Is It Anxiety or Intuition? Navigating Dating with Anxious Attachment

Shannon Jackson
4 hours ago
5 min read

You’re dating someone new. Things seem to be going well, but they haven't texted you back in a few hours. Suddenly, your chest feels tight. Your mind starts racing: Did I say something wrong? Are they losing interest? Are they with someone else?

You feel a desperate, powerful urgency to do something, to text them again, check their social media, or just get the reassurance you need to make this awful feeling stop.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This is the classic signature of anxious attachment.

When you’re already a person who struggles with anxiety, dating can feel like pouring gasoline on a fire. It heightens every fear, every insecurity, and every doubt. It becomes almost impossible to tell the difference between a real red flag and a phantom fear created by your anxiety.

In a recent episode of the Healthy Push Podcast, I sat down with psychotherapist Emma (@perfectly_emmperfect) to unpack all of this. We talked about where anxious attachment comes from, why it’s so hard, and, most importantly, how to heal.

So, how can you tell if that gut feeling is your intuition warning you, or just your anxiety trying to sabotage a good thing?

The Core Question: Is It My Anxiety or My Intuition?

This is the million-dollar question for anyone with an anxious attachment style. You feel something is off, but you can't trust if the feeling is based in reality or in fear.

Emma shared a game-changing way to tell the difference:

Anxiety shows up as urgency. It’s that "I need to make a decision right now. I need to end this right now. I need to resolve this immediately."

Intuition, on the other hand, is a quieter (though still uncomfortable) knowing. It’s the voice that says, "Okay, this is uncomfortable, and I'm going to sit with it. I'm going to process it and look at it from all sides."

Anxiety screams; intuition whispers. Your anxiety wants you to react immediately to get rid of the discomfort. Your intuition wants you to pause and gather more information. Learning to create that pause is the first step toward healing.

What is Anxious Attachment, Really?

Before we can heal it, we have to understand it.

Anxious attachment is an "insecure" attachment style that forms in early childhood based on our connection with our caregivers. If our caregivers were inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or made us feel like our needs were "too much," we may have developed a deep-seated belief that we have to cling to, perform for, or "fix" a relationship to keep from being abandoned.

In adult romantic relationships, this can look like:

Being hyper-focused on the relationship.
Constantly feeling on edge, like "the other shoe is about to drop."
Fearing that any conflict means the relationship is over.
Needing immediate resolution and constant reassurance.
Feeling unworthy of love or fearing your partner will inevitably leave.

This often leads to the painful anxious-avoidant dynamic, where the anxious person chases connection and the avoidant person withdraws, triggering a deeply dysregulating cycle of abandonment fears.

Your 5-Step Toolkit for Healing Anxious Attachment

The good news is that your attachment style is malleable, it's not a life sentence. You can move from an anxious attachment to a more secure one. Here are the practical steps we discussed in the episode.

1. Master the "Pause" with Self-Regulation

When you feel that wave of anxiety and urgency, your first job is not to text your partner—it's to regulate your own nervous system.

Instead of immediately acting on the fear, create space.

This is your "toolbox" of self-regulation skills. It's not about making the discomfort go away instantly but about teaching yourself that you are capable of sitting with it and surviving it.

Go for a walk outside.
Practice deep breathing or tapping (EFT).
Talk to a safe, trusted friend (not to vent, but to process).
Put your phone in another room for 30 minutes.

2. Build Unshakable Self-Trust

A lack of self-trust is at the root of anxious attachment. You don't trust yourself to be okay if the relationship ends, so you cling to it at all costs.

Emma gave a brilliant, simple way to rebuild this: Make small promises to yourself every day and keep them.

It can be as simple as:

"I will take three deep breaths when I wake up."
"I will drink a full glass of water before my coffee."
"I will do that one to-do list item I've been procrastinating."

When you repeatedly show up for yourself in these small ways, you are sending a powerful message to your brain: "I am reliable. I can count on me. I will be okay, no matter what."

3. Spot and Stop the People-Pleasing Cycle

The line between being a kind, accommodating partner and being a people-pleaser is thin, and those with anxious attachment cross it all the time. We abandon our own needs to make sure the other person is happy, hoping it will make them stay.

How do you know if you're people-pleasing? Emma's advice was sharp and clear: Look for resentment.

If you are carrying around a lot of resentment toward your partner, your friends, or your family and you're not speaking up about it, that's a clear sign you are people-pleasing. You are abandoning yourself, and it's "going to eat you alive if you don't do something about it."

4. Learn to Communicate Your Needs (Without Fear)

This is often the hardest step. We're afraid that expressing our needs will make us look "weak," "needy," or "too much."

But in a secure relationship, your needs are valid. Period.

A big part of healing is learning to state your needs simply and confidently, from a regulated place (not from a place of urgent anxiety).

It can sound like:

"I value clear communication, and it helps me feel connected."
"I'm looking for a partner who is consistent. That's important to me."
"I need [X] to feel secure in a relationship."

The right person will want to meet your needs. If someone makes you feel "crazy" for having them, that is not your anxiety, that is your intuition telling you this person is not for you.

5. Be Willing to Walk Away

This is the ultimate sign of a secure, self-trusting person. It's the ability to say, "I love you, but I love me more. And I am abandoning myself to stay in this relationship."

Knowing that you have the strength to walk away from something that isn't meeting your needs is the most powerful shift you can make. It means you are no longer dating from a place of scarcity and fear, but from a place of wholeness and self-worth.

A New Way to Date: From Outcome to Self-Discovery

So much of our dating anxiety comes from being attached to an outcome like finding "the one," getting married, having kids. We treat every date like a pass/fail test.

What if we reframed it?

As Emma so powerfully put it, dating is an opportunity to learn. Every "failed" relationship, every bad date, every conversation teaches you something new about what you want, what you don't want, and who you are.

When you let go of the outcome, you can focus on the most important relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. When you build that connection and self-trust, you'll find that the dating world looks a whole lot less scary.