Why You Feel Anxious When Someone Pulls Away (Attachment & The Nervous System)

When Distance Feels Like Danger

Many people believe they are “too emotional” in relationships because they feel intense anxiety when a partner becomes quiet, distracted, or asks for space.

You may notice your thoughts racing:

• Are they losing feelings?

• Did I do something wrong?

• Should I say something now?

• Should I give them space?

• What is wrong with me?

• Are they going to ghost me?

The emotional urgency can feel disproportionate to what is actually happening in the moment. Yet inside your body, it does not feel small. It feels serious — almost like something important is at risk. The anxiety and the uncertainty eat away at you from the inside out. This reaction is not simply overthinking. It is your attachment system activating. Your nervous system is responding the only way it knows how… with clinging to fight for your needs to be met, or to fawn and people please in hopes to be loved, again.

The Attachment Alarm

Romantic relationships activate one of the deepest survival systems in the human nervous system: the need for safe connection. Intimate connection is one of the most vulnerable experiences we can enter and the greatest mirrors to illuminate our fears. Soon, a light feels like it is being shined on all of our greatest insecurities.

When someone we depend on emotionally becomes distant, less responsive, or harder to read, the brain does not interpret this as a minor social change. It interprets it as potential loss of safety. Your nervous system is not reacting to the present moment alone. It is reacting to what distance has meant in the past. For some people, emotional distance historically meant unpredictability, inconsistency, feeling inherently “wrong,” or feeling alone with overwhelming feelings. As a result, hyper vigilance becomes the default. The body learns to monitor connection closely.

So when a partner withdraws — even briefly — your nervous system increases alertness.

This often shows up as:
• urge to text or call
• difficulty focusing
• replaying conversations
• seeking reassurance
• emotional intensity during conflict

It is not neediness or you being “too much.” It is a protective response to perceived disconnection.

The Pursue–Withdraw Cycle

In many relationships, the anxious reaction and a partner’s withdrawal begin reinforcing each other. This is called the pursue withdrawal cycle.

One partner moves closer to feel secure. The other moves away to feel regulated.

The more one reaches, the more the other needs space. The more the other needs space, the more the first feels unsafe.

Neither person is trying to hurt the other. They are trying to regulate their nervous systems in opposite ways. This is normal. It does not feel comfortable. However, due to the law of balance — the opposite responses subconsciously are created in attempts to create homeostasis, even if it doesn’t feel comfortable… even if it feels like conflict… even if it feels like distance.

Unfortunately, this cycle often erodes intimacy. The pursuing partner feels rejected and unseen. The withdrawing partner feels pressured and inadequate. Conversations become about behavior instead of underlying fear. Over time, these create mini-fractures of trust. Each partner feels safety eroding and without safety, intimacy has no container. Intimacy is not pure without safety, rather it becomes a mask in hopes to feel connected but leaves both people with a pang of emptiness.

Over time, both partners may conclude they are incompatible when in reality they are caught in a patterned response that is only human — its only a mechanism of protection that finds itself in a never-ending cycle. Until, you disrupt the cycle.

Why Logic Doesn’t Calm It

Many couples try to solve this with reassurance or rules:
“Just trust me.”

“Give me 24 hours.”

“You’re overreacting.”

”I will do better next time.”

But attachment reactions are not cognitive first — they are physiological first. They live deeply in the body which is why that is where you feel it first.

When your nervous system perceives distance as danger, the body shifts into an activation state. Heart rate increases, attention narrows, your chest and stomach tighten, and your mind searches for explanation. This is why the reaction feels urgent. You cannot reason your body out of a survival response. You cannot even comprehend responding with patience and pause. Your body says, “This is what I need and I will not change my mind.” (ie. “I need space now” for those experiencing avoidantly attached patterns and “I need to fix this now” for those experiencing anxiously attached patterns.

You have to help the body experience safety again. You get to do this within your own body and within the dynamic of your partnership.

The Impact on Intimacy

Unresolved attachment activation slowly changes how partners relate. The anxious partner may begin monitoring the relationship instead of enjoying it. This perpetuates the avoidant partner to want more distance as they feel their partner’s “hovering” energy. The withdrawing partner may begin avoiding emotional conversations altogether. This perpetuates the anxious partner to want to talk and fix the uncomfortable energy between them even more.

Physical intimacy often changes too. Anxiety makes closeness feel fragile with amplified vulnerability. Withdrawal makes closeness feel pressured, almost needing it to be scheduled. What began as a protective response becomes emotional distance, physical distance, energetic distance.

Couples often believe their problem is communication. More often, it is nervous system safety.

Polyvagal Theory and the Fear of Disconnection

Dr. Stephen Porges is the creator of polyvagal theory. In this theory, to keep it brief, he identifies that there are three nervous system states:

• Ventral vagal (safe & connected)

• Sympathetic (fight/flight activation)

• Dorsal vagal (shutdown/collapse)

Polyvagal theory talks alot about the “window of tolerance,” which is the optimal state that the system can be in where it is not in hyper-arousal in high or hypo-arousal in shut down, but it hovering in the middle — awake, aware and present. Trauma narrows the window of tolerance and regulation techniques shift the nervous system back into a ventral state where the window of tolerance can be widened and more “spacious,” one could say.

Within relationship, our nervous system is constantly shifting states. Thus, in conflict or day-to-day interactions, partner distance shifts someone with anxious attachment out of ventral vagal safety and into sympathetic activation and shifts someone with avoidant attachment out of their window of tolerance into activation or directly into dorsal vagal.

Polyvagal theory talks a lot about the “window of tolerance,” which is the optimal state that the system can be in where it is not in hyper-arousal in high activation or hypo-arousal in shut down, but it hovering in the middle — awake, aware and present. Trauma narrows the window of tolerance and regulation techniques shift the nervous system back into a ventral state where the window of tolerance can be widened and more “spacious,” one could say.

Nonetheless, the way we connection = survival at a biological level. Connection is what all life is hinged upon. Even those who feel incredibly “disconnected” from others are inherently not. We are constantly operating in response to the level of connection we feel or do not feel with the world around us. Connection is survival. We need it (ps. it actually is one of the greatest factors to longevity in life. The more connected you feel to community and relationships, the longer you live — even when you may choose other unhealthy lifestyle choices. Connection is what got us to this earth and it is what keeps us “alive,” whether we choose to believe it or not. Again, we need it.

Anxious Attachment Is Not Just Anxiety — It’s Mobilization

When someone is in their anxious attachment activation, the sympathetic “fight/flight” response is online with a:

• Racing heart

• Urgency to fix

• Hyper-focus on cues

This leads many anxious attached individuals (or those experiencing anxious attached presentation) as “clingy” when it’s actually fear in motion. As humans, we worry because we tend to live in the future and protect ourselves from future pain. We can cognitively understand that we are living in our heads in a potential future that is not actually in front of us in the now. However, the body physiologically doesn’t compute this. The nervous system enters into it’s coping strategy state of fight, flight, fawn and freeze, and it feels it is all happening RIGHT NOW. Similar to trauma, the body cannot identify if it is a flashback or presently happening. The nervous system will treat it all one-in-the-same. Therefore, it is important to allow the mind and the body to start communicating to each other. When we open this thread of communication (through somatic experiencing: learn more), the process of the nervous system taking over can begin to slow down and one regains “power” over their knee-jerk reaction to let their attachment pattern be in the driver’s seat. They now are attuned to the fear versus reacting to it.

The Fight Response in Anxious Attachment

Most people associate anxious attachment only with pursuit — but fight often hides inside it. Many people who are anxiously attached want to protest in anger that their partner is not showing up for them, prioritizing the relationship, or meeting them half way. It shows up as criticism, blaming, and even, ultimatums. Overtime, this individual may see an increase in escalation in the relationships conflict, especially within themselves. Their tone becomes sharp, and sometimes even loud. They are grasping to find proof that their partner cares, but if they don’t find it, their anger and resentment only grows. This may look like:

• “Why don’t you care?”

• “If you cared you would…”

• “You don’t love me if you won’t talk about this right now..".”

• “This relationship clearly isn’t important to you!”

Fighting is a way to mirror to your partner the importance of the relationship to you. Anger can be an attachment bid. However, it often gets the anxious partner the opposite of what they are looking for: it gets them withdrawal… obviously. Yet, to the nervous system, this response makes complete and total sense. “If I match my voice in tone and intensity to how deeply I care about making this right, they will feel how much I love them.” But sadly, it backfires. It is important for the couple to reframe fighting and anger as a desire to connect. If the anxious partner who is feeling anger can go a layer deeper to see that they are craving love and connection, and then communicate from that place of clarity and regulation… everything shifts.

The Fawn Response in Anxious Attachment

Many anxious partners lean toward fawning rather than fighting.

They are:

• Over-accommodating

• Suppressing needs

• Excess apologizing

• Becoming “low maintenance” to avoid abandonment

• Losing self to maintain connection

This is a learned relational survival strategy. If I please you, you will have more capacity to meet my unmet needs. If I give to you, you’ll have more to give to me and you’ll make it reciprocal, right? This stems from early unpredictability or inconsistency within one’s childhood or within a core relationship in their life. It can show up highly for individuals with a fearful-avoidant pattern or disorganized attachment because this individual fawns due to a high level of hypervigilance to keep the peace.

Sometimes when we think we are being loving, our nervous systems are actually in the driver’s seat trying to prevent loss.

Why Withdrawal Feels Like Rejection (Even When It Isn’t)

Withdrawal, of course, is not comfortable. It feels threatening to have someone pull away. It feels like its “because of you.” However, I invite you to inquire deeper… Maybe it is because of their own nervous system. Their own nervous system needs tending to. Yes, the relationship bubbled up (or triggered) a feeling within them. Yet, it is only natural. Neuroception, a term within polyvagal theory, is the body detecting safety or detecting danger outside conscious awareness. This is happening in the subtle-most layers of ones experience. Our systems are always calculating risk for us, way before we become consciously aware of how we are feeling (sometimes, it never travels into our conscious awareness and remains in the subconscious realm).

Because this is happening in the subconscious and within the inner-nervous system’s experience, cues can be ambiguous and they are often interpreted as threat. It is only human to make it personal, right? It is only human for your body to respond to the body’s around you, let alone the body of someone you love who you are often impacted by in deeper ways than people who you have less connection to. Delayed responses trigger more activation than direct conflict because there is less “activity.” When the system has less factual happenings, we as humans must create a story to “fill the gap of the unknown.”

This very story that we write within our heads is what destroys most relationships. They way we “will in the gap” is completely based on our personal background. We create a story that serves either: 1. the proof of our core wounds, or 2. the denial that any of this conflict is happening in the first place and that the relational patterns aren’t a problem. The latter is the mind’s way of protecting the love. For many couples, this dismissal of emotion and dismissal of unhealthy patterning only perpetuates and amplifies the pattern reoccurring, over and over again.

The nervous system prefers predictable discomfort over uncertain distance. We always want certainty and we will create any story necessary in hopes to prove to ourselves the story we “want” to believe.

Dorsal Collapse: When Anxious Turns Into Shutdown

After prolonged activation, anxious partners can flip into:

• Emotional numbness

• “I’m done.”

• Detachment

• Depression-like symptoms

Dorsal vagal shutdown happens after prolonged sympathetic activation where there is quite literally not enough energy in the body and the nervous system to remain activated. In severe cases, this can look like complete “crash” where a person falls asleep due to their nervous system not having the capacity to hold any more activation. This occurs because the body is wise. It will do anything to support the nervous system in “surviving,” even when that impact the relationship from feeling like it’s thriving.

How the Pursue–Withdraw Cycle Maps Onto Nervous System States

I want to map this out in a feedback loop that you may be able to resonate with. It is very common for both individuals to go into a sympathetic state (fight or flight) when attachment fears are activated. As a reaction, one partner takes on a fight or flight response that is very active and the other enters a state where their fight or flight looks like shut down or collapse (dorsal). The one that operates in an active state will often be the “anxious” partner who will reach for the other to fix, connect, and hope for repair in the moment. As a reaction, the other partner retreats (emotionally or verbally) in their dorsal collapse. This creates an intensification for their anxious partner which leads the '“avoidant” into complete shut down, which may look like silence, checking out of the convseration, stonewalling, emotional disconnection and appearing emotionless, or physical withdrawal.

These two nervous systems are attempting to find safety but are moving in two opposite ways.

Why Reassurance Sometimes Makes It Worse

When anxiety rises in attachment, reassurance can feel like oxygen. The anxiety uses it as a bandaid thinking that maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay.

“Are we okay?”
“Yes, we’re okay.”

For a moment, the body softens. The heart rate slows. The spiral pauses. But if reassurance becomes the primary way you regulate, something subtle begins to happen. Repeated reassurance can reinforce alarm because at its core, there is a lack of trust. There is a lack of safety in ones body, and thus within the partnership. Both partners begin to feel a lack of trust in the connection. If every spike of anxiety is followed by immediate soothing from your partner, your body may learn that the spike is necessary to receive closeness. The pattern becomes: Activation → Reach → Relief → Repeat. Instead of: Activation → Self-regulation → Secure reconnection. Security grows when your nervous system learns:

• I can survive temporary disconnection.

• Distance does not equal abandonment.

• My body can return to safety.

This does not mean reassurance is wrong. It means reassurance alone cannot build regulation capacity.

The Difference Between Co-Regulation and Dependency

When this cycle continues, the relationship becomes co-dependent. You are looking to the other partner to alleviate your emotional dysregulation and calm your fears versus finding safe and healthy co-regulation by turning inward, yet, while being in each other’s presence.

To put it clearly: co-regulation is mutual and stabilizing. Dependency is urgent and fear-driven.

Co-regulation sounds like:
“I’m feeling activated. Can you sit with me for a minute?”

Dependency sounds like:
“I need you to fix this feeling right now.”

In co-regulation:

• Both partners remain present.

• Both nervous systems move toward safety.

• Connection is offered, not demanded.

In dependency:

• One nervous system is outsourcing safety.

• The other may begin to feel responsible or pressured.

• Intimacy turns into management.

Healthy attachment includes co-regulation. Secure attachment also includes self-regulation. If you want a healthy partnership, you need to be able to do your own regulation for yourself.

Temporary Relief vs. Long-Term Regulation

Reassurance often soothes the symptom — not the activation underneath it. The nervous system learns:

I feel better when they calm me.

But it does not learn:

I can calm myself.

Over time, your body may begin to associate safety not with connection itself, but with immediate response, quick repair, constant availability. The window for tolerance narrows. Distance feels harder. Silence feels sharper. Uncertainty feels intolerable. The relief is real — but it is short-lived. The pattern will then continue and your relationship will feel stuck in a loop on repeat.

Co-Regulation: The Missing Skill in Most Relationships

Many couples focus on communication strategies, but few are taught nervous system awareness. Co-regulation is not about solving a problem or fixing the fight. It is about helping two nervous systems return to safety together amidst their own sympathetic activations or dorsal shut-downs. Again, according to polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, the state associated with safety and connection is called ventral vagal activation. When you find this ventral state:

• Breath is steady.

• Voice is warm.

• Face is expressive.

• The body feels grounded.

Co-regulation is the process of helping each other return there. You don’t ask your partner to get you there. Together, you find internal trust to hold a safe container where you steady your breath. Take a pause. Remember that love is at the core of your conflict… a desire for closeness, an ache for respect or reciprocity, a hope for intimacy. Co-regulation happens when you create space for it.

For those feeling uncertain about their relationship, stuck in these anxious-avoidant loops and are interested in learning foundational skills to create secure attachment in your relationship, I invite you to explore The Relationship Audit.

Somatic Tools for Attachment Activation + SUGGESTIONS FOR Co-Regulation

Co-regulation is:

• Sitting close during distress.

• Softening your tone intentionally.

• Making gentle eye contact.

• Slowing the pace of conversation.

• Offering grounded presence rather than rapid solutions.

It is less about words and more about nervous system cues. Your body reads safety through:

• Facial expression

• Vocal prosody (the melody of your voice)

• Rhythm of speech

• Physical proximity

These cues signal that you are not alone. That it is possible that you are safe. That this is not a threat. That we can handle this… together.

When Co-Regulation Isn’t Available: The Role of Self-Regulation

Co-regulation is powerful. Being soothed by a caring partner can be deeply healing for the nervous system. But real relationships are imperfect because each person comes in with their own fears… stemming from a completely unique mosaic of backgrounds, even if you both resonate with fearing the same thiing.

Sometimes your partner is overwhelmed. Sometimes they need space. Sometimes the timing is simply wrong. And for someone with anxious attachment, this is often the exact moment activation peaks.

This is where self-regulation becomes essential — not as a replacement for connection, but as a bridge back to it. Again, co-regulating is lovely. Yet sometimes you may need to regulate your body on your own first.

I often recommend a simple guideline: the 20-minute rule. Step away for about 20 minutes to allow your nervous system to settle before returning to the conversation.

This is not avoidance. It is preparation for connection and the ability to create a necessary structure where both people know that re-connection will happen. It builds trust in your partner that they can and will do what is needed to attune to their own emotions, needs, and nervous system.

When your body is activated, your brain is not operating from relational safety. You are operating from protection. In that state, your mind searches for certainty, your thoughts intensify, and communication easily becomes reactive. Taking space allows your physiology to shift out of alarm. If you feel capable, these same practices can later become relational — sitting quietly together, breathing side-by-side, or grounding in shared presence. Done gently, this can actually deepen intimacy because you are no longer trying to fix each other, only to be present with each other.

Why Solo-Regulation Matters

If safety only comes from another person, the nervous system becomes dependent on immediate reassurance. But when you learn to help your own body settle, something new develops: You are no longer alone with your feelings. Here, you actually make secure attachment possible. Without self-regulation, you will never have a securely attached relationship. Full stop. Self-regulation is a foundational key.

Self-regulation does not mean you should not need your partner. It means you are able to return to them without urgency driving the interaction.

You move from: “I need you right now so this feeling stops.”

to: I can steady myself, and then we can talk.”

This shift changes the entire pursue-withdraw cycle. Your partner feels less pressure. You feel less panic. The conversation becomes possible.

Regulation Before Communication

Many relationship conflicts are not actually communication problems. They are timing problems and intention problems. When two nervous systems are activated, words lose accuracy. When conversation is rushed, it’s likely one will leave with unmet “expectations.” Creating adequate space and enough time to connect is critical. When dysreguated and unable to be present: Tone sharpens and intent is misread. Both partners leave feeling more hurt than before. This is why regulation must come before conversation.

Regulation first. Conversation second.

A pause does not damage connection. An unregulated interaction often does. Learning to step away, settle your body, and then return is not distancing from the relationship. It is protecting it.

How to Talk About This Without Blame

Attachment conversations can easily become character attacks.

Instead of:
“You’re so distant.”

Try:
“When we go quiet after conflict, my body goes into alarm.”

Instead of:
“You never reassure me.”

Try:
“When I don’t hear from you after we argue, I notice my chest tighten and my thoughts race.”

This keeps the focus on nervous system experience rather than personality flaws. Blame triggers defense. Shame deteriorates any secure foundation. Vulnerability invites connection. Compassion and taking responsibility always opens doors to soften walls.

When you speak from sensation and fear rather than accusation, your partner is more likely to stay present.

Secure Attachment Is Not the Absence of Activation

Security does not mean never getting triggered. Even securely attached couples experience:

• Conflict

• Misattunement

• Distance

• Hurt

The difference is recovery speed. In secure dynamics:

• Activation is noticed sooner.

• Repair happens faster.

• Neither partner interprets temporary distance as permanent loss.

Safety is built through repeated repair and the trust that the repair will happen and that both partners prioritize this repair and can initate this repair (this is HUGE).

Each time conflict is followed by reconnection, the nervous system updates its map: Disconnection is survivable. Repair is possible. Closeness can return.

Over time, the body no longer treats distance as danger. It learns that connection can ebb-and-flow, as can the feeling of being in-sync, without breaking the relationship.

“Am I With the Wrong Person, or Is This My Attachment?”

Is anyone asking these question:

• “Am I with the wrong person, or is this my attachment?”

• “Am I repeating the same pattern again, or is this person an aligned opportunity to do it differently?”

• “Am I being asked to show up differently, or am I attracting a mirror of what my nervous system has always known?”

  • ie. My nervous system has always know it has to effort for love, so I attract a partner who I can repeat my anxious attachment with.

  • ie. My nervous system doesn’t feel safe to be vulnerable, so I attract a partner who won’t expand me emotionally so I remain more comfortable and in control (even though I crave to be emotionally held.)

  • ie. My nervous system is very used to high levels of chaos, so I attract a partner where there is a heightened level of tension and disagreement so my system remains in the state of overwhelm in which is has built normalcy and homeostasis around.

Often times we re-enact our trauma in our relationships in order for us to see, feel, and turn toward that which we have not yet softened toward in our past. We will continue to repeat pattens until we release the stored energy within our nervous system. First, that requires an awareness. Secondly, that requires a validation of your pain. Thirdly, that allows for energy of the pattern to be released so that you can begin to operate from a new story without the anxious, avoidant, or survival patterns running your life anymore.

When Professional Support Helps

It can be helpful to look for support if you feel stuck in the loop of these patterns. These emotions are stored in your body and you have continued to have unmet needs that you’re deeply hoping can be finally met (originating from the works of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) by Sue Johnson). Again, because these patterns are stored in your nervous system, somatic therapy is a very helpful modality so that you can get out of your head. By bringing your focus to your body, “where your attention goes, energy flows.” This alone will be healing for you (and it feels more easeful versus so complex — this is a great modality for heavy thinkers and fixers). Finally, attachment-focused work is foundational. Healing happens in relationship. We start within the relationship with your nervous system and how your inner child innate needs were responded to that impacted your beliefs about how to get love, safety, and belonging. For those interested in attachment, somatic-based support, start with a free 30-minute session with me or learn more about my approach.

The Nervous System Can Learn

Reminder, the body can learn that distance is not always danger. Yet, it requires us to tap into the layer that lives underneath our survival layers, our hardened layers, our armored layers. When we tap into the softer layers underneath, we unlock our neuroplasticity and the malleable ability to change our patterning from the inside out.

We don’t earn secure attachment, we practice it. We practice entering the soft layers so that the hardened layers can melt away. The more we access our softness, the less ingrained the armoring becomes. These armored layers are neural pathways that we continue to travel, deepening, deepening, and deepening the habit to harden ourselves and harden our nervous systems each time we react to the fears of our inner child versus choosing the option to soften toward the fear, itself.

Safety is not achieved. Safety is built. Safety is practiced within your nervous system. Safety is rewired into your very being. Then, your survival strategies stop becoming the operating system that your body automatically runs upon. Instead, your body starts to choose an automatic response that is rooted in safety, love, and belonging so that you don’t have to search for it. You are it. You are the wholeness. You are the safety you seek.

What Actually Helps

So, change usually begins when partners understand what the reaction means rather than judging it. When the pursuing partner learns ways to regulate the body during disconnection, urgency softens. When the withdrawing partner learns to stay emotionally present without overwhelm, distance reduces.

Somatic awareness, slower conversations (try the speaker-listener technique which is a Gottman therapy intervention), and supported emotional expression allow new experiences of connection to form. The nervous system learns that closeness does not always lead to overwhelm — and distance does not always mean loss. From there, communication tools finally begin to work because the body is no longer in protection. Within The Relationship Audit and the BE WITH Attachment Style Transformation Group, we practice creating a new feedback-loop in which your nervous systems can operate from what we call your “window of tolerance,” according to Polyvagal Theory.

If you recognize this pattern in your relationship, it does not mean the relationship is failing. It often means your attachment systems are interacting in a predictable way that can be understood and gradually changed with the right support.