Is Anxious Preoccupied attachment permanent?

Hi. Thank you for reaching out and asking this very thoughtful question.

So, from what I hear you saying is that you feel immense anxiety in relationships, constant worry that you will lose that partner or that you will be left alone. One of my first questions I would want to address is if you have anxiety in other facets of your life and other relationships? Does it happen only with romantic partners? Or family members/friends etc. And when you mention that you will lose your partner or be left alone, I want to address that and see if you are referencing something like abandonment from that partner, or if you are referencing that something will happen to them... let's say a tragic accident. The reason I want to differentiate those is because we may be dealing more with a generalized anxiety if it is the latter example... or anxious attachment if it is the former example. 

We will proceed assuming it is anxious attachment.  You mention feeling extremely clingy and fearful you will ruin your relationship and this is common of anxious attachment.  Other common traits of the anxious attachment are: they are so very generous and attentive to the ones they care deeply about, they are quick to display their feelings, but sometimes can blame others for that, and they often perceive behaviors as abandonment. Abandonment is a key piece of anxious attachment and often drives many of the behaviors and patterns you are likely talking about that you display. What tends to happen is when someone perceives abandonment who has an anxious attachment, they will engage in "clingy" or "needy" behaviors because they need to feel safe, and they need to know it is okay and that they will not be abandoned. This can become detrimental because often times these behaviors tend to push our partner away. (Side note, I also notice that a lot of anxiously attached individuals end up with avoidantly attached individuals and as you can imagine - those two responses: neediness and avoidance are very very triggering to one another). Anxious attachment is not all that bad... I want to note that there are absolutely some benefits of these traits. Anxiously attached individuals love the idea of attaching to people... people mean everything to you. You feel safe when you have someone to support, who supports you, someone to connect with. You love to be heard and understood. And in order for you to move forward in a relationship, these things have to be met pretty early on or you wouldn't even start it. You have wonderful intuition. When things go sour is when it doesn't continue to match that narrative or if your partner skips one tiny beat. If they do, then the fears of them leaving you start to set in. You always have a fear that they will disappoint you. You may even sometimes hyper focus on this one person. And when this happens, you also hyper focus on the behaviors. This is when those clingy behaviors start, and you regret saying or doing these things the second it happens. But then you are fearful those behaviors you just did, pushed them away and gave them even more reason to leave. 

Attachment theory shows us that these anxious behavior patterns (and any attachment pattern) is a learned behavior. So, is it going to last forever? No. If you work diligently to rewire those neural networks, then no it does not have to last forever. However, the older we get the more solid our brain becomes (meaning it isn't as absorbent and spongey as when we were younger) BUT our brain never fully solidifies. We are built to heal and we can always rewire those neural networks and teach ourselves differently. 

When I work with someone on moving away from an undesired attachment, we also spend A LOT of time learning about the secure attachment. The secure attachment is the "goal" for where we want to reside. So, in order to do so we start with learning about your attachment style, learn about the secure attachment style, and then we heavily begin on recognizing the anxious patterns in your relationship. This takes time... we work on warning signs, what your body feels like when it's happening and how to stop yourself before you do. Once you can get to the point where you can examine it in the moment, we work on regulating the body and nervous system so we can teach it "you are not abandoned right now, nor are you going to be abandoned you do not have to respond this way" and get to a point where we can actually engage in alternative behavior (hopefully the choice at this point would now be a securely attached behavior). It is not 1 time of doing this. Nor 2, or 3, or 4. Just like it wasn't just 1, 2, 3, or 4 times with other people to form an anxious attachment. It does take time and it does take repetitive patterns of *doing differently* than what you would normally do. It takes time and patience. But it can be done. 

I want to also add that I like to add in information to provide to partners and spouses. Healing and moving to a secure attachment can be exponentially pushed forward if partner is on board, learns about it, and does everything they can to also support that secure attachment. (If they aren't securely attached, we should also get them working that way).