I am happy to share this guest posy blog written by Santiago Delboy, MBA, LCSW:
When care has been inconsistent, intrusive, or difficult to access, separations may acquire a
different meaning. Being on our own or hearing our partner’s wish for alone time can activate
older expectations and fears. For example, we may fear -consciously or not- that we are no
longer wanted, that we have done something wrong, or that we will never find consistent
Companionship.Anxious Attachment and Loneliness
Anxious attachment describes one way of organizing our experience around uncertainty in
relationships. It neither defines a fixed identity nor signals a personal flaw, but represents a
pattern shaped during childhood by attempts to preserve connection when connection felt
unstable or unavailable.
As a result, we might monitor other people’s behaviors closely, seek repeated reassurance, or
become distressed by sudden changes in availability. We may become compliant, agreeable, or
perfectly responsive, hoping that by meeting the other person’s needs, we will prevent rejection.
Or we may protest distance through anger, accusations, or withdrawal.
All these strategies attempt to reverse actual or anticipated feelings of loneliness; they are both
an expression of longing and an attempt at self-protection. Even though they are aimed at
restoring closeness and keeping us from feeling alone, they can make relationships feel more
precarious and keep ourselves in a perpetual sense of anxiety.
Loneliness is often connected to feelings of sadness or a longing for companionship, intimacy, or belonging. In those moments, the world around us might feel slow and empty.
However, loneliness can also be activating. We may wonder whether we have been forgotten,
rejected, or replaced, searching for signs that a relationship we cherish is changing, diluting, or
disappearing. Feeling cut off from others, we may experience disconnection as dangerous.
As this sense of danger emerges under the surface, we may become aware of growing anxiety,
perhaps fearing that someone we need or care about is unreachable or no longer available for us, leaving us alone to face difficult feelings on our own. This distress is not merely a cognitive
distortion but it has meaning.
The Role of Early Relationships
Early relationships shape how we experience separation and reunion with others. If these
relationships were sufficiently responsive and predictable, we may have developed the capacity
to realize that connection can survive a temporary absence – what psychology calls object
constancy. The other person’s absence might be distressing, but it does not trigger an unbearable fear of abandonment.
The Loneliness Beneath Anxiety
Worry, vigilance, anticipation, and relational problem-solving can keep our mind active, even if
it makes us feel anxious. In this way, anxiety symptoms might serve a defensive purpose,
protecting us from feeling helpless, grief-stricken, angry, or needy. For example, worrying about
how to keep another person from leaving can feel safer than recognizing how deeply we need
them, or grieving earlier experiences of not feeling known and cared for.
Not all loneliness, however, is a repetition of the past. People may genuinely lack sustaining
relationships, a sense of community, or opportunities for belonging. A feeling of isolation is not
always reducible to internal dynamics and past experiences. However, our ability to navigate
solitude and enjoy our own company responds to deep, complex dynamics therapy can help
Understand.
How Depth Oriented Therapy Can Help
Depth-oriented treatment looks at anxiety as more than
an isolated experience. Instead, it considers the emotional meanings, unconscious expectations, and relational patterns that lie underneath. While it looks at our past experiences, it does so in order to recognize its impact in present-day feelings and relationships. And while
psychodynamic therapy helps develop insight and understanding, it is highly relational and
focused on our emotional life.
Depth Oriented Therapy helps loneliness be experienced and understood without
treating it as evidence of inadequacy or a problem to “fix.” The work begins by tracing what
unfolds inside of us when connection feels uncertain: the feelings it evokes, the expectation that
follows, and the strategies used to secure or avoid closeness.
While this kind of insight can be useful and clarifying, it is rarely enough to change deep-seated
emotional patterns. Change also requires learning to recognize, tolerate, and make sense of the
underlying longing, uncertainty, anger, or grief, without turning to vigilance, reassurance-
seeking, withdrawal, or self-criticism.
As these feelings become more tolerable, protective responses may become less necessary.
Working through them can change us from within, creating the conditions for a different internal
experience of connection. We might be able to sustain a sense of being cared for during
temporary absence, distinguish present-day uncertainty from dangers from the past, and ask for
closeness more directly.
The goal is not self-sufficiency or the elimination of distress or of our need for others. The goal
is greater freedom to depend on others without feeling that every absence threatens our sense of self. As connection becomes less dependent on constant reassurance, solitude can become more bearable and relationships more mutual and flexible
About the author
Santiago Delboy, MBA, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and founder of
Fermata Psychotherapy, a psychodynamic therapy practice in Chicago. Fermata provides therapy
for adults in-person and virtually. His approach is informed by psychoanalytic, relational,
attachment, and trauma perspectives. He is Adjunct Clinical Faculty at the Chicago Center for
Psychoanalysis, and has been a clinical consultant at the Institute for Clinical Social Work and
Northwestern University.
