Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

by Jessica Fern

Regardless of a person’s specific attachment style, people with attachment insecurity will all struggle to some degree with emotional regulation and self-soothing. People with more attachment anxiety tend to seek outward regulation from others—they want to be taken care of, try to overprocess with partners, look for someone fix or take away what they’re going through, or can even seek someone else to just tell them what to do. People with an anxious attachment style can struggle with being able to hold and sit with their own feelings and so, like a game of emotional hot potato, they try to pass off their emotions to their partners in order to diffuse their own discomfort. Seeking this external regulation from others is often at the exclusion of their own self-regulation and their own sense of self.