What are the signs of anxious attachment?

Anxious attachment shows up as a kind of hyper-alertness to your relationship's temperature. A later-than-usual reply isn't just a later reply — it's a data point you're already building a theory around. A short text reads as distance. A cancelled plan reads as the beginning of the end. The signal is real to you because the fear behind it is real, even when the evidence isn't. It usually comes from needing reassurance at a rate most people don't think to give — not because you're needy, but because uncertainty genuinely feels like danger to your nervous system, not just an inconvenience. The pattern gets reinforced when it pairs with someone avoidant, because the less reassurance you get, the harder you reach for it, and the harder you reach, the more the other person pulls back. The fix isn't suppressing how much you feel — it's learning to tell the difference between anxiety and actual information, so a quiet hour stops being read as a five-alarm fire.