Like so many others, my anxious attachment style reached its unbearable apex during the pandemic. I remember staring at my phone, watching friends typing and sending messages in a WhatsApp group, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. Paranoia told me they were gossiping about me behind my back in a separate group. So I sent messages to each of them individually to make sure everything was okay. Of course, it was. But the noise in my head was not.

People talk about attachment theory a lot. But for the most part, the conversation centres on romantic relationships: is the reason you’re not ready to call him your boyfriend because you’re an avoidant? Are you catastrophising about why she hasn’t replied to your texts because you’re anxious? Do you never worry about anything much at all because you’re a secure unicorn?

But rarely do we look at how attachment theory can be applied to friendships. And yet, it obviously plays an integral role, manifesting in different ways in different friendships. “The way we learned to relate to our earliest caregivers travels with us into every significant relationship we form, including our friendships,” explains Dr Jemma Anderson, an HCPC registered educational psychologist. “Our attachment style shapes what we expect from close relationships, how safe we feel being vulnerable, how we respond when a friend lets us down, and what we do when intimacy starts to feel like too much.”

Like with romantic attachment styles, these aren’t modes of behaviour that we consciously choose; otherwise surely all of us would prefer to be securely attached, whereby you can exhibit healthy conflict resolution, emotional safety, and general stability because of how safe you feel within yourself. Some people might be lucky enough to be this way naturally given their upbringing, but a lot of us, particularly people like me from broken homes, invariably have to learn it the hard way.

In some cases, one person’s anxious attachment can exacerbate the others within the same dynamic. This was what happened to Maggie*, 30, with her closest friend, Jess, from university. “After we graduated, we would text and voice note every single day, seeing each other every weekend and describing ourselves as a duo,” she recalls.

The dynamic shifted when Maggie made a new friend, Fran, on a cheerleading team in London. “For numerous reasons, Jess didn’t like Fran and pretty much told me that if I was going to be friends with her, then I couldn’t be friends with her too.” For whatever reason, Jess couldn’t overcome the feeling that she’d been replaced, which might’ve stemmed from an anxious attachment friendship style.

Something similar happened with another one of Maggie’s university friends, Sarah. “We were conjoined from our very first day,” she recalls, explaining how they’d walk to lectures together, go on nights out together, and eventually moved to the US together for a year abroad.

Things took a turn when the pair moved in together in London, and Sarah’s anxiety got more severe. “She would get really angry and claim that I was phasing her out,” Maggie remembers. “I would still respond to all of her messages, just not immediately. She started making incessant demands for attention and was always unhappy with me. I just eventually felt like I couldn’t keep up anymore.”

Anxious attachment can stem from growing up in an environment where caregiving felt inconsistent or unpredictable. “You might find yourself analysing a friend’s tone in a message, misreading a slow reply, or feeling disproportionately hurt when plans change,” explains Dr Anderson. “The fear underneath this behaviour is usually that you’re too much or not enough for others.”

This was certainly how I felt in that pandemic-induced panic, though I’d had similar experiences leading up to it: always fearing the worst if a friend didn’t reply to my texts within what felt like a typical timeframe, overthinking the most innocuous of texts, and generally being very paranoid and insecure in my friendships.

The way we learned to relate to our earliest caregivers travels with us into every significant relationship we form, including our friendships

“Anxiously attached people can give a lot to friendships, sometimes more than feels sustainable, because giving feels like a way of securing the connection,” adds Dr Anderson. “When this level of input isn’t reciprocated, the disappointment and betrayal can feel devastating rather than inconvenient or a little frustrating.”

It can also be hard work for the person on the receiving end, rupturing friendships and causing lasting trauma in the process. This was the case for Yas, 31, and her friend Emily. “It feels especially striking when we are planning things,” she says. “There’s a level of detail and confirmation that she tends to need for a plan that I just don’t require at all, and it can turn meeting up into a bit of a palaver. I will enjoy it when we do meet up, obviously, but sometimes the level of admin required to get there can be a little draining.”

This behaviour shows up as neediness, which can be an instant repellent that then brings up a degree of guilt. “I think I’ve noticed it a bit more in the past couple of months as I’ve gone through a breakup which has really impacted my capacity to do all the ordinary life admin things, like keeping up with WhatsApps,” adds Yas. “I know that this all probably comes from a good place, so then I just feel a bit mean for moaning about it.”

Avoidance can appear very differently in friendships. From the outside, it may look like hyper-independence. But get closer to an avoidant person, and you’ll quickly realise there are certain barriers they won’t cross. “Deep emotional conversations can feel uncomfortable and the prospect of relying on or needing someone else can feel dangerous,” says Dr Anderson. “Similarly, being relied upon or needed by others can feel equally suffocating and unsafe.”

The final attachment type is disorganised, which is when people recognise both anxious and avoidant traits in themselves. It’s more common than people realise and can be confusing to experience, given the contradictions that can arise. “It can look like wanting closeness desperately while simultaneously pushing it away,” says Dr Anderson. “They might pursue friendship intensely, then feel overwhelmed by the intimacy and resort to withdrawal or crave connection but expect disappointment and resort to sabotage before they can be hurt.”

The good news is that all of this can be remedied through a combination of introspection, self-awareness, and really good therapy. This was what enabled Maggie to push past her own anxiously attached friendships as she moved through her twenties. “If you don’t feel good enough in yourself, that’s not something that you should be inflicting on other people,” she says. “For me it was about learning my self-worth and understanding that if I didn’t say yes to everything, and I didn’t people-please all the time, that people were still gonna like me and want me in their lives.”

Security in friendship isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t. It builds through accumulated experience of having your needs met, understood and responded to

If you’re unsure of your own attachment style in friendships and feel that you could be something other than secure (like most of us), it’s best to start off by looking for patterns. “Do you assume the worst if a friend goes quiet for a few days?” suggests Lorin Krenn, a relationships coach. “Do you avoid reaching out because you don’t want to be a burden? Once you recognise those patterns, you can begin separating what’s happening now from the fears you’ve carried over from past experiences. That awareness is important because it stops you interpreting every slow reply or cancelled plan as rejection, and it makes it easier to communicate what you actually need from your friendships.”

“Security in friendship isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t. It builds through accumulated experience of having your needs met, understood and responded to,” adds Dr Elena Touroni, consultant psychologist and co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic. “Good therapy can help people understand where these patterns originated, but a great deal also shifts through choosing friendships carefully and allowing yourself to be fully known in them.”

It’s worth pushing through. For me, a combination of therapy, honest conversations with friends, and emotional maturity was the key. These days, I’m much better at self-soothing in moments of anxiety; an unreplied text no longer elicits the kind of panic it once did, and I’m on my way to feeling secure.

*Names have been changed