The first time my dating anxiety turned into physical pain was in the summer of 2014 when I turned 20. I had a big crush on someone from my summer internship at a bank.
One night, I sent him a late-night text and waited for him to reply. As I waited, my chest started hurting. The pain became so bad that I thought I might have a heart problem. I even called an ambulance to my sister’s house, where I was staying at the time.
A medic checked me and told me my heart was fine. She said the pain could be psychological. I never imagined that waiting for a text from someone I liked could cause such a severe physical reaction.
It was the first of many episodes like that, and over time I learned that I had severe anxiety specifically related to dating.
It often went like this: I met my “type.” I would get excited when I saw his name on my phone. The attention quickly became addictive. I wanted constant contact. The more euphoric those first days or weeks felt, the more brutal the comedown would be when he pulled away or just disappeared without a word.
Once I got fixated on someone, he took up all my attention. I thought dating other people at the same time would stop me from getting so caught up in one person; but I was wrong. Even when I was on a new date, I would be staring at my phone waiting for his texts.
Sometimes I sent walls of messy texts, trying to explain myself or get some kind of reassurance. Then I felt intensely ashamed, like a helpless child wishing I could take back everything I had sent, while still desperately wanting him to reply.
The more anxiously I acted, the further he pulled away as I chose people who were avoidant and unavailable. His withdrawal reinforced all the negative things I already believed about myself and activated my fear of abandonment.
I felt trapped by my own inner working.
What was happening in those first few weeks
1. I didn't trust that love was safe
Growing up, my absent father taught me that love was busy and distant. His job came first. Later, I became attached to unavailable, emotionally inept men and learned more of the same. Love became waiting for someone, making excuses for him, and denying what I needed. Love was being left.
So when I met someone new, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
At the beginning, he might be texting me constantly and giving me all the attention I wanted. But part of me was already waiting for it to stop.
The uncertainty of those first few weeks was difficult for me to cope with. I was constantly watching for signs that his interest had changed or that he was pulling away. A delayed text or a small deviation in behaviour could trigger my anxiety.
Sometimes I couldn't tolerate not knowing how it would end. I wanted certainty, even when it was the certainty of being left. So the most logical thing to do, in my mind, was to reach out more.
If he reassured me, the anxiety stopped for a while.
If he didn't, then I had my answer, which gave me relief, and it confirmed my belief that love wasn’t safe and I’d be left, which I had been through again and again. At least, I knew just what to do.
2. I assumed I was the problem, so I kept trying to correct myself
Growing up, I put my father on a pedestal. I was taught to respect him because he was my father, because he worked hard and provided. Even when he was distant or his behaviour hurt me, I didn't learn to question him. I questioned myself.
That followed me into dating.
When a man became distant, I went over what I had said or done. I wished I hadn't been so emotional. I wished I had been easier to love.
Because I thought my behaviour was the problem, I kept trying to correct myself.
I tried to be less needy and want less. I watched what I said, how much interest I showed, and whether I was being too emotional. I kept shrinking myself to make the relationship easier for him to stay in.
I thought it’d solve the problem, and I had got everything under control but, in contrast, it made me increasingly unstable.
The things I wanted hadn't disappeared because I was trying not to show them. I still wanted closeness, consistency, and to know where I stood.
Eventually those needs came out anyway, often with much more anxiety and urgency because I’d been suppressing them for a long time.
Then the relationship would implode, and I would look at my reaction and his pulling away as further evidence that I had been the problem all along.
3. I wasn't really texting to communicate. I wanted to be regulated.
When I felt anxious, I thought I had to do something to make it go away immediately.
And I relied on the person I was dating to do that for me.
I handed him the power to change how I felt. A text from him could calm me down. Seeing his name on my phone gave me a dopamine hit. Being ignored by him made me feel worthless. So I reached for more contact because I wanted him to take the feeling away.
When I sent walls of texts, I wasn't necessarily trying to communicate something. I was dumping my frustration and releasing suppressed needs onto him because I couldn’t hold them inside anymore. I made my anxiety his responsibility. My “cool girl” facade had crumbled.
Nothing could really help even if he had replied, because the dopamine and validation only lasted for a short while. My neediness was a bottomless pit because the core problem remained the same: I was unavailable to myself and did not know how to regulate myself.
4. I wanted the next person to undo the pain and shame from the last one
I often moved from one attachment to another without taking proper time in between. I was anxious when I was dating someone and anxious when I wasn't. I didn't know how to function without being attached.
After a painful breakup, I was left with the pain of losing someone and the shame of how I had behaved while trying to hold on, of not being a “cool girl” who was so easy to love. Then I went on more dates to distract myself.
A new person gave me something else to focus on and another chance for things to turn out differently. I wanted the next man to prove that I wasn't a crazy person for having the needs I had.
That’s how someone I barely knew could quickly start carrying the weight of everything that had happened before him. I’d assign him the significance and power he didn’t earn or ask for. A small thing going wrong between us could become a verdict on my entire existence.
If he showed interest in me, I felt validated; all my past struggles were worth it. If he didn’t respond to me fast enough, I wasn't only reacting to him; I was reacting to my whole history of being ignored and left behind, my low self-esteem, my self-fulfilling prophecy of being alone forever - I’d feel like I was nothing.
5. I was ashamed of my needs, so I chose men without properly accounting for them
When denying what I needed became a habit, a default, choosing emotionally unavailable men felt like second nature. That was the only type I knew and could feel excited by. The uncertainty that would lead to intense chemistry was pre-installed.
I became quickly attached to men who were inconsistent, distant, or uncomfortable with closeness without immediately seeing that as a fundamental problem or being able to cut them off cleanly.
Choosing these men was enabling because I could continue occupying myself with decoding their hot and cold signals and getting over them, instead of confronting my own unavailability and my fear of being known for who I was.
I’d gone to great lengths to avoid facing my own life and sitting with my pain: how I felt about myself when nobody was choosing me and who I was when I had nothing. Eventually I had to be there for myself, the real me, with all the mistakes and failures, embracing everything I was denying and ashamed of, before I could stop the pain and start to have what I truly want.
What I changed
There wasn't one thing that changed my anxious attachment. I worked on myself, changed my daily life, put hard rules around behaviours I knew were bad for me, and eventually changed the way I dated altogether.
This work became the foundation of what I now teach inside my coaching programme, Insight to Action, with a week-by-week action plan to help you turn it into real changes and follow through.
1. I went to therapy.
I spent around a year in therapy understanding my anxious attachment, the experiences underneath it, and the patterns I kept repeating. Therapy also gave me somewhere to take my emotions instead of making the person I was dating responsible for them.
2. I stopped moving straight from one attachment to another.
I started giving myself time after painful relationships instead of immediately finding someone new to distract me from the pain and shame of the last one.
3. I learned to let my anxiety sit and dissolve without immediately doing something about it.
Previously, anxiety made me reach for an instant fix, usually through the person I was dating. I had to learn that a feeling didn't automatically require an action.
4. I built a fuller life outside dating.
I started to take up new hobbies. These gave me new people, routines and experiences that had nothing to do with romantic relationships, and helped me rebuild a sense of self outside dating.
5. I created more structure in my everyday life.
I used routines, exercise, hobbies and plans to make my life feel more stable instead of allowing dating to determine the emotional rhythm of my day.
6. I wrote.
Writing gave me somewhere to process what I was thinking and feeling. Instead of immediately sending everything to the person I was dating, I could write it down, bring it to therapy or turn it into something useful.
7. I changed my relationship with my phone.
I had become extremely reactive to the sounds and notifications on my iPhone, so I switched to Android. The associations faded and my anxiety improved significantly. I have now switched back to iPhone.
8. I set hard rules for myself.
I stopped trusting myself to make every decision in the middle of an anxious episode. I created rules around behaviours I knew made things worse so I didn't have to renegotiate them every time I was triggered.
9. I stopped sending long emotional paragraphs over text.
If I felt overwhelmed, I wrote it somewhere else first. I stopped using walls of text to pour my emotions onto someone and then waiting for his response to make me feel better.
10. I stopped trying to resolve relationship problems through texting.
I started saving important conversations for in person instead of reacting to ambiguous messages, confronting someone virtually or trying to get reassurance through my phone.
11. I made my own communication predictable.
I stopped playing games with texting or changing how I communicated according to what I thought would make someone like me more. I wanted my behaviour to be consistent so I could judge his behaviour more clearly too.
12. I started treating communication as a compatibility issue.
If someone's communication style made me consistently unhappy, I stopped assuming I had to become less needy. I started recognising that we might simply want different levels of contact.
13. I changed how I used dating apps.
I became intentional about how much time and attention I gave them, how long I would message someone before meeting, and when I would move on if the interaction wasn't progressing.
14. I changed my dating approach completely.
I stopped approaching dating as finding someone I liked and then trying to make the relationship work. Instead, I defined what I wanted and focused on gathering information, assessing compatibility, and deciding whether I wanted to continue.
15. I started filtering emotionally unavailable men out earlier.
Hot and cold behaviour, sporadic communication, emotional distance, and someone keeping me at arm's length became reasons to leave rather than problems for me to solve.
16. I changed my dating standards.
Communication style, consistency, empathy and emotional availability moved to the top of my non-negotiable list. A man could be attractive, successful, and otherwise impressive, but those qualities meant very little if being with him constantly triggered my anxiety.
17. I stopped treating my need for closeness as something I had to fix.
I accepted that intimacy, regular communication, and emotional closeness mattered to me. Instead of trying to reduce those needs, I started looking for someone who wanted similar things.
18. I stopped trying to be the cool girl.
I became more honest about what I wanted and needed instead of fitting myself into a stranger's life and hoping that having fewer needs would make him stay. My motto: no one who isn’t here with me and chooses me is that special.
19. I learned to let the wrong people go quickly.
As someone with an anxious attachment style, every time I put myself out there came with a cost, and I wasn't willing to keep paying it mindlessly. I became much more selective about who I gave my time and emotional energy to. I put a ruthless guardrail around it. If a relationship required me to abandon myself, I walked away.
20. I learned to recognise secure love when I eventually encountered it.
By the time I met my husband, his consistency, interest and stability were less familiar to me than the hot and cold relationships I had known before, but I had done enough work and shown myself it often enough to recognise that they were what I wanted and needed.
An update on my coaching programme, Insight to Action
Cohort 2 started on 3 October with seven women.
Before we began, each cohort member filled out a long questionnaire I designed for them personally. I then created their focus brief based on their answers, and we had a 1:1 call to go through it, where I shared my deep insights and a week-by-week action plan for the eight weeks built around their own situation.
We’re now in Week 2. Every Monday, they get an email with their exercises for the week. They send their work back, and I give them feedback. In between, we have a group chat to check in and share what comes up.
The next cohort opens in early January. If you sign up now at insighttoaction.live, you’ll get priority for a place at the current price. The price goes up in the new year.
Thank you to those who have voted yes to a dating webinar. I’ll share the event page with everyone next week!