Healing Anxious Attachment in the Runner-Chaser Dynamic

There is a particular kind of heartbreak that does not end with a dramatic goodbye. No final conversation. No fighting. No clear closure. Just…silence.

You continue functioning. You show up at work. You respond to messages. You move through your day, but internally, something has collapsed.

You were the one who remained emotionally available in the connection, while the other person slowly withdrew: Messages became slower, conversations shallower, presence became absence. In the end, their disconnection became absolute.

If you found yourself trying harder as they pulled away; if you were ghosted or breadcrumbed after deep intimacy in a connection that might have felt profound, intense, spiritual, and fated…

You may have been living inside what psychology calls the runner-chaser dynamic – a form of anxious-avoidant relationship pattern; an attachment pattern that can exist between friends, family members, lovers – any two people who have a deep emotional bond.

This article is for the anxious partner – the one who stayed. (A complementary article on the one who left follows.)

What Is the Runner-Chaser Dynamic?

In attachment psychology that defines relationship patterns, this particular pattern is known as an anxious-avoidant relationship dynamic.

• The anxious partner fears abandonment and seeks closeness.
• The avoidant partner fears engulfment and withdraws.

Neither person is wrong; neither is ‘toxic’. Both are wounded – operating from a place where their nervous system responds to what it perceives as emotional threats and goes into protection mode.

For the anxious partner or ‘chaser’, when the avoidant partner or ‘runner’ pulls away, their body and mind experience it as a threatening lack of safety – as extreme emotional danger.

Why Anxious Attachment Feels So Intense

If you identify as the anxious partner, intimacy – which can be physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual – feels:

• Safe
• Reassuring
• Necessary

Distance, on the other hand, feels like rejection, leading to a fear of abandonment. When the avoidant partner is inconsistent, your nervous system may go into protest mode in order to protect you. You get caught in a loop:

• Replaying conversations
• Over-analysing what changed
• Drafting long messages
• Seeking reassurance
• Trying harder to restore connection.

This is where the ‘chasing’ begins. This is not desperation. This is attachment activation. Your body is responding to perceived abandonment. Often, this fear is much older than the relationship itself, likely going back all the way to your childhood or younger years.

Anxious attachment frequently develops from:

• Unfulfilled need for emotional security
• Inconsistent emotional caregiving
• Unpredictable closeness
• Feeling unseen or unchosen in formative relationships

The present relationship did not create the wound – it activated it. Your stress increased, anxiety spiked, and cortisol hit the roof.

Your triggered nervous system reacted in the only way it knows to keep you safe – it drove you to seek reassurance from the runner, to reach out in alarm and to get them to show that they care, that they are there, that they’ve got you, that they are dependable and emotionally available…all the things that suffocate the runner, triggering their own wounds. Your avoidant partner couldn’t handle your requirement. They breadcrumbed, ghosted, and went completely silent – disappearing from your life.

They did what their nervous system needed to do to keep them safe – they rejected the connection and abandoned it. This is hard for the chaser to accept, but the disconnection came as instant and intense relief and release to the runner. (That sense of relief and freedom, however, probably didn’t last for long…but that is another story for another article. Watch for it.)

The Silent Shame of the Anxious Partner

In the trauma dance that is now unfolding for both partners, each one has their own internal narrative driving their behaviour.

For you, the chaser, the story your mind creates following the rejection is one of shame that causes extreme torment. It imbalances you in ways that show up not only as physical distress, but also as emotional agony. You mind might spiral in deep anguish with thoughts and questions like:

• ‘Was I too much?’
• ‘Did I overwhelm them?’
• ‘If I were calmer, they would have stayed.’
• ‘If I needed less, this would work.’
• ‘It’s not their fault, it’s mine.’
• ‘Serves me right for being demanding.’
• ‘I’m not lovable, nor worthy of their presence.’

Understand this:

• Needing reciprocity is not neediness.
• Wanting consistency is not weakness.
• Desiring emotional availability is not excessive.

You were asking to be met. You were asking them to match your level of effort in the connection. You were asking them to be as invested as you were. That isn’t asking ‘too much’. It is emotional health.

When Effort Exists Only on One Side

In many anxious-avoidant relationships, a tipping point eventually arrives. After innumerable attempts at reaching out, after going through many cycles of hope and disappointment, anxiety gives way to exhaustion. You realise:

• You cannot communicate someone into emotional capacity.
• You cannot love someone into self-awareness.
• You cannot chase someone into choosing growth.

The moment you stop reaching out arrives. You too go silent. This is not manipulation. It isn’t revenge. It isn’t pettiness where you want to give them a taste of their own medicine so they know what complete withdrawal feels like. It isn’t a declaration that there is no more love. It isn’t a denial of the connection.

It is a quiet stepping away in a bid for self-preservation. It is a choice to reclaim control, restore your dignity, and define boundaries that should have been in place earlier. It is you choosing yourself instead of prioritising them – perhaps one of the most painful things for you to do.

The Grief that Leads to Growth

Despite stepping away, your love doesn’t disappear with their disappearance. And this fact may further trigger you, causing you to lose patience with yourself. Show yourself kindness when this happens – treat yourself as you would treat a dear friend going through what you are going through.

While you wrestle with yourself to reach a state of calm, time elapses and the questions you ask make you turn inward to seek answers. Something inside you whispers: Enough pain. Enough effort. Just…ENOUGH! In your exhaustion, you can no longer repress what you knew all along:

• Connection requires reciprocation.
• Love is not proved through endurance of neglect.
• Effort cannot live on one side.
• Unconditional love does not mean accepting less than you deserve.
• Unconditional love also does not mean excusing poor behaviour repeatedly.

You accept that emotional maturity must exist on both sides so that:

• Both partners acknowledge the impact they have on each other.
• Both are willing to grow.
• Both are willing to look at their shadows.
• Both are willing to change.

Not change who they are – but evolve into who the relationship requires them to become.

That is growth. You turn a corner and take a step towards healing.

Healing Anxious Attachment: What Actually Works

Healing anxious attachment is not about becoming avoidant. It is not about pretending you don’t care. It is about nervous system regulation and shadow integration. It involves:

• Learning to self-soothe before reaching outward.
• Pausing before reacting.
• Differentiating past wounds from present reality.
• Recognising when someone lacks emotional capacity.
• Refusing to equate rejection with unworthiness.

This is where shadow work becomes transformative.

The Shadow Beneath Anxious Attachment

Beneath anxious attachment often lie unconscious beliefs such as:

• “I am too much – too intense, too needy, too exhausting.”
• “If I am not chosen, I am not worthy.”
• “Love must be earned by putting others’ needs before mine.”
• “Love must be fought for.”
• “If I stop trying, I will be abandoned.”

These beliefs operate below conscious awareness. Shadow work for relationships helps you gently uncover and integrate these parts of yourself, not to eliminate your desire for closeness, but to stabilise it. When you integrate these shadow aspects, you no longer chase. You choose.

What Secure Love Actually Requires

One of the most powerful shifts for the anxious partner is understanding that love is not just about intensity, it is about capacity. Emotional capacity in relationships means:

• The ability to sit with discomfort and examine it.
• The ability to communicate fear instead of withdrawing.
• The ability to listen to understand, not just hear the words.
• The ability to say, “I’m sorry for hurting you. I am triggered. I want to work through this.”
• The willingness to acknowledge impact.
• The willingness to grow.
• The willingness to look at one’s shadow.

Without this capacity, even profound chemistry cannot sustain a relationship.

You cannot build capacity for another person. You can only cultivate your own.

Walking Forward Without Closing Your Heart

Healing does not mean hardening. It means becoming secure. It means that you:

• Tend to your own wounds.
• Regulate your nervous system.
• Stop over-functioning for connection.
• Release control over whether the avoidant partner evolves.

Sometimes two people must separate to grow. If both do the work, alignment may happen eventually, not because that is destiny, but because two adults put in the effort to become emotionally regulated before reconnecting with awareness and understanding.

And if it does not? Well, then you will still have reclaimed something essential: Yourself.

If You Are Ready to Move from Anxious to Secure

Understanding anxious attachment intellectually is only the first step. Transformation happens when you:

• Work directly with your nervous system.
• Integrate your shadow aspects.
• Rewire relational patterns at the root.

This work is deep. It is layered. And it is not meant to be done alone.

In my 1:1 shadow work coaching, I guide clients through:

• Identifying attachment triggers
• Regulating anxious activation
• Healing abandonment wounds
• Building emotional capacity
• Moving from chasing to secure choosing

If you are ready to stop repeating the runner-chaser dynamic and begin building secure love – within yourself first – you are welcome to connect with me.

Begin gently. Begin consciously. Begin with yourself.

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Hi! I am Rachana Misra.

Begin your Shadow work journey with me. I use multiple modalities and coach you 1:1 to meet, heal, and integrate parts of you that you have been unconsciously hiding away from your conscious mind.

Make the unconscious conscious!

Be whole. Be authentic. Thrive!