What We Reach For When We Don’t Feel Safe: Attachment, Habits, and Healing

As a child, I sucked my thumb. It wasn’t dramatic, and it wasn’t rebellious. It was how I soothed myself.

At three, I soothed myself through touch—and even now, something soft still brings me back to calm.

But when I was shamed for it — told I was “too old” — the need for comfort didn’t disappear. It just found a new outlet. Nail biting replaced thumb sucking. When that became unacceptable — when bitter polish was painted on my fingers and the message became, “This is wrong. Stop” — the urge didn’t go away. It moved.

Food became the next comfort. Sneaking it, hiding it, eating when no one was home. Not out of greed or lack of self-control, but because I was alone after school. My nervous system didn’t know how to settle itself, and food was something I could count on.

Then it was smoking. Then binge drinking. Then high-risk behaviors. Then over-exercising, running until my body could no longer keep up. Even healthy eating became rigid, controlling, and addictive.

The behavior changed. The function did not. Each version was trying to accomplish the same thing: regulate emotion, soothe loneliness, create relief, feel something — or feel less.

The Role of Attachment

Growing up, I witnessed attachment patterns play out in my parents. My mother was co-dependent but detached in ways I couldn’t bridge. My father struggled with addiction and often seemed self-absorbed. I learned early that connection was unpredictable, that safety could not be counted on. My nervous system adapted, creating coping mechanisms that carried me through childhood but became addictive in adulthood.

Attachment Styles and How They Influence Habits

Attachment styles describe the ways we relate to others based on early experiences of connection and safety. The main patterns are:

• Secure: Comfortable with closeness, able to trust, and can navigate conflict without fear of abandonment.

• Anxious: Crave closeness and reassurance, fear rejection, and often overreact to perceived threats to connection.

• Avoidant: Value independence, may withdraw emotionally, and have difficulty relying on others.

• Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidant: A mix of anxious and avoidant traits, often wanting connection but fearing it at the same time, creating internal conflict and heightened stress responses.

  
  

  

  Some childhoods teach the nervous system to survive uncertainty, shaping coping patterns that echo into adulthood. Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Each attachment style can influence how we cope when our nervous system feels unsafe:

• Secure: Usually able to self-regulate, but may still reach for habits like caffeine, exercise, or occasional indulgences when stressed. They tend to maintain balance and recover quickly.

• Anxious: Often seeks external reassurance, leading to habits that provide immediate comfort or distraction — like overeating, binge-watching, shopping, or seeking validation through social media or relationships.

• Avoidant: Tends to withdraw and numb feelings, using habits that create distance from emotions — such as alcohol, cannabis, excessive work, or over-exercising — to maintain a sense of control and independence.

• Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidant: Experiences conflicting desires for closeness and avoidance, which can lead to a stacking of behaviors — food, alcohol, substances, shopping, social media, or high-risk activities — trying to soothe anxiety while avoiding vulnerability.

Addiction Stacking: When One Habit Isn’t Enough

This is what I now understand as addiction stacking. One coping strategy stops giving enough relief, so the nervous system adds another, and another, and another.

Food doesn’t numb enough, so alcohol steps in.

Alcohol doesn’t numb enough, so cannabis is added.

Cannabis doesn’t satisfy, so distraction, overwork, shopping, drama, or social media steps in.

This is how addiction can quietly stack—when one coping strategy stops providing relief, the nervous system adds another, in search of what finally soothes the pain. Image by Maja Pejic from Pixabay

All of it is the same system searching for regulation, safety, and comfort. None of it is moral failure. None of it is weakness. It is a nervous system trying — again and again — to soothe what feels unsafe inside.

The Nervous System and the Brain Behind the Behaviors

Our nervous systems are wired to keep us safe. When attachment wounds are activated, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol, and the brain craves dopamine for relief. Oxytocin — the bonding hormone — may have been inconsistent in childhood, leaving the nervous system seeking substitute rewards.

The brain and nervous system adapt to seek relief and safety, but true balance is found when regulation comes from within rather than through external substitutes. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The behaviors we reach for — substances, food, exercise, shopping, drama, binge-watching — are all attempts to self-soothe a nervous system that doesn’t yet feel safe inside its own body.

The challenge is that dopamine habituates. What once felt comforting no longer works. The nervous system escalates. The pattern continues until relief is found from within rather than outside.

Learning to Feel — Not Numb

What helped me begin to untangle these patterns wasn’t willpower. It wasn’t shame. It was hypnosis, and the unwavering belief that I could feel better — that I could actually experience what normal felt like. Over time, I began to regulate my nervous system instead of numbing it with substances or behaviors.

Now, when a trigger arises, I can overreact — I am human — but I respond instead of react. I notice the trigger. I feel the feeling. I sit with it instead of numbing or escaping.

I pay attention to where the feeling lives in my body:

• Throat: Something I need to say.

• Heart: I don’t feel seen.

• Solar plexus: I’m not being heard or recognized.

Even perfectionism or procrastination shows up this way — as a signal that something inside me feels “not enough.”

Healing begins the moment we learn to meet ourselves with understanding, recognizing that every part of us has always been seeking love and safety. Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay

Then comes the shadow work: figuring out which part of me is triggered:

• The child who felt rejected because her father said, “Art doesn’t make money.”

• The child who felt alone because her mother couldn’t give the affection she needed.

Here’s the breakthrough: the child who felt alone became the adult who understood the way her mother could show affection. I didn’t give up on my mother. I simply saw how she could love differently, and then I could use that understanding to nurture the little girl inside of me and remind her that she was loved.

Healing Strategies That Work

Healing is about retraining the nervous system to feel safe without external crutches. Here’s what has worked for me and for my clients:

1. Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT)

• Uncovers the subconscious roots of behaviors and attachment wounds

• Reframes negative beliefs and installs new patterns for emotional regulation

• Reveals the original imprint where self-soothing behaviors became necessary

2. Hypnosis

• Calms the nervous system and amygdala

• Reduces cortisol spikes and anxiety-driven urges

• Reinforces internal safety and self-trust

  
  

In a space of deep calm, the mind and body open to healing, allowing new patterns of safety and self-trust to take root.

3. Mindful Awareness (including Mindful Eating)

• Helps recognize true hunger vs. emotional craving

• Reconnects the body with its signals

• Encourages conscious, compassionate responses rather than automatic coping

4. Journaling (Dr. Caroline Leaf Method)

• Strengthens cognitive awareness

• Tracks emotional triggers and behavioral patterns

• Supports shadow work and integration

The goal is not to eliminate coping behaviors immediately. It is to replace numbing with presence, external regulation with internal safety.

A Message to Readers

If you’ve ever found yourself reaching for something — anything — to feel better, you are not weak. You are human. You are responding to a nervous system that learned early that it could not always feel safe.

Healing begins with compassion—understanding that every urge to cope is really a call for safety, and learning to meet that call with presence, awareness, and care. Photo by PX Geralt

Healing isn’t about perfection. It’s about awareness, presence, and compassionate response. It’s about noticing your triggers, feeling your feelings, locating them in your body, and understanding which inner child is calling for care.

Over time, you learn to sit with the feeling, respond to it, and soothe yourself in real, grounded ways — building safety from the inside out.

That’s the work. That’s the freedom. That’s the path from coping to thriving.