For a long time, I thought I was just “too much.” Too emotional. Too sensitive. Too attached. Too afraid of being left. I didn’t realize that what I was actually experiencing had a name: anxious attachment. And I didn’t understand that it didn’t come from weakness, it came from survival.

Growing up in a home that felt unsafe

When you’re raised by someone with narcissistic traits, love doesn’t feel stable. It feels conditional. Performative. Unpredictable.nAffection shows up when you’re useful. Attention disappears when you have needs. Praise turns into criticism overnight. As a child, I learned very quickly that love wasn’t something you received, it was something you earned. I learned to scan moods, anticipate reactions, shrink myself, and work for approval.

Research shows that when caregivers are emotionally inconsistent, children don’t develop a sense of relational safety. Instead, they develop a fear-based attachment system where closeness feels fragile and abandonment feels permanent. I didn’t know it then, but my nervous system was learning:

“Connection is dangerous. Love can disappear at any moment. Stay alert.”

How anxious attachment formed

Anxious attachment isn’t about being dramatic, it’s about being wired for loss. I grew up never knowing which version of love I would get: Warm or cold. Present or distant. Kind or critical.

According to psychological research, this kind of inconsistency trains the brain to stay hyper-vigilant. You learn to overanalyze tone changes, silence, body language. You learn to cling to closeness because distance feels like a threat.

That became my internal world:

• I overthought everything

• Feared abandonment constantly

• Needed reassurance but felt ashamed for needing it

• Felt panicked when people pulled away, even slightly

I wasn’t “too much.” I was traumatized.

Why I still seem to attract narcissistic people

Here’s something that was painful to learn, but liberating to understand: We tend to be attracted to what feels familiar, not what feels healthy. For someone like me, raised in narcissistic dynamics, chaos felt normal. Emotional unavailability felt normal. Being ignored felt normal. Being needed, but never truly valued, felt normal.

Psychology refers to this as repetition compulsion, the subconscious pull toward familiar patterns in an unconscious attempt to “fix” them this time.

So yes, I have repeatedly attracted (and felt intensely drawn to) narcissistic or emotionally unavailable people. Not because I’m broken. Not because I want to be hurt. But because my nervous system mistook instability for intimacy.

Narcissistic people often:

• Withhold affection

• Gaslight

• Love-bomb and then withdraw

• Need validation without offering it back

• Create emotional highs and lows

And for someone anxious-attached, that rollercoaster feels like love,  because that’s what love felt like growing up.

The hardest truth: It wasn’t my fault

I didn’t choose this pattern. I adapted to survive it. Children don’t learn safety from words. They learn it from consistency, warmth, and emotional attunement. I didn’t get enough of that, so my brain learned to cling instead of trust.

And that wasn’t weakness. That was intelligence. That was a nervous system doing its best to keep me close to “love,” even when love was flawed.

How awareness became my first step toward healing

The first time I learned about attachment styles, I cried. Not because it hurt, but because it made sense. There was a reason I felt the way I felt. There was a reason I stayed in relationships that hurt me. There was a reason I felt addicted to people who couldn’t love me.

I wasn’t crazy. I was conditioned.

And now I’m slowly teaching myself that love doesn’t have to hurt. That closeness doesn’t have to feel like fear. That I don’t have to lose myself to be kept.

If this feels like you, if you resonate with this, please hear this part clearly:

You are not too needy.

You are not too much.

You are not broken.

You adapted to the love you were given.

And you can learn new patterns. You can attract healthier love. You can feel safe without chasing closeness.

That’s what Peace in Progress means to me:

Not perfection.

Not instant healing.

But awareness. Compassion. And learning to choose differently — slowly.