Compulsive Behaviors — An Attachment Perspective

By Rachael Maher, MS, LCPC, LMFT

Compulsive behaviors get described in a lot of ways. Frustrating. Irrational. Out of control. And if you’ve ever been caught in one, you probably know that description doesn’t quite capture it — because part of you knows it’s not working, and yet you keep doing it anyway.

Here’s a reframe that might actually help.

What if compulsive behaviors aren’t malfunctions? What if they’re something you learned to do because, at some point, you needed to?

From an attachment perspective, that’s exactly what they are. They’re regulation strategies — ways of managing overwhelming emotion when there wasn’t a reliable relationship to help you do that. They’re not random. They’re not weakness. They’re adaptation.

At their core, most compulsions are doing one of a few things: reducing anxiety, restoring a sense of control, or managing an internal experience that feels too big to sit with alone. And the frustrating truth is — they work. Not forever, and not fully, but in the moment, they bring the nervous system back from the edge. That’s not pathology. That’s a person doing the best they can with what they have.

Where compulsions come from

When early relationships don’t consistently offer safety or soothing, people learn to create their own. They learn that feelings are theirs to manage alone, that needing too much is dangerous, that control is the closest thing to security. Compulsive behaviors are often what that self-sufficiency looks like in practice — self-generated regulation systems built when relational regulation wasn’t reliably available.

Different attachment patterns tend to show up in different ways.

If you grew up anxious — always waiting for the other shoe to drop — compulsions often center on certainty: checking, seeking reassurance, replaying conversations.

If you learned to shut feelings down and handle things alone, they often look more like numbing or controlling: overworking, rigid routines, withdrawing, substance use.

And for people whose early relationships were both a source of comfort and fear, compulsions can feel more chaotic or intense — self-harm behaviors, addictive cycles, dissociation.

In all of these, the behavior makes sense. It’s organized around survival, even when it no longer looks like it.

Why they’re so hard to stop

Because they’re still working — a little. They still cut anxiety in the moment. They still create a feeling of control. They still interrupt the overwhelm before it becomes unbearable.

The problem is what happens over time. The behavior reinforces the very fear it’s managing — I needed that to feel okay becomes its own kind of proof that something is wrong.

Tolerance for distress shrinks. Dependence on the behavior grows. And the cycle tightens.

But the deeper issue is this: the behavior is doing a job. Until something else can do that job — until there’s another way to feel safe, to tolerate discomfort, to come back from the edge — simply taking the behavior away doesn’t help much. It’s not a bad habit that needs breaking. It’s a solution that needs replacing.

What that looks like in real life

Sam came to therapy stuck in a cycle with his wife. Every time a conflict escalated — especially when she was visibly disappointed or upset with him — he’d leave the house and go for a run. Not a short one. Five miles, sometimes more.

His individual therapist had actually encouraged it as self-care. A way to regulate before saying something he’d regret. And it worked, in a sense. By the time he came back, he was calmer. More in control. But nothing had been resolved. The original issue sat untouched. And his wife had been left alone with her distress — feeling abandoned, unseen, increasingly desperate to be heard.

What started as frustration would tip into panic or anger while he was gone. So when Sam walked back through the door regulated and ready to reconnect, the emotional temperature of the relationship had risen, not fallen.

His nervous system had learned something very specific: when things get too intense, leave. Come back when you’re in control. It kept him functional. But it also kept the cycle running — and it ran like this:

His wife, feeling disconnected, would pursue harder. Sam, feeling overwhelmed, would withdraw to regulate. His wife, left alone in her distress, would feel more abandoned. Sam would return calmer — but nothing resolved. The next conflict would start from a higher baseline. Over and over.

For his wife, the cost was obvious: disconnection, abandonment, escalating hurt. For Sam, it was quieter — but just as significant. He never experienced repair. He stayed stuck in the same recurring argument. He reinforced a belief that conflict is something to escape rather than move through. And over time, he felt increasingly defeated, like no matter what he did, nothing ever really got better.

The runs weren’t the problem. They were his solution. But the solution was also what was keeping him stuck.

Compulsions as protective parts

One way to understand this — drawing on both parts-based and attachment-informed approaches — is to think of a compulsive behavior not as something broken in you, but as something protective in you. It’s trying to prevent emotional flooding. It’s trying to keep shame or fear from taking over. It’s trying to hold things together when they feel like they’re about to fall apart.

This applies to quieter compulsions too — rumination, replaying conversations, mentally rehearsing what you’ll say. Those are doing the same work: trying to reduce uncertainty, trying to prevent something bad from happening, trying to stay one step ahead of a threat that may or may not be real.

So instead of asking how do I stop this, the more useful question is usually: what is this protecting me from feeling? What would I have to sit with if I didn’t do it?

The shift: from self-regulation to relational regulation

Real change tends to come not from removing the behavior, but from building something that can replace what it does. That means slowly increasing the capacity to feel without immediately escaping. It means finding internal anchors — self-compassion, grounding, a growing ability to tolerate discomfort a little longer than before. And often, it means experiencing what it feels like to be regulated with someone — to have another person help bring you back, rather than having to do it entirely alone.

For Sam, the work wasn’t about stopping the runs. It was about recognizing that calming himself down wasn’t enough. He needed a way to come back and actually repair things — to stay in contact with what had happened between them, not just return once he felt okay.

The old frame was: I need to leave to feel okay.

The new one: I need to find a way to stay connected — or come back and actually work through this — so things get better.

Because from an attachment perspective, the goal of regulation isn’t just to calm yourself down. It’s to create safety between people, not only within yourself. Regulating in isolation keeps you functional. Regulating relationally is what actually changes things.

The reframe that tends to stick

Not: this behavior is irrational — but: this behavior is trying to keep me safe.

And then not: I need to get rid of it — but: I need something that works better and costs less.

That’s a very different starting place. A much more honest one. And usually, a much more compassionate one — both toward the behavior itself, and toward the person who needed it in the first place.