Many people I work with describe feeling caught in a confusing push and pull when it comes to relationships.
Part of them longs for closeness, reassurance, and connection. Yet when someone does get close, something inside tightens. They begin to worry they’re too much, or not enough. They overthink conversations, worry they’ve said the wrong thing, or suddenly feel the urge to pull away.
It can feel contradictory.
If connection is something we naturally need, why can it sometimes feel so difficult or even unsafe?
The answer often isn’t about personality, effort, or being “bad at relationships.” More often, it reflects what the nervous system has learned about safety through earlier experiences of connection.
Relationships Are Experienced in the Body
We often think of relationships as emotional or psychological experiences, but they are also deeply physical ones.
From the beginning of life, safety comes through connection. A caregiver soothing distress, meeting needs, or simply being emotionally present helps a child’s nervous system learn that closeness equals safety. Over time, the body builds expectations about what happens when we reach for others.
But if relationships were unpredictable, inconsistent, or frightening, the nervous system may learn a different lesson: that closeness comes with risk.
In those situations, adaptations develop. Staying alert, becoming self-reliant, or keeping emotional distance may have been ways of coping. Those responses weren’t chosen consciously; they were survival strategies.
And survival strategies tend to stick around long after the original situation has changed.
The Push–Pull Many People Recognise
This is why so many people experience a confusing mix of wanting connection while also feeling unsettled by it.
You might notice yourself craving reassurance but struggling to believe it when you receive it. Or worrying that people will eventually leave, even when there’s no clear reason to think they will. Some people become very responsible for others’ feelings, while others find themselves stepping back just when relationships start to deepen.
Often these responses are attempts to prevent pain before it happens. If the nervous system expects rejection or disappointment, it may try to protect you by staying cautious or in control.
None of this means you don’t want connection. Often, it means connection hasn’t always felt safe.
When Trauma Shapes Relationship Expectations
For people living with complex trauma, relationships may once have been sources of confusion or harm rather than safety.
If caregivers or early relationships were unpredictable, critical, or emotionally unavailable, the nervous system learned to stay alert. Later in life, even safe relationships can activate those old expectations. Kindness may feel suspicious. Conflict might feel overwhelming. Needs can feel risky to express.
People sometimes describe knowing logically that someone is safe, while their body still reacts as if danger is nearby. Emotional shutdown, people-pleasing, or withdrawing from closeness can all be ways the nervous system tries to stay protected.
These patterns are not signs of weakness. They are signs that your system adapted in order to cope.
When Difference Leads to Relational Caution
For many neurodivergent people, relational difficulties aren’t only about attachment but also about misunderstanding and misattunement.
Autistic and ADHD individuals often grow up being corrected or misunderstood, often repeatedly. Communication differences, sensory needs, or emotional responses may not fit what environments expect, leading to experiences of exclusion or criticism.
Over time, many people learn to mask or carefully monitor themselves to maintain acceptance. While this can help reduce conflict, it can also create exhaustion and distance from one’s authentic self.
In this context, anxiety about relationships isn’t irrational, it reflects lived experiences of not being fully understood or accepted.
How Relationship Patterns Link With Mental Health Difficulties
Relationship patterns often weave themselves into the struggles people seek therapy for.
Someone living with OCD might find their doubts attaching to relationships, questioning whether they truly love someone, worrying they might harm someone, or constantly seeking reassurance that things are okay. The aim is usually to relieve anxiety, but the result is often exhaustion.
For those experiencing eating difficulties, food and body control may sometimes function as ways to manage feelings that arise in relationships, feelings of vulnerability, rejection, or being seen.
And in complex PTSD, closeness itself can become activating. People might withdraw, become hyper-independent, or feel unable to trust others even while longing for support.
Across different experiences, the underlying intention is often the same: protecting oneself from relational pain.
Why Needing Others Can Feel So Difficult
Many people come to believe that needing others is unsafe or burdensome. They tell themselves they should cope alone, or that depending on someone will inevitably lead to disappointment.
Yet humans aren’t designed for complete independence. When the need for connection is suppressed, it often reappears as loneliness, burnout, or emotional exhaustion.
Learning that it is safe to rely on others, even in small ways, can feel unfamiliar at first. But it is often an important part of healing.
Relationships Can Become Safer
One of the hopeful things about all of this is that relational patterns are not fixed.
The nervous system continues learning throughout life. Experiences of safe, respectful relationships, where misunderstandings are repaired, needs are listened to, and authenticity is welcomed, can gradually shift expectations.
This process rarely happens quickly. It unfolds through repeated moments of safety, often in small, ordinary interactions.
Therapy can become one of the places where this learning begins.
How Therapy Helps
Therapy is not only about talking through problems; it is also about experiencing a different kind of relationship.
In therapy, people often start noticing how closeness feels in their body, when protective responses appear, and how past experiences shape present expectations. Over time, safety and trust can develop slowly, without pressure to change too quickly.
Using trauma-informed and integrative approaches, including CBT, EMDR, Schema Therapy, and relational psychotherapy, therapy offers space to explore patterns while building new experiences of connection.
Change happens not by forcing trust, but by discovering that safety can exist in relationship.
Considering Therapy
If relationships often feel confusing, overwhelming, or exhausting, therapy can help you understand how these patterns developed and how to build safer connection with yourself and others.
I work with adults experiencing complex PTSD, OCD and eating difficulties, offering trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming therapy in Menai Bridge and Llandudno, as well as online across the UK.
Struggling with relationships doesn’t mean you are bad at connection. Often, it means your nervous system learned to survive in relationships that were difficult or unsafe.
And with time and support, those patterns can change.
