How to Navigate Valentine’s Day if You’re Single and Anxiously Attached

Feb 10

woman with black hair in cheet dress walking happily past red wall with "love" written on it repeatedly, therapy for attachment issues in fort collins colorado

Valentine’s Day can feel like an emotional pressure cooker for anyone, especially for those of us with an anxious attachment style. If you frequently worry about relationships, seek reassurance, or fear abandonment, a holiday celebrating romance may feel like a spotlight on your deepest insecurities. This experience is common and understandable, and there are ways to cope that nourish your emotional well-being.

Before we dive in, let’s talk about what anxious attachment is. People with an anxious attachment tend to crave closeness and worry intensely about rejection or abandonment. They may seek frequent reassurance from partners and interpret ambiguous social cues as threats to connection. This pattern stems from learned relational expectations and influences thoughts, behaviors, and emotional triggers in adult relationships.

Why Valentine’s Day Feels So Hard

I felt like writing this blog because I’ve been there too. In college, I once was seeing a guy who seemed promising, and I was really excited about him. Then Valentine’s Week rolled around and I anxiously waited for him to ask me to do something on Valentine’s day, when he conveniently told me he’d be out of town. I believed it was just bad timing—until a couple months later when I learned he had been seeing someone else….neat. That experience awakened a visceral sense of abandonment and left me feeling not just single… but rejected. So I get it. The ache of seeing other couples while you’re alone taps directly into anxious attachment fears.

For someone with this attachment style, Valentine’s Day can trigger:

Catastrophic interpretations (“I’ll always be alone”).
Hypervigilance (noticing every couple in a restaurant).
Emotional rumination (replaying what could go wrong).
Distorted self-worth (“Why am I not chosen?”).

These reactions feel real, but they don’t reflect your actual worth or your future capacity for secure connections.

Actionable Ways to Navigate Valentine’s Day

Here are proven, therapeutic things you can don starting now:

1. Understand Your Attachment System

Your attachment system is a pattern. Anxious attachment develops based on early relational experiences and can influence how you interpret connection, distance, or rejection in adult life. Acknowledging that your brain “lights up” emotionally because of this pattern, not because you’re unlovable, helps you create space from your reactions and respond intentionally.

2. Reframe Valentine’s Day

Rather than viewing Feb. 14 as a day that proves your relationship status defines your worth, reframe it as an opportunity to be gentle with yourself. Schedule something meaningful that isn’t centered solely on romantic validation like a creative class, nature walk, or self-care night with friends (Galentines, anyone??).

3. Practice Self-Soothing and Emotional Regulation

Learn to bring safety to yourself when your nervous system triggers anxious thoughts. One method involves noticing tension (e.g., chest tightness), breathing slowly, and offering yourself grounding statements like: “My feelings are valid, and they will shift.” This interrupts the cycle of escalation and builds emotional resilience over time.

4. Build Supportive Connections

Strong friendships and support networks provide reassurance that isn’t romantic in nature. Spending time with people who value you without expectations of intimacy pressure helps expand your sense of belonging beyond romantic attachments.

5. Try Mindful Self-Reflection

Journaling around your triggers (e.g., “What made me feel anxious today?”) allows you to differentiate between anxiety and reality. Often what feels like a sign of rejection is just temporary social longing.

6. Consider Professional Guidance

Therapeutic support—or even coaching—can be transformative for people with an anxious attachment style. Through therapy, you can:

Better understand your attachment triggers.
Practice effective coping skills.
Build a secure sense of self that carries into relationships (and days like Valentine’s).

You’re Not Alone And This Feeling Isn’t Permanent

Valentine’s Day can feel like evidence of what you lack, but that interpretation is a lens, not a fact. Your anxiously attached nervous system wants connection, and that is normal and okay. With the right strategies and support, you can show up for yourself and your future relationships in healthier ways.

If you’d like guidance in navigating attachment patterns and building secure connection habits, my counseling and coaching services offer a supportive environment to help you grow. Whether through individual therapy, attachment-focused coaching, or relational self-exploration, I’m here to walk with you through the quieter days as well as the emotionally charged ones like Valentine’s.

You deserve connection that feels safe, fulfilling, and genuine, starting with the relationship you have with yourself.

About the Author

Hannah Dorsher, licensed professional counselor for attachment in fort collins colorado

Hannah Dorsher, MA, LPC, NCC, CAT, EMDR is a therapist and attachment + motherhood coach specializing in anxiety, attachment wounds, birth trauma, and relationship healing. She offers therapy to clients in CO and FL and attachment/motherhood coaching to women worldwide.
Learn more about her course Anxious to Secure—Healing Your Anxious Attachment and her therapy services here.