The Attachment Figure You've Been Seeking: How IFS Heals Attachment Wounds for Empaths and HSPs
IFS, HEALING, ATTACHMENT, EMPATH, HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON
I have spent so much of my life attuning to others, offering the four S's of attachment: helping them feel seen, safe, soothed, secure. I have relationships where these qualities exist, yes. But I don't often get to receive them deeply, especially not from other empaths who might offer them with the same intensity I give.
I grew up absorbing others' feelings—one of the hallmarks of being an empath, though I didn't know it at the time. My parents were kind, attentive, and prioritized me. Everything you'd think would create secure attachment. But because of my high sensitivity and empathy, I also absorbed what lived beneath their demeanor. Their anxiety seeped through my porous boundaries. I noticed when disappointment flickered across their faces—when I didn't meet their emotional needs or expectations. I felt every feeling, caught every exquisite detail.
And because I noticed and felt it all, I believed it was mine to fix.
By the time I left elementary school, I'd become an expert at emotional caretaking. I could read a room instantly, sense needs before they were spoken, adjust my presence to soothe others' nervous systems. This was also how I cared for myself—when I could calm their nervous systems, mine could finally rest.
I felt most at peace alone with a good book, in nature, or with someone who had already regulated their own nervous system. Those things co-regulated me and provided the 4 S's of attachment. With most people, though, I poured myself out, trying to meet their attachment needs and be the figure they required.
Church reinforced this pattern. Self-sacrifice, self-denial, caring for others, perpetual giving—these were godly and desirable. Recognizing my own needs was suspect. I could only hope for care when people around me spontaneously offered it, which created a sense of helplessness and lack of agency. I had no self beyond the helper role.
I thought I was designed to be a giver. And because I was attuned to emotional and attachment needs, those became the needs I tried to meet.
It burned me out.
The Empathic Paradox: Expert Providers, Starving Recipients
If you're an empath or highly sensitive person (HSP), you might recognize this pattern. You've become extraordinarily skilled at providing exactly what others need for secure attachment. Your exceptional attunement capacity—that ability to sense what someone needs before they speak, to perceive the authentic self beneath the presented self, to match someone's dysregulated state and gently guide it toward regulation—makes you a natural healer of attachment wounds.
Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes secure attachment as requiring the "Four S's": feeling Safe, Seen, Soothed, and Secure. Your porous boundaries and deep empathy allow you to provide exactly these qualities:
Safe: Your attunement creates safety by sensing when someone's approaching their limits and adjusting accordingly.
Seen: You perceive what's communicated implicitly. For people whose early caregivers couldn't attune, being truly seen by you is profoundly healing.
Soothed: Your capacity for co-regulation is exceptional. Your presence itself is soothing because being felt and understood calms the nervous system.
Secure: Through consistent, accurate attunement, you help create earned security. Your reliable understanding builds trust.
But here's the paradox: the same permeability that makes you an expert attachment provider often leaves you attachment-starved. You feel others' emotions as your own, absorb anxiety through porous boundaries, sense every micro-expression and subtle energy shift—and all of this requires enormous nervous system resources.
Even in relationships where these qualities exist, you rarely receive them with the depth and intensity you give. And when you try to get these needs met through external relationships alone, you might find yourself feeling desperate, anxious, or frustrated—patterns that can lead to codependency and enmeshment.
Why Attachment Wounds Run Deep for Empaths and HSPs
For highly sensitive and empathic individuals, attachment wounds often develop not from dramatic neglect or abuse, but from subtle, cumulative misattunement. Even well-meaning, loving parents may struggle to:
Remain calm and present during your emotional intensity
Understand your different processing needs and pace
See your sensitivity as a gift rather than something to "fix"
Provide appropriate regulation support for your complex emotional landscape
Tolerate your separate emotional reality when it differs from theirs
When you consistently receive messages—spoken or unspoken—that your emotional responses are "too much," your perceptions excessive, or your way of being problematic, you can develop what researchers call Complex PTSD. You learn to abandon your own needs, suppress your authentic self, and pour your exceptional attunement capacity outward while remaining disconnected from your inner world.
The result? You become an expert at the Four S's for others while feeling fundamentally unseen, unsafe, unsoothed, and insecure within yourself. You know you can provide profound care, yet you don't feel your own inherent value and lovability. You create deep connection with others, yet feel disconnected from yourself and uncertain of your place in the world.
The Impossible Search: Why No Human Can Fully Meet These Needs
I tried everything to fill that desperate longing. In my twenties, I discovered self-compassion, which taught me to offer myself validation rather than endless demands. In graduate school for clinical psychology, I studied codependency and enmeshment, learning to recognize unhealthy attachment patterns. Through therapy, I began developing more secure ways of relating. Eventually, I found a romantic relationship with both individuation and connection—no longer having to sacrifice one for the other.
I even tried cultivating the deep connection I craved with God, but the way I'd been taught was codependent, desperate, and anxious.
Here's what I gradually learned: No human being—no matter how healthy, well-intentioned, or loving—can fully and consistently provide the Four S's we need. This isn't failure. It's simply the reality of being human.
Even the most attuned partner, friend, or therapist:
Has their own nervous system needs and limitations
Cannot be perpetually available or perfectly attuned
Brings their own wounds and blind spots
Cannot see us more clearly than we see ourselves
Cannot soothe us more effectively than we can learn to soothe ourselves
For empaths and HSPs who provide such exquisite attunement to others, realizing we cannot receive it at the same level from external sources can feel devastating. It seems like confirmation that we're simply too much, too sensitive, too needy.
But there's another possibility—one I discovered when I encountered Internal Family Systems in my thirties.
The Attachment Figure Within: Discovering Your Core Self
Internal Family Systems, or IFS, led me back to myself. It became the path that reconnected me with my soul, my essence, the deepest part of me—and ultimately, with divine love itself.
In IFS, we learn that beneath all our protective patterns, coping mechanisms, and wounded parts, there exists what's called the Core Self. Spiritual traditions have given it different names over centuries: imago dei (god image), the universal Christ, spirit, soul, true nature, highest and wisest self. I think of it as my widest and wisest self—infused with and connected to the divine, intertwined with my life force.
When I first encountered my Core Self, I realized: This is the attachment figure I had been longing for.
The Core Self naturally embodies the qualities we long for in the ideal attachment figure:
Compassion: The Core Self sees all parts of you with warmth and care, never turning away in judgment or disgust.
Curiosity: Rather than fixing or changing you, the Core Self wants to understand your experience with genuine interest.
Calm: The Core Self provides a regulated presence that helps your nervous system settle, even amidst intense emotion.
Clarity: The Core Self can see truth without distortion, perceiving what's actually happening rather than what fears or defenses suggest.
Courage: The Core Self can face difficult emotions and memories without being overwhelmed or fleeing.
Confidence: The Core Self knows its inherent worth and helps you recognize yours.
Creativity: The Core Self finds new solutions and perspectives, not bound by old patterns.
Connectedness: The Core Self understands you're part of the grand array—connected to the spark of life in everything.
When I started relating to all the parts of me through my Core Self—giving them compassion, approaching them with curiosity—my inner life became one of healing and harmony.
How Core Self Provides the Four S's
The profound discovery I made through IFS is that the Core Self can provide the Four S's of attachment in ways that no external person ever could:
Seen: Your Core Self sees every part of you—including the parts you've hidden, the parts you're ashamed of, the parts you've been told are "too much." It perceives your authentic self without the distortions that even loving others might have. It knows your deepest longings, your unique gifts, your genuine struggles. And it never looks away.
When I connected with my Core Self, I experienced being truly seen for the first time—not just the capable, caring exterior I showed the world, but the desperate, thirsty, exhausted interior I'd been hiding. And my Core Self didn't turn away in disappointment. It said, "Of course you're exhausted. Of course you're longing for care. Let me help."
Safe: Your Core Self creates the ultimate safety because it cannot abandon you, judge you, betray you, or become overwhelmed by your intensity. It's not depleted by your needs. It doesn't have bad days when it can't show up. It's not threatened by your growth or your authenticity.
For empaths who've learned to constantly monitor others' emotional states for safety, having an internal source of safety changes everything. You no longer have to modulate your authentic expression based on whether it might overwhelm or disappoint others. Your Core Self can handle all of you.
Soothed: Your Core Self provides co-regulation from within. When you're overwhelmed by absorbed emotions, your Core Self can help you distinguish what's yours from what you've picked up from others. When you're flooded with your own feelings, your Core Self can hold them with you, providing the calm regulated presence that helps your nervous system settle.
This internal soothing is available 24/7. It doesn't require waiting for someone else to be available, hoping they'll respond the way you need, or managing your needs to fit their capacity.
Secure: The Core Self offers the most profound security: it's permanent, inherent, and unconditional. Your worth to your Core Self doesn't depend on your performance, your caregiving, your achievements, or your capacity to meet others' needs. You belong to yourself. You matter simply because you exist. You are lovable exactly as you are.
This security doesn't fluctuate based on others' responses to you. It remains steady through relationships changing, people disappointing you, or your own mistakes and growth.
The Transformation: From Desert to Oasis
When I discovered my Core Self through IFS, everything shifted. The desperate, anxious longing that had driven so much of my relational seeking finally quieted. The 4 S's given to my parts through my Core Self met all of my attachment needs in ways external relationships never could—and never should have had to.
Now I know I belong. I know I matter. I know I have intrinsic value. I know I am lovable just as I am.
This isn't positive thinking or affirmations I'm trying to convince myself of. It's direct, embodied knowing that comes from experiencing my Core Self's unwavering presence. It's the difference between hoping someone will show up for you and knowing that the most important someone—you—is always there.
My relationship with the divine has also transformed. Rather than the codependent, desperate seeking I learned in church, I now have a relationship with the divine mediated through my Core Self. I know my own divinity through the spark of Self-energy, and I'm connected to the spark of life in everything through it. I am part of the grand array.
I feel filled up inside for the first time ever. Without anxiety or desperation. With knowing. With peace. With excitement. With life.
What This Means for Your External Relationships
Here's what surprised me: healing attachment wounds through the Core Self didn't make me need relationships less. It made me able to truly be in relationship for the first time.
When you're not desperately seeking the Four S's from external sources, you can:
Receive what others offer without needing it to be perfect: You can appreciate partial attunement, occasional misattunement, and human limitation without it triggering abandonment panic.
Give without depleting yourself: Your attunement capacity becomes a gift you choose to offer rather than a desperate attempt to earn love or create safety.
Maintain your center while connecting deeply: You can still merge beautifully in intimate moments, but you can also cleanly separate and return to yourself afterward.
Set boundaries without guilt: When your Core Self is meeting your attachment needs, you don't have to accept relationships that drain you or violate your boundaries just to avoid being alone with unmet needs.
Show up authentically: You're no longer performing the false self designed to earn care. You can risk being seen because you know your Core Self already sees and accepts all of you.
My external relationships improved dramatically—not because I found people who could finally meet my needs perfectly, but because I stopped needing them to. I could show up for connection without the desperate undercurrent of "please see me, please don't leave, please be enough."
Beginning Your Journey Home
If you recognize yourself in this—if you're an empath or HSP who's spent your life providing exquisite attunement while feeling fundamentally unseen yourself—there is another way.
You don't have to keep searching for someone who can finally provide what you need. You don't have to accept that being sensitive means being perpetually attachment-starved. You don't have to choose between connecting deeply with others and maintaining a self.
The attachment figure you've been seeking isn't out there. It's within you, waiting to be discovered beneath the protective patterns and wounded parts that have been trying to hold you together all by themselves.
Internal Family Systems offers a path to:
Unburden the parts that are exhausted from hypervigilance and constant caretaking
Heal the wounded parts that absorbed the message that your needs are too much
Access the Core Self that can finally provide the secure base you've always needed
Transform your relationship with yourself from one of criticism or neglect to one of compassionate attunement
This isn't about becoming self-sufficient in an isolated way. It's about developing the internal secure attachment that allows you to connect with others freely, joyfully, and authentically—without the desperate undercurrent of unmet attachment needs driving the connection.
Resources for Your Journey
If you want to explore IFS and discover your Core Self, I recommend:
Internal Family Systems: The Path to Divine Love - A deeper exploration of how IFS connects you to your essence and transforms your inner world
No Bad Parts - A foundational text on IFS by its creator
If you're still discovering whether you're an empath or HSP, these articles might help:
Understanding the Porous Boundaries Cluster - Recognizing the constellation of traits that make you extraordinarily perceptive and deeply feeling
Complex PTSD in Highly Sensitive People - Understanding how attachment wounds develop differently for empaths and HSPs
The Promise
The journey from being attachment-starved to feeling filled up inside isn't quick or simple. It took me decades to find IFS, and years of practice to truly embody the security my Core Self offers.
But I can tell you this: It's possible to feel at home in yourself. It's possible to know your inherent worth without needing external validation. It's possible to maintain your extraordinary capacity for attunement while also staying connected to your own needs and boundaries. It's possible to give generously without burning out.
You don't have to keep wandering in the desert, hoping the next person or relationship will finally be the oasis. You can discover that the living water you've been seeking has been within you all along—your Core Self, waiting to meet you with the Four S's you've been providing to everyone else.
You can finally come home to yourself.
And from that grounded, secure, deeply connected place within, you can offer your gifts to the world in ways that nourish rather than deplete, that express your authentic self rather than performing for acceptance, that create genuine connection rather than codependent enmeshment.
The attachment figure you've always needed is already here. It's time to meet yourself.
Hi, I’m Catherine. I’m so happy to share this time and space with you.
I’m a counselor and self-trust coach living on the Emerald Coast of Florida, on the unceded land of the Muscogee. I am a creative, mystic, and neurodiverse adventurer. I love writing, creating, and connecting.
I love helping folx Befriend Your Inner Critic and Become Your Own Best Friend. I enjoy hearing from you and walking alongside you on your journey.
With a full heart,
Catherine
