I’ve Been Hearing A Lot About Attachment…

              Attachment and Attachment Styles are one of the more recent psychological concepts to make their way into the mainstream and while I LOVE the conversations that are happening about mental health and about attachment, there is a ton of misinformation out there and the appropriate information that is out there is being misused and/or misattributed. So if you’ve been reading about attachment or seeing tiktoks about attachment styles and you think you might be something other than securely attached and are worried that you might be doomed. This post is for you. Read on.

              Coined by psychologist, John Bowlby, attachment theory concerns itself with the importance of being able to attach to a primary caregiver (typically a parent but can be others) and its subsequent impact on our development. Attachment theory works to explain how we conceptualize safety and security which then informs our ability to take risks, explore the world around us on a micro or macro scale, and how we respond to others. Simplified, the way in which we attach to our primary caregiver and the way in which they are able (or not able) to meet our needs, impacts the way we find security and the things we feel we have to do to feel secure. Which makes sense. If your caregivers are able to meet your needs and make you feel safe and secure, you have time to spend on other pursuits and exploration because you’re not focused on creating that feeling of safety and security.

              Let’s look at this in adulthood and adult relationships. Many securely attached and insecurely attached children grow up to adulthood. What is the impact there? In the 80s Hazan and Shaver looked at this. In their studies they looked at attachment in the context of adult couples. They found that when adults had weak attachments, they led to a lack of intimacy and, to various degrees, feelings of inadequacy for both partners. Alternatively, they found when attachments were overly strong, there was a higher likelihood of the couple having codependent tendencies. Their overall finding for healthy relationships were the couples that were able to balance intimacy with independence. Much in the same way that a securely attached child has a secure base in their caregiver and are free to explore the world, a securely attached adult has a secure base in their relationship and is free to explore their outside interests.

              Secure attachment is the most prevalent attachment style in the general population of people. Even with all of our caregiver’s imperfections. Even with our partners who may have temporarily rocked that, it remains the most common type of attachment (which also suggests that a certain degree of “good enough is good enough” is actually true). The second most prevalent attachment style is the anxious-preoccupied style impacting about 20% of the population. The most simplified way to describe those that are anxiously-preoccupied attached is that they have a negative view of their self and a positive view of others. In childhood, oftentimes their primary caregiver was inconsistent in their ability to meet their needs and may have gone back and forth between offering support, security, and being able to nurture them and, on the other end, intrusive, insensitive, or, potentially, emotionally unavailable to the needs of their child. Because a child’s natural inclination is to find safety and security, the anxiously-preoccupied child seeks that security by clinging to their caregiver. Adults with an anxious-preoccupied attachment style tend to be described as, well, clingy or needy. They can be deeply self-critical and mistrusting of their own decisions, however, when they seek reassurance, it does not alleviate their distress. In relationships, this can manifest as a deep rooted fear that they are going to be rejected or left by their partner. This fear can be a powerful motivator and lead this person to seek out the places where they feel rejection is coming from. As the old adage says, if you’re looking for something to be wrong, you will find it. This leads the partner with anxious-preoccupied attachment to be “emotionally desperate” in their relationships and behave in ways that actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy and push people away from them.

              The remaining two insecure attachment styles are dismissive avoidant and fearful avoidant. The hallmark of the Dismissive Avoidant attachment style is an inflated, positive view of the self coupled with a negative view of others. These are the people who don’t “need” other people and view themselves as self-reliant to an extreme. For those who have a dismissive avoidant attachment style, most typically, as a baby and young child, had a primary caregiver who was unavailable to them. This may have occurred either emotionally or physically, showing as either being emotionally withdrawn or physically absent when the child was distressed. As adults, those who are dismissively-avoidant attached tend to actively avoid relationships. They find that others are not necessary and desire a great deal of independence. They tend to hold those that are trying to get close to them at arm’s length and do not prioritize closely connected, intimate relationships. When people who have this attachment style find themselves in relationships, they tend to dismiss strong feelings including their own.

Alternatively, the hallmark of the fearful avoidant attachment style is a fluctuating view of the self and others. Where the other insecure attachments are staunchly marked by either a positive or negative view of the self and others, the fearful-avoidant is much more confused. Another way that this type of insecure attachment differs from the other two types of insecure attachment is that it has less to do with the unintentional ways that caregivers respond (or don’t respond) to their infants, and much more to do with trauma, abuse, and loss. Their childhood experience may have felt like the person that they need to go to for security and comfort is simultaneously a person they fear. This develops into a world view that generalizes the need for being close to others to get needs met coupled with the fear that getting close to others will lead to pain and hurt. It is the combination of the hypervigilant, rejection-seeking of the anxious-preoccupied style and the dismissive-avoidant evasion of intimate relationships. As an adult, they want the intimacy and are also extremely uncomfortable for these potential friends/partners/lovers to get too close to them. This then leads to an emotional shut down. In many ways this gets the person exactly what they do not want although that may not be clear to the fearfully-avoidant attached adult. They may perceive it as others abandoning them and view it through the lens of victimhood. Those who are in a relationship with a partner who has a fearful-avoidant attachment style may feel as though they’re repeatedly being told to “come here” immediately followed by “go away”.

              If you see yourself in any of the other-than-secure attachment styles. All is not lost. While Bowlby originally believed attachment to be fixed, subsequent, repeated, longitudinal, studies have found that you can always become more securely attached. In the same way that your original attachment style was developed and determined by experiences with those that were supposed to care for you, your new experiences can create new connections to how caregivers (and partners) respond to you. With a connection to a securely attached partner and spending time in individual and/or couples therapy with a therapist that comes from an attachment perspective, you can work to change the way that you view the world and have experiences that support the idea that you can find safety and security. In working with a therapist that comes from an attachment perspective, we’ll explore the ways that you respond to tension, assist you in developing new skills or strengthening existing skills to soothe yourself and regulate your emotions, and help you increase your distress tolerance in relation to others. If you need help with this and you live in the tri-state area, click the button below and let’s talk.