Secure Attachment
Welcome back to our series on attachment! Based on our last post, you now know that attachment is rooted in a child’s connection to a primary caregiver and that caregiver’s ability to help the child feel a sense of safety and security. Given what we know (from being humans) of what how we can be inconsistent, it stands to reason that there is a continuum of where you can fall on having strong and weak attachment. Over time, four primary attachment styles have been identified and defined. In today’s and the next several posts, we’re going to explore these different styles.
Today’s focus is going to be on secure attachment. A secure attachment style is the “ideal” attachment style. **I should go ahead and add a disclaimer here that if you have something other than secure attachment, you are not crazy, doomed, or otherwise broken, you just have a little more work to do to feel safe and secure and to ensure you’re doing that in healthy ways**
When looking at attachment in children we can break it down into four characteristics: proximity maintenance (how close you want to be to attachment figures), safe haven (wanting to return to attachment figures for safety in the face of a threat), secure base (being able to use attachment figure as a base from which to explore the world and return to), and separation distress (the anxiety that arises when the attachment figure is absent).
In a child who has developed a secure attachment style these characteristics look as such:
1. Proximity Maintenance: These children are able to separate from their parents.
2. Safe Haven: Securely attached children tend to return to their parents in the face of stress or threat in order to feel safe and secure. Their parents represent safety.
3. Secure Base: Children who are securely attached feel safe exploring the world around them knowing that their attachment figure/caregiver are going to be there for them to return from. This is the young child who, in a doctor’s waiting room, willingly gets down from their mother’s lap to go play with the toys in the corner while looking back and checking that their parent is indicating it is still safe to do so.
4. Separation Distress: Securely attached children prefer their parents to strangers, but are able to greet their returning parents with positive emotions.
Other characteristics that have been connected with children with secure attachment styles include being: more empathic, less disruptive, less aggressive and perceived as more mature than children with other attachment styles.
How does this translate into adulthood? While it’s not a guarantee that a securely attached child will develop into a securely attached adult (as we all know, life can happen), but for those that are securely attached in adulthood some of their underlying beliefs about life tend to be that they are lovable and worthy of love, others are available and responsive to them, and the world is a safe, predictable place. This allows for securely attached adults to have:
1. Trusting, long-term relationships
2. Higher self-esteem
3. Comfort in being vulnerable/sharing their feelings with the people in their life
4. Ease in seeking out social support when they feel it is needed.
These beliefs also lend themselves to additional characteristics like having a high frustration tolerance, an ability to manage ambiguity both in various facets of their lives, dealing effectively with others, and having resilience in the ability to manage life’s challenges as they come. This is not to say that the life of a securely attached individual is easy, it simply means that they do not have the additional challenge of seeking out safety and security.
In the coming posts, we’ll explore the other attachment styles, the potential challenges they present, and how they can be overcome.
Stay tuned!