Understanding Attachment Styles
As a therapist, understanding attachment theory is so important as they play such a big role in relationships. I love helping my clients in therapy to understand their own style and the impact it has had in their life.
Our attachment style doesn’t develop overnight, it takes time, specifically the time spent as an infant being cared for and nurtured by our parent(s). The relationship one has with their primary caregiver (typically one’s mother) as a child acts as a blueprint and essentially influences future social and intimate relationships by defining how you interpret and view relationships, which is defined and categorized by styles of attachment. When we’re an infant or young child, we seek out comfort and support from our caregivers — we’re actually dependent on them.
Our physical and emotional needs are meant to be met through someone else, such as our mom, and when they are, we become securely attached.
Secure Attachment:
When our caregiver is attuned to our needs as a baby, we learn that we can safely trust and depend on others. Hence the name, “secure” attachment! This might look like our parent soothing us when we’re crying or letting us explore independently but remaining close by to foster independency but still providing feelings of safety. Because we learn as an infant or child that we can trust others and depend on them through the relationship with our primary caregiver, we’re more equipped to foster similar dynamics in our future relationships. Securely attached individuals are accepting to relying on others and allowing others to rely on them. They’re more equipped to harness healthy relationships because their attachment style is built on trust, emotional closeness, and tolerance. Individuals with a secure attachment also are more likely to have a positive view of themself and others as a child, teen, and adult. When our parents are emotionally attuned to not just our physical needs, but our emotional ones as well, they teach us how to effectively handle our emotions, which makes securely attached individuals more successful at identifying and regulating their emotions later on in life. Their parents taught them relationships and people are safe so they don’t feel the need to overly seek external approval and validation.
However, when our physical and emotional needs are not met through our primary caregiver as they should be, we can develop an insecure attachment.
An insecure attachment is developed quite opposite of a secure attachment. Our parents are not attuned to our needs and we’re left feeling like people and relationships are unsafe. It’s harder for insecure attached individuals to trust others or view relationships as safe, and they may not even view themselves positively either. There are three types of insecure attachment: anxious/preoccupied, avoidant/dismissive, and disorganized/fearful avoidant — each being constructed by different ways the primary caregiver may not have met the infant’s physical and/or emotional needs.
Anxious/Preoccupied Attachment:
The development of an anxious/preoccupied attachment is the result of misattuned and/or inconsistent parenting in early childhood. This means that sometimes the primary caregiver might’ve been supportive and responsive, and in other times they weren’t and were miss attuned to the child’s needs. This inconsistency is confusing as we are first figuring out the world as young child, it probably made it hard to understand behavior and unsure of what kind of response to expect in the future. It’s a lot like mixed signals.
Another factor that can play a role in the development of an anxious/preoccupied attachment is what’s called the emotional-hunger factor, where the caregivers sought emotional and physical closeness with their child for their own needs, and not the needs of the child. One who causes an anxious attachment style in their child is likely to have an anxious attachment style themselves.
Anxiously attached people desire and may feel like they need intimacy, closeness, and emotional dependency from others. Having someone they love is a remedy for their strong emotional needs. Because of this, they are highly sensitive and attuned to the needs of their partner, but may neglect their own. Their strong emotional needs, might make them become desperate and clingy with their relationships due to being afraid or even feeling incapable of being alone. Anxious adults often are jealous and suspicious of relationships, especially with a romantic partner, because they strongly fear abandonment. They might feel like they need constant reassurance that they’re loved, worthy, and good enough, which is reasonable considering they often question their worth in a relationship. These people feel the weight of blaming themselves when they face rejection or a loved one doesn’t respond to their needs, making them feel unworthy of love.
Anxious attached people lack self-esteem and for them, it may feel like they’re on an emotional roller coaster all of the time. It’s tiring. Anxious attachment can cause anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and low life satisfaction — and while relationships might be the remedy, they can be the most hindering to oneself due to how an anxious attached person views relationships. On one hand, being alone is poison to an anxious attached person and a relationship is the medicine, but can cause insecurity and anxiety around where they stand in the relationship. The slightest form of rejection, disappointment, or disapproval from a loved one can take quite the stab at their already low-self esteem.
Avoidant/Dismissive:
The avoidant/dismissive attachment style is the result of when one’s caregivers are strict, emotionally distant (lack showing and/or expressing emotions) and expect their child to be the same, plus they expect independence and toughness. From an outside perspective, an individual who has an avoidant attachment style looks like they’re self confident and self sufficient, because they were expected to refrain for being emotional or showing emotion, they have such a low tolerance for emotional and physical initmacy — causing them to struggle and avoid long lasting relationships. Because of their self confidence and self sufficiency, they also tend to be high achievers.
Parenting that develops an avoidant/dismissive attachment is reserved and backs off when support, reassurance, and affection is needed from a child. These parents tend to be unavailable, they don’t necessarily neglect their children and are present, but remain unreachable. A child from this parenting style may express the need for closeness, but the door is always perceived as shut from their caregivers. Any emotion is typically met with a response of, “toughen up.”
Avoidant attached adults tend to be happy with who they are and where they are, and are social, easy-going, and fun to be around, making them key candidates for having friends or sexual partners. They’re independent and have a high self-esteem, so the need to rely and depend on others for reassurance or emotional support is non-existent. They want control of their life and often invest this in their professional or personal development. Relationships tend to remain surface level for these types, while going deep is avoided— which doing so can cause them to “hit a wall” and run or close themselves off. It’s hard to get “in” with an avoidant/dismissive person. When a relationship becomes more serious, they tend to distance themselves and/or find reasons to end the relationship.
Disorganized/Fearful Avoidant:
The disorganized/fearful avoidant attachment style is the most difficult as it’s a result of being sexually, verbally, and/or physically abused as a child. The source of safety, the primary caregiver, is instead the source of fear. As an adult, they may have inconsistent patterns and are deeply afraid to trust others. This attachment style incorporates both the anxious and avoidant styles.
As an infant or child, we subconsciously know that our caregivers are intended to be trustworthy and safe, so when they’re the source of fear, a problem arises, causing the child to never know what to expect or if their needs will even be met at all. This style can also be developed by witnessing a caregiver abuse someone else as a child. Again, the source of safety still becomes the source of fear.
As a disorganized attached adult, there is a lack of coherence in relationships. On one hand, they want to be loved and to love, but on another, they’re afraid of letting anyone in, or even close. There is a strong fear that even those close to them will end up hurting them. Like the avoidant attachment style, they avoid intimacy and closeness, but the problem is with the disorganized attachment style is that they still desire relationships. They expect and are waiting for someone to hurt or reject them — it’s something that is viewed as inevitable. Often they will self sabotage relationships, as they have trouble believing people can support and love them for who they are. Since they expect and believe that their romantic partner will reject them, even if there are no signs, they start acting in a manner they fulfills this belief — confirming and furthering their perception of people and relationships. They view themselves and others negatively.
Having an insecure attachment style can feel quite difficult. It can make relationships challenging and exhausting. The average person may not understand or know their attachment, thus being unaware of how their own style is impacting their relationships.
So, what do you do if you have an insecure attachment style? While our primary caregivers define it for us and we have essentially no control over what style we develop, we can work through our insecure attachments to build a secure attachment. It’s even possible that your parents were attuned and met your needs as a child and developed a secure attachment for you, but you resonate with one of the insecure attachments — any significant relationship in our lives can cause us to develop a different attachment style than the one developed as a young child. But this is also for those with an insecure attachment styles — a healthy, attuned, and emotionally intimate relationship later in life can cause a secure attachment to form.
Because we perceive and view relationships dependent on our attachment style, it’s likely we recreate those relationships later in life. Which is why primary caregivers who cause an insecure development to form in their children are often that specific attachment style as well. We gravitate towards familiarity, even if it’s an unhealthy perception of relationships. This is why those with a disorganized attachment style are more likely statistically speaking to end up in abusive relationships later on in life. However, awareness is always the first step. Maybe not even awareness of your attachment style, but awareness that there is an area in your life that you want to improve, even if you’re unsure what’s causing it or how to fix it. Therapy can be a great option, as therapists provide a safe, trustworthy, and emotionally available environment, which in itself is healing, but this can be a place to identify and work through your insecure attachment style.