What are Attachment styles and how do they impact our relationships?
Attachment styles are a habitual pattern of relating to others. Specifically significant relationships , like a parent, a romantic partner or maybe even a best friend. Mostly we are talking about how one responds relationally in these relationships around points of connection and disconnection. So, basically what we do when we start to feel insecure or dis-connected. Or when that sense of safety, closeness or trust with a partner feels threatened.
Our attachment styles happen right out of the womb. They start with this earliest relationship, typically with the mother. And they tend to stay stable across or throughout our lives, although they can change.
The research started with children and we now understand that our attachment style is our need to stay close or connected to a significant other is a biological, innate survival instinct that we all, as humans, possess.
Think about a newborn baby and a mother/father/parent and how that would be survival, food, water, basic needs. That baby needs to be right on that parent. And we find as adults we still have this innate need to be close to have a sense of security, to feel confident and secure goin out into the world.
There are four different attachment styles
- Secure Attachment
- Anxious Attachment
- Avoidant Attachment
- Disorganized Attachment
Secure Attachment, you attachment figure was available to you. So as a child when you cried, that person showed up and soothed you. They were attuned to your needs and they met them. That is super regulating for a child, and they develop this calm sense of self. When you know you have that secure base, you feel more confident to go out into the world. Its very regulating ot know that person is accessible to you and offers reassurance and engagement and is soothing. Your insides feel all regulated and you feel good to out into the world and be yourself. You feel like your emotions make sense, because when you have an emotion and someone is attuned to it, and meets that need and soothes that emotion, the emotion is validated. As we go into adult relationships, again, if we are in a place of need or vulnerability, pain or hurt, we can reach out to our partner and they respond, they are available, they engage with us, and it helps regulate us. We feel calm and we are moving on.
So in a secure relationship, when you have conflict, you feel more confident that it doesn’t mean the relationship is going to fall apart and this person is going to abandon you.
The other 3 fall under the Insecure Attachment Style. There isn’t the reassurance, accessibility, responsiveness, the things we need to feel calm. Those don’t happen. How do we manage when we are not getting that soothing and that thing we are needing from the other person.
Anxious Attachment Style
When we feel that closeness or connection being threatened, we are reaching out and doing anything to get a response from our partner. We call it attachment panic, and it’s literally like panic because it is a survival thing. So it feels like “I have to do anything to get this person’s attention.”
In adult relationships it looks like a partner who is criticizing, judging, yelling, calling a bunch of times, anything to get this non-responsive partner to respond. This could show up in a provocative way or anyway to get this person close to sooth this inner anxiety and panic we are experiencing.
Avoidant Attachment Style
This person does the opposite. They’ve had the experience of having needs, reaching out and those needs not being met. The way they manage that internal panic is to suppress their needs. “So, it’s okay, I don’t need anybody. I’m going to barry all that stuff, cuz it’s way too painful to have needs and not have somebody meet them. It’s vulnerable, it’s painful, it plays on our self worth and it’s dis-regulating. So this person has sort of shut down, tried their best to barry that attachment system. They will pull away, close up, shut down, be silent just so they can pull away.
Disorganized Attachment
This is a complicated mis of both Anxious and Avoidant attachment styles. You are reaching out for closeness, but when the closeness comes, you avoid any kind of panic. This style is reflective of a more traumatic, chaotic upbringing. Usually stems from pretty serious attachment trauma. when the person you are seeking comfort and engagement from, is also the person who is hurting you.
Are certain attachment styles attracted to a specific attachment style?
You do tend to see an anxious and avoidant attachment style together. Those play off of each other quite dramatically.
Because we are often looking to heal the wound from the problem parent. And so we are often drawn towards that subconsciously, to heal that wound, or to satisfy that space that we never got from reaching out. So you can see how often an anxious attachment style develops from an avoidant parent/caregiver. The more they pull aways the more anxious the partner gets, the more they pull away, and it creates this spiral.
Often there is a familiarity to it for them, but then it perpetuates the insecure attachment, and it feeds off of itself and everyone is triggered and everyone is panicking. It’s a hard one.
The good news is that once people can recognize, oh thats whats happening, thats whats showing up here, it can be a big relief. It’s not necessarily that the two of us at our core don’t want to be together, don’t have the capacity for love and connection. It’s just that we are stepping on each other’s vulnerability buttons.
And when you realize now we just need to undo some of these unhelpful ways of managing disconnections, so that we don’t exacerbate this cycle. Then you can start correcting and calming all of the attachment panic that the relationship is stirring up for both people.
How does knowing our attachment style help us in relationships?
Coming in, having that awareness, helps you sort of know when you’re being triggered and you can pause. Then you can make a choice to have a different reaction or to respond in a different way.
When we don’t know, and we are in it and reacting, suddenly we are screaming at our partner or putting them down and we don’t even know why we are doing it. And no one knows what is happening.
But in the awareness we have the choice to say oh I see what’s coming up. This insecure attachment, likely doesn’t stem from the current relationship. Iit may, but usually these are often stemming from early childhood. So when we can say “oh this is coming up because I have this wiring about people not being dependable and I’m there and I want this person to be close, I need that assurance. Let me pause and say, this is not reflective of the relationship in front of me. I can name what is happening and I can choose to have a different response.
Or I can tell my partner, I am feeling pained, rather than shut down. So being able to name it and ask for what you need verses going into the automatic reaction and pushing the other person away.
Can we find ourselves in a cyclical relationship pattern? Always attracted to the wrong person/attachment style.
Yes, there can be a familiarity to the relationship. It feels familiar because it’s all you know so that makes it comfortable. And you find yourself saying how did this happen again? It’s okay, you have to acknowledge it and again this is where the awareness piece comes in.
You are always tuning in to what the motivators are or how do I feel in this relationship? Does it spark that same wobbly feeling? Stepping back, is that because this person really is not there, is not accessible and this is not ideal for me. Or is it, actually they are and my old stuff is coming up and I need to regulate myself and allow that person to show up in a different way, and have a new experience.
Because a lot of this stems from early childhood relationships, many of us if it wasn’t blatant abuse or something that was very apparent or toxic. We will tend to hold onto an idealized version of the parents, because that is again protective in a way.
When we are doing this attachment work and we are recognizing where our anxious, avoidant, disorganized attachment stems from, we are going back and realizing that that idi menan more and that person wasn’t actually available. And I made the narrative of why they were so great at their career or whatever it was. That can be a lot to unpack for people. It can be very dysregulation as you come to realize there was a child there that needed more that didn’t get it. And recognizing that or feeling that pain or grief for yourself as a child and what you might have not gotten. And that still doesn’t mean your childhood was horrible, or your parents were horrible. NO! It’s realizing I was lonely or I cried alone in my room a lot. Or I suppressed a lot of things I needed so I could be valued as being calm and cool or whatever was being valued in my family.
Sometimes doing that can bring up hard stuff for people that they haven’t thought of before, and therapy can be helpful in making some space to process that stuff. Therapy is particularly helpful if you’ve found yourself in a dynamic where you have two people with insecure attachment styles that are playing off of each other. Because that is hard to do on your own. You are dysregulated, which means it’s hard to do really rational work , or help support each other when we are both triggered. Couples therapy is a good idea. If you’re already in that relationship and you recognize it, and you think we should probably get someone to help us through. We have the awareness, but we need a third party to help us regulate, hear things and hold all of that for us, because it’s too much on our own.
Therapy helps get underneath all of the noise and helps you bond over the real stuff and show vulnerability and then create a new cycle of regulating around these events of disconnection that are affective and leave the couples feeling more bonded.
How do you go about discovering your attachment style?
Sometimes it’s really obvious, like reading a blog and thinking Oh this is me or that’s me. And sometimes it’s not clear at all. One book Dr. Jessica Waldron recommends is Attached by Amir Lavine and Rachelle Heller. It is a great starting point and it comes with a little questionnaire to help you identify your attachment style.
Can we work towards becoming a more secure attachment style?
Therapy, getting in there and opening up about what kind of stuff is living in your emotional body. We all have stuff, no one came out unscathed.
If there is healing that needs to happen? Sometimes we have to process the grief for what we didn’t get as a child.
Building a sense of self, a sense of security within, asserting your needs, having emotional awareness, and taking responsibility , because we often put our stuff on the other person.
Mindfulness, The more you’re practicing mindfulness the more you are tuning in. Tuning into your own internal experience and really starting to connect with yourself.
Mindfulness can look many different ways.
Formal mindfulness is meditation where you’re sitting down, closing out all the noise and likely closing your eyes. There are apps to use for guided meditations, Insight Timer. What it allows you to do is bring yourself back into the present moment. Our minds often wonder about the past which creates depression or they wonder about the future which creates anxiety. Being in the present moment will make you feel better.
Here are a few things you can do or think about to bring yourself back to the present.
What does the air feel like on your skin?
What does it feel like where your fingertips are touching your legs, arms, etc.
What three things can you see in the room?
Mindfulness will help you begin to notice when you are being triggered. And when we build that muscle to be more intune, we can then pause, and when we can pause, we can respond how we choose. And in that we are taking responsibility for our choices.
Connect with Dr. Jessica Waldron via Instagram or her website DrJessicaWaldron.com
Connect with Cassie Burton and Curiosity Junkie Podcast via Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.