Why You Love The Way You Do: A Glimpse Into Attachment Styles
This past weekend, I was trying to come up with an idea for a new blog post. After all, it had been a while since I wrote one. I tried to think of a topic that seems to come up fairly frequently during sessions when I remembered one that checks that box – attachment. What exactly is attachment? Read on to find out…
In 1969, a psychiatrist by the name John Bowlby described attachment behaviors he had come to observe while conducting research. This work was further expanded in 1970 by Mary Ainsworth, who identified four primary attachment styles. Attachment begins in infancy and helps to shape our future adult relationships based on our experiences with our primary caregivers. Gaining a better understanding of the different attachment styles can thereby also help us to become aware of and understand patterns in the different relationships we have as adults, improve our connections with others, and possibly even help reshape these connections.
The four attachment styles consist of secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and disorganized attachment. Each of these styles has unique qualities that are rooted in our childhood experiences and often impact the ways in which we form and maintain relationships.
Generally speaking, people with secure attachment style feel comfortable and emotionally safe in their relationships. They tend to have relatively stable, healthy interactions. In anxious attachment style, we tend to see someone who worries about their relationship. They may have a fear of being abandoned by their partner and are typically highly sensitive to their partner’s moods and needs. People with avoidant attachment style keep their partners at arm’s length. They generally appear emotionally unavailable or distant, avoid talking about complicated emotions, and tend to avoid (albeit passively) close relationships. Disorganized attachment is normally indicative of trauma or inconsistencies in early childhood. This attachment style may lead to a person who both seeks closeness in their relationships some of time while pulling away at other times. The particular attachment style we develop depends greatly on our childhood interactions with our primary caregivers – were they a “secure” home base and did they encourage us to express ourselves? Were they sometimes warm and supportive, but angry and irritable at other times? Did they neglect our emotional needs or even discourage us from expressing emotions? Or was there a traumatic experience in childhood that led us to fear the person we would instinctively seek out for comfort and safety?
So, now that we have a better understanding of attachment styles, what do we do with all this? The beauty of our behaviors is that we can always change them. Developing insight and understanding where our behavior comes from can help to us to create healthy changes that can then lead to healthy relationship patterns. Now, if you’re a securely attached person, great! Keep up the good work. But if you’re not, we can still have personal growth and ultimately have a positive effect on our otherwise not-ideal attachment style. How do you do this? I thought you’d never ask!
One vital requirement for developing insight is to be honest with ourselves – to know what we really need and understanding how and what we react to in our relationships. Given that we often seek out relationships that reflect our own attachment styles, it can be helpful to use our newfound insight to seek out healthy relationships – allow yourself to become familiar with “red flags” by looking at past relationships and using these to help identify healthy qualities that don’t line up with those same behavior patterns. In talking with clients about relationships, I often encourage them to practice healthy, honest communication with their partners. I don’t just mean the easy topics either. Get comfortable with the discomfort of talking about the hard stuff, too. Remember – avoidance isn’t going to help us grow and only keeps us stuck in the same patterns of behavior.
One more note - sometimes, relationships can consist of one partner with one attachment style and another partner with another attachment style. As is so often the case, communicating and being intentional in what we say (and how we listen!) can help our relationship and our connection to our partner. I often say that communication can solve so many of our concerns and the ways in which our attachment impacts our relationships is not exempt from that rule.
So, what do you think? Any idea what your attachment style might be? Can you notice any patterns in your own relationships? If you feel like you can identify with some of this and it turns out it’s something you’d like to do a little more work on, I’m always happy to talk and to listen.
Thanks for reading.
And as always, be kind to yourself.
Sincerely,
Ayleen
Sources:
Izaki T, Wang W, Kawamoto T. Avoidant attachment attenuates the need-threat for social exclusion but induces the threat for over-inclusion. Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 16;13:881863. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.881863. PMID: 36051199; PMCID: PMC9426543.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html
https://www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-theory/mary-ainsworth/
https://positivepsychology.com/attachment-theory/#attachment-styles-their-impact-on-relationships