When asked, many people tell me that they have never had attachment styles explained to them in a way that connects. Discovering your attachment style, where it comes from, and how to work with it, can be a powerful step in improving yourself and your relationships.
As a mental health therapist focusing on attachment theory, I love helping people explore their past and how it connects to the present. This post is ALL ABOUT understanding attachment styles.
Attachment Styles Explained
Attachment styles are used as a way to describe how people engage in relationships. Generally, attachment styles are formed from childhood experiences, and will typically stay the same throughout someone’s life. However, attachment styles exist on a spectrum, and people can shift their styles based on experience or intentional efforts.
The concept of attachment styles is pulled from Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, which posits that people are biologically wired to connect with others and that individuals form their relational patterns early in life, usually through their bond with a caregiver.
These early experiences create the expectations that people have for relationships, therefore creating their relational patterns. These patterns and beliefs tend to carry on into adult relationships, whether or not they make sense for their new relationships.
Secure Attachment Style
A secure attachment style means that you have a healthy level of relational anxiety and appropriate responsiveness. Healthy anxiety means that if you feel that a friend or partner is upset with you, you become attuned to them and work through the problem. It also means that you have a general trust that others are not going to hurt you, or that you can manage difficulty in relationships.
Being in a relationship is prone to conflict because two people with different worldviews are attempting to connect. People with a secure attachment style can accept and navigate these conflicts with relative ease.
Theoretically, people with a secure attachment style were able to feel secure in their connection with their primary caregiver. This means that the baby or toddler felt safe to express distress and the caregiver was responsive to that distress.
Many factors impact the ability of a baby or toddler to feel secure (because babies are not logical beings), so it is not necessarily a reflection of bad parenting if someone is not securely attached. Brain functioning, death in the family, having a parent struggling with anxiety, and societal factors are just some examples of things that could impact someone’s ability to feel securely connected in childhood.
Only 66% of people have a secure attachment style, according to recent research, so where do the other 44% fall?
Anxious Attachment Style
Also referred to as “anxious-preoccupied” or “anxious-ambivalent,” an anxious attachment style is referring to someone who has a fear that the relationship will end or that the person will leave them. If you have an anxious attachment style, you likely have experience with unstable relationships, the loss of a caregiver, or a deep belief that you are not good enough to keep relationships.
Some behaviors that may result from having an anxious attachment style are:
- People-pleasing
- Attention-seeking (I prefer to say connection-seeking)
- Picking fights to keep people from leaving
- Chasing
- Scanning for problems in relationships
- Wishing you were ill or exaggerating illness
- Possessiveness or intense jealousy
These are just some examples. It’s important to view these behaviors as not good or bad, but rather serving a purpose, even if it’s in an unhealthy way. With anxious attachment, the purpose of the behaviors is to feel connected and secure.
As a herd species, humans are biologically wired to find safety in connection. So these behaviors can temporarily help you feel connected and soothed, but in the long-term can be harmful to relationships.
Ultimately, you will want to do some work on improving self-worth, getting connections healthily, practicing healthy conflict and boundary setting, and learning self-soothing techniques.
Avoidant Attachment Style
On the other end of the spectrum, the avoidant attachment style (aka dismissive or anxious-avoidant) stems from the belief that people will hurt or take advantage of you, that you are powerless to prevent or tolerate pain, or that people won’t help you. If you have an avoidant attachment, you likely experienced caregivers being unresponsive or unavailable or you were hurt in relationships. Again, this isn’t necessarily placing blame on caregivers or assuming bad intentions, just to recognize how you experienced connection as a child.
Some behaviors that may result from avoidant attachment are:
- Critiquing others
- Stonewalling
- Being extremely private
- Disliking vulnerability
- Avoiding emotional talk
- Focusing on Independence
- Addictive behaviors
The purpose of these behaviors is to keep you disconnected from others. While this can definitely reduce pain in relationships, it can also increase feelings of loneliness and cause conflict in relationships with others who are wanting a deeper connection.
To help with this, you’ll want to increase your ability to tolerate normal distress or pain, as this will be a natural part of relationships, and recognize that the gain from having healthy relationships will typically outweigh the costs. Additionally, you’ll want to practice being vulnerable and open in small ways to prove to yourself that people won’t always hurt you, and can, in fact, help you.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment Style
Also known as disorganized or fearful-avoidant, the anxious-avoidant attachment style describes someone who has both the fear that people will leave and the fear that people will hurt them. This can be a very painful attachment style because you never quite feel settled in relationships. If you have this attachment style, you’ve likely experienced mixed messages in caretaker relationships. Perhaps you’ve experienced both pain and love, a parent leaving and returning, or two caretakers who have very different styles of how they show love.
Some behaviors that may result from an anxious-avoidant attachment style:
- All the behaviors mentioned in the Anxious and Avoidant sections
- Push-Pull behaviors
- Inability to be soothed by others
- Saying/Doing something hurtful, then apologizing and requesting soothing
- Sending mixed messages
If you have this attachment style, it is best to first explore self-soothing strategies to help with fear and anxiety, improve self-worth and self-efficacy, and build distress tolerance. Once you have skills developed, then begin practicing making healthy requests and healthy boundaries in relationships.
Ultimately, moving toward a secure attachment takes time and intention, because you are fighting what your brain is wired to do, AND it’s totally possible to feel better in relationships. If it’s helpful, reach out to a therapist trained in attachment theory (click here to look for a therapist).
What thoughts do you have about attachment styles explained? Leave your questions below!
Other posts you may like:
3 Steps to Heal From a Toxic Family
“Am I Toxic”- 17 Harmful Tools that Help You Survive
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