If you’re interested in the personal growth space, or you’ve been to therapy, or stayed up late googling “Why does my partner say I’m clingy?” or “Why do people ghost other people?”, you might’ve come across the concept of attachment theory and attachment styles.
Simply put, attachment theory is a model used to explain four common ways of relating and emotional bonding that can be observed in both children and adults.
Our attachment styles are the unconscious beliefs we hold as to how safe and consistent we feel in close relationships, and are hypothesised to be formed in infancy and childhood in response to how our primary caregivers routinely interact with us.
These beliefs follow us into adulthood and inform how we view, seek, and respond in relationships and relational conflict.
You might notice that whenever you start dating someone new and they seem to be quite interested in you, you feel a strong urge to pull away.
Conversely, you might be someone who finds themselves compelled to seek reassurance of your partner’s love or friend’s affection any time they seem a little quiet or distant, unable to relax until the bond between you feels re-established.
Or, you might really want a relationship and be dating actively, but then quickly find fault or lose interest in every potential match.
This is your attachment style at work. A person’s attachment style is usually very unconscious to them, unless they have done the personal work to uncover this piece of self-awareness. We often experience the signals of our attachment style as emotions, physical sensations, and behaviour that we often can’t even explain to ourselves.
Alternatively, you might feel very clear in your choices and rationale for experiencing repetitive difficulties in relationships. “There’s no good men left”, “I just can’t find someone who accepts me as I am”, "People always leave me when they get to know me," and so on.
The four attachment styles in adults
The attachment styles are usually referred to by different names for children and adults, and also have multiple names in the literature, which can be confusing.
The four styles are (the names I will be using in this post are the simplest and in bold):
Secure attachment (the one style that has only one name).
Anxious attachment (also called anxious-pre-occupied for adults, or anxious-ambivalent for children).
Avoidant attachment (also called dismissive for adults, or anxious-avoidant in children and adults).
Disorganised attachment (also called fearful-avoidant in adults and children).
Secure attachment is as it sounds, more steady and enduring, and the other three are all considered anxiety-based responses, while presenting differently.
While few people had the kind of idyllic childhood that produces a perfectly securely attached adult – given we were all raised by human parents who had their own human parents, and the further back the generations we go the less likely we are to encounter such emotionally aware parenting – many adults still have an overall secure attachment style with some tendency towards one or the other anxious styles in conflict, times of uncertainty, or with less relationally-healthy people.
Getting to know the other attachment styles and how they present can be extremely informative for anyone in relationships with other people – meaning all of us.
Attachment issues can occur in friendships, close working relationships, dating, and long-term partnerships. Secure attachment can also be built or strengthened at any time, so even if you recognise your own relational patterns in the anxious attachment styles below, do not despair.
Secure attachment
Development in children
Secure attachment is formed when a child experiences consistent, emotionally safe and loving care from their primary caregivers. They experience a feeling of acceptance and being valued, and are given appropriate comfort and soothing as well as the chance to explore and develop the ability to self-regulate.
Secure attachment in adult relationships
Adults with a secure attachment style trust that they are able to express their needs and that they will be well received by others, they can express those needs in a way that helps others to hear them, and are comfortable with independence as well as forming close bonds. Securely attached adults are at ease with a healthy state of interdependence in their relationships.
Anxious attachment
Development in children
Anxious attachment can develop when children experience inconsistent caregiving. Parents might be loving and responsive (even over-coddling) one day or moment, and unavailable or misattuned to the child’s needs the next. The child finds this confusing and may interpret the parent’s behaviour as a reflection of their own, learning that they must take care of the caregiver in order to feel secure.
A parent’s preoccupation with the child or over-protectiveness can also create anxious attachment in children. Anxiously attached children become highly distressed when separated from the caregiver, have difficulty self-soothing or feeling secure with other adult figures.
Anxious attachment in adult relationships
Anxiously attached adults (or, largely secure adults with a tendency towards anxious attachment in times of high relational distress), tend to be sensitive and attuned to their needs of their friends and partners, but underneath feel unworthy of a healthy relationship.
This expectation and sensitivity to other people's behaviour can mean that anxiously attached adults are on the constant look-out for signs that their partner or friends are upset with them, pulling away, or no longer interested. This can lead to frequent reassurance-seeking, which paradoxically leads to increased distance and frustration from the other person.
Anxiously attached adults find it difficult to establish healthy emotional boundaries and to be able to feel ok when their partner is having their own difficult time, which can be a sign of codependence.
Avoidant attachment
Development in children
Parents who are physically present, and even attentive and supportive of their child’s physical needs, may still resist connecting emotionally with the child. The parent might be unskilled in responding to the child’s emotions, find emotional displays aversive, and struggle to communicate their own emotions with others.
Such caregivers might overly focus on the development of independence in their child, and encourage children to keep emotions of all types under wraps. Heightened displays of emotion might be overtly punished, though this extreme is not necessary for the development of avoidant attachment.
Avoidant attachment in adult relationships
Avoidantly attached adults (or, largely secure adults who tend towards avoidance in times of relational stress), find it difficult or unimportant to form close bonds with others. They might enjoy less-deep friendships and relationships, but begin to pull away when the connection becomes more involved. Adults who are more avoidantly attached might also display hyper-independent behaviours in relationships.
Underneath, there is a lack of trust in others and in the ability of others to remain close. This often presents however as finding fault in a partner or friend, or walking away at the earliest signs of conflict. Avoidantly attached adults also lack familiarity and skill with the beliefs and behaviours required to sustain deep connections as a result of their upbringing.
Disorganised attachment
Development in children
Disorganised attachment develops when the child’s source of care is also a source of fear. This creates a conflict in the child as to whether it is safe to approach the caregiver in order to have the child’s fears soothed. This can occur in an abusive home, but also one where a parent’s unresolved trauma creates an environment of high unpredictability and volatility.
Due to the uncertainty, children may alternate between behaviours from both the anxious and avoidant attachment styles. The child’s still experiences a natural drive for closeness to the parent, while also rejecting the parent out of fear.
Disorganised attachment in adult relationships
As with children, disorganised attachment in adult relationships presents as inconsistency in relating to others. Adults may pursue relationships and closeness with others, then pull away out of anxiety.
Like those with a more classically anxious style adults, those with disorganised attachment find it hard to trust that their partners will love them consistently. Even when faced with a steady, loving partner, they may unconsciously create situations that push the partner away or turn towards avoidance themselves in order to fulfil what they believe to be the inevitable outcome.
The way forward with attachment
Understanding your own attachment style and those of your loved ones can be a key step in making changes to confusing and challenging relational patterns. It can reshape the way you date, cope with conflict, and help with sustaining longer term relationships. As a result, it can positively impact your experience of what it means to be a person in relationship to other people and for other people to be in a relationship with you.
Whatever your tendency towards less-secure behaviours, it is possible to learn to recognise and manage your typical responses to anxiety and stress in relationships, strengthen your sense of security, and allow you to choose more relational responses.
In therapy, the usual approach is to gain familiarity with your own person signals that your attachment style is being activated, and learn how to manage the anxiety in a healthy manner so that you are able to make conscious decisions in your relationships. This allows you to experience different outcomes than you may have previously, which in turn helps to break down the expectations you have held about how relationships usually go and how other people will treat you. With time and repetition, this provides the opportunity to instill a more secure view of attachment.
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