What are attachment styles?
Attachment styles are expectations we develop about our relationships with others based on the relationship we had with our caregivers when we were infants. Our attachment style often defines the way we interact and relate to others in our relationships, especially when that relationship is threatened. Understanding your attachment style allows you to bring awareness to your behaviours, how you perceive your partner and identify patterns. It provides a great framework for understanding your needs within a relationship, and the best way to get them met.
There are four attachment styles and they are: secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful.
A securely attached person is able to love and accept love fairly easily. They tend to have good self-esteem, and feel comfortable with intimacy and autonomy. They’re able to depend on others without becoming totally reliant.
Anxious attachment is a form of insecure attachment that is marked by a preoccupation with relationships and a fear of abandonment. They tend to have a negative view of themselves, and crave intimacy but worry that others don’t reciprocate their feelings.
Those who are avoidantly attached are the opposite. They are fiercely independent and find it difficult to be emotionally intimate and trust others. Relationships can feel suffocating for them and they often withdraw and distance themselves from their own feelings as well as their partner’s.
Fearful attachment is the combination of anxious and avoidant attachment, and is often also known as disorganised attachment. Those who are fearfully attached both desperately crave intimacy but want to avoid it at all costs. They tend to feel they don’t deserve love and often feel overwhelmed by emotion and are unable to self-soothe.
Where do our attachment styles come from?
As infants, we have a fundamental need for attachment because our survival depends on it. The attentiveness and level of care we received or didn’t receive, sets the stage for how we build relationships as adults. If you have a secure attachment, it generally means that your caregiver made you feel safe, and was consistently engaged and responsive to your needs. It’s important to put a disclaimer here that there is no such think as the ‘right’ way to parent, but what separates secure from insecure attachment is a continued effort to meet a child’s needs and the parent’s own ability to stay calm and self-regulate.
If you have an insecure attachment, which is any of the remaining three: anxious, avoidant or fearful, it’s likely that your caregiver may have been unavailable, distracted or rejecting during infancy. There are many reasons why this may have happened (e.g. parents working multiple jobs to keep food on the table, illness, disability and many other environmental and/or lifestyle factors). Whether you turned inwards and felt anxious or whether you distanced yourself from these feeling, is a marker of whether you may be anxiously or avoidantly attached. Fearful attachment is more complex in that it’s likely your caregiver was simultaneously your source of comfort and also your source of fear often due to erratic or unpredictable behaviour.
Our attachment style is also influenced by a number of other factors such as separation from a caregiver whether due to illness, separation or death, neglect or abuse, mental illness or caregiver’s having a lack of support or resources.
Why is knowing our attachment style important?
Knowing your attachment style can increase your relationship satisfaction, help you work through communication issues and improve your intimacy. Knowledge is power, and understanding yourself on this deeper level allows you to connect with what you need and crave in your relationships. When an argument or conflict arises, it becomes clearer and easier to assess what fundamental need isn’t being met and enables you to work together to do so.
It’s important to note that your attachment styles are not static. Your relationships are not doomed because you have an anxious attachment or a difficult relationship with your parents. It can change over time and in different relationships depending on how secure they feel. You can also work to overcome some of the insecure behaviours with understanding, therapy, consistency, good communication and developing self-awareness.
For those with insecure attachment styles, building self-regulation skills, checking in with yourself and challenging existing patterns going against your default reaction in conflict will support you in building more secure relationship behaviours. For example, for those with an avoidant attachment style, when your urge to turn away from your partner arises that is the moment you need to do the exact opposite and turn towards. Accepting and working through your attachment style can be a big task and many jump from relationship to relationship frustrated that they aren’t getting their needs met, often unaware of what lies beneath the surface.
If you are wanting to expore your relationship behaviours and attachment styles, contact us today today to schedule a session.
Illustration credit: Mindbodygreen, https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/attachment-theory-and-the-4-attachment-styles