The Importance of Understanding Your Attachment Style

Attachment Perspective

Having an attachment framework helps me to think about people through the lens of attachment. How we attach, ways we attach or don't attach to other people are very interesting.

Secure Attachment

Infants are born into this world hard wired for attachment – it's what keeps us going as a species - in an ideal scenario, caregivers “fall in love” with their infant and the infant responds accordingly. Secure attachment can promote feelings of trust, vulnerability, high comfort levels with closeness and a sense of resiliency.

This is different from dependency in that it's an ability to be close based on a sense of secure attachment, not a terrified, needy attachment. Secure attachment allows children to take risks to explore with curiosity vs. fearfulness or anxiety about moving out in the world. The securely attached person generally feels self-reliant and self sufficient, but also secure enough to let other people in and show their humanness and vulnerability.

Insecure Attachment

Extensive research done with infants and mothers along with follow up in adult life shows that our attachment style is in place between the first and third year of life. Situations that can cause insecure attachment can be having caretakers who are unable to sense their baby's needs, and end up responding in a way that is frustrating to the infant. Other situations are caretakers who are depressed or using substances such as alcohol or pills, making them unavailable to meet their child's emotional needs

Often children who were neglected or dismissed at core levels can either become falsely independent (I don't need anyone, I can manage on my own - because I have to – a style called Dismissing or Avoidant), or conversely be some combination of fearful, angry or passive and helpless. This second style is called Anxious or Preoccupied or sometimes Ambivalent. Both are different ways of adapting and reacting to the same problem – an unavailable caretaker, or a caretaker who was unskilled, immature, addicted, depressed, or overwhelmed by poverty and lack of resources (although insecure attachment can just as easily happen in a family with money). Our attachment style reflects the way we experience the other persons' experience of us, and is a measure of how we respond to that. A child who is Anxiously preoccupied with a caretaker that is unpredictably available might respond angrily in a demanding way, or feel inconsolable even when they finally get the attention they want. (Think about your own responses to feeling unseen or unimportant to help you get a sense of this). In addition, our parents may have had their own untreated trauma and loss to deal with, thus making our parent more vulnerable to their own attachment issues. A narcissistic parent is unable to truly see their child as separate from them and that can also lead to insecure attachment, although it's confusing because often these parents are more concerned about how things look, so their family “looks good” too.

Attachment styles get handed down generationally so that families can be disdainful of “weakness” or strong affection (i.e., we don't need to show our feelings), or the opposite; of becoming overly dependent, needy, enmeshed, or manipulative to get needs met. The child who was brought up by the Dismissing parent, who is uncomfortable with their dependency needs, can grow up to have similar characteristics. This person will often have trouble feeling their own emotions after a childhood where their emotions and needs were dismissed or invalidated. The Anxious or Preoccupied child can grow up to feel very insecure in relationships and often become very concerned with what the other person is feeling about them. Their sense of self-esteem may come from other people, causing them to lose track of themselves. Sometimes they had to take care of a needy or anxious parent who was also insecure.

Both of these types exist on a continuum and starting a new relationship can often trigger extreme responses of both kinds. The formerly shut down person might have a period of opening up for the first time, and later be unable to sustain that. Then the partner will complain they are not who they started out to be!

There is a third category called Disorganized Disoriented Attachment. This is often caused by more extreme situations where there was mental illness in one of both of the parents. There may have been violence and chaos in the house, causing disturbances to young children's nervous systems, and even to optimal brain development. You have an emotionally disregulated parent unable to help their child learn how to regulate themselves, thus a sense of being “disorganized”. Children are unable to organize themselves and need help with this. Adults with this kind of attachment issue can be very challenging for themselves and those around them. If you know someone like this, there might be a sense of walking on eggshells around him or her.

Some symptoms of all of the insecure styles are a lack of self-esteem, low self-confidence and a tendency to addictions in some cases. Often a person will be a chronic underachiever and feel an inability to be motivated, or cut off from a healthy sense of ambition. The obvious place it shows up is in relationships of all kinds. There may be long-term depression and people can become symptomatic in a variety of ways.

Role of Therapy and Attachment

If we were unable to form secure attachments when we were young, it's never too late. Often just having a caring adult in the form of a relative, neighbor or teacher can be helpful growing up. Research shows that psychotherapy has the potential for actual transformation of the nervous system from the act of sitting together over time. An attachment-oriented therapist can help you to regulate yourself emotionally, and to explore your attachment style with others. How attachment plays out in therapy is often a reflection of how it's playing out in the world, and the therapist will be attuned to this and be able to help.