Attachment Styles - Do you know yours?

A conversation with a client yesterday got me thinking about attachment styles in relationships and how they can affect us. Do you know yours? Have you ever wondered why you always seem to have the same experiences over and over but with different people? Different relationships, different friendships and different workplaces, all ending up the same way? Even our relationships with our children.

How do these attachments develop? The way we show up in our everyday lives and in our relationships is shaped by our childhood experiences, it essentially sets the scene for how we build relationships as adults. Our attachment style is how we relate to others in our relationships. This can include romantic relationships, friendships and workplace relationships

There are 4 attachment styles, according to psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby; they are:

Anxious

Avoidant

Fearful-avoidant

Secure

As humans we all have needs. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs these are

Psychological needs – air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction

Safety needs – personal security, employment, resources, health and property

Love and belonging – friendships, intimacy, family, sense of connection

Esteem – respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom

Self-actualisation – desire to be the most we can be

Values of course will differ from person to person, what is important to one person will be completely different to what is important to another person.

When I read Marisa Peer’s book “I am Enough”, her thoughts on our needs really struck me. It is really as simple as, our needs are, to find connection and avoid rejection. We will do anything to meet those needs, even if in unhealthy, unconscious ways. Having our needs met we feel loved, supported, seen, heard, valued and safe. If our needs are not being met, we tend not to feel these things, creating imbalances in our lives.

When our needs as children are not met, we can take this to mean they will never be met and create attachment types based on our beliefs. We learn we cannot trust our caregivers and end up unable to form a secure bond. As adults we can sometimes forget that we can meet our own needs and not to always rely on other people to meet them

It is important to remember that our parents and care givers also have their own attachment styles, and they may have been parenting trying to meet their own needs, whether this was the need to feel worthy, be perfect, feel loved etc and they developed behaviours in parenting, subconsciously seeking their children out to meet their needs. I am in no way suggesting that we blame our parents for the way we ‘turned out’, but to remember that they are humans as well and we can look at them with love and compassion instead, they were doing the best they knew how to at the time. As children we also learn by observing our environment and how our parents and care givers interact in their relationships, and we make assumptions and take these into our adult lives.

Once we recognise this, we have the power to change our lives. We cannot change the past and we cannot change others, we can only change our own behaviours, which in turn changes our lives.

There are 3 insecure attachment styles, let’s look at how adults display these attachment styles

Anxious Attachment Style

Someone with an anxious attachment style can have behaviours that appear as clingy, low self-esteem, fear of being rejected, fear of abandonment and show up as emotionally dependant on others. They are anxious about their worth in a relationship and can wonder if their partner loves them. They often blame others for not meeting their needs rather than trying to meet their own needs.

The presence of a loved one can almost seem like a cure for the anxiously attached person so when the partner is not there, even emotionally not there, this may trigger the person to remind themselves they are not worthy of the love of their partner. Of course, this isn’t true, we are all worthy of love, but with thoughts so deep it is often what first comes to mind.

In a relationship, the anxiously attached person may rely on the mood of their partner to dictate how they are feeling within any particular moment, if their partner is upset they can quickly assume that they have done something to upset them, triggering their fear of abandonment.

Anxious attachment often stems from unpredictable or emotionally insensitive parents. This can leave a child not knowing what to expect and they can find themselves always striving for love and connection.

The anxiously attached person often unconsciously seeks out people with avoidant styles attachments, which only validates their fear of abandonment and rejection

Avoidant Attachment Style

Someone with an avoidant attachment style often displays behaviours that stem from parents and caregivers who were emotionally unavailable and do not tolerate expressions of feelings (seen as emotional outburst) and can expect their child to be tough and independent from an early age, using phrases such as ‘no need to cry’, ‘stop crying’, ‘I’ll give you something to cry about’. They learnt that they cannot express their emotions as their parents did not value connection.

As adults they can appear confident and self-sufficient, social, easy going, have lots of friends and have high self-esteem. They do not rely on others for emotional support and self-assurance. They have no problems being single.

Relationships can be tricky as they will not let you in, emotionally. For a relationship to last there needs to be a deep connection.

They find it difficult to ask for help, are sensitive to being controlled and have a deep fear of being hurt. They can have a high level of intimacy avoidance but also a low level of anxiety around abandonment. If intimacy increases, they can start to display avoidant patterns out of fear.

All of these behaviours can be at an unconscious level, meaning they may not actually be aware of them, but they are core beliefs and they will actively look for ways in which they can validate their beliefs by seeking relationships that align with them.

As children, they learned to shut off their need for physical and emotional connection as they could not rely on their parents to soothe them. They learned to cope by burying their emotional needs which makes it difficult to form lasting relationships in adulthood.

As an adult, intimacy can feel overwhelming so they may avoid it which can make their partners feel neglected and question the bond. They can view vulnerability as a weakness.

Once they feel emotionally regulated, they can reach out to establish the bond only to repeat the pattern as they have not resolved their underlying conflict .

This attachment style also has a lack of awareness around their inner needs, fears and emotions and generally do not allow others to be there for them.

Fearful-avoidant Attachment Style

Someone with this attachment style will generally display behaviours from both the anxious and avoidant attachment styles, craving connection and intimacy and also avoiding it at all costs. They are often reluctant to enter into relationships but also desperately wanting to be loved by others.

Trauma may play a large part in the development of this attachment style where a child has learned to be fearful of their caregiver, where they find themselves needing comfort from them but also not trusting of the person they receive it from. As adults this can manifest into needing connection and intimacy in relationships but also doing everything to avoid it.

They can develop a core belief that everyone they become close to will leave them, just as their parent or care giver did.

The key to break out of these patterns of thinking is to become aware of our attachment style and of our thoughts and if necessary seek the help of a counsellor.

Every change first starts with self-awareness. We cannot change something we are not first aware of.