One of the first steps we can take towards understanding ourselves, our relationships and gain insight into how we experience the world can be taken by identifying which primary attachment style we may have adopted to survive our childhood. 

It’s then with support and/or through self exploration that we can open our eyes to the dynamics of how we relate to others – through observing our external and internal worlds.

Often it is found that people with an anxious attachment style are attracted to the perceived self-assured, stoic, confidence and stability that can accompany the avoidant attachment style and the person with avoidant attachment can be attracted to the energised and giving nature that can be a part of the anxious attachment style. 

The attraction between the two forms a cyclical push-pull feedback loop which activates our attachment systems and core wounds. The relationship likely has the dynamic of highs and lows, which can feel addictive and are more so a reflection of our unmet needs as infants.

The anxiously attached person craves the stoic and appearing stable connection with the avoidant attached person whilst simultaneously fearing it, as their caregivers were most likely inconsistent with their expression of love and unpredictable. This dynamic is ultimately recreated in the relationship.

The avoidant attachment style often means the person craves the other person to give a lot of ’emotional labour’ to sustain the relationship as they experience emotional intimacy as a loss of their independence whilst simultaneously fearing abandonment. Therefore the avoidant attached person affirms their initial beliefs that emotional intimacy appears as ‘neediness’ and eventually that they will be ‘abandoned’ if the anxiously attached person leaves the relationship and ultimately that they cannot depend on others to meet their needs.

Though this type of relationship can feel emotionally unfulfilling and painful at times, through conscious effort it can be transformative and teach us a lot about ourselves.

When we gain this insight, we can work with our partner, a professional and/or through self discovery ways to move towards a secure attachment style and healthy, sustainable relationships.  

Further Resources

Attached – Dr Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller

https://attachment.personaldevelopmentschool.com/

Why Anxious and Avoidant Partners Find It Hard to Leave One Another

When we are on the journey of self-discovery and we are exploring our attachment styles it is fundamental to be compassionate and non-judgmental with ourselves. We can also hold the knowledge that we can have qualities of all the attachment styles and whatever our primary style is, we can heal our attachment wounds and cultivate a secure attachment within ourselves and move toward healthy & nurturing relationships.

Secure attachment is fostered when we had caregivers that were able to be present and responsive to our emotional and physical needs for the majority of the time. It is important to humanise the experience of being a caregiver and highlight that it is a ratio, as no person can be perfectly available and attuned all of the time.

These experiences resulted in us having the innate knowing of our lovability, self-security, emotional regulation skills, and an openness to give and receive love.

Some of the aspects of secure attachment are:

• This attachment style means we understand that we are worthy of connection & love

• Often experienced as open, present, communicative, supportive, balanced & open-hearted

• Understand that connection is safe & does not struggle with vulnerability

• Openly expresses feelings, needs & boundaries & interdependent

• Ability to comfortably give & receive love

Secure attachment is the attachment style that our brains were designed to thrive in, and it is possible to foster these pathways through conscious healing. We often ‘inherit’ our attachment style from our parents which creates a transgenerational pattern of attachments for our families but we can break this cycle with awareness and therapeutic action.

Whatever our attachment style may be the secure attachment style has important lessons for us to acknowledge.

• Humans are fundamentally designed to thrive with consistent love and responsiveness from their caregivers
• Consistent is enough to foster a secure attachment for our children
• The qualities of a secure attachment style can be cultivated through conscious healing, practice and/or the support of a trauma-informed therapist.

Attachment styles highlight the emotional and relational environments that we grew up in as infants which then colour the way we perceive and behave in relationships as adults. Attachment doesn’t only influence how we create and experience relationships but also shapes how we experience safety in a world. Given that attachment styles are the ways we survived our childhood, is it essential that as adults we approach this self-discovery with compassion and non-judgment.

Disorganised, also known as fearful-avoidant attachment style describes perceptions and behaviours which have aspects of both the avoidant and anxious attachment styles as well as the core belief that “I will be betrayed”. This is because our trust with our caregivers was fragmented or non-existent.

This attachment style is adopted as a result of unresolved trauma in infancy. It is a survival strategy needed when our caregivers weren’t able to be consistently receptive, responsive, or present to our needs as infants and were highly unpredictable. This unpredictability and inconsistency were also then accompanied by experiences of fear. Creating the imprint that our caregivers were a source of both security and fear. This often means we received the message that we do not matter, or that our desire for connection with our caregiver was experienced as one-sided and scary. This connection with our caregiver would have been a neglectful connection with some positives so that we did not want to serve connection altogether such as the avoidant attachment style does.

Some of the core beliefs of this attachment style are:

Fear of being betrayed &/or abandoned & the world is unsafe. If we have this attachment style we may be very trusting and overly giving, whilst simultaneously highly suspicious and hypervigilant. Sometimes it means that as quickly as we open to others, we can close and push back from others. This means we might have difficulty with opening up & trusting others, managing our stress & regulating our emotions

“I am bad & defective, I cannot make mistakes” & “I am unworthy, I am not good enough”. This attachment style often carries a lot of guilt & shame. Sometimes this attachment style had to grow up quicker and needed to be ‘perfect’ to feel as though they could be loved in the family.

– Often experienced as ‘overly emotional’, reactive & emotionally volatile. Due to a chaotic environment during our upbringing, this means we had to be hypervigilant and hyper attuned to other’s needs to stay safe. This can mean this attachment style makes us highly empathetic – often feeling other’s feelings more than our own (enmeshment) or struggle with empathy due to disassociation and an interruption in our brain development. This also meant that our brains were programmed to see danger in relationships which we have brought into our adult relationships as well.

– Simultaneously craves & fears intimacy & believe we need to earn love & connection. This belief that can come with this attachment style often means that we can often be overachievers or instead struggle with mental health & addiction.

People with this attachment style often have an innate drive to be seen, heard & validated, or to be ‘significant’ in adult life because these were experiences that were missing in childhood with our caregivers.

This style can take steps towards healing and secure attachment by:

• Seek a trauma-informed therapist & heal through co-regulation

• Learn about yourself & your trauma responses

• Get to know your triggers for feelings of abandonment & betrayal

• Practice effective self-soothing techniques for triggered moments

• Practice self-compassion & mindfulness

It is important for us to approach the exploration of attachment styles from a self-compassionate & non-judgemental. This creates an environment that fosters healing toward a secure attachment style & more harmonious relationships.

We develop an avoidant attachment style when our primary caregivers are emotionally &/or physically distant or unavailable when caring for us when we were infants.

This means that they weren’t able to be reciprocal, receptive, responsive, attuned, or present to us & weren’t able to see us for who we were. This could have meant that they had high expectations of us & were dismissive & or disappointed when we did not meet these expectations.

Due to the lack of emotional &/or physical needs being met this attachment style leads us to believes that we won’t get our needs met by others & therefore we have highly developed self-soothing abilities such as storing positive emotions in fantasies or our imagination when our emotional needs are lacking. This style can also sometimes result in a complete dismissal of our emotions & creates a sense of detachment.

Some of the core beliefs of this attachment style are that of an assumed rejection from others, deep self-shame & that intimacy or closeness is inherently unsafe.

This style is often experienced as seeming “self-orientated”, withdrawn, dismissive, private, emotionally unavailable & avoid emotional vulnerability. This style can present as intellectual & are strong thinkers. Like other insecure attachments, this style though may present as dismissive, also simultaneously craves & fears intimacy.

How to heal from the traumas of this attachment style

– Practise self-validation & empowerment

– Practise connecting with own feelings & expressing them to others

– Practise vulnerability with safe people

– Reprogram/rewire your brain to understand that safety & trust with others are possible through repetitive messaging, affirmation & the use of reasoning.

Attachment styles have been described as survival styles by a leading expert in attachment, Patricia Crittenden. We are biologically wired to have a fear of abandonment and developing one of the insecure attachment styles depends on the different ways this fear is triggered in the first 3 years of our lives.

This highlights the importance of bringing an attitude of self-compassion & non-judgment when exploring our attachment styles, as they are a set of perceptions & behaviours that allowed us to have a sense of safety and therefore survival in our early relational experiences

An anxious & preoccupied attachment style usually stems from inconsistency with our primary caregivers’ ability to demonstrate love when we were infants

This means that they were unpredictable & inconsistent at being reciprocal, receptive, responsive, attuned, relationally safe & reliable at caring for our emotional & physical needs. 

The Anxious attachment style is often associated with the characteristic of “clinginess” or appearing emotionally needy. This is due to the fears of abandonment & issues with trusting the feelings a partner expresses for them. 

Anxiously attached people may think things such as “I’m not good enough for my partner”. This often leads to reactivity to their partner & needing constant reassurance. It also often results in experiencing criticism harshly which negatively impacts their self-esteem.

There is usually a sense of disconnection from a self of self, loss of ability to self-soothe & emotional dependence on a partner with a focus on the partner’s moods & behaviours.

Anxious attachment style often makes us feel ambivalent about intimacy as we crave it whilst also experiencing feelings of overwhelm & fear when we are being intimately close with someone.  

Ways to heal this attachment wound and move toward a secure attachment style include:

• Get to know yourself by exploring your needs, wants & boundaries

• Learn to connect with yourself when in a relationship & how to soothe yourself when upset

• Practice being connected to your separateness such as your own hobbies & friends

• Practice being conscious & intentional with your life

“Attachment is a unifying principle that reaches from the biological depths of our being to its furthest spiritual reaches.” ― Jeremy Holmes

Attachment styles describe characteristics of how we attach to others in our relationships which were scaffolded in our earlier years with our primary caregivers. There were four attachment styles uncovered by John Bowlby in 1958.

• Secure – autonomous;
• Avoidant – dismissing;
• Anxious – preoccupied; and
• Disorganised – unresolved.

Adults with these attachment styles differ in a number of significant ways:

• how they perceive and deal with closeness and emotional intimacy.
• ability to communicate their emotions and needs, and listen to and understand the emotions and needs of their partners.
• modes of responding to conflict.
• expectations about their partner and the relationship (internal working models).

Secure: Low on avoidance, low on anxiety. Comfortable with intimacy; not worried about rejection or preoccupied with the relationship. “It is easy for me to get close to others, and I am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.”

Avoidant: High on avoidance, low on anxiety. Uncomfortable with closeness and primarily values independence and freedom; not worried about partner’s availability. “I am uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust and depend on others and prefer that others do not depend on me. It is very important that I feel independent and self-sufficient. My partner wants me to be more intimate than I am comfortable being.”

Anxious: Low on avoidance, high on anxiety. Crave closeness and intimacy, very insecure about the relationship. “I want to be extremely emotionally close (merge) with others, but others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t love or value me and will abandon me. My inordinate need for closeness scares people away.

Anxious and Avoidant: High on avoidance, high on anxiety. Uncomfortable with intimacy, and worried about partner’s commitment and love. “I am uncomfortable getting close to others, and find it difficult to trust and depend on them. I worry I will be hurt if I get close to my partner.”

Although there are four distinct attachment styles, we can have a combination of behaviours from the different styles – not necessarily staying in one style of attaching. We also may have a dominant style but we can learn healthier ways to connect and attach in our relationships.

Further Reading

Four styles of adult attachment

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk

The impact that relationships have on our lives cannot be understated. In many ways, we are psychologically programmed during our early childhood and it is during this time that relationships influence how we continue to experience the world around us.

“People need people – for initial and continued survival, for socialisation, or the pursuit of satisfaction. No one – not the dying, not the outcast, not the mighty – transcends the need for human contact” – Irvin Yalom.

Our need for human connection is undeniable and the most nurturing relational environment is one that is built from safety. Our mental health is deeply connected to the company we keep.

It is through relationships that we are given opportunities to experience others as well as have ourselves reflected back to us. We have a reciprocal relationship with our environments; mutually influencing our surroundings and each other.

It is important to take some time to notice what relationships we feel most safe to be ourselves in. Try to keep company that supports you in feeling seen, heard, and validated. Your energy and time are important.

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds” – Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers is one of the most influential contributors to psychotherapy and psychological research. He is the father of the person-centred therapy approach. This approach holds the ethos that we all have the answers within and a drive toward self-actualisation – an innate desire for growth and fulfilment. 

This sentiment Carl Rogers shared speaks to me. I see the sunset as a daily miracle I get the privilege to witness and I hold person-centred values in my work and in my life. 

I do not take a singular approach to therapy but the person-centred approach is the bedrock of my therapeutic work and its values guide my life in general. 

When we let go of the idea that we can control things outside of us and we accept what is, then we can watch with awe as we allow people, things and ourselves to be wonderful. Letting go of control and finding acceptance fosters gratitude, inner peace and growth. 

Have you had the experience where you do something and your friends commend you on it, but your inner voice says ‘They are just being nice/polite, I know I am not actually good at x’ – This is the voice of shame. Initially when I would experience thoughts or feelings of shame I would battle with them, but it wasn’t until later that I realised that fighting these feelings wasn’t the way out of this psychological affliction that we all seem to inherit.

Shame is an invisible, universal human condition that uses the tools of harsh self-criticism and thoughts of perfectionism to express itself in our lives.

When shame speaks it says “I am bad, I am wrong, I am defective, I am unworthy of being known or loved, I am not good enough” and when we do achieve, it counters with “who do you think you are?”.

The way that shame thrives within us and our social environment is through secrecy, silence and judgement. Empathy and self-compassion are antidotes to shame. They are the practises we can use to meet and address our shame. Self-compassion is built on the shared knowledge that humans are inherently imperfect and so highlights our shared humanity and sometimes the absurdity of the human experience. Where shame isolates us in our imperfections – self-compassion connects us.

Where shame says “you’ve fucked it up again”, self-compassion says “It’s okay, I get this is hard, I am here and I am not going anywhere”, where shame says “Of course they are leaving, they were always going to because I am unlovable”,  self-compassion says “Fuck this hurts and I deserve to feel loved and safe more than ever right now”.

Self-compassion can be a challenging practise to integrate into our lives. Can we imagine how we would speak to our loved ones or children in these kind of situations? Can we then endeavour to treat ourselves the same way?

Self-compassion is fundamentally relating to ourselves kindly. Mindfulness practise is inherently self-compassionate as it asks us to observe situations and accept them as they are. Where self-criticism uses the veneer of motivating us, it actually diminishes our capacity and often can activate our fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. Self-compassion creates an environment of comfort and safety by releasing oxytocin – the feel good hormone and we are designed to best respond to this environment, creating opportunity for us to thrive.

Self-Compassion is asking “What can I do to help?” to ourselves.

Further Resources

Time is flying by as fast as these clouds are on the sunset horizon.

It’s strange to slow my breathing and be witness to this daily miracle despite the swift finality for the day.

There’s something about this one that pains my heart. Immersed in this moment with melancholy melodies, this unfolding event before me demonstrates the way I’m experiencing life in its entirety.

Beautifully and wistfully busy at a dizzying rate.  

No matter how I slow down and become a tool of conscious expression, I will never be able to capture this feeling as honestly as this windy sunset has. 

Although my heart feels open, I am simultaneously grieving my loss, our collective loss when we get dragged by the man made wind pushing us along the path of productivity and consumption with dehumanising acceleration. 

As I tread the water of all my to do lists, papers to write, people to connect with and work to do, I try to remember to be present to this daily blessing for my heart.

Sometimes when we are sad, busy, stressed and moving too fast, what can help is a daily ritual that reminds us to slow down. These feelings that overwhelm us need space to be felt, listened to, nurtured and then moments of rest to follow. Listening to our body, feelings and minds is how we can feel and then live with balance.