Are you ready to dive deep into understanding the ways our early experiences shape our adult relationships? Today, we'll explore the concept of insecure attachment styles and how they can affect our connections with others. Whether you're curious about your own attachment style or seeking information to better understand someone you care about, this blog post is here to shed light on the topic. As an attachment-focused EMDR therapist who understands the intricacies of attachment, I'm here to help you take steps towards healing and growth through understanding your attachment patterns.
What are Attachment Styles?
Attachment styles are patterns of behavior and thoughts that develop in childhood and persist into adulthood, influencing the way we relate to others, how we show up in close relationships, and even affect our mental health. The concept of attachment styles originates from attachment theory.
At the core of this theory, all children need attachment to their primary caregivers in order to establish a sense of safety, security, and protection--the basic components of survival for a child or infant. Beyond physical needs, a child's emotional needs must also be met in order to form a secure bond with their primary caregivers. While our caregivers may have good intentions and try their best, sometimes they are unable to attune to our needs in the way that we need and an insecure attachment style develops. Let's explore how our early childhood experiences affect our adult attachment.
Secure Attachment Style
While the purpose of this post is to discuss insecure attachment, it's important to note that some individuals (roughly half the population) have a secure attachment style. These are individuals whose parents were able to attune an appropriate amount to their child's needs, providing them the physical and emotional support necessary to form a secure base from which they could explore the world. These individuals are generally regarded as well regulated and often seek out and engage in stable relationships. They may have a number of close friends and don't struggle to form affectional bonds. If you weren't born into this attachment style, don't worry, we'll later explore how you can "earn" this style.
Let's Explore 3 Types of Insecure Attachment
The are three main types of insecure attachment styles, specifically avoidant, anxious, and disorganized attachment. These presentations can emerge when our early bonding experiences with primary caregivers are disrupted or inconsistent. These insecure attachment patterns can impact our trust, emotional intimacy, and emotional stability--leading to difficulty in sustaining intimate relationships. It is crucial to recognize insecure attachment patterns in ourselves and seek healing in order to live a more fully connected life.
1. Avoidant Attachment
Do you frequently find yourself needing personal space or feeling uncomfortable with intimacy in your relationships? Is your response to discomfort in the relationship to pull away emotionally or physically? You may resonate with an avoidant attachment style. This attachment style often develops when caregivers are emotionally distant or neglectful, leaving us feeling unsupported and doubting the reliability of others.
Signs of avoidant attachment may include:
Difficulty expressing emotions or a tendency to minimize them
Strong preference for independence and self-reliance in self and partner
Fear of intimacy and a fear of being suffocated or engulfed by a romantic partner
Difficulty asking for and providing support or reassurance
A tendency to prioritize work or hobbies over relationships
Feelings of emptiness and unfulfillment in relationship with a struggle to form emotional bonds
Lack of empathy towards others, may present as being overly critical of self and others as well as lack of compassion
Having physical relationships with others, but exiting the situation when they express feelings
It is difficult for avoidant individuals to be emotionally present in relationships because they were conditioned to shove down their emotions and get on with it by themselves. These individuals may appear cold, distant, aloof, and dismissive to their partner. While this may not be readily apparent in the beginning of the relationship, as the relationship gets more serious these signs will become more obvious, especially in moments of conflict or rupture. Avoidant individuals may even resist getting into relationships due to not wanting to deal with the emotional work and their fear of closeness.
2. Anxious Attachment
Do you often feel insecure in your relationships, worrying about your partner's love and commitment? Have you ever thought of yourself as "clingy" or "needy"? Do you obsess over every text they send and worry when they're out with friends? An anxious attachment style may resonate with your experiences. This attachment style typically emerges when caregivers are inconsistently available, causing us to crave reassurance and develop a fear of abandonment.
Signs of anxious attachment may include:
Constant need for reassurance and validation
Fear of rejection or abandonment and a strong desire for closeness
Overanalyzing and overthinking relationship dynamics
Jealousy and possessiveness in relationships
Tendency to amplify minor conflicts or perceived threats
Anxious individuals desperately crave being in relationship and may downward spiral when they are alone. These individuals may believe things like "I need a partner", "I'm not valuable unless someone else loves me", "I'm not good enough, so I need to work extra hard to show that I am", and more. These individuals may be chronically dating or hopping from one relationship to the next with little breathing room, if any, between partners.
3. Disorganized Attachment
Do you often feel trapped between the longing for connection and the fear of vulnerability in your relationships? Does every relationship feel painful and chaotic, like riding a rollercoaster that you don't know will end? A disorganized attachment style may resonate with you. This attachment style typically develops when caregivers provide both nurturing and abusive or unpredictable behaviors, creating confusion and fear in the child. This attachment style is what I refer to as its own "personal little hell" because it mixes both features of avoidant and anxious attachment making it very hard to feel safe in relationships.
Signs of disorganized attachment may include:
Conflicting behaviors and emotions in relationships - vacillating between wanting closeness and pushing partner away
Difficulty trusting others and fearing both closeness and abandonment
Frequent emotional highs and lows in relationships, leading to outbursts and conflict
A tendency to attract or be attracted to emotionally unavailable partners
Struggles with self-identity and self-worth
May have diagnosis of borderline personality disorder
Those with disorganized attachment style struggle immensely in relationships. You may feel strongly pulled to wanting a partner, but once you have them everything turns sour, leading to you feeling on edge until the relationship implodes and you're back to longing for a partner. This cycle likely plays out over and over again in your relationships and you may even think to yourself "I'm crazy" because of how insidious the cycle is for you. But, you're not crazy, or bad, or unlovable. You do have the potential to heal and get off the chaotic, toxic merry-go-round that has been your dating history.
How Do the Different Insecure Attachment Styles Function Together in Relationships?
With an understanding of how an individual acts in a relationship based on their attachment style, let's look at how different types of styles interact with each other when paired up in a relationship.
Avoidant with Avoidant Partner
Individuals like this may experience relationship problems when paired with other avoidant individuals because neither party feeling safe to be emotionally vulnerable or pursue more emotional intimacy. This can leave the person feeling like they have an empty, unfulfilling shell of a relationship where neither party really fights about anything, but exists in a perpetual state of detachment and discontent.
Avoidant with Anxious Partner
When avoidant individuals are paired with someone with anxious attachment, a cycle of pursuit and withdrawal begins. When conflict or perceived disconnection happens in the relationship the anxious partner will try to cling to the avoidant partner (runs towards them), which only repels the avoidant partner further away due to their fear of emotional closeness (runs away from them). This tug of war leaves both partners feeling unsafe in the relationship as neither of their needs are being met.
Anxious with Anxious Partner
When an anxious individual partners with another who has anxious attachment, hello codependency and enmeshment. Due to fears of being alone, both partners may absorb into each other which, while it initially may sound nice for that individual, will lead to negative outcomes. These such outcomes include: losing individual identity, stunting personal growth, deepening dependence on external validation, increasing fear of abandonment, and stepping further into a sense of helplessness. Partners in this type of relationship may also fear bringing up potential conflict so issues continue to fester until it erodes the relationship from the inside.
Anxious or Avoidant with Disorganized Partner
Since disorganized individuals display traits of both anxious and avoidant attachment styles, they will at times conform to the opposite of their partner. If the partner is avoidant, they may go anxious. If their partner is anxious they may go avoidant. This is due to the fact that disorganized individuals vacillate between wanting extreme closeness and then abruptly pushing away their partner. So whether their partner is avoidant (wanting emotional distance) or anxious (wanting closeness) their needs will not be fully met by their disorganized partner. Also, due to the internal emotional volatility that a disorganized individual feels they may externalize their big emotions causing frequent conflict and hurtful communication that exacerbates the behaviors of their partners insecure attachment patterns. Remember though that it takes two to tango, so it is not only the disorganized partner's fault for dysfunction in the relationship, but a combination of both partners' unhealthy patterns of behavior that reinforce one another.
Disorganized with Disorganized Partner
This is likely to be a short-lived relationship with extreme highs and extreme lows. Individuals may feel drawn to each other at first in a twin flame kind of way, but unless great care is given to self-awareness and working with a professional to build the emotional regulation and communication skills necessary to establish a sense of safety, it may not last.
Insecure Attachment Does Not Have to Be Forever: Let's Discuss Earned Secure Attachment
Remember earlier in this post when I discussed those lucky folks who were able to establish a secure attachment through their primary caregivers? The good news is that even if you didn't establish a secure attachment in childhood, it is possible to achieve "earned secure attachment" as an adult. While this is not a short process, it can be quicker than you think. By utilizing a highly-effective treatment model like attachment-focused EMDR to change your internal beliefs regarding relationships (e.g. "I'm unlovable", "I'm not enough for my partner", "I'm too difficult to love", "I'm undeserving of a good partner because _____", "Relationships are scary", etc.) you're able to then change how you relate to others and stop automatic, self-sabotaging behaviors in romantic partnerships. When we change internally, we change how we interact externally, which in turn changes how others behave towards us. We begin attracting more secure partners and finally know how handle a secure relationship once we find it!
Taking the Next Step Towards Healing
Identifying and understanding your attachment style is a vital first step towards healing and developing healthier relationships. Remember, your attachment style is not an inherent flaw but a result of your early experiences. It can be changed.
After learning about your insecure attachment pattern though, it is important to reach out for professional help. Taking this step can be daunting, but the rewards are immeasurable. Reach out to a therapist who specializes in attachment-focused EMDR to start your journey of growth and healing. You deserve to experience the love, support, and security you've always longed for. Remember, you have the power to shape your own narrative and create the loving and secure connections you deserve. Don't let your past define your future. Embrace the opportunity for change because healing is possible, and I am here to support you every step of the way. Reach out today.
