Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Attachment Styles: A 4-Part Series

Attachment Styles- Introduction & Definitions

Attachment Styles is a concept that helps us understand how our childhood brain wires to relate to our primary caregiver, and eventually others. Attachment Styles

This is a script developed in our childhood based on the interactions we have with our primary caregiver. Our brain develops so we can efficiently and effectively deal with how to be close to that caregiver, we are wired to survive in this way.

Humans survive by bonding with a caregiver as we are born helpless and need a lot of care.

There are 4 main Attachment Styles: Anxious/Preoccupied, Avoidant/Dismissive, Disorganized/Ambivalent and Secure.

We will review each one in 4 separate parts.

Attachment Styles Series: Part 1- Anxious Attachment

Anxious Attachment Style- How It Develops

This development of a relational script begins with every interaction we have with our primary caregiver. This is to ensure that our caregiver will be motivated to care for us.

If we have a healthy, loving and consistent caregiver, this is a lovely process. Our Secure Attachment Style will be activated in intimate relationships throughout our lives when we get close to others.

When this is secure and consistent, intimacy will likely feel safe for you. You will be able to give and receive love with flexibility, developing a Secure Attachment Style.  

However, many people develop Anxious, Avoidant or Disorganized Attachment Styles. These types also guide our lives and relationships.

An Anxious Attachment Style can develop if an infant, and later child, experience their caregiver as unavailable at times, in regards to their care. As a child, they may feel their parent is emotionally unavailable to them.

This can be a clinically depressed or traumatized parent that has really challenging days with their mental health. They may dissociate, or struggle to simply get out of bed.

They may have lost a loved one while they were pregnant and are grieving their own childhood primary caregiver, while creating a bond with their new baby. This can be triggering and even traumatic for a new parent.

A parent may get sick and need to be in hospital care for a year in the child’s formative years, the child may experience a traumatic abandonment here.

A caregiver may have their own attachment trauma and emotionally shut down when they are most needed. A caregiver may be strong with meeting a child’s physical needs but emotionally unavailable.

These types of experiences teach a child that their needs will not always be met. So, whatever the reason for these unmet needs, the Anxious Attachment Style develops in which a child learns love and care can be unavailable when needed or inconsistent and unreliable.

To be clear, this happens even when caregivers are doing their best to love and adore a new baby. Parenting can be both magical and really hard.

Anxious Attachment Style: What It Looks Like In An Adult, Intimate Relationship

Your Attachment Style activates as you get to know another person and feel close to them, fall in love. 

This activation can take awhile for some people, which is the reason there can be a beautiful honeymoon phase and then things seem to change after dating awhile, possibly making decisions to further intimacy, Ex. Move in together.

This attachment experience will also be impacted by the Attachment Style of the other person you are getting close to.

People with an Anxious Attachment Style worry in close relationships. They worry the other will leave as they begin to feel more vulnerable.

They may worry about a partner’s death often. They may not trust a partner to be emotionally available when they need them to be.

How this presents will also be impacted by personality. They may hide their fears. They may need a lot reassurance that they are loved. They may be overtly jealous about the partner’s other relationships.

If a person with Anxious Attachment dates a Securely or other Anxiously Attached person, their Anxious Attachment worries/fears may be largely mitigated.

A Securely Attached person may be more able to be flexible and meet the Anxiously Attached person’s needs, mitigating fears.

Another Anxiously Attached person may be able to access a lot of empathy for their partner (identify with similar worries), take care of each other, forming a Secure Attachment in their relationship.

All people, regardless of their Attachment Style, can create a healthy, Securely Attached relationship under the right conditions.

Here is the commonly seen issue however: people with Anxious Attachment Styles tend to be attracted to and date Avoidantly Attached people.

Why?

The attachment scripts simply match. An Anxiously Attached person expects another will be emotionally unavailable, or inconsistency show up to meet their needs, a natural way of being for an Avoidantly Attached partner. An Anxiously Attached person may experience their Avoidant partner as an emotionally cold, withholding, distant person, triggering to them. Nte.

An Avoidant person likely does not believe this of themselves, but may find the intimacy needs high and triggering, they withdraw.  

I also believe strongly we have an innate healing centre that sets us up for healing opportunities to heal our Insecure Attachment Styles and make new choices. This will also impact our choice of partner.

The Anxiously Attached person has learned to expect others to not meet their emotional needs. They may feel some needs are met, but they have to work hard for this to happen Ex. Please others.  This informs the way we perceive our partner’s behaviour and how they show up for us.

Anxious Attachment Style - Flexibility

This piece is important as we all have choice and flexibility in who we are.

If you choose a partner that seems to show up in a similar way to your childhood caregiver, your Anxious Attachment Style will be fully activated, can lead to extreme fear of loss. It can lead to feeling very insecure and anxious or preoccupied about losing them. You may scan for threat, nervous about a new colleague your partner has mentioned several times.

This may cause intolerable relationship anxiety.

However, if an Anxiously Attached person chooses a person with a Secure Attachment Style the anxiety can be mitigated and manageable. A Securely Attached person will be more emotionally available.

Anxious Attachment Style - Healing and Treatment Considerations

Humans are extremely adaptable. We have a lot of capacity for neuroplasticity; our brains can rewire when we are introduced to a different experience than our childhood exposure.

However, our brain will try to use the old script as much as possible, it is biologically easier and more efficient to do so.

This can cause a lot of pain and lost relationships with partners that do not have the capacity to support triggered insecurities as you change.

There are healing opportunities to help keep the impact off of your personal life.

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Attachment Styles can be healed and changed when presented with new experience. Your Attachment Style will activate with your therapist and this can be used in sessions, relational therapy. You can also build new insight and tools to have healthy intimacy.

What usually brings those with Anxious Attachment to our clinic is fear of and actual relationship losses, as partners find the anxiety hard and/or you do and, inevitably, withdraw.

Attachment Style’s Series: Part 2- Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant Attachment refers to a relationship script in which you do not trust people will be there for you when needed. You learn to be hyper-self reliant. Being in close connection with others is uncomfortable.

Let’s explore this in more detail.

Avoidant Attachment Style - How It Develops

Avoidant Attachment develops when an infant perceives their caregiver as emotionally unresponsive. As a result, their emotional needs are not met. 

As an infant they may initially work really hard to engage, babble, smile and do all the evolutionary behaviors a human infant does to engage and get a caregiver to be motivated to care for them. But, eventually, inevitably, they shut down and stop initiating.

This may be a very depressed caregiver. This could be a traumatized caregiver that dissociates and/or struggles to be close to others, including being responsible for meeting other’s needs.

This may simply be a caregiver that is stressed, distracted and out of their depth. They may send a child outside all the time to “play on their own” for hours at a time. They may seem uninterested in the child, seem to find them a burden and the child learns to take little space and stay out of their way.

A hyper-reliance and extreme independence may form, in which the child learns to take care of themselves, learning not to expect much from others. They are really independent and seem to be fine, need nothing. They are an “easy” child. They learn to not really need anyone.

Avoidant Attachment Style - What It Looks Like In An Adult, Intimate Relationship

This is the dating partner you meet that seems initially perfect, “a dream come true”. They are independent, not emotionally needy, likely successful, seem so centred and in control.

The disconnection begins after you have been dating awhile. You have been connecting, spending time together… then they start getting busier. They seem to need more space, like a lot. You may start to feel lonely, surprised as it started out so great.

When you bring it up, they may say they also need you to be independent. Spend time with your friends. They are busy.

It seems the closer you get, they seem to disappear. You have a great vacation together, get home and they seem to disconnect even more than before. They spend all day, every day in the garage, working on a favorite hobby.

They don’t really seem to need you. You don’t feel you can bring your feelings to them as they don’t seem to get them. You may feel messy, they seem so calm.

The sex that was so great in the beginning seems to stop, they aren’t interested in physical affection. Or the sex begins to feel transactional, you are meeting their sexual needs but not connecting emotionally. You may feel a bit used afterwards.

The relationship starts to feel hollow. You feel alone, a lot.

If a partner has a Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment, they likely tell themselves they just don’t really need anyone. In a breakup, this can be very traumatic to be on the receiving end of.

They seem emotionally cold, shut down. It may feel very logical and even strategic, like you never mattered. They may seem to move on really fast. It may feel they never really cared about you at all.

People with Avoidant Attachment have learned being close to people is unsafe, even hurtful. Their central nervous system is highly activated when in intimate settings/relationships as the feeling of being close to others is deemed unsafe, almost a threat. As a result, they need a lot of time away from that intimate partner to feel safe and regulated in the relationship.

Let me shock you. If you are dating a person that seems to fit here, they do feel close to you. You may be the most intimate relationship they have ever had. They need far less quality time to feel connected than you do. Too much activates their central nervous system and they need to withdraw to regulate it.

Avoidant Attachment Style - Flexibility

There is flexibility in every single Attachment Style. Clients may present knowing they have this way of being in relationship. Some people will identify it and want help.

They may have many dissatisfied past partners that complain they are emotionally unavailable. They may feel they choose partners that are jealous and insecure, emotionally needy.

This can be for several reasons. They may be attracted to Anxiously Attached people, as they experience them as a person that is motivated to meet their needs. How refreshing! They likely love the warmth these people being to their life.

They may not know how to give a partner what they want and also stay regulated. They feel unsafe in connection. If they have never had their emotional needs met, they do not know how to do this for others. They may tell themselves they don’t really have emotional needs as they shut them down, childhood needs weren’t met. They, therefore, may not understand all the emotions their partners have.

They also may trigger an Anxiously Attached partner, escalating their insecurities and related feelings.

All of this can bring them in to get help.

They can learn to stay in intimate conversations even when anxious internally. They can learn to communicate. They can learn to be emotionally available. They can learn to feel safe with a partner that supports them in this. They can learn to shut down less.

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Avoidant Attachment Style - Healing and Treatment Considerations

The most important consideration here in getting help is that being close to people feels hard/unsafe. This will be activated with your therapist.

Pacing will be paramount to ensure you stay in the relationship and do the healing work. You are at high risk to decide you have learned a few things and leave prematurely.

There’s nothing wrong with starting with short-term therapy. You can learn some emotional intelligence and how to be more present as a partner.

But to heal your Attachment Style and genuinely feel people are now there for you and meet your needs, closeness is safe, simply takes time. It takes time to rewire the brain and relationship scripts that govern your attachments.

Attachment Style’s Series: Part 3- Disorganized Attachment

Disorganized Attachment Style- Definitions

Disorganized Attachment is what develops when a child experiences a primary caregiver as inconsistent. They may feel they are sometimes there for them and other times not, leading to a confused central nervous system.

Disorganized Attachment Style- How It Develops

Disorganized Attachment develops due to inconsistent parenting and/or caregiving. Whereas with Avoidant Attachment, a parent is emotionally unavailable, with Disorganized Attachment the key is inconsistent, possibly even dangerous, parenting.

This may be an abused child. This may be a child from an alcoholic home, with erratic expectations; when a parent is sober they are loving, but angry and abusive when drunk.

This may a traumatized parent that is terrified when their child has an emotional need. This may be a severely mentally ill parent Ex. unmanaged Schizophrenia.

This also can be an abusive and/or unresponsive, or even absent parent, and the child also has/needs other important caregivers, Ex. A grandparent or foster parent that is loving and nurturing. This leads to a child feeling sometimes it is unsafe to be close to others and sometimes it is safe, confusing.

What if your parent is both your best friend, always there for you to advocate for and defend you in a “cruel world” but also your harshest abuser? Has no boundaries? We still have to learn to be close to that parent to survive. Remember that fundamentally, Attachment is a script developed to survive in the reality you are born into not an ideal one.

Disorganized Attachment includes an intense need to be close to others and then become fearful of them once the bond has been formed and, in turn, disconnect. In Disorganized

Attachment there will be re-engagement, dis-engagement, vacillating as a child, and later adult, re-engaging when it is deemed safe to do so. This on/off again connection is key to this Attachment Style.

Disorganized Attachment Style - What It Looks Like In An Adult, Intimate Relationship

In an adult relationship Disorganized Attachment is the push-pull partner. This needs to be differentiated from the Avoidant partner than shows up and bonds in the beginning and then emotionally shuts down or physically disappears Ex. Travels for work all the time.

The Disorganized partner shows up and emotionally shuts down inconsistently. You don’t know what to expect and are not sure that they will be there for you when needed the most. 

This push-pull dynamic is directly related to Attachment fears. They crave connection/closeness with some intensity. Once closeness is established, fear is triggered and disconnection regulates this fear. Once grounded again, the desire to connect intensely surfaces, and they re-engage, creating the cycle.

This is confusing to be at the receiving end of as they can say the right things, be there for you, holding emotional space, seem to get the impact of their disconnection on you…and still withdraw after that emotionally intense conversation. When you are convinced they are gone…they come back and show up beautifully. Huh? They may seem to feel “all over the place”.

Disorganized Attachment is especially hard for those with an Anxious Attachment Style as these people fear abandonment and will feel continuously emotionally abandoned in a relationship with an unhealed Disorganized Attacher.

Disorganized Attachment Style - Flexibility

The best way to begin the healing process of a Disorganized Attachment Style is with a Securely Attached person. They will be less likely to personalize the disconnection need, and more trusting of the re-engagement that follows, and related cycling.

All Attachment Styles have the capacity to create a Secure Attachment under the right conditions or with someone with a compatible Attachment Style. Ex. An Avoidantly Attached person will tolerate the disconnection quite well,  it can even aid their regulation needs in intimacy.

However, identifying and communicating needs is so important here. Especially if a personal trauma history is something a Disorganized person grapples with (more likely with this Attachment Style), possibly including Post Traumatic Stress symptoms.

Trauma

DSM PTSD Diagnostics

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Disorganized Attachment Style - Healing and Treatment Considerations

The good news here is a person with Disorganized Attachment is not Dismissive of the connections in their life, as Avoidantly Attached people often are. Avoidant Attachment

A Disorganized Attached person knows they need people and value them.

However, there may be a lot of wounds in which they feel they have lost people and minimize the pain they cause with their patterns. Once it is possible to see this impact, and the pain caused to others, healing can begin.

This often must include healing the pain of abandonment and abuse, the sources that led to complicated core beliefs and embodied fears of both craving and fearing intimacy with others.

Attachment Style’s Series: Part 4- Secure Attachment

Secure Attachment Style- Introduction & Definitions

Secure Attachment is the optimal Attachment Style when I child feels they are unconditionally loved and emotionally cared for/regulated.

Secure Attachment Style - How It Develops

Secure Attachment develops when things are optimal. This means the primary caregiver is consistent in their ability and capacity to meet their child’s emotional needs.

Does this mean a perfect parent? Not necessarily…but who doesn’t want that? Lol.

Parents have issues/concerns and life goes on around them. Ex. Experience a prolonged illness.

It is really about several pieces:

The primary caregiver(s) find a way to be present and sooth/comfort the child in a good way, and in line with their child’s temperament.

Not all children are the same. Some are resilient dandelions and can grow anywhere without optimal conditions. Some are lovely, sensitive orchids that sense every feeling around them and need more emotional support, ideal conditions to thrive. However, dandelion and orchid kids are also, in part, created by their attachment experiences. Child Development

Community helps as well. Other caregivers the child can rely on as needed, when their primary caregiver can’t be there, makes a big difference. Ex. An involved grandparent, great friend.

The child learns that life can be hard, but the family will get through it together, they can rely on that.

Therefore, they develop a secure feeling in the world. They trust others are there for them and the world is a safe, loving place.

If there is a conflict, their parent gets upset with them, they will work it out and re-bond. They have experienced love as unconditional.

This creates an adventurous and/or resilient child that feels the world supports their endeavours and dreams. They have good self-esteem. They trust they can do volunteer work in another country and come back to a secure, loving family and home.

They trust people love and value them, want them around.

Secure Attachment Style - What It Looks Like In An Adult, Intimate Relationship

The Secure Attachment Style primes a person to be close to people in a healthy way. Their central nervous system is wired to be regulated when close to others.

However, a Securely Attached person can end up creating an Insecure Attachment in a challenging relationship with an Insecurely Attached partner. Just as it is possible to create a Secure Attachment in a healthy relationship, even if this was not your childhood experience.

Approximately half of the general population have a Secure Attachment Style. People with this Attachment Style can often end up in a support role with a partner with an Insecure Attachment Style.

The super power of the Securely Attached person is they trust themselves and their emotional experience in intimate connection. This means if they have an Avoidantly Attached partner that needs a lot of emotional space to stay regulated, the Securely Attached partner will not personalize it. They can be more flexible in how they show up. With an Anxiously Attached partner, a Securely Attached person is in an optimal position emotionally to support a fearful partner. With a Disorganized Attached person there will be more emotional tolerance for inconsistency.

However, the Securely Attached person also has needs. It is important to communicate them to a partner if they are creating harm towards you. Support your Insecurely Attached partner in communicating their needs, with boundaries and respect.  Couple Page

Secure Attachment Style- Flexibility

I have alluded to the Securely Attached person having the most potential for flexibility to securely connect with many people with acceptance.

Why?

Having a childhood experience of consistent, loving caregiving results in feeling loved and valued. People were interested in you and your feelings/thoughts. This goes a long way in your ability to trust you can connect with people and learn new skills.

Emotional Intelligence can be learned if needed. So can communication skills.

Secure Attachment Style - Healing and Treatment Considerations

Having a Secure Attachment Style sets you in a great place to be resilient and supportive. It does not mean you cannot end up in a challenging relationship with people that struggle being close to others. You may end up feeling disconnected and irritable, not know where the insecurities are coming from.

When you spend years in a challenging relationship, it takes its toll and you will also need support and care, especially if your partner has a trauma history Ex. Sexual abuse. Trauma Meet the Team

In Conclusion:

Humans need others to survive. We are wired to attach and build community and extremely depressed when we are not able to that. Ex. Pandemic of 2020.

Attachment Styles is a theory to explain and understand how our brain wires in infancy, childhood and throughout life to attach and have relationships in a way that feels safe.

We can used this understanding to build self-insight, better understand our partners and each other.

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Lisa S.