Attached

by Rachel Berg

As human beings, we are hardwired for connection-it is one of the driving forces in our lives. The urge to "belong” and experience closeness and intimacy is something we all crave and seek. So why do so many of us struggle to connect and maintain healthy relationships?

Have you ever felt like you keep ending up in the same situation, even with different partners? Do you ever feel yourself getting clingy or jealous? Or do you always seem to be more emotionally invested than your partner? Maybe you want to be with someone, but as soon as things get emotionally intimate, you back off?

The answer to these struggles and patterns that are occurring in adulthood may be better understood by looking at the past. According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, the relationship we have with our caregivers during childhood becomes the template for how we build relationships as adults.

We are all wired to connect with our earliest caregivers. We need our caregivers when we are born to physically survive and we also need them to help us emotionally regulate. As children, we seek comfort, soothing, and support from our caregivers because we are not able to do these things on our own. These early experiences with our caregivers teach us how to have and be in relationships. We learn how emotions exist and how to communicate them, how to cope with our environments, and how to recover from stress with the help of our caregivers. If our caregivers were able to offer a nurturing environment and were reliably attuned to our needs, even when those needs were not clearly expressed, they would have helped us form a secure attachment style. Misattunement, inconsistency, or neglect by our caregivers, on the other hand, would likely lead us to develop an insecure attachment style.

In his research John Bowlby identified four types of attachment styles that emerge:

Insecure Anxious

In childhood, this is a misattunement between the child’s needs and the caregiver’s needs. When the child has emotional or physical needs the caregiver is responding by attending to their own emotional or physical needs first at the moment and ignoring the child’s needs. This can appear to the child like the caregiver is unpredictable or inconsistent.

In adulthood, this can show up in a person’s tendency to override their own emotional needs to put other people’s emotional and physical needs first. A mindset of “If you are okay, I am okay.” In romantic partnerships, their person often views their partner as the ‘better half.’ The thought of living without a partner or being alone can cause high levels of anxiety. There is often a strong fear of abandonment and a strong desire for approval from others. The attention, care, and responsiveness of the adult's partner or those close to them are often thought to be the ‘solution’ for anxiety. In the absence of intimacy and connection, this person can find themselves behaving in a clinging or demanding way. These individuals often find themselves preoccupied with important relationships and in positions where they feel desperate for love.

Insecure Avoidant

In childhood, the caregiver was disconnected from the child’s physical and emotional needs. This leads the child to navigate their emotions alone.

In adulthood, this person can experience a disconnect between their emotional worlds and what they are doing or how they are relating to others on the outside. This person tends to be less sensitive to other’s emotional cues. They often perceive themselves as strong, independent, and self-sufficient on an emotional level. These people tend to have high self-esteem and a positive view of themselves. Adults with this attachment style generally avoid or feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness and tend to hide or suppress their feelings when faced with emotional situations.

Insecure Disorganized

In childhood, this can look like a caregiver who is a combination of neglectful, depressed, traumatized, or abusive. The message to the child is confusing. The child may feel unsafe with the caregiver but it is not safe to be without the caregiver because their emotional and physical needs cannot be met on their own.

In adulthood, this person is not able to distinguish between safety and danger. They may also have difficulty regulating their emotional states. These people want intimacy and closeness, but at the same time, experience difficulties trusting and depending on others. They often avoid strong emotional attachment due to their fear of getting hurt.

Secure ( “The Autonomous Adult”)

In childhood, the caregiver was able to tolerate their stress and remain attuned to the child’s emotions and physical needs.
In adulthood this person is comfortable spending time alone can navigate emotions on their own, and are comfortable communicating their emotions openly, and can relate to the emotional experiences of others in relationships. They are comfortable with giving others space in relationships and allow others to navigate emotions on their own. With a secure attachment style, adults thrive in their relationships but also don’t fear being on their own.

If you identify with an insecure attachment style you are not alone. Having an insecure attachment style is very common. The good news is although there are layers and complexities to the thoughts and behaviors that make up your attachment style it is possible to change the patterns you have learned with time, attention, and professional help. Due to the brain’s lifelong neuroplasticity, neuroscientists believe it is possible to change ingrained thought patterns and learn newer, healthier coping skills.