Attachment Styles: What Are They and How Do They Manifest? (Part 1)

Discovering and exploring your attachment style can be incredibly helpful in understanding yourself better, your view on others, and how you navigate close relationships in your life. 
In this episode, you will learn about the attachment theory and the four different attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganzed/anxious-avoidant). I also share my personal experience on how I developed an anxious attachment style and how it's impacted me and my relationships with others.

Source: https://simplypsychology.org/attachment.html

Healing requires energy, vulnerability, and hard work. It’s a lifelong journey and it's never linear. Whatever season you're in on your healing journey, hold on to hope. <3

I hope you have a lovely rest of your day!
Love,
MacKenzie Mae


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Transcript

Hello survivors and allies! I hope everyone is having a lovely day. I’m so happy you clicked on today’s episode, because this week on Trauma Chats, I will be chatting about attachment styles, a little bit on the theory behind attachment, what the four different attachment styles are, and my experience having an insecure attachment style. There’s a ton I want to talk about with this topic, and this episode would be super long if I kept it all in one, so this will be part one of this topic and part two will be next week’s episode all about the most important part of attachment styles; how to HEAL your insecure attachment style and move towards a secure attachment style. If you’re not already following this podcast, make sure to click that follow button so you don’t miss next week’s episode or any other future episodes! And if you find value from these episodes, be sure to rate this podcast on spotify and rate and review it on apple. Even just a sentence helps SOO much! Alright, let’s get into today’s episode! 

Quick reminder, I am not a mental health professional. I am using my personal experiences, what I’ve learned in my therapy, and sources I researched to create this episode. I will link the sources in the episode description if you’re interested in learning more!

So first let’s understand what attachment is and where the idea of attachment styles came from so we can get a foundational understanding. Attachment is defined as the deep emotional bond between two people who seek closeness and feel secure in the presence of one another. The attachment theory, discovered by John Bowlby in 1958, is the idea that our early childhood relationships and how we bonded with close adults in our lives, such as caregiver figures, teachers, coaches, priests, therapists, etc. is how we form the way we attach to people in the future. In other words, children internalize the security or insecurity of relationships between them and close adult figures and create mental rules or guidelines to follow for future relationships, whether they are romantic or not. If those rules or guidelines are healthy or not depends on the nature of the relationship they had with the close adult. These rules are centered around three aspects, an individual’s feeling of personal security, feeling secure in others, and their perspective on attachment or what their past experiences have demonstrated attachment to be. So let’s say a child was made to feel secure in the bond with a close adult, meaning they had mutual trust, felt like their needs were met, felt supported, cared for, and comfortable being their authentic self within that relationship, meaning they received unconditional love. In that case, they probably view attachment to be secure, safe, and beneficial to their well-being. This secure relationship probably made the child feel secure in themselves, have a sense of self-worth, trust themselves, and feel comfortable being who they are. This relationship also showed the child that they can trust others, feel like others are willing to support and care for them, and will accept their authentic self. On the other hand, let’s say a child was made to feel insecure in the bond with a close adult, meaning there wasn’t mutual trust, that close adult didn’t meet their basic needs or may have neglected them, made them feel shameful, unwanted, and only showed love to them if their personal expectations of the child were met. This type of insecure relationship would most likely cause the child to feel unsure of attachment. They may think attachment comes with disappointment, shame, conditional love and be scared of it. Or they may long for attachment more than anything to find that feeling of security they’ve always desired. Their relationship with themselves is most likely damaged leading them to ONLY trust themselves or NOT trust themselves at all. And they may view others as a threat to their well-being or as a way to make them feel whole or worthy. As you can gather from these two polar opposite scenarios, it’s incredibly important for a child to have a secure bond with close adult figures early on. A secure bond then can lead to them having a secure attachment style. An insecure bond can lead to them to develop one of the insecure attachment styles. I want to also add that a child could have a secure relationship with their parents but have another close adult relationship that was insecure. That is what happened in my experience. I’m incredibly fortunate to have parents who have always loved me unconditionally, but I still developed an insecure attachment style from being sexually abused by my taekwondo coach as a young girl. If you’re a parent listening and you have a child with an insecure attachment style, hopefully that fact helps you take some of the blame off yourself if you’re racking your brain on how your child have an insecure attachment style and you believe you had a secure relationship. 

Alright, so now that we understand what attachment is and the theory behind secure and insecure attachment, let’s dive into the 4 different attachment styles.

Like I said, there are 4 different attachment styles. There is 1 attachment style that is considered secure, called a secure attachment style, and 3 styles that are considered insecure, and those are 1. Insecure-anxious, 2. Insecure-avoidant, and 3. Insecure-disorganized or insecure anxious-avoidant. In the examples I just shared, you can assume that the first child/adult relationship scenario with the secure relationship would most likely lead to the child having a secure attachment style. The second scenario I shared with the insecure child/adult relationship could lead the child to having any of the 3 insecure attachment styles, depending on several factors like their specific experience in that relationship and their personality. Let me explain the three insecure attachment styles. 

The first is insecure-anxious. Individuals with an insecure-anxious attachment style commonly had at least one unreliable, inconsistent early childhood relationship with a close adult who may have also been an intrusive communicator, meaning they pry for information or invade one’s privacy without consent. This type of relationship can cause the child to internalize that they aren’t okay on their own, they can’t make their own decisions, and don’t feel good enough or secure enough on their own causing them to commonly lean on codependency to feel quote on quote “complete” and receive reassurance. Individuals with this attachment style are anxious and insecure, lack self-esteem or a sense of self-worth. In other words, they don’t trust themselves. Their view of attachment is a way to feel whole, because they were always made to feel like they weren’t secure on their own. And if they are wanted, they are worthy. So their view of others in a relationship or friendship is trustworthy, able to provide them with any and every need or desire they have, but are often let down because no one can complete another person. You are a whole, complete human on your own, and there’s no way someone else can fulfill every need or desire you have. People with this attachment style value a relationships and close friendships more than themselves, they fixate on them, and lose some of their own identity to ensure the other person won’t abandon them. They tend not to set boundaries to avoid conflict, and almost morph into the person they think their partner or friend wants, causing the person to feel even less self-worth because they lose themselves in the process. Over time, they can start to feel resentment against their partner or friend, blaming them for their insecurities and for not being able to satisfy the countless needs and desires expected of them. As one can imagine, this creates an incredibly unstable and easily threatened relationship or friendship. A person with an anxious attachment style commonly thinks or says phrases like, “I’m scared my partner is going to leave me,” “my friend is going to abandon me for someone else,” or “I don’t think my partner or friends really care about me.” They overthink every energy shift, every mood change their friend, partner, or any other close individual experiences, and rationalize in their minds that it’s their fault. This causes them to hyper fixate on every move they make to ensure they don’t upset others. This can lead to perfectionist tendencies. If they do end up rationalizing a mood shift was their fault, they commonly feel the need to correct that shift in mood, or quote “fix” it, because they feel a responsibility to do so. They truly believe deep down that the mood shift was their fault and fear they will automatically be abandoned if others feel hurt by them. So to combat that fear abandonment, they attempt to try to fix any negative mood shifts, which an often times come across as controlling or manipulative.

The second insecure attachment style is avoidant. Individuals with this style of attachment most likely had a close adult relationship as a child where that adult was commonly unavailable, dismissive, or maybe even rejected them. This can cause them to view attachment as damaging, unreliable, and unable to depend on. Individuals with this style of attachment tend to feel secure in themselves, only trust themselves and are commonly very independent. They believe they meet all their own needs and don’t need to lean on others at all, causing them to isolate themselves and not ask for or accept help. They fear attachment because they don’t trust others and don’t believe they can depend on anyone. It commonly gets to the point where they may believe an intimate relationship or a close friendship could be a threat to their freedom. Because of that, they are commonly said to have commitment issues, always prepared with an exit strategy. They attempt to mentally prepare themselves by anticipating that others will let them down right from the jump, even if they haven’t been given a reason to feel that way. People with an insecure-avoidant attachment style avoid closeness and emotional connection, causing them not to open up to others about feelings or emotions they experience, which can make them seem distant or cold. They are often intolerant and critical of others because they expect others to be able to rely solely on themselves and not expect anything from them, because that’s how they operate. 

The last type of insecure attachment style is insecure-disorganized or insecure anxious-avoidant. The child/adult relationship someone with this style of attachment experienced was most likely traumatizing and frightening. Their needs were ignored or not even seen as needs. The child was most likely always confused on whether they were doing the right thing or not because the adult was contradictory, hot and cold, many highs and lows, not very predictable. This can cause the child to internalize a low view of themselves and of others. So unlike anxious attachment where one trusts others, but not themselves, or like avoidant attachment where one trusts only themselves, disorganized means they trust no one, including themselves. They can view attachment as chaotic and confusing, sometimes reliable, sometimes not, very contradictory and incoherent. This can cause them to be untrusting of others while also craving attachment and security, expecting others to meet their needs but at the same time believing no one can help them, and having a hard time feeling safe with others, but also craving closeness or intimacy. They view others as unpredictable, their view fluctuating with their highs and lows. Someone with this style of attachment can come across as chaotic, insensitive, explosive, and sometimes even abusive. This is because their view of everyone, including themselves, is inconsistent, so imagine how frustrating that could get, to never feel confident in how others or you will act or react, and never knowing what to expect. Their source of safety is also their greatest sense of fear.

If you struggle with an insecure attachment style, you are not alone. 

I developed an anxious attachment style, and it’s something I have really struggled with my whole life. I believe I developed this style of attachment due to being sexually abused by my taekwondo coach from ages 9-13. Out of every adult in my life at that time, I had the closest relationship to the person who abused me besides my parents. I’d spend time with him almost every day, several hours, and many of those hours just him and I. I trusted him, cared for him, and thought he cared about me. He took advantage of me though, of my kindness and vulnerability. He was incredibly inconsistent. One moment he would be training me and my teammates to be the best in the sport I loved the most, and the next he would be violating my pre-pubescent body, verbalizing his love for me, and grooming me with gifts and money. I saw every side of him. The trustworthy, selfless façade he presented to my parents and others in our taekwondo community, the verbally and physically abusive side of him he’d present to his family, and the manipulative, intrusive, sexually abusive side of him he’d present to me. As a child, this made me question my own worth, my sense of safety, my view of attachment. It caused me to lack trust in my own judgement of others, of danger, of every choice I had to make. In addition to being abused, after I disclosed and other adults were notified, many of them decided not to believe me, to side with the person who abused me, and abandon me. Many of those adults were people I had close relationships with and thought cared about me, so their betrayal also impacted my view of attachment, trust in myself, and trust in others. Listen to episode 6 where I talk all about my experience with enablers of my abuse in you’re interested in learning about their impact on me. But between the relationship with the person who abused me and the betrayal of many adults after the abuse, I became extremely fearful of betrayal or abandonment. I lost trust in myself and my sense of self-worth. And I have viewed attachment as something I needed in order to feel safe, to feel whole. Since I couldn’t trust my own judgement and was so insecure personally, I felt I needed others to depend on to help guide me to make decisions and to show me my worth. If I was wanted, I was worthy. My lack of trust in myself led to me putting either all my trust in others, or none at all. Before interacting with someone, I wouldn’t trust them in the slightest. But if someone showed any type of interest in me or just seemed like a nice person on the surface, I’d immediately put my trust in them. You can imagine how that would impact every relationship or friendship I had in the future. I lacked boundaries because I didn’t trust my own intuition, so 1 I never reflected on my needs and desires to determine my boundaries and 2 I didn’t want to scare anyone away if I set a boundary they didn’t agree with because I viewed that as abandonment, which was my greatest fear. I became a perfectionist and a master people pleaser to ensure others accepted me and wouldn’t abandon me. And I became incredibly codependent on others whether they were close friends or partners because I truly felt like I needed them to complete me, to make me feel safe, worthy, loved, and protected. And overall, I was massively insecure in myself and in my friendships and relationships, causing me to be constantly anxious that I was going to make a mistake, not be perfect, etc. and that others would abandon me. In my past romantic relationships, I completely lost myself trying to be the person I thought my partner wanted me to be. I kept noticing that I would feel way less confident in a relationship than I would be single. I think this is because I wasn’t prioritizing myself. I was always prioritizing them and the relationship because I was so afraid of being abandoned. I’ve always struggled with overanalyzing my partner’s energy, their moods and emotions. Commonly convincing myself that I did something wrong, that they’re upset with me, and that I need to fix it and make them happy again if they’re not. I felt like I was responsible for their emotions and for making sure they were happy. I’d stop doing anything that brought me joy, would absolutely lose my identity and take on many parts of their identity. I’d do what they wanted to do. I’d alter myself to their liking. I would rely on their reassurance, by asking questions like, “do you really love me? Do you like how my hair, outfit, makeup, whatever looks? Do you think I’m good enough for you?” And depending on their answers, I’d either continue what I was doing, or alter myself more to make sure they approved of me. I had no sense of self-identity, I was making myself solely into the person my partner wanted me to be, so of course I had low self-esteem and virtually no self-worth. And to make matters worse, I felt like I couldn’t live without them because since I let go of so much of myself and replaced it with their identity. As I mentioned, I wouldn’t set boundaries because I was afraid that would make them upset, they wouldn’t accept those boundaries, and they would leave me. If they left then I would be left with the few parts of my own identity and a massive hole where I had replaced my identity with theirs. So, my intention of feeling more whole with them actually ended up with me feeling less whole than I was before meeting them when I was alone. Unfortunately, all of this definitely caused me to put a lot of the blame on them and feel resentment towards them. Only in the last year have I become aware of my insecure-anxious attachment style. I’m in the process of analyzing the three aspects of attachment: my view of myself, my view of others, and my view of attachment itself. I’m slowly working to move each of those aspects closer and closer to how someone with a secure attachment style would view them.

For those who have a secure attachment style, that either means you have worked hard to heal your insecure attachment style or as a child you had a secure, trusting relationship with a caregiver figure or other close adult in your life. That adult was in tune with your emotions, accepting of who you are and allowed you to discover your own identity. They met your basic needs and were reliable. Individuals with a secure attachment style tend to have a sense of self-worth, they trust themselves and they have trust in others. They view attachment as beneficial, but not almighty or something to fear. Typically, people with secure attachment styles are able to set boundaries because they don’t fear they will be abandoned if they don’t succumb to whatever their partner desires. They are empathetic individuals who understand that their partner or friend is their own person, who has their own wants, needs, and desires. They love unconditionally because they accept that people make mistakes and always have room to grow and become a better version of themselves. This allows them to truly forgive others, and not hold grudges. People with a secure attachment style believe others will effectively communicate their desires and will work to compromise with their partners or friends to determine what desires they can meet and what they may need to obtain elsewhere. They don’t worry about their partner or friends leaving them because of their belief of trusting others to communicate any feelings they are having, and if they haven’t communicated any feelings of wanting to leave the relationship or end the friendship, then there’s no reason to worry. They open up about feelings and emotions to others and lean into their vulnerability, but ultimately understand that they are responsible for their own well-being, and others are not. 

One can imagine how difficult relationships can be having an insecure attachment style. It may seem impossible to ever have a secure attachment style. But the truth is, you have the power within to do so. Like I’ve said many times before, the beautiful part about being a human is we have the ability to shift and evolve our minds, create new neural pathways, and embody new mindsets! I am right here alongside you. I’ve been working on shifting mine for a year now, and I’m already seeing results, so don’t lose hope! 

The big question is, how can us with insecure attachment styles shift to having a more secure attachment style? You’ll have to wait and see because I will be sharing all about that in next week’s episode! Like always, I appreciate you taking the time to listen to this episode. It means the absolute world to me! Can’t wait to chat with you next week