What Is Attachment?
Attachment refers to the way we emotionally, mentally, and psychologically bond to others. A person’s “attachment style” is developed during our early relationships with parents or caregivers. When enough of our needs are met from birth to adulthood, we can develop secure attachment. If we learn that we can get our needs met in relationships with those around us, then we feel a sense of security inside ourselves. This can form a belief of safety in relationships and safety in the world. If parental figures do not meet our needs, we can learn that we cannot trust or rely on others to meet our needs, or trust our own capabilities or worth.
Secure attachment in childhood is created through caregiver’s emotional availability, physical and sexual safety, and trust. Any of these needs that go unmet can be experienced as relational trauma. Insecure attachment is created through consistently unmet needs during formative years. The feelings of abandonment, neglect, or violation experienced early on can become foundational negative expectations or beliefs in relationships. These can be overwhelming experiences for a helpless child who is dependent upon adults for care and survival. An insecurely attached adult carrying the wounds of unmet needs and traumatization in childhood ends up re-experiencing the initial pain, shock, and confusion when triggered by current day events or interactions.
What are the Insecure Attachment Types?
There are three types of insecure attachment: anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and a combination containing both anxious and avoidant behaviors called disorganized attachment. Even though one of the insecure attachment styles is labeled as anxious, avoidant types feel anxiety about relationships as well. It is the underlying reason for the anxiety that’s different.
Avoidant Attachment
Avoidants are anxious about relationships; they are anxious that the relationship will consume them and that they won’t be able to escape or protect themselves. At one point this belief was a reality, in that the child self was not able to protect themselves from the engulfment of the perpetrating party. Hence avoidants tend to hold others at arm’s length, to avoid the suffocating fear of enmeshment and losing themselves in the relationship to the other person. Their childhood trauma wound comes to expect and believe that they will be consumed and drained in relationships, therefore it feels safest to avoid relationships altogether or keep others at a distance with difficult to surmount walls. The strategies for living they have developed include being guarded, unknown, or unavailable and these strategies provide relief at the cost of recreating the same emotional experiences they had in childhood of feeling alone or misunderstood.
Anxious Attachment
The anxious attached individual seeks more than a healthy amount of connection; they desire the enmeshment of the two individuals. Any distance (or perception of distance) or space in the relationship can feel like abandonment or deep rejection to this person. Since they have learned from their childhood trauma that being alone feels threatening or dangerous and being merged with another provides a sense of relief, they attempt to recreate this. At one point, abandonment or separation could have been so overwhelming that a belief of fusing with a rescuing party provides relief. This can create an intense and toxic push/pull relational dynamic between these two attachment styles that can be difficult to intervene with healthy boundaries or end the relationship altogether.
Where To Go From Here
No one is 100% securely attached. Relationships are nuanced and feeling secure can ebb and flow depending on other life factors. Typically, during times of transition or significant life events such as the death of a loved one, weddings, discovery of infidelity, or becoming a parent can trigger attachment wounding trauma. Negative or positive life events can unearth pain from the past, which can be difficult to put into words or even understand what exactly it is that is being triggered.
If you would like to understand more about your attachment style and learn how to become more securely attached, reach out to me for a consultation call or to schedule an appointment to start the healing process.
– Jade Hajovsky
