Understanding Your Attachment Style
Have you ever noticed recurring patterns & behaviors in your love life?
Perhaps you don’t even condone these behaviors, but for some reason they keep showing up. Even after years, and in new relationships, you can see these same familiar dynamics pop up over and over again. The way you engage socially is complex, and it can be frustrating as hell not knowing why you are the way you are and feeling like you’re stuck in a repetitive loop.
If you’ve started to acknowledge this, it might be time to dive into understanding the ways you attach and interact with others. Attachment styles are a simple concept that can help you navigate through your past, present, and future relationships.
First, you have to understand the history behind this idea. And therefore, the Attachment theory, which was first coined by psychiatrist John Bowlby, way back in the 1930s.
He defined attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings”.
After observing how children interact in an unknown environment either with, or without their mother present, Bowlby discovered the great importance of children’s relationships with their mother in terms of their social, emotional and cognitive development.
According to Bowlby, your relationship with your parents has a big influence on your social and intimate relationships in the future.
How you were loved as a child plays A LOT into how you love as an adult.
So, here are the four different styles our attachment patterns have been grouped into...
Anxious
Avoidant
Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganized)
Secure
To find out what style you are, take this quick quiz: https://www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/
20% of the population is said to have an Anxious attachment style meaning they often stress and overthink about their relationships. While they want intimacy, they don’t believe in their own worth, ultimately lacking the confidence that anyone will ever truly love them. They often expect others to be unavailable and not interested in long-term commitment, so they never believe their current partner is their ‘true love’. People who are anxious usually have low self-esteem, need affirmation from others, and are afraid to be alone. And thus often find themselves staying in unhealthy relationships.
People with Avoidant attachment styles don’t seem to believe in ‘happily ever after’. They usually are independent and uncomfortable with too much intimacy. They crave alone time and can feel suffocated easily by too much affection from their significant other. They’re also afraid of commitment because they fear they will receive more than they can handle, leading them to sabotage the relationship.
Fearful-Avoidant people are a combination of avoidant and anxiously attached. These are the individuals who don’t allow others to get close to them, not because they don’t want that closeness, but because they fear once it happens the other will hurt them. They are conflicted with wanting commitment they don’t think anyone can provide, creating an overall unstable and unpredictable behavioral pattern.
The Secure attachment style is the ideal way to attach to others. And a positive is that around half of us are securely attached! These people usually seek long-term and committed relationships based on trust, mutual understanding and emotional closeness. Overall they feel positive and confident about themselves and their relationships, and are comfortable getting close, but also being alone. They respect boundaries but aren’t possessive or dismissive. This is the most balanced attachment style.
I know the majority of these styles have negative connotations, but the beauty is you can change this within you. Your past does not have to define your future.
By diving into your subconscious, revisiting your childhood, and acknowledging your patterns & behaviors,
You can uncover the reasons that make you the way you are (or have been up until today).
You can discover your why.
And that is the first step to shifting your story.
To create a new beginning.
To live into new possibilities of a more fulfilled version of yourself.
You are not your attachment style, you are so much more than that. In changing your dysfunctional patterns, you become a more whole and authentic version of yourself.