Attachment 101: Figure Out Your Attachment Style
Transcript
Hello Everyone! Welcome here to episode 1 of In the Messy Podcast. I’m your host, Jan, a practicing psychotherapist here in Ontario, Canada. I’m super stoked about today’s topic which is the introduction to attachment styles. What you’re going to get here is a crash course on attachment styles. Let’s go!
What are attachment styles
Before we even dive into attachment styles, I just want to preface this conversation with the fact that attachment theory was not just thought up randomly, but has a long developmental history. It draws on psychological concepts that include cybernetics, information processing, psychoanalysis, and developmental psychology. You might think that this is a whole load of jargon. And because I don’t want to bore you with each component of psychological theory, we’re going to focus on what matters. What I’m trying to say is that attachment theory is backed up by decades of research and hundreds of studies.
Attachment Theory was conceptualized by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Bowlby was an incredible human being. He graduated from Cambridge in what we now call developmental psychology and he worked with children who had a tough time fitting in. His experiences with two kids in particular really and truly changed his life. One of the kids was an anxious little boy who followed Bowlby around and people soon called him his shadow. Another kid, a teenager actually, was very isolated, had little to no emotions, and remote who was expelled from his school for stealing and didn’t have a stable mom-figure in his life.
Bowlby studied under Melanie Klein who was famous for her object-relations approach to psychoanalysis. Klein believed that kid’s emotional problems are almost entirely due to fantasies created by the internal aggressive and libidinal drives. If an image helps here, think about the movies where there’s an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. She believed that the environment had nothing to do with how a kid reacted.
Wait, What? How could a kid not be affected by their environment? I’m sure if I was surrounded by chaos, I would grow up quite chaotic. But unfortunately, that’s where the field of psychology was in 1940.
In his research, Bowlby found a common theme in all the kids he was seeing. All of these kids had histories of moms who were absent or not always in the picture whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. From that point onwards, all his efforts were focused on mother-child separation. You might wonder why he only focused on the moms and kids. A practical reason is that it was easier to document and isolate the variables. When you bring in other family members, it gets complicated really fast.
On the other hand, Mary Ainsworth, completed her graduate studies at the university of Toronto. Her Professor, William Blatz, introduced her to security theory. One of the key tenets of security theory is that babies and kids need to develop a secure dependence on parents before tackling unfamiliar situations. So for example, a toddler could say, “I need to know that I’m safe and secure and that mommy and daddy are here to catch me if I fall. If I fall down, I know mommy and daddy will be right with me and make sure I’m okay.” On the flip side, if the kid knows that mommy and daddy aren’t always there, it creates an environment where the kid feels insecure.
This all gets way more interesting when Ainsworth finds herself in London with her husband where she somehow ends up working with John Bowlby. They developed attachment theory which was groundbreaking for the time. They rejected psychoanalytic explanations and opted for a simpler explanation: that the relationship between a child and his or her parents is inextricably linked to their growth and development over time. If a child or an adult has attachment needs and longings to be safe and secure are not met, they go through a process of grief and mourning. It may even impact the ability to form deep relationships with others in the future as well.
Attachment styles are ways in which we find that safety and security. And in general, there are 2 main attachment styles. The first one being the secure attachment style and the second one being the insecure attachment style. This is when a baby grows up knowing that mommy and daddy are there for them. In all relationships no matter if its parent-child, adult relationships or romantic relationships, the baseline is “Are you there for me when I need it? Can I rely on you? If I cry out, will you come?”
In psychotherapy, we like to use acronyms. And what I want you to remember is ARE. The fundamental basis for any and all relationships is A (Accessible), R (Responsive), and E (Engaged). In the context of a parent-child relationship, accessible is if the mommy and daddy are available if I call out to them. R (Responsive) is when mommy and daddy respond to that call at that moment. E (engaged) is when mommy and daddy can connect with the child on an emotional level.
So for example, a child is running in the playground and he falls down and scrapes his knee. Mommy and Daddy see this and come over to the child to see if he’s okay. They’ve already shown that they are accessible to the child. They’re at the playground watching him. They also show that they are responsive by making sure he’s okay. Maybe they get on his level by kneeling down. They could say something like, “Hey buddy, are you okay? We just saw you fall. How does your ouchie feel? It probably hurts, huh.” This shows that they are engaged with their child’s experience.
Over time with consistency, this boy will grow up knowing that if he falls or makes a mistake, his parents are A (accessible), R (responsive), and E (engaged). He’ll start applying this to other relationships. As he grows older, he’ll start exploring the world knowing that if something bad happens, he is safe and secure because he has people who are ARE that he can go back to. His parents and other loved ones become an attachment safety net.
Don’t we wish that our childhoods were as perfect as this one? I surely wish it were like that! But unfortunately, the reality is that our parents are imperfect people and sometimes, it has led to unintentional wounds which can end up leaving the child with insecure attachment styles.
The second attachment style is called insecure attachment style. This is where mom and dad were inconsistent with being ARE (accessible, responsive, and engaged) or maybe they were non-existent. One caveat that I do want to say here is that all attachment styles are neutral, meaning they are neither good or bad. Yes, having a secure attachment style is a bit easier when it comes to handling challenging events. These attachment styles (secure or insecure) are simply strategies for human beings to feel connected, loved, safe, and secure. I don’t want anyone listening to this to say to themselves, “I’m screwed because my parents weren’t ARE”. Please know that the first step is awareness and that a lot of the current research shows that insecurely attached people can find ways to move towards a more secure attachment style. So not all hope is lost!
Insecure attachment styles are broken down into 3 types. Bowlby and Ainsworth’s studies showed that children with insecure attachment styles fell into 3 categories: anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.
No baby wakes up saying, “Hmm, I’m going to be insecurely attached today.” No baby says, “I’m going to manipulate my parents by crying a whole bunch so I get what I want.” The first thing that they learn is whether their needs are being met or not. If mommy or daddy is inconsistent in being ARE, babies are likely to feel worried about whether they are available and will do everything in their power to signal their needs to make sure they’re heard. They become preoccupied with their attachment figure’s ARE and look out for cues that they could be abandoned at any time. In a key study, Bowlby and Ainsworth found that if they put a child in a playroom with their mom, the child plays well. When mom leaves, an anxiously attached child will start crying to the point where even if mom comes back into the room, the child won’t stop crying unless they get the assurance that mom isn’t going to leave. Over time, it leaves them feeling uncertain and anxious of their status in relationships, not just the parent-child relationship but influences all adult relationships too. This pattern is marked by needing constant reassurance of a person’s love and being hypersensitive when love is not reciprocated.
That brings me to the second insecure attachment style called avoidant attachment style. People with avoidant attachment styles learn that it’s better to do things by themselves than to share their attachment needs with others. As children, they’ve had enough experiences where their caregivers were dismissive of their feelings. For example, if a child comes back with a bad report card, daddy and mommy start reprimanding him for not trying. And even though the child starts crying, they might say something like “Why are you crying? Stop it. Mommy can’t deal with this right now.” The child learns that showing emotions is inherently dangerous because the closest people to them will not be ARE. In the same study by Bowlby and Ainsworth, they found that children who had an avoidant attachment style typically didn’t react when mom left or came back. They just simply kept playing. They’ve learned that turning towards their caregivers isn’t helpful and end up relying on themselves. This pattern carries out to adulthood where people say, “I don’t need anyone; I can solve my own problems.”
Finally, the last insecure attachment style is the disorganized attachment style. It’s a hybrid of both the anxious and avoidant attachment style where a child might show a mixture of an anxious pursuit of connection while avoiding connection for fear of getting hurt. It’s a push and pull between the strategies. Often than not, children with disorganized attachment styles experience incredibly inconsistent behaviour from their caregivers. Sometimes, parents might be incredibly ARE and other times, they could act in ways that hurt their children. If you think about it, children are incredibly vulnerable. They need mommy and daddy for protection, safety and security. How traumatizing would it be if sometimes a parent was loving and the next moment, they were frightening! It would surely confuse the child to the point where they become hyper aware of what to do and not to do. Understandably, they naturally crave safe connection but struggle to feel safe being close. And as they grow into adults, they carry this with them.
I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s it. My parents are horrible people.” Or maybe some of you have amazing parents that are a safe and a secure attachment. We shouldn’t blame our parents for what they didn’t know. After all, they were only given what their parents were given them. Blame doesn’t really help the situation but makes us feel more terrible about ourselves and our situation. Instead, having awareness is the first step to changing the situation for yourself.
So before you go online and search up a quiz to see “What attachment style you are”, I want to caution you. Attachment styles are dynamic, meaning that they are different with different people and will change over time. We develop attachment strategies early in life & we continue to add more attachment strategies to our “attachment strategy tool kit” throughout our life. Some will continue to be helpful & others might block us from the relationships we want. And depending on which relationship you think about, you could be a totally different attachment style. For example, you could be totally secure with your best friend but when it comes to your parents, you’d rather avoid any interaction with them.
Reflection
As we wrap up our first episode, we talked about the origins of attachment theory lot about different attachment styles, secure and insecure. And in the insecure style, there are 3 types which are anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment styles. All of these are strategies that help people get through life feeling a little bit more safe and secure. I wonder whether you can take a moment for yourself to think about the ways in which you are secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized.
Call to Action
And this wraps up our first episode. If you liked what you heard, I’d love if you could hit the subscribe button for more content like this. What would blow my socks off is if you sent this to someone who needs to hear this. And until next time, find beauty in the messy.
