Attachment Styles: How They're Quietly Shaping Your Relationships (and Why They Can Change

Maybe you find yourself checking your phone every few minutes. Waiting for a response from someone that seems like is taking an eternity. Maybe you pull away at the last minute, just as a relationship begins to feel really close. Or maybe you simply have this anxiety that occurs anytime things are feeling “too good”, as if you’re preparing for the potential threat of getting hurt by being too close.

It’s difficult to understand why these behaviours occur. However, most people who experience them know that they aren’t occurring randomly. These behaviours are usually indicators of a certain attachment style. An attachment style refers to a set of automatic thoughts and actions related to love, trust, and connection developed prior to adulthood which continues to influence how you relate to others currently. The objective of learning about it isn’t to give you a new identity so that you can hide behind a name. It is to help you make sense of a behaviour pattern that has been trying to communicate with you for years.

What Attachment Styles Are (and Where They Come From)

According to attachment theory, your early bonding experiences with parents, caregivers, or other significant figures develop into a map of what is expected in future relationships. When the early bonds in your life responded consistently and positively during the time of your early development; as an adult you will generally believe that connection is a safe thing. Conversely, when those early interactions were inconsistent or unresponsive (distant or overbearing); as an adult you will likely approach relationship connections as being unsafe or something that requires management.

The earliest lessons we receive do not remain in our childhoods. Rather than remaining dormant until later in life; they tend to travel ahead and subtly guide us on how we express our needs within our relationships, resolve conflict, and react towards intimacy throughout adulthood. This is fundamentally how attachment styles operate in our relationships. It does not manifest itself through a singular large incident, but rather through subtle influences guiding our responses on a daily basis.

To be clear, an attachment style is not a flaw in your personality nor is it a diagnosis. It's a learned pattern, and learned patterns can be understood, and gently reshaped.

The Main Attachment Styles, in Everyday Terms

Psychologists generally describe four broad attachment styles. People usually do not fit into only one category exactly, yet understanding an overall trend is a good way to begin self-discovery.

Secure Attachment

A person with a secure attachment style tends to feel comfortable with intimacy and being independent. They are able to communicate their own needs fairly clearly, able to trust without seeking constant reassurance, and resolve conflicts without feeling the other will leave them.

Anxious Attachment

This often manifests in increased sensitivity to what seems to be a growing distance between two individuals (delayed responses, short conversations, or the individual appearing to be distracted). There is usually an overwhelming desire for reassurance, a propensity for excessive analysis, and fear that closeness may be taken away at anytime.

Avoidant Attachment

In this case, closeness can become a burden. They may value independence greatly, feel uncomfortable when their partner desires greater emotional investment or a higher level of commitment, and create space either physically or emotionally when there appears to be increasing intensity in the relationship.

Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) Attachment

In this style, a person both wants closeness and fear it. The individual longs for connection but perceives themselves to be unsafe when connected. Therefore, Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidance relationships may seem to oscillate between the yearning for connection and the withdrawal from it.

When Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Meet

Of all the attachment styles, anxious and avoidant attachment styles attract particular attention due to how often anxious and avoidant partners will pair off and create a dynamic where both individuals experience exhaustion in their relationship.

Anxiously attached partners seek comfort, closeness, reassurance from their partner. Avoidantly attached partners may pull away from their partner when they become overly engaged. This creates a cycle of anxiety and avoidance. In the context of a partnership, each individual has developed protective mechanisms to cope with their fears. For the anxious attachments, protection is provided by seeking closeness; while for the avoidant attachments, protection is provided by maintaining distance. Once you realize that your pattern represents the collision of two protective mechanisms, rather than a "cold" partner being too unresponsive or a "needy" partner being too demanding, the next step typically involves learning about attachment and understanding why this type of dynamic keeps occurring in your partnerships.

Why Attachment Style Isn't Destiny

Fortunately, there is evidence suggesting that our attachment patterns are not destined to be set in stone for our entire lives. Rather, attachment patterns develop early in life and remain malleable and responsive to new experiences and opportunities for self-discovery throughout adult life. As researchers refer to this concept as "earned secure attachment," earned security implies that individuals who did not begin with a secure attachment style can establish a secure attachment style throughout their adult years by engaging in intentional and consistent effort towards developing greater trust, better communication skills and feeling more at ease within close proximity to others.

Signs Attachment Patterns Might Be Worth Exploring

While many issues in your relationships do not point to underlying attachment patterns; there are some common behaviours which may lead you to consider your relationship problems as potential indicators of attachment-related difficulties and therefore would benefit from exploration with the assistance of a mental health professional:

• You repeatedly encounter the same type of conflicts within all of your relationships.

• You consistently experience intense fear of being abandoned by your partner, or of being too much for them

• When things get emotional in a relationship, you feel uncomfortable, panicked or like you need to run away

• You find yourself questioning everything your partner says and/or thinks, with no apparent good reasons to do so

• Over and over again, you find yourself getting involved in relationships where you engage in anxious-avoidant type behaviours

If you identify with one or more of these patterns, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It just means that there is some information. Information is something we all work with.

You Don't Have to Untangle This Alone

Attachment patterns develop over time. So it stands to reason that changing attachment patterns will also take time, patience, and support. Our therapists at Adayu, provide a safe and non-judgmental environment for you to consider how to deal these attachment patterns. Whether it’s through individual sessions or couples and relationship therapy, we offer the opportunity to find a healthier way to relate to others, at a speed that makes sense to you.