Blog

by Emily Anderson, Masters Intern Therapist

Have you ever felt worried or anxious about your partner’s feelings for you? Have you ever felt trapped and need to escape a relationship? Maybe you want to feel loved but are afraid of it at the same time. These are all signs of different types of attachment styles. Attachment theory is used to describe the relationship and bond between parent and child as well as romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the way bonds are created and maintained throughout our lifetime. This theory suggests that individuals are born with a need to build bonds with caregivers and others in their lives. That need to bond and feel close continues throughout our lives.

There are four main attachment styles: Anxious, Avoidant, Disorganized, and Secure. Each attachment style is built and maintained through many different types of factors. The first three attachment styles are considered insecure attachments. They can have negative impacts on your ability to relate and connect with others. However, attachment styles can change and grow and are not a pattern that will forever plague your relationships. The first thing is recognizing what type of attachment you have and the steps to change it.

Anxious Attachment

When an individual has an anxious attachment, they have a really strong desire for love and connection. However, they also have a lot of doubts about the other person’s feelings and struggle with abandonment anxiety. There are many different signs that you may have an anxious attachment. These include, but are not limited to fear of abandonment, frequent need for validation, people-pleasing tendencies, sensitivity to changes in how others feel, speak, or behave, and intense emotional distress around being alone or being left alone. 

These different behaviors and feelings can be present at different intensity levels and many times can cause what’s called protest behaviors. Protest behaviors are behaviors directly motivated by feelings of discomfort associated with your anxious attachment style. For example, if someone has an anxious attachment and can’t get ahold of their partner their anxiety will rise. To combat the rising anxiety they will call and text the partner over and over again until they hear from them and are reassured of their bond. Protest behaviors usually provide a small relief of anxiety, but can usually be damaging for yourself and your partner in the long run.

There are many theories about the causes of anxious attachment and what perpetuates the attachment style. Sometimes it’s as simple as having an anxious temperament. For others, it was about not bonding with a primary caregiver as a child, or even experiencing abuse or trauma. These aren’t things that need to be present for you to have an anxious attachment but are risk factors for developing an anxious attachment. 

One of the biggest components of what makes anxious attachment continue to be prevalent in someone’s life is a lack of awareness of their insecure attachment and who they have as a partner. If their partner also has an insecure attachment style (anxious, avoidant, disorganized) it can be difficult to feel secure in the way your attachment style needs you to be. This is best seen in couples where one has an anxious attachment style, and one has an avoidant attachment style. The anxious partner will continue to reach out and try and get closer. But doing so causes the avoidant partner to feel the need to pull away from them. This triggering pattern will eventually just feed into each other and is called a purser-distancer dynamic. This dynamic is extremely prevalent in relationships and can cause a lot of emotional and intimacy issues.

Avoidant Attachment

Individuals who experience avoidant attachment often feel a strong desire to avoid emotional closeness and avoid strong emotional relationships. This is usually done to protect themselves, and avoidant individuals are fiercely independent and don’t want to receive care or help from others. Some other signs of an avoidant attachment are suppressing emotions, distrust in others, relying only on themselves for emotional support, and struggling with their own emotions around bonding and attachment. Avoidant individuals tend to seem very confident and fun–loving social people. But they have a lot of difficulties having and maintaining close relationships both platonic and romantic. 

Where anxious attachment has protest behaviors, avoidant attachment has what is called deactivating strategies. Deactivating strategies are behavior patterns that arise in direct response to their avoidant attachment being triggered. These can be things such as pulling away physically or emotionally, breaking up with a partner, ignoring or avoiding calls or texts, etc. They help maintain the space between the individual and others around him. For example, if they have a partner that likes to check in a lot someone with avoidant attachment is likely to emotionally pull away and ignore the texts or calls. 

Just like anxious attachment, there are many theories of why avoidant attachment develops. The main driving theory is that it develops as a response to the rejection or shaming of a child’s bid for closeness and comfort. They don’t feel secure in their attachment to a caregiver and do not feel secure in their ability to express those needs and feelings to a caregiver. They begin to ignore and suppress their emotional needs and as such when they become adults they never learn how to process and express their emotional needs.

Avoidant attachment can be maintained through partnerships that aren’t healthy or with a partner that has an insecure attachment. Just like I stated above the purser-distancer dynamic is an unhealthy pattern of behavior that aids the maintenance of both anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Avoidant attachment styles can also be maintained through cognitions and self-fulfilling prophecies. Individuals with avoidant attachment have a negative cognition that relationships and closeness are bad and won’t work, so in turn they use deactivating strategies to protect themselves from getting hurt by a failing relationship. Those deactivating strategies push connection away instead of developing intimacy and ultimately the relationship fails, reinforcing their original negative cognition. There are ways to heal avoidant attachment and work to become more secure, which will be talked about later. 

Disorganized Attachment

Disorganized attachment is a mixture of both anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Individuals with this style of attachment have a strong need for love and connection. But fear that same love and connection once it is given to them. It’s usually characterized by hard-to-predict and inconsistent behavior. It’s the conflicting emotions that differentiate it from anxious or avoidant attachment. Some signs of disorganized attachment include a strong need for closeness and connection while finding it painfully difficult to open up and be vulnerable; feeling uncomfortable and distrustful of a partner that is supportive and caring; struggling to believe your partner and constant vigilance for signs of rejection. 

One of the main driving theories of disorganized attachment is experiencing childhood abuse directly from an attachment figure. Such as seeking comfort and proximity from the caregiver who is also the source of their fear and discomfort. Not all children who were abused develop disorganized attachment and not all individuals with disorganized attachment were abused. The abuse is a large risk factor for disorganized attachment and it isn’t about the severity of the abuse itself but instead about how it shaped bonding and attachment.

People with disorganized attachment styles present with both protest behaviors and deactivating strategies. However, instead of soothing the distress it usually causes another trigger to spike. For example, someone may feel anxious that their partner has not called or texted back and so they text them continuously until they answer. Their partner in turn gives them care and understanding which instead of soothing the distress now triggers their fear of closeness and intimacy. This pendulum swing is incredibly difficult to manage and can cause a lot of confusion and relationship issues. 

Ways To Build a Secure Attachment

Understanding what type of attachment you have will help you in processing and shifting your attachment style to one that is secure. A secure attachment style is someone who feels safe, stable, and satisfied in their relationships. As well as express empathy and set boundaries. They don’t fear being on their own but they thrive in close relationships either platonic or romantic.

One way to help shift attachment is to practice vulnerability. For anxious attachment that means building emotional safety within yourself to take some risks and step out of your comfort zone. For example, self-soothing when you feel anxious instead of exhibiting a protest behavior. It also shows you that you can rely on your partner to be a safe jumping-off point. Not as someone who you are dependent on, but who can be there for you as a safe place. For avoidant attachment, that involves looking at and developing healthier relationship patterns, and actively working on addressing these patterns of behavior. For example, reaching out to your partner to explain the feelings and thoughts you’re dealing with instead of pulling away.

Practicing mindfulness and other self–regulating strategies can also be a helpful way, to not only stop overanalyzing your relationship but to manage the strong wave of emotions that come with insecure attachment styles. For example, in a disorganized attachment style, an individual needs to develop self-compassion and self-awareness to help regulate their emotions and process them. With anxious attachment, you can sometimes spiral into the what-ifs of the relationship and develop unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

Working With a Couples Therapist

Finally, working with a therapist can be extremely beneficial if you don’t feel you’re making progress on your own. It’s important to develop self-worth and self-esteem as you work to shift your attachment style. You can work individually or with a partner on creating that safe space within yourself. A common therapeutic technique used to heal attachment style is inner child work. Mentally revisiting your childhood and engaging with your child self with the emotions and care you didn’t get before. (i.e. compassion, understanding, love, and support). It helps to heal and accept these wounds and helps to take away the control they may have over your life and relationships now. Attachment styles can have a profound effect on our relationships and the way we move throughout the world. Getting to know yours can help pull you out of pitfalls and help you live a happier and healthier life.

Consider Online Couples Therapy or Marriage Counseling in Minnesota

To continue your journey towards secure attachment, consider seeking support from a licensed marriage and family therapist in Plymouth, MN. They can provide personalized guidance and therapeutic strategies to help you navigate and heal from attachment challenges. Take the first step towards healthier relationships with couples therapy near the Twin Cities. Start with these three simple steps!

1. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation
2. Meet a skilled and caring online couples therapist in Minnesota
3. Achieve the calm and confidence you need to feel more secure in your life and relationships.

Other Counseling Services at Radiant Living Therapy

At Radiant Living Therapy, we support, explore, and address challenges through couples therapy. Expert therapists at our Plymouth, MN counseling office offer other mental health services such as anxiety and depression counseling and EMDR for trauma therapy. Other services include counseling for men, teen therapy, and more. We are here to help you thrive.

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