As infants, we are incredibly adaptive. We monitor our caregivers—their moods, emotional signals, and behavior—and figure out how best to maximize the care we can get from them. How do I need to cry? What should I do if I’m angry, sad, or afraid? What should I express or not express? Based on the ways in which we’re responded to, we begin to get a sense of ourselves, others, and what we can expect. Accordingly, we shape our behavior to fit our caretaking experiences and, with repetition, patterns of behavior and the respective neural pathways get established in our brain and are strengthened over time.
What this means is that our internal working models of how to do relationships are developed through our interactions with, usually at the most, two people: our parents! And, although the cast of characters in our lives change as we grow up and create a life for ourselves, the neural templates that govern our perception and emotional experience live on inside of us and continue to influence how we behave in our adult relationships. That’s good news for those of us who had emotionally competent parents, and not such good news for the many of us who didn’t.
The lessons we learned about ourselves, others, and how to do relationships are reflected in our general patterns of relating or attachment style, of which, research shows, there are basically four categories. Most people develop either a secure, avoidant, or anxious attachment style, while a few people develop what is called a fearful-avoidant attachment style. Let’s take a look at each of them.
If our parents were emotionally competent, that is, if they were sensitively attuned and consistently responsive to our emotional needs, if they made us feel safe, secure, and loved, we likely developed a secure attachment style. We learned that reaching out and connecting is a good thing and that we can trust and depend on our loved ones to be there for us when we need them. We learned that our feelings are not to be feared, rather, they are our allies and are there to be helpful to us. We grow up to be adults who are comfortable with and adept at being close and connected with our loved ones. Our self-image is healthy, we feel worthy of love, and we view our partners in a positive light. We’re emotionally available and responsive to our partners and can reach out to them for comfort and assurance when we’re feeling vulnerable or distressed. When we have lapses, we can own our mistakes, take responsibility, and make a repair. Overall, we’re emotionally flexible, can adapt to different situations, and can easily flow between being close and connected with our partners to being comfortable on our own. Such is the case for more than half of the adults in the United States (US).
Then there are the rest of us.
When our caregivers are misattuned, distant, or intrusive, when they respond negatively or unreliably to our emotional needs, the seeds of insecurity get sown. We feel unsafe, anxious, and distressed, and, in order to cope and maintain some degree of connection, we develop one of three insecure styles of relating: avoidant, anxious/ambivalent, or fearful-avoidant.
Those of us with an avoidant attachment style, which amounts to about twenty-five percent of the general (US) population, tend to have had parents who were emotionally unavailable, insensitive to and possibly rejecting of our emotional needs. As children, we sensed that our feelings and innate needs for connection were dangerous as they seemed to drive people away, and that reaching out would only bring us rejection, criticism, disappointment, and pain. As a result, we learned to turn off or “deactivate” our natural needs for closeness. As adults, we find emotional intimacy threatening and prefer to not have anyone depend on us. We have a strong need to be independent and self-sufficient, and to be seen as such. While we tend to think positively of ourselves, at least outwardly, we’re wary of others, don’t trust that they’ll be there for us, and frequently find fault in our partners. Although we may outwardly seem to have a positive perception of ourselves, it may belie an underlying sense of insecurity. In spite of actually wanting to be close to another person, which is our natural inclination, we dismiss our emotional needs, deny our vulnerability, and keep our partners at arm’s length.
Those of us who had caregivers who were inconsistently attuned to our feelings, at times nurturing and responsive and at other times insensitive, intrusive, or unavailable, likely developed an anxious attachment style. Such is the case for about twenty percent of the general adult population. Uncertain of what to expect from our caregivers, we had to work harder to get their attention. We learned to turn up the volume on or “hyper activate” certain feelings to draw them in and, thus, maintain some degree of connection. We grow into adults who crave closeness but can’t seem to get enough of it to quell our fears for any length of time. We wonder if they feel the same way we do and worry about whether we can believe or depend on their love for us. Our relationships tend to be stressful, consuming our thoughts and taking up a lot of emotional real estate. We’re highly sensitive to possible signs of rejection or abandonment and frequently seek reassurance and approval from our partners (which may work for a moment but, sooner or later, the worry and fear kicks in again and we’re back in a spin cycle of anxiety and distress). We’re easily upset, we have strong emotional reactions, and we can say or do things we later regret. We doubt our self-worth, we tend to be self-critical, and we have a hard time being on our own.
A small number of us, about five percent, have a fearful-avoidant attachment style. Our caregivers likely had unresolved trauma of their own and, as such, were emotionally unpredictable (for example, sometimes appropriately responsive, sometimes anxious or afraid, and sometimes behaving in ways that were frightening to us). As children, we couldn’t be certain how they’d respond when we were distressed and were faced with an unsolvable dilemma of needing soothing and connection from our attachment figure but fearing the very person who should be providing it to us. Occasionally, our caregivers pulled for us to soothe them more than they were able to soothe us. Caught between a rock and a hard place, we resorted to a mixed bag of coping strategies that alternated between pushing our feelings down, amping them up, becoming compulsive caregivers, or checking-out altogether. We grew into adults who, perhaps not surprisingly, have very ambivalent and conflicting feelings about emotional closeness. We both want and pursue connection but, then, when our partners seem to be moving closer to us, we get uncomfortable and pull back, afraid that we’ll get hurt or be rejected, or we attack, to reject them before they reject us. Our emotions often get the best of us, our moods can be erratic, and our relationships tend to be chaotic. We have a hard time communicating our feelings, think that we’re flawed and unworthy of love, and view our partners negatively as being untrustworthy and possibly dangerous.
Reflection:
As you read through the descriptions of the different attachment styles, do you see yourself in any one of them? Do you identify with any particular style? Perhaps you see yourself as having more of an anxious style. Maybe you see yourself as more avoidant in your relationships. Maybe a little bit of each? You might even suspect that you have a fearful-avoidant style of relating.
If you found yourself identifying with anything other than secure, you’re not alone. When it comes to romantic relationships, nearly half of us have an insecure attachment style.
Now, before you start getting down on yourself, it’s important to realize that these different categories are not rigid and discrete. The dividing lines that separate them are blurry and there’s overlap. The categories were originally developed for research purposes, which has its benefits. Being able to classify someone as having a particular style of relating helps us to identify and understand common contributing factors like one’s early experience in life, similar behavioral patterns, and to look at how these styles affect one’s life experience. However, in reality, there are many variations on a theme, so to speak. After all, we humans are a diverse lot with unique and varied histories and personal characteristics, all of which contribute to our experiences in life and how we operate in our relationships. In addition, our attachment style can also be affected by the attachment style of who are in relationship with. For instance, we might have more of an avoidant style with one partner but respond with more of a fearful-avoidant style if we were with a partner who experiences more attachment related anxiety. Alternatively, we might have more of an anxious attachment style but have less attachment anxiety when we’re with a partner who has a secure attachment style. So, we can think of each of the attachment styles as representing a range of possibilities within which we not only see similarities but also a fair amount of differences.
Although childhood experiences with our caregivers leave lasting imprints on the neural circuitry of our brains – we don’t have to remain prisoners to our past. Grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience and attachment theory, my award-winning book Loving Like You Mean It shares a proven four-step approach to use emotional mindfulness to break free from old habits, befriend your emotional experience, and develop new ways of relating. Get your copy today and receive a free gift.
