Attachment Styles Deep Dive w/ Doctor K
Commons
- Attachment theory is backed by neurobiology and physiology.
- About 50% of people are securely attached, 25% anxiously attached, 20% avoidantly attached and other 5% have disogranized attachment.
Attachment system basics
It's about the way we (humans) form bonds. It generally has 4 variations.
- Securely attached. (Healthiest form). ~50% of people.
- Anxiously attached. ~25%.
- Avoidantly attached. ~20%.
- Disorganizedly attached. ~5. (not discussed)
Origins of attachment styles (kinda)
A look into how someone can develop one or the other attachment style. With examples of parents and children.
Securely attached.
If parents are available and provide what's needed. Child gets securely attached. Simple as that.
Anxiously attached. (Inconsistency)
When childrens' need sometimes get met and sometimes not. It's not reliable, not assuring. So children start to amplify their signals of distress by crying, temper tantrums. Fear of abandonment a.k.a Anxious attachment forms.
Avoidant attachment style.
Another thing that can happens is: a child can learn that when they are emotionally vulnerable and try to bond (connect) with other people they'll get punished. So, they'll go "When I cry, when I try to get my needs met, I tend to get ingored." And this results in Avoidant Attachment. In this situation, the child fundamentally fears connection. Another example is when a kid invites their parents to a foodball game to cheer up for him/her. And if parents are unsupportive they, may not show up. In this case, children might start to internalize that being vulnerable and connecting with another human being is dangerous. They start to retrieve away from the relationship.
I wanna connect -> becomes vulnerable -> gets hurt -> Avoidant
Disorganized attachment.
This occours in cases of severe neglect or trauma. It has a lot of variability and heavliy depends on the circumstances. It gets so individual that it's hard to generalize. Thus, not talked in this session.
What they look like
Shared by both styles (Anxious and Avoidant)
The core is: there's a signal that brain interpretes as danger. Which in response triggers a persons attachment style behaviours. For anxious this signal could be the partner pulling away. And for the avoidant, it's someone getting close.
Anxiously attached
Usually afraid that if they don't do the right thing, their partner will leave. In order to get their needs met, they Amplify their signals. These people usually have gravitational strategies (listed later) to pull people closer. Their relationship view is blended or completely blended. They may lose their sense of identity because they want to make their partner happy. They view relationships as fragile and prone to falling apart unless they act in the right way. Insecure. Sometimes they trauma dump. Sometimes very manipulative (guilt tripping, pity trapping) . While avoidants tend to be numb, anxiously attached people have hard time regulating their emotions. May grow into BPD. May cheat/filrt with others (less likely according to Dr.K in comparison to avoidants BUT please check with other sources since I, the editor, am anxiosly attached and may be biased) in order to make their partner jelaus. In worse cases this pattern may escalate to self harm threats. Tend to play hard to get. Have poor Theory of mind. They make the other party responsible for their feelings (subconsciously). They may use physical touch as a tool to bring them togheter and advance the intimacy in the relationship. Mind is more likely to supress the negative qualities of their partner. Also, they supress positive features of pontential partners that they are not dating.
Challanges:
- Struggle with conflict
Struggle with conflict: Since they tend to be insecure, they don't articulate issues / problems. Because they are afraid it'll make their partner leave.
Their love look like manic love
Avoidantly attached
Tries to reduce the emotional connection. Emotional connection is basically danger for them. They view relationships as two separate people coexisting (like roomates). Usual thougt process is like: I have my life and you have yours separately. Shows in behaviours like: separata bank accounts, not moving in together, not defining the relationship. May use a very legitimate excuse to subconscoisly avoid bonding with another person. An example is they could be very work focused. While it is very reasonable and legit thing to say, 20% of people out there could be using such excuses without knowing they are doing it. More likely to have extra affairs (cheating) explained as having other situationships to create distance in current relationship. While avoidants may also have impaired Theory of mind, it differs from anxious by not having concept of other person's subjectivity. They try to not be responsible for other party's feelings as much as possible and expect vice versa. Avoidantly attached people may utilize pyhsical touch as a barrier to intimacty, to avoid emotions. May find relationship as a lot of work (burden).
Challanges:
- Sends mixed signals (craves relationships but once reached they get scared)
- Uncompromising views of relationships (no middle ground)
- Idealization / Fantasy (search of the perfect one)
- Poor at articulating emotions or experiences ()
Mixed signals: One reason for mixed signals is internal conflict. As all human beings require emotional intimacy (bonds). But avoidants get burned by bonding with other human beings. So it's like consistent loop of push and pull which results in mixed signals.
Idealization: They might want a perfect person because they believe that it'll meet their emotional needs. This may result in criticism followed by devaluing their partner and being naggy. They may make comparisons (not always articulated). Hyperfocus on small mistakes.
Conflicts:
- Explosions
- Withdrawal
Their love may look like ludus love
Securely attached
They think about the relationship as a unit. Generally dependable, emotionally available. Can make relationship decisions. Often discuss decisions. Able to communicate. Vocalize thoughts and feelings. Can tolerate mistakes through empathy and quick to forgive. They don't hold grudges. Good at conflict resolution. Physical touch is an expression of intimacy, unlike anxious (they use it as substitude for intimacy) or avoidant (they use it to reduce intimacy). Tend to enjoy the relationship. Comfortable blending lives.
Their love may look like erotic love, or sacrificial love
Theory of mind
It's the ability to understand someone else's experience. Read more People who lack Theory of mind fail to recognize that a Person may behave in some way not because it's objectively right or wrong, but instead, they have particular experience of life that allows them to behave that way.
View of relationship
A relationship is two people that blend into one shared life. But for insecurely attached people (all other than secure) the core differs.
Here's what it may look like:
Dating
We'll look into this in pairings (e.g: secure+anxious, secure+avoidant, avoidant+avoidant and so on)
Anxious + Avoidant
Start: 1:10:39 If you're anxious (apparently) the worst person for you do date is avoidant. Ironically, the chances of someone (any attchment style) ending up with a avoidant is statistically higher than meeting others. Explained as:
Even if avoidants are a minority (20%), they occupy more dating bandwidth, by staying uncommitted and running parallel situationships. So, statistically one is more likely to encounter them than their population share suggests. secure+secure = exits the pool, anxious + any other = anxius exits the pool, avoidant + 3-6 of any other = avoidant stays in the pool and the other 3-6 depending on their style.
Could be many problems in anxious + avoidant pairing. One of them is: the anxious are insecure and avoidants don't have the emotional bandwith to sooth that insecurity. Anxious may feel unworthy because they think avoidant doesn't care about them. Which actually is true, they don't care. It feeds into preconceptions. On the other hand, anxious person's need of assurance confirms the beliefs of avoidant that relationships are a lot work/burden. Also, anxious person is more likely to ignore reassuring and positive things and focus on the negative. And neither is good at articulating. Avoidant's search/desire to find the "perfect one" feed into anxious's insecurity.
Avoidant + avoidant
If you or your partner is avoidantly attached, you/they need to learn to recognize the internal thinking that allows avoidant attachment to be propagated. The avoidants tend to do a lot of thinking that seems very reasonable but serves their attachment system. Example: They say/think they are not ready to commit. Second thing they do is focus on the imperfections of their current partner as it gives them excuse/reason not to advance the relationship. Another very important thing for avoidantly attached people is most stuff around alexithymia. Understanding what they feel emotianally, what they are afraid of and being able to articulate it and talk about is critical. Part of the tragety and reason of avoidantly attached people don't articulate their emotions is because when they tried to articulate them things don't go well. The reason things don't go well is because they are not very good at articulating them. It's a vicious cycle. Another major pitfall is avoidants like engaging in relationships with non-feasible partners.
What to do about it
Anxious:
Break the cycle of: Signal -> Attachment behaviour. In this case signal could be avoidant pulling away. BUT, somtimes the Signal axnious preceive is actually internal emotional need (e.g: feeling unloved). Meaning their emotional state can affect how they interprete stuff. The thing to do is to deal with the internal emotion directly not with the endresults of it's effects.
Disable the behaviour. Again, this comes back to internal emotional need causing a false positive signal making the anxious engage with the behaviours. Don't spam text, love bomb, manipulate. Just understanding what's happening can help calm down.
Protest behaviours. Stuff the anxious do in response to unresolved conflicts, or inarticulated thouts. In forms of passive agressivenss, manipulation, pulling away, silent treatments and so on. The thing to do is to open up about what's bothering them or what are they trying to achieve or fulfilled. Which calls to proper communication. But the anxious need to to notice, stop the protest behaviour and speak up.
Avoidant:
Same thing as anxious. Noticing the Signal that triggers their Attachment behaviour and breaking the cycle. The better they get at recognizing the signal and the reaction the better off avoidants will be. Usually signal for them is getting too close.
More things to do for both
- Mentalization. Read more.
- Intersubjectivity. It's acknowledging that both participants in a relationship has believes and finding a way to make it work together.
Gender dynamics & attachment
Gender of a person (male and female in this context) plays a big role in terms of attachment theory
Anxiously attached men.
Dr.K highlights anxiously attached men in this sessions since there's more and more research on it.
Many aspects of masculinity conflict with the anxious attachment. Men are supposed to be confident, initiators but since they have insecurities it becomes a vicious cycle (feedback loop). Now they are insecure about being insecure. This may result in them getting into and staying in unhealthy relationships by tolerating a lot of abuse and toxicity. They tend to manipulate their partner into having intercourse so that they can use it as a substitude for the emotional intimacy.
Editors notes.
- This is my personal notes from the lecture (Link). so make sure you also watch the whole lecture for them to make kinda sense.
- These notes are not meant to be read top to bottom but more like a spreadsheet. Because I tried to reorganize stuff that's been said to make more sense in terms of structuerd blocks of information instead of being scattered.
- Also, don't forget about external factors like culture, religion, society, traditions and so on since they can have impact on how one displays their attachment or preceive yours. Those factors may restrain or amplify the attachemt style or perception of them.
- Also, there's this thread that argues Attachment styles are cope and comforting lie. I sugges reading the whole thread.