Attachment Styles

A theory for understanding interpersonal interactions.

Readership: All;
Theme: IOIs and Vetting
Length: 1,250 words
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Introduction

In a previous post, Good Relationships are Chosen and Developed, NOT “Found” by Chance (2023/10/9), it was mentioned that Attachment Style is an example of how Personality plays into the mating game.

This post provides the basics for understanding the theory of Attachment Styles and provides some references for further reading.

Here are some links you can read to bring yourself up to speed.

• The Attachment Project: What Is Attachment Theory? — Provides a brief history of several contributing theories to our modern understanding of Attachment Theory.
• The Attachment Project: Attachment Styles & Their Role in Relationships — Describes how Insecure Attachment creates negative patterns in relationships.
• The Attachment Project: How a Secure Attachment Style Develops in Early Childhood – Of interest to parents!  This page describes how parents can promote a Secure Attachment style in childhood.
• This site offers a Quiz that explores how your childhood conditioning manifests in your adult relationships, and can help you determine which type of Attachment Style you have.

Types of Attachment Styles

There are three main types of unhealthy Attachment Styles (Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized, collectively called Insecure Attachment Styles), which are characterized by difficulties with cultivating and maintaining healthy relationships.  The Secure Attachment style is recognized as the only healthy style.  Key descriptions are copied below.

Anxious Attachment: Causes & Symptoms

Also referred to as anxious ambivalent attachment in children, anxious attachment develops in early childhood due to misattuned and inconsistent parenting.

Common signs of this attachment style are low self-esteem, strong fear of rejection or abandonment, and clinginess in relationships. A lot of memes are based on this type.

Adults with an anxious attachment style tend to have a negative self-view, but a positive view of others. This means that they may view their partner as their literal “better half.” Because someone with this attachment style deems themselves to be less worthy of love in comparison to other people, the thought of living without their partner (or being alone in general) causes high levels of anxiety. In other words, they deeply fear abandonment.

To ease this fear of abandonment, people with the anxious attachment style strongly desire security within relationships, and attention, care, and responsiveness from a partner tends to be the “remedy” for their feelings of anxiety.

On the other hand, the perceived absence of support and intimacy can lead someone with the anxious attachment style to become more clinging and demanding, preoccupied with the relationship, and desperate for reassurance that they are loved.

In a nutshell, people with this attachment style value their relationships highly, but are often hypervigilant towards threats to their security, as well as anxious and worried that their loved one is not as invested in the relationship as they are.

Avoidant Attachment Style: Causes & Symptoms

Parents who are strict and emotionally distant, do not tolerate the expression of feelings, and expect their child to be independent and tough might raise children with an avoidant attachment style.

As adults, these children appear confident and self-sufficient. They do not tolerate emotional or physical intimacy and might not be able to build healthy relationships. What’s more, in the workplace, they are often seen as the independent, ‘lone wolf’.

People with the avoidant/dismissive attachment style tend to have a positive self-view and negative one of others. Consequently, they prefer to foster a high sense of independence and self-sufficiency–especially on an emotional level.

Someone with the avoidant attachment style tends to believe that they don’t have to be in a relationship to feel complete: They do not want to depend on others, have others depend on them, or seek support and approval in social bonds.

Adults with this attachment style generally avoid intimacy or emotional closeness, so may withdraw from a relationship if they feel like the other person is becoming reliant on them in this manner. They also tend to hide or suppress their feelings when faced with a potentially emotion-dense situation, such as conflict.

Disorganized Attachment: Causes & Symptoms

The most difficult type of insecure attachment is the Disorganized Attachment Style, also called the Anxious-Avoidant or Avoidant-Fearful style. It is often seen in people who have been physically, verbally, or sexually abused in their childhood.

Also referred to as Fearful-Avoidant attachment in children, this style develops when the child’s caregivers — the only source of safety — become a source of fear.

In adulthood, people with this attachment style are extremely inconsistent in their behavior and have a hard time trusting others.

People with the disorganized attachment style tend to vacillate between the traits of both anxious and avoidant attachment depending on their mood and circumstances. For this reason, someone with this attachment style tends to show confusing and ambiguous behaviors in their social bonds and boundaries.

For adults with disorganized attachment, the partner and the relationship themselves are often the source of both desire and fear. On the one hand, Disorganized / Fearful-Avoidant people do want intimacy and closeness, but on the other hand, experience troubles trusting and depending on others.

People with this attachment style often struggle with identifying and regulating their emotions and tend to avoid strong emotional attachment due to their intense fear of getting hurt.

Such individuals could also suffer from other mental health issues, such as substance abuse, depression, or borderline personality disorder.

Secure Attachment

People who have developed a Secure Attachment style are self-contented, social, warm, and easy to connect to. They are aware of and able to express their emotions comfortably and openly. Adults with a secure attachment style can depend on their partners and, in turn, let their partners rely on them.  As a result, they also tend to build deep, meaningful, and long-lasting relationships and are well-liked in the workplace.

Relationships with someone with a Secure Attachment style are based on honesty, tolerance, and emotional closeness. Although someone with this attachment style often thrives in their relationships, they also don’t fear being on their own. Securely Attached individuals tend to have a positive view of themselves and others, so they do not overly seek external approval or validation.  They can successfully identify and regulate their emotions, and even help a partner do so with theirs.

Concluding Statements

The secure attachment style is the most common type of attachment in western society. Research suggests that around 66% of the US population is securely attached.  That means that 34% of people have an Insecure Attachment style.  That’s 1 out of 3 people!  They’re the people that you meet each day.

Identifying your own Attachment Style is an important step towards knowing yourself.  If you find that you have an Insecure Attachment Style, then it is crucial for you to be working through those issues and pulling yourself together.

Understanding your own Attachment Style and being able to identify the Attachment Style of others can take you a long way in understanding your interactions with others and getting along with them.

It is possible, however difficult, for individuals with Insecure Attachment issues to change and develop a Secure Attachment style.

Children often learn Insecure Attachment styles from parents who have attachment issues themselves.  This is one way that generational curses propagate from one generation to the next.  Parents who want to raise securely attached children might benefit from researching the topic and resolving their own attachment issues, if such exist.

Related

• Σ Frame: What is Borderline Personality Disorder? (2016/5/30)
• Σ Frame: Agreeableness and Personality (2022/6/8)
• Σ Frame: Imposing Masculine Presence (2022/6/10)
• Σ Frame: How to be winsome by adapting to others’ Communication Styles (2022/6/13)
• Σ Frame: How to Motivate the Four Personality Types according to their Communication Styles (2022/6/15)
• Σ Frame: Erotic Blueprints and Personality (2022/10/12)