Understanding attachment styles

0:02 A listener production. Hello, and welcome to another solo. Episode of Crappy to Happy, And this week I'm answering another listener question. I love this so much. A listener has asked for me to explain attachment theory. I couldn't be more excited to get. This question because it is honestly one of my favorite topics. I've thought about talking about this many times before, but to be honest, I've sort of assumed that everybody kind of understands what attachment theory is and what attachment styles are, but obviously not. So I'm very happy to do an explainer to let you know basically about attachment theory, but also how it relates to you, how it relates to you in your adult relationships, perhaps in your parenting, and even in the workplace. And this might even end up needing to be a two parter because I think when we start talking about attachment theory in the workplace, then that could potentially be a whole other topic.

1:00 We'll see how we go. Attachment refers to the emotional bond between two people, particularly between a parent and a child. So John Bolby was a psychotherapist back in the nineteen forties nineteen fifties who came up with this concept of attachment theory, a theory of the way infants and caregivers attach, which he appropriately called attachment theory. Up until that point, I should say, the world of psychology was very much focused on behavioral psychology. You know that all children's behavior was based on reward and punishment, and so if you wanted a child to stop crying, for example, then you would not reward that behavior.

1:42 You would not reward crying by picking them up, because that would just reinforce that behavior. That was very much the whole skinner sort of operant conditioning and Pavlovian kind of thinking. John Bolby came along and said no, he thought that there was something else going on emotionally, and he establish this idea that there is a relationship that forms between an infant and a caregiver. So what attachment theory basically says is that there is a system at play, There is a process that is carried out between an infant. Remember, human infants are the most helpless species at birth and any other on the planet. They can't we cannot feed ourselves, warm ourselves, regulate our body temperature. We can't walk you know, a baby giraffe will minutes after birth, or a baby purse will be up and walking. They can fend for themselves pretty much. Human infants cannot. They would die without the support and the care of another human being. There's a saying that there is never just a baby. There is always a baby and someone, because a baby cannot survive without that someone.

2:53 So when a. Baby communicates a need, and they have many, maybe they're hungry, maybe they're cold, maybe they are uncomfortable, then they communicate that need to a caregiver. And when that caregiver. Responds to that need, So here's the call, usually a cry, let's face it. And then the caregiver responds in a way that is sensitive, attuned to what the need is appropriate. They offer comfort if the child is distressed, if they're cold, they warm them, they change their clothes, you feed them, all of those things. Then that is the attachment system at play. That is the circle. The loop is closed.

3:38 Infant has a need, signifies distress, caregiver responds to the need. Everyone is happy, and therefore add a secure bond develops. And by that I mean that the infant forms an internal working model of that relationship. An internal working model the world that says, if I have a need, somebody will be there to meet that need. If I am distressed, somebody will comfort me. If I'm hungry, if I can express that, then somebody will respond and they will feed me. They will be sensitive, they'll pick up on what I want and need, and they will be able to provide that for me. So if that works well, if that is how it plays out on a reasonably consistent basis, And obviously there's no perfect parent, and obviously we get it wrong sometimes and parents get angry, and parents get distracted, and parents have got older toddlers running around the house and they can't always pick up the kid the minute that it cries. We get all of that, But if that plays out consistently enough, then that child will form what we know as a secure attachment. And there's a lot of implications to whether a child has a secure attachment or whether they don't, So essentially that is one option that they develop a secure attachment, develop a working model of relationships and of the world, that they are worthy of being loved and cared for, that their needs will be met, that there is somebody there who cares

5:09 for them, and they grow up with that internal working model, and that pretty much plays out in their later lives, in their adult relationships and the relationships at school when they make friends. They just tend to be more healthy and emotionally well adjusted. But we'll get to all of that in a minute, of course. The other option is that they might develop an insecure attachment. So if that system isn't working, and if the adult is not always available, is not sensitive, is not attuned and responsive, is not available to meet that child's needs, then potentially that child will develop an insecure attachment. So there are various types of insecure attachment. And also, just by the way, just picking up on that early theory, John Bolby developed attachment theory. Initially, it was Mary Ainsworth, a student of his, who further developed this theory later on, I think the sixties it was.

6:03 And she went in and she observed infants in their home with their caregivers, and she observed relationships playing out, and she actually came up with an assessment whereby she could tell pretty accurately what a child's attachment style was, whether they were securely or insecurely attached. By about eighteen months, you can pretty reliably predict a child's attachment style very very early on. These patterns form early, so if there is a mismatch there, if there is, if there is not a sensitive response for whatever reason, then a insecure attachment can form. Under that banner of insecure attachment, we can have an anxious attachment, an avoidant attachment. And initially that's what all we thought. We thought there was either anxious or avoidant attachment, or later on they added a fourth which was called disorganized attachment. If the caregiver is inconsistent, unp predictable, if the caregiver is sometimes available, one day they're responding and the next day they're angry. If they are intrusive, overly intrusive in the infant's life, intervening all of the time, not letting them just do their thing, not letting them explore the world, and that child can't form a solid, coherent sort of picture of that there is going to be predictability with that caregiving, that they are going to consistently be available, then they might develop

7:34 what is called an anxious attachment. In the instance where a caregiver is emotionally withdrawn, if they're emotionally shut down, if the child learns that when they express when remember the first part of the process is that the child expresses, the infant expresses a need in some way, if the caregiver is emotionally withdrawn, shut down, just avoidant generally, and that child learns that it's not really there's not really any point expressing a need because that's not safe, it's not going to get me anywhere, well, then they can develop an avoidant attachment. An avoidant means they just basically avoid their own emotional needs because they learn very quickly to shut down their attachment system. In the case of the anxious attachment, those infants they tend to kind of rev up their attachment system because they feel like if they keep crying enough, or if they keep reaching out enough, or if they keep expressing their need enough, then maybe one of those times that will get what they need.

8:38 So there is this sort of insecurity about this anxiousness about their attachment system. The anxiously attached infant or caregiver or adult is threatened by too much distance. They're threatened by too much separation because they're not sure that that adult is going to come back and it's going to be there for them. So even later in life, and we'll get to talking about this, they become threatened by too much separation. They want closeness, they want proximity, they want reassurance. They avoidantly attached. They get threatened by too much closeness that doesn't feel comfortable to them because they're not used to it. They have no imprint. Remember this is your internal working model. These are your how you learn to relate to other people, your blueprint for relationships and interactions with people, from your earliest age, before you've even got language. For this, you are learning just by your experience. So the earliest earliest age, before they even are verbal, that infant is learning. We don't rely on people because people aren't always going to be there for us.

9:43 We don't tell people what we want because people can't be trusted to be there. So we're much better off to just shut that down and just rely on ourselves. So these people grow up to be self explanatory right like emotionally avoidant. They keep people at arm's length. They don't like too much closeness in relationships that makes them feel uncomfortable. The anxiously attached is more likely to be constantly wanting closeness, constantly wanting reassurance, and often that even when they get that reassurance, it just doesn't seem to stick because that imprint, that blueprint is so deeply embedded in their psyche from such an early age that it's really hard to shake. So there's anxious, there's avoidant, and the fourth one is disorganized. So disorganized attachment refers to really, you know, really abusive or neglectful relationships where an infant at that very very early age, the person that they look too for to have their needs met, that caregiver that they rely upon to have their needs met, is at the same time the person they need to be protected from. So if their caregiver is either frightening, scary, you know, abusive, or helpless like doesn't know what to do when the baby cries, just don't even get it together to even like completely lose themselves, like drop their bundle when a baby cries, so helpless, sorry, frightened or frightening, other words often used to describe the caregiver of the

11:14 disorganized attachment. So it's almost like those little brains just can't make sense of that. They just doesn't compute, and so they often grow up to have more complex mental health issues. If you have been in that situation, then you would know what I'm talking about. You'd be very familiar. Maybe even things like borderline personality disorder, you know, other sort of complex post traumatic stress things like that. If there's been abuse in those. Early relationships, they are it's a very small percentage of the population. So typically around about fifty to sixty percent of the population in non clinical populations, just the general public will have a secure attachment. So if you are one of those, yay, that's great, and I can tell you what all of the benefits of a secure attachment are.

12:08 Typically around about I think twenty to twenty five percent are avoidant and around twenty percent are anxious, and then a tiny percentage will have a disorganized attachment. That's how attachment styles. Develop, That's how they kind of are created in early life, primarily just to recap infants. What they need is they need for a caregiver to be a secure base from which they can go out and explore. They need somebody who's able to be a solid kind of a rock. They need to be able to go and explore, but also for that person to be a safe haven to which they can return when they are distressed or they need comfort. They need that person to be available to them, not just for comfort and protection if they're distressed, but also just to be engaged, to delight in them, to validate them, to be interested, to make eye contact, you know, constantly reassuring and kind of validating them just for their existence.

13:09 So if you think about that, the safe haven is being willing to open their arms and accept that infant in when they do need something, not just tell them pick themselves up and off you go and you're fine, you're not dying, you're not bleeding, you'll be you know, actually give them some comfort and validate and acknowledge their very genuine emotional needs at the time that they're expressed, but also not be so overly protective and intrusive and overly coddling that they're not willing to let that infant actually go out and take some risks and explore. So they're the two key components of a secure attachment. I guess I think that's important to state. It's that balance of being willing to let them go but also being willing to welcome them back. And at most of the time, you know at least half of the time. Then being tuned in enough, being present enough, mindful enough to be able to pick up on what they're needing at any given time, so that you can actually respond and give them what they need, even if it's a look of reassurance.

14:13 Some kind words are cuddle or feed them, change them, dress them, pick them up, comfort them, whatever it is. So that's the fundamentals of secure attachment. If those things are there, then all is good for various reasons. Some children, obviously almost half forty percent, will grow up with an insecure attachment some variation of an insecure attachment, and that has various implications. Where do we go from there. Initially, attachment theory was all about children. It was all about parenting and caregiving and infant relationships. Later on in the eighties some people started to explore what this means for adults and started looking at adult attachment, and there is now an adult attachment assessment that you can actually do.

15:04 You need to see a therapist a trained assessor to do that assessment. Most people can kind of get a sense for themselves about what their own attachment style is and have some sense of their personal history and also what they're like in relationships, but you really probably shouldn't be self diagnosing. If you're really interested in this stuff, then then there's an actual proper assessment process that you can go through, but you have to go through it with a trained assessor. It's very specific assessment. What we used to think was the way you were parented was the biggest predictor of how you will parent. If you grew up with avoidant If you have an avoidant attachment, then you're most likely to have avoidantly attached kids.

15:46 And that can be quite scary for many adults who perhaps didn't necessarily have the caregiving or the relationship with their own parents that they would have liked, and it can be terrified you think that you're going to pass that same pattern onto your children. What they have actually found is that it's more how much sense you can make of your early experience, if you have worked through that stuff, if you have a concoherent narrative, if you don't deny it or minimize it or pretend everything was perfect when it was great, or if you don't overly embellish how bad things were like, if you have a sort of a reasonable sense of perspective about your early experience and you can put it in context, and you can talk about it with a sense of sort of balance, emotional balance and regulation. You're not still holding grudges, you know, or like I said, pretending that everything is actually great now I had amazing childhood, my parents are fantastic, when.

16:42 Actually that was not the case. Then that's actually a stronger predictor of how you will parent your own children, your ability to cultivate and foster a secure attachment in your own children. So it really is all about how much you can reflect and make sense of your own early experiences. Just wanted to say that children who develop a secure attachment are more likely to have good emotional regulation. They have healthier relationships, higher quality friendships. They tend to be more kind, more compassionate. They are much less likely to develop mental health issues later. They're much less likely to develop anxiety, depression, addiction, have behavioral issues. The children who do have those issues behavioral issues at school, underperforming at school, end up with addiction problems, end up with relationship conflicts. They often will have an insecure some variation of an insecure attachment. As adults, if you have a secure attachment, you are more likely to have really good emotional regulation. Again, you are comfortable being depended on by others and also comfortable depending on others you are trusting as well as trustworthy. It's called interdependence.

17:56 Where you are comfortable in a relationship to rely on, to lean on others, and also to have others lean on you. You're more likely to take responsibility for your own emotions, for your own part in a relationship, less knocked down by criticism or negative feedback, because there's that strong sense of yourself and your own worthiness, and your own just basic right to respect and kindness, and just the sense of yourself as a worthy person or as that can be a little bit missing in somebody who has an insecure attachment. So ideally getting into a relationship with somebody who is securely attached is a great thing, but there's not that many of them to go around. Oftentimes, what we see happen is that somebody who has, for example, an anxious attachment will hook up with somebody who has an avoidant attachment, and it's almost like they do this, it's like this subconscious pattern plays out where they go for the person that is the worst person for them, So they are highly needing reassurance and closeness and proximity and loads of reassurance in a relationship, and they hook up with this person who pushes them away, keeps them at arm's lengths, who struggles with closeness, and what that does is it just continually feeds into their anxiety and they end up on this sort of treadmill where they're constantly coming back and trying to turn this thing around and trying to get this person to give them what

19:26 they need when that person is never going to give them what they need. So somebody with an anxious attachment should not be with somebody who has an avoidant attachment. Ideally, what we would all be striving for is to all develop our own earned security. Somebody with an avoidant attachment can hook up with somebody who has got an avoidant attachment also, but often those relationships will fizzle out. They can continue but be pretty unpassionate, if. That's a word like. These are really like two individuals kind of sharing time together, but both on their own path. There's not a lot of intimacy there, there's not a lot of closeness there, and sometimes that can feel safe and comfortable for both of them because they know that the other person isn't going to threaten them with wanting too much closeness.

20:17 So there's all sorts of ways that these relationships. Can play out when you get together with somebody who has potentially a different attachment style to you. So again that could potentially be a topic for another show. However, attachment styles can be fairly enduring if you are not doing the work that you need to do to turn things around. So here's the other important point. There is such a thing as earned security. If you had or have had an insecure attachment, if you know that you have had, you have an anxious attachment or avoidant attachment, just from the things that I've just said earlier, it is possible to turn that around. There is such a thing as earned security, and you develop earned security by, like I just said, working through that stuff yourself, having healthy adult relationships. It's very easy in adulthood to replay the same unhealthy relationship dynamics over and over and over.

21:15 And if you do that, the more you continue to do that, the more you are continuing to reinforce potentially an insecure attachment style. If you can cultivate a healthy relationship where there is mutual trust, respect, toned down whatever your anxious or avoidant tendencies are. Then over time you can turn that around and you can develop essentially a secure attachment. But let's talk about how these attachment styles show up in your adult relationships. I did touch on it briefly before, but essentially, somebody who has an anxious attachment is hyper sensitive, hyper sensitive to any sort of rejection or criticism, concern that you might be mad at them.

22:03 If you don't answer a text, you know they might start going into If this is you, you might know that you start going into oh my goshav I've done something? Are they mad at me? This is what an anxious attachment style will do. There is a constant feeling of worry that somebody's not happy with you, and a fairly constant need to seek reassurance, particularly from a romantic partner, but potentially also from friends, potentially also in the workplace. It's this constant need for reassurance. It can look like clinginess, neediness. It can be. Jealousy, like extreme jealousy in relationships, always thinking that something's going wrong, never fully trusting that the other person is really going to be there for you one hundred percent.

22:50 And like I said, even if they reassure you, that might make you feel better for five minutes, but then that anxiety that insecurity crops up again. It's really hard to internalize that felt sense of security and trust in the relationship. It's just not there within you. It can take a lot of work in a relationship. And you know, and you can imagine that a partner might get pretty frustrated with this, constantly feeling like they need to reassure you all the time, and they have to prop you up all the time, and they have to make you feel better all of the time. But over time, if you work on yourself, if you're willing to do the work on yourself and stop relying on somebody else outside of you to reassure you, and actually work on cultivating that sense of self worth within yourself, then it is possible to turn that around. Oftentimes, people with an anxious attachment drive people away because they are so insecure and needy and clingy and jealous that people, you know, people will struggle with that. If you're an avoidantly attached person, then your issue is that you don't like to ask for help very self reliant, don't want to get too close.

24:04 Often will go through adult life like never really forming a solid commitment, little bit commitment pvhobic. It's not that they can't be you know, loving and intimate, but if things get too close, if things get too emotionally intimate, then they back away. It feels uncomfortable. What happens with the emotionally avoidant person is that as the relations ship starts to develop and they get closer, then they start finding fault with the person. Love this person, really great, ticks all the boxes, really great relationship. But then if it starts to get too good, it starts to get too close, then their attachment system kind of shuts down, and so that can look like they start to find fault not really like very very picky, and might end the relationship or might just say I need more space.

24:56 And then often as soon as they have their space or the relationship does end, then they develop all of those warm, fuzzy feelings again because they're no longer threatened. As soon as the distance is there, they're no longer threatened, so then they're sort of safe to feel all of those feelings again. And so it might be when you're away. If your partner is away on a holiday, then you're oh, I miss them so much, love them so much as soon as they're back, not so sure about this. Too much closeness activates the threat response. Remember I said anxiously attached too much distance, not enough closeness activates the threat response for the avoidant. It's too much closeness that activates the threat response for the disorganized. Well, then there's a whole lot of other stuff going on, and that's probably a lot more complex, and there's probably things that need to be worked through in therapy, but it's just really helpful to know, and most people would know that there is childhood stuff they're going on that some deeper work to be worked through.

26:02 At the end of the day. The key is recognizing your own attachment pattern and recognizing how this is playing out in your relationships. If you are blaming your partner all the time for something, if you are accusing your partner of, for example, making you feel insecure flirting with all those other people, and they're telling you that's not the case, that that's all in your head, it really requires you to actually accept that maybe this is all in your head. It's about managing regulating your own nervous system, regulating your own emotional response, looking at your typical patterns of behavior, and managing that urge to do.

26:47 The thing that you always do. If your partner's away or out with the boys, or away for work or something, and you are feeling this compulsive need to text them all the time or to check in all the time time you need to tell you all the time how much they love you and how much they miss you, and that's driving them nuts a little bit, then you. Need to manage that urge. You need to learn not to have to look to that person for that reassurance and to be able to manage that on your own. If you're the avoidant attached to person, then you need to start learning to get more comfortable with closeness, letting people in, learning how to be more emotionally vulnerable, recognizing that actually some people are willing to be there for you even if your impressions, whether your feelings, don't matter. That it's no point reaching out and telling anybody what you want because nobody's going to be there for you, and you may not even have any conscious memory of forming these ideas.

27:42 As. I said that often happened pre verbally. But then your job is to learn to get comfortable with a bit of closeness, like learn to let people in baby steps ask for help, ask for you know, somebody to spend more time with you, instead of having that urge to say, you know, no, I don't need that, or resist that urge to find fault with people who theoretically ideal for you. So that's in a nutshell, that's essentially it takes a lot of mindfulness, It takes a lot of self reflection, a lot of personal insight, and it takes the patience to be able to pause and recognize that this you can change these patterns over time. It is possible to change these patterns over time, and you are not destined to play out these relationships over and over and over again, even if it seems like that is what you have always done. As soon as you have that insight and the understanding, you know where it comes from, and you know why you're doing what you're doing, then it's just a case of managing that, recognizing that, taking a pause, taking a breath, and trying to do something different. I'm going to wrap that up there. I hope that has been reasonably helpful. If you've got any further questions, as always, please do send them through. I'm happy to come back and talk about this some more. I would say, also, I have a quiz on my website off the back of this podcast which is essentially an attachment quiz.

29:15 It's not clinical, it's not diagnostic. It's just something that I put together myself, but it's very popular. People really got some great insights from it. It's the relationship What's your relationship Style quiz. If you've got a cast done dot com, you'll be able to see it on my website and you can take a little mini quiz and get some sense of what your own attachment style is. And there are a few tips there that I will send you after you have done that, So I hope that that's useful as well. I've also written a whole book about how to have healthy relationships. My third book, crap At a Happy Love who You're With. Contrary to what some people think, it is not just about intimate relationships. It is about all relationships. There's a whole chapter on attachment. There is a whole chapter on schema therapy, which I'm going to talk about in an episode very soon. And there's also a whole lot of stuff about how learning how to set boundaries and communicate and really how to know yourself well enough to be able to bring your best self to your relationships, whether they be family, friends, work, colleagues, intimate partners. So that is also available in all bookstores.

30:17 Crappy to Happy love who you're with. But first off, go have a look at that quiz on my website cast done dot com and I will catch you on the next episode of Crappy to Happy. Listener