Attachment Theory and Adult Relationships | Reducing Abandonment Fears in Counseling

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@allceus.com Counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on attachment and adult relationships. I am your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. We're briefly going to define attachment theory in case some of you aren't familiar with it. Learn about the impact of attachment, identify triggers for attachment behaviors. We're going to real briefly explore the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and attachment issues in adult relationships, which will move into adult attachment theory, which is, guess what, pretty much the same as child attachment theory, examine how attachment impacts emotional regulation and vice versa, and finally move on to what do we do about it? And ways to help people become more securely attached. Attachment behaviors like crying and searching are adaptive responses to separation from a primary attachment figure, which is someone who provides support, protection and care. Now you want to think about I guess I'm going to jump ahead to adult attachment theory. Early on, you want to think about the age of the person in the infant. The infant can't fend for itself, it can't make itself a hamburger or whatever. There is a lot that the infant requires from that primary caregiver. So there are different things that may trigger that response in an infant. However, all of us, I mean, think about it. I think if we're being honest, all of us really crave support, a sense of safety and a sense of being cared cared for by other people. As we move into adult relationships, you don't necessarily have just one person that serves all those functions, which is why we have multiple different important relationships in our lives. But as a child, there's generally one primary caregiver. Erikson postulated that the periods of trust versus mistrust and autonomy versus shame and doubt occur when this attachment is really in full swing. And that is that infancy period through late toddlerhood, if you will. This is when the child can't fend for themselves. They can't express their needs, they're not very verbal yet, and they are having to learn not only to trust that others are there to help them and help them learn to self regulate, but they also have to learn to trust their own reactions. If they start crying and the caregiver responds with an appropriate response to whatever they're crying about with nurturance and empathy and all that kind of stuff that will produce one reaction if they start crying and the caregiver responds to what are you Crying about, you know, shut up or I'll give you something to cry about. I think, you know, we've heard, people have heard that before. If you didn't hear it yourself, those are two very different responses to a child crying. In securely attached relationships, the caregivers, and I'm going to jump ahead to the mnemonic device, are caring, they are consistent, they are aware, they are responsive, they are empathetic, and they are supportive and encouraging. That's really important for all of us to have people in our life that meet those criteria. Maintaining proximity to an attachment figure through attachment behaviors increases the chance for survival with a child. They start crying, they cling. We all know when children start going through separation anxiety and some of those other phases, developmental phases that they go through. We see these very natural attachment behaviors. When a child is at the doctor and they get a shot, for example, then they start crying and they generally reach out for their primary caregiver. It makes sense that is the child going, I trust that you are going to help me feel better and keep me safe. As children get older, the adult caregivers are the ones who help the child learn those skills for self regulation through mirroring and modeling and empathy. From the initial relationship, this initial attachment relationship, we learn how scary or safe the world is and what it's like to be loved, what we should expect from another person. Well, if we don't ever challenge these beliefs or whatever, especially if they're dysfunctional or insecure or whatever word you want to use, then when we get into our adult relationships, we may still feel like the world is a scary place and that we are not worthy of love and nobody is going to have our backs. If it's a good relationship in childhood, then oftentimes we will be able to expect, or we will know that it's okay to expect that people are going to be consistent and attentive and responsive and empathetic and all that other stuff. The attachment system essentially asks the fundamental question, is the attachment figure nearby accessible and attentive to a 2 year old or younger? That is very different than to a 22 year old because remember, object permanence doesn't exist initially. So children who are in that initial trust versus mistrust stage, they don't have object permanence. They don't. If they don't see the attachment figure, if they don't see that primary caregiver, that primary caregiver is all gone. And that can be very terrifying to the person. If the answer is yes, the attachment figure Is nearby, accessible and attentive, which doesn't necessarily, as the child gets older. It doesn't necessarily mean always in the line of sight. It means if I call out, if I cry from my crib, then caregiver is going to come help me self soothe or help make the boogeyman go away or whatever it is. So if the answer is yes, the person feels loved, secure and confident, and behaviorally is likely to explore the environment and interact with others. If I have this safe home base I can come back to, then I'm going to be more likely to reach outside my comfort zone. Because I know if things get uncomfortable out there, I've got somewhere that I can come back to. Think about that in your adult life. We all want a home, so to speak, that we can come back to where we feel loved, secure and confident. We don't always have the best days at work or doing things. We may step outside of our comfort zone and something doesn't go well. But we know we can go back home where we feel safe and secure. Think if you've ever gone traveling. I'm not a big traveler. Traveling is a little stressful for me. So when I go out traveling, it's kind of exciting. But when I come home, it's very relaxing because I feel secure and confident. I know what to expect. I have, you know, control over my own domain, so to speak, and the people who are most important to me are right there. Now, in this day of multimedia communication, Our adult attachment figures tend to be a lot more easily accessible and attentive. If you're having a bad day, you can text somebody. I mean, I love that fact right now that when my teenagers are having a bad day, they're able to text me and say, mom, this is going bad, or I don't feel like I did well on this test or whatever it is, and I can be there for them. Instead of them having to wait indefinitely until they can get me on a landline or until I show up at the house, we are increasingly attached, which is nice to a certain extent. If the person exhibits attachment behaviors, crying, seeking, whatever, and they can't reach that primary caregiver then or that caregiver, then they will probably start to experience anxiety and exhibit attachment behaviors Ranging from simple visual searching to active following and vocal signaling to the other person. In adults, how do we see this? If they can't reach their attachment figure or one of their attachment figures and they really want to reach that person, what type of seeking behavior do we see? We see them Emailing and texting and calling. And that is our version, the adult version of seeking behaviors. When my husband was in Florida, you know, the end of last year, there was one time that I needed to reach him and I couldn't reach him. And I was really worried that something had happened. And so I was a little anxious anyway and I texted him and he always texts right back. And I waited and I waited, he didn't text. So then I, you know, SMS Tim and he didn't respond to that. And then I emailed him and then I called him and finally I reached him and I was like, oh my gosh. I don't remember what it was that had me freaked out that day, but that is unusual behavior for me. But because I felt for whatever reason that I thought that something bad had happened down there, I think it was, well, whatever I thought it was something to do with his family, you know, I was really concerned so I was trying to reach out. So as my anxiety went up, my seeking behaviors went up exponentially. We want to pay attention to that in adults and figure out, you know, from a trauma informed perspective if they had difficulty reaching their primary caregiver, if they never learned those self soothing behaviors as youth, then as adults they may find more things distressing and have more things that cause them to emotionally dysregulate, which will activate extreme seeking behavior. So these seeking attachment behaviors continue until either the person is able to re establish a desirable level of physical or psychological proximity to the attachment figure, or until the person just wears down. At a certain point they may just be like, there's nothing else I can do. How loved or unloved we feel as children deeply affects the formation of our self esteem and self acceptance. It shapes how we seek love and whether we feel a part of life or more like an outsider. Think about children who are raised in an environment where the caregivers have mental health issues, addictions issues, something else going on and they are not emotionally present. You know, they may be physically there, but in order for Junior to get any attention, Junior has to act out or Junior has to create some sort of drama. Well, think about, you know, when that Junior grows up, what is that going to look like in adult relationships? What kinds of extreme behaviors might that person feel like they've got to exhibit in order to get any attention. They may not know other ways of reacting because their primary caregivers, who are the ones who theoretically are supposed to be responsive, that was the only way they were able to get attention. So we may need to Help people examine the function of their behaviors. In the past, doing this served a purpose. It served you well. From a trauma informed perspective, it was functional. Now is that behavior still functional? And if not, what are some alternatives as we individuate? You know, getting into that those teenage years, we often start to again seek approval in our childhood. When we're infants, that caregiver is supposed to be there to help feed us, keep us safe, yada yada. When we get older and we start to individuate and become our own person and develop our identity, then we're going to be often looking towards peers and friends and others to also fulfill those functions of being consistent and compassionate, attentive, responsive, empathetic and supportive. Gonna remember that acronym by the end of the day yet. So does attachment stop after infancy? Well, jury's out. Maybe yes, maybe no. But it looks like generally no. Consider the adult who got needs met as a child, but in adult relationships does not get needs met. Well, it happens sometimes. You grow up in a particular environment, you know, maybe it's a great upbringing, you have a great childhood. But then in adulthood, all of a sudden those attachment behaviors aren't there. We want to look at what happened, at what point that makes the person not seek out comfort, security and attachment with others. Generally, I won't say. Obviously generally at some point, either during individuation or later, those behaviors were severely punished. In some way they became attached and then they experienced a significant loss or were ridiculed or there was some sort of psychological injury as a result of that attachment. So attachment can be disrupted later in life. We want to look at what role significant others play in the survival of the adult human. Well, we're not meant to live in complete isolation. Even people who are super introverts generally want some level of connection with some people at some time. That's just kind of how we're wired and that's okay. Erikson talks about intimacy versus isolation and that's one of the later stages of development. Intimacy is something that we want not only for procreation of the species, physical intimacy, but also emotional intimacy and that feeling of attachment. There's a reason why we have the hormone oxytocin, which is our bonding hormone. When that hormone is activated, we tend to feel more relaxed. That is a survival response. How does not getting our emotional, physical and safety needs met impact our self esteem, our trust in others and our future relationships? Well, if the people that we think are supposed to be trustworthy, that are supposed to love us, are not responsive, or if nobody seems to be responsive, then we may feel like we don't deserve responsiveness, which can be a huge impact on our self esteem. We may be like, what's wrong with me? Why don't people like me? Why doesn't anybody want to help me? Our trust in others. If other people are not willing to be there to help us meet our needs, they're not willing to be there to be supportive. Then of course we're probably not going to trust that somebody's just going to pop up and be like, okay, nobody else wants to be supportive, but I'll be there for you. That's not the way things happen. It does start to erode our trust in others. When I work, I've worked in addictions for better part of 20 years, and a lot of people who are in early recovery from addictions, the social circle that they had been existing in for during their addiction was not one that was filled with trustworthy people in general those. So their attachment style, if it had been good in the beginning, which, you know, never know when they were in early recovery, they were often very insecurely attached because so many of their friendships, so many of their relationships had seemed to blow up in their faces, so to speak, and it impacted the way they viewed others and the way whether they viewed others to be trustworthy. Is it possible for them to develop trust in themselves and others again? Certainly. Certainly. Or, you know, I am so glad to say that I've seen that happen. Is it easy? No, it's not supposed to be easy, but it can happen. And if we don't get our needs met, it can impact our future relationships because we may. If we find somebody that meets our needs, even if it's not a healthy relationship, we may hang on to it because we are so afraid that if I let this one go, there may not be anything else. Or we may distance ourselves from all other relationships and become withdrawn because we are afraid to get hurt again. In 1987, Hazan and Shaver noted that the relationship between infants and caregivers and the relationship between adult romantic partners often share similar features. Both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive, remembering that for adults, nearby is very different than for an infant. Both engage in close, intimate bodily contact, whether it's sitting on the couch together, watching a Netflix marathon or holding hands. You get the idea. Both feel insecure when the other one is inaccessible. Now, you know, I personally have a little bit of argument with that, but it really comes down to what do you define as inaccessible if that other person, for example, if you're a military spouse and your partner is overseas for 18 months, and you know when they're on a mission, they are completely inaccessible, do you feel insecure? At what point? What's the duration of the inaccessibility that leads to insecurity? Is it an hour or is it a year? You know, those are the sorts of things that we want to look at. If you have a significant other who's in jail for a year, it happens. And you know what? Do you start feeling insecure because that person is inaccessible? We want to kind of look at that, but just sticking with. With their research. Both share discoveries with one another. When you learn something new, you share it with your partner. I'm big into organic gardening and animal rescue and all that kind of stuff. And although he may not want to hear it, he humors me because I will share what I learn. Different things. I learn about those things when I'm, you know, at the dinner table or whatever. I share those things with my family, and they share their discoveries with us. Both play with one another's facial features and exhibit a mutual fascination and preoccupation with one another. You can just take that kind of at face value. Think about when you first start dating with someone or dating someone, you may play with their hair or rub their cheek or something. And initially you may have this preoccupation, that first six months or whatever of new relationship energy. There tends to be a preoccupation with one another, and both may engage in baby talk. And baby talk can be really baby talk, or it can be pet names for one another. And I agree, Shirley, that as an adult, we should be able to ideally feel secure when we are by ourselves if we trust our partner. Which is why I stop on that one, because I don't like that one. But I'm just kind of telling you what their research said. One of the things that I talk about in my relationships class, and I'm going way off topic here, I make the analogy of good relationships being like chocolate chip cookies, because y' all know I love food. Chocolate chip cookies are basically sugar cookies, which are really awesome by themselves, and chocolate chips, which, again, are really awesome by themselves. Could you eat them both, you know, independently? I do. I don't know about anybody else, but I do. So independently, they are great to stand alone. They are not completing each other, but when you put them together and you make a chocolate chip cookie, that is, like, doubly good. So when people get in relationships, I encourage them not to look for someone to complete them. I want them to be complete on their own, and if they're not, figure out what is it that they need to do. However, I want them to be able to join with another and complement the other person. If adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships, then we should observe the same kinds of individual differences in adult relationships that Ainsworth observed in infant caregiver relationships. The way adult relationships work should be similar to the way that those relationships work and should facilitate exploration among each other. You should in healthy adult relationships, we encourage our partners to have friends, to have alternate interests, to do things, to step outside of their comfort zone. And if things go crappy, you know, we're there to be responsive when they come back home. And if things go well, we're there to be responsive when they come back home. Whether an adult is secure or insecure in his or her adult relationships may be a partial reflection of his or her experiences with primary caregivers in infancy or in later life. You may have great attachment in infancy and then, you know, later life, things kind of fall apart with your parents or caregivers or whatever. And yes, Carl points out that we can bring insecurity into our relationship from childhood, even if our partner is trustworthy. Or we can develop insecurity when we perceive our partner to be unavailable or inaccessible. We do want to check some of our cognitive distortions and our expectations. For example, if you are in an adult relationship and you expect your partner to be accessible 247365 if you text that person, they better text back in five minutes even if they're at work. That's not real, probably healthy, or realistic. So we do want to encourage people to check their assumptions and figure out if they have that level of need for reassurance, where that's coming from. Certain kinds of events trigger a desire of closeness and comfort from caregivers. There are three main sets of triggers. Conditions in the person when you're tired, hungry, sick, in pain, cold. In addictions counseling, we talk about hungry, angry, lonely, and tired, or halt. Any conditions that make you feel icky emotionally or physically. Sorry for the overly technical term can make us want to have comfort from our caregivers. This is somewhat dependent on the person. Some people when they get sick, they just want to be left the heck alone and they want to, you know, just them, their TV and their Vicks VapoRub, more power to them. But a lot of people do regress a little bit at that point and kind of want to be taken care of. Conditions involving the caregiver is another trigger. If the caregiver is absent or departing, discouraging of proximity or giving attention to another, it can trigger attachment behaviors. And this is another area, especially in adult relationships. We need to examine whether it's factual or emotional reasoning and where it might be coming from. If our partner, for example, works in a business that is and starts talking a lot about their work partner, if the romantic partner gets jealous of the work partner, then we may need to look at why that relationship is threatening and why the person may start feeling insecure. If the people are in a romantic relationship and one person says, and we've all heard this, I think I need some space, that can trigger attachment seeking behaviors or if they start spending a lot of time away from the home or apart from their significant other, that can trigger attachment and seeking behaviors. If it is a marked difference than what it used to be. If the person's getting ready to depart. I remember when my husband went on multiple, you know, week long trainings when, back when he was in law enforcement. And I would want to spend more time with him before he left just because I knew I wouldn't see him for a week or two weeks or whatever that is that, you know, attachment seeking behavior, whatever. Get, get caught up on it if you want to. And conditions of the environment, alarming events, criticism or rejection by others. For example, if the environment feels unseen, safe, then we may start seeking out that primary caregiver, or not primary caregiver, but that adult caregiver. Adverse childhood experiences impacting attachment and I'm just going down the list of the ACEs survey. Physical, sexual or verbal abuse, physical or emotional neglect. A family member who is depressed or diagnosed with another mental illness which tends to make them less emotionally available and responsive. A family member who is addicted to alcohol or another substance, which again may make them less physically and or emotionally available. Or a family member who is in prison or even deployed for a long period of time. Not saying that any of these will necessarily cause irreparable harm. I know a lot of military families, for example, who have really good communication and they send letters and they facetime and they do all kinds of other stuff so that caregiver who is away feels more present. They're still accessible even if they are not physically present. Witnessing a parent being abused can impact attachment. And losing a parent to separation, divorce or some other reason, like the parent just decided one day that they didn't want to be a parent anymore and they went to the store and never came back any of those things can disrupt a person's trust in other people. Our caregivers are the ones that are biologically programmed to take care of us and if they are not wanting or able to take care of us, and as children we don't understand the difference. If a child can't get their caregiver to take care of them, then they may feel like they are not worthy and that adults and people are not trustworthy. Attachment Styles Real Quick Avoidant infants avoid the parent physically and visually. If an infant is not securely attached to that adult caregiver, you will see them close their eyes, yawn, or avert their gaze, especially if the caregiver is not responsive in the right ways or is overly intense in some way that is overwhelming to the child. Avoidant adults are somewhat uncomfortable being close to others. They find it difficult to trust others completely and difficult to allow themselves to depend on others or to let anyone get too close. Resistant or ambivalent infants either passively or actively show hostility towards the parent. They may throw things, they may cry when the parent holds them. The anxious or ambivalent adult often worries that their partner doesn't really love them or won't want to stay with them and want to merge completely with another person. And this desire, this lack of boundaries, can be really scary to other people. Secure infants often cry briefly when the parent leaves but is consolable, greeting the parent warmly upon return. Secure adults find it easy to get close to others and are comfortable depending on others and having others depend on them. They don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to them. I'll share with you a little story. When my son started preschool, my first child, I took him to preschool and he was about 22 months when he started preschool. And up until then I had been staying at home with him and the first day he went to preschool he cried and cried and once he got out of sight and I got behind the other wall, I cried and cried and then evidently we both were fine and went along the day and I showed up to pick him up and he was just excited to see me and was wonderful and I was like okay. The next day I took him to school and he very happily met his teacher at the door. He said, hi Ms. Jessica, grabbed her hand and walked to the circle because they had circle time first, no crying at all. He was just bye Mommy, and I cried. So the first two days of preschool were a little tough for us, but that secure attachment because he was able to get close to his adult caregiver daytime caregiver, his teacher. But he was still receptive to me when I came home or when I came to get him. And that's what we want to look for in adult relationships. We want to recognize that people are going to have other meaningful relationships in their lives. But, but it doesn't mean it has to be exclusive, you know, it can't. It doesn't mean that you have to be friends with that person or me. You can be friends with that person and me. We want to look at what causes secure attachment, because that's what we want to emphasize. Well, consistency, emotional and physical. I will be there, I will help you. I will be supportive, you know, providing scaffolding as much as possible. Unconditional positive regard and comfort, support and encouragement. This little diagram can be helpful with people who are insecurely attached. They're going through daily life. They have everyday activities. They perceive something that's triggering. Either they don't feel well or they feel unsafe or insecure. For some reason, they start feeling anxious. They seek closeness to their partner. If their partner responds negatively, you know, maybe they start texting their partner who's also at work, and their partner says, I can't deal with this right now, I will talk to you later. Or stop being such a drama person. Whatever they say, if the partner responds negatively, it increases insecurity and anxiety, which generally prompts the person to more aggressively seek closeness to that partner. All of a sudden, now it becomes more of a crisis. In avoidant attachment, you have the everyday activities triggering conditions, the anxiety. They seek closeness to partner. The partner responds negatively, which increases insecurity and anxiety. So the same sort of path that we were following before, but in an avoidant attachment, the person just gives up on getting a positive response. They don't try to seek closeness anymore. They're like, okay, fine, screw it. They experience anxiety suppression and distancing and re immerse themselves in everyday activities and start to become more withdrawn and walled off. Insecure attachment. The person goes through days, perceives triggering conditions, feels anxious, seeks closeness. The partner responds positively, Hallelujah. It reduces or eliminates the anxiety, and then they can resume their everyday activities. Think about children. When they're on the playground and they get into a fight or they fall down, the primary caregiver is there to help them emotionally re regulate, if you will. So that's what we're really looking at. We want to make sure that we have people in our life that when life is more than we can tolerate at the moment that they're there to help us get it back together. They can provide either emotional or practical support or both. Can people have different attachment styles to different people who are significant in their lives? Interesting to think about. Can you be securely attached to your children but insecurely attached to your spouse or your best friend and avoidantly attached to your parents? I've seen it, so I think it's true. And it's important for us to understand why those dynamics exist with each different person. So as I mentioned before, there is that acronym CARES for Secure attachment in relationships, adult child Otherwise. We want to have consistency in our relationships. We want to be able to predict whether that person's going to be there for us or not there for us. We want them to be attentive. It doesn't mean they have to be at our every beck and call, but when something's going on, we want them to care and be attentive and want to listen to what we have to say, what we have to share. We want them to be responsive when we are hurting. We want them to be there to provide emotional support when we are happy. We want them to be there to share in our glory. We want them to be empathetic, which will help them be attentive and responsive. And we want them to be supportive. Supportive doesn't mean doing things for us that we can do for ourselves. It means being there to be empathetic and give us encouragement to keep going and to figure out how to solve the problem. So changing attachment style. Encourage people to start building their self esteem so they can start seeing themselves as lovable. Have them practice acceptance of themselves and others to become less fault finding. This is a pretty big order for people who tend to be codependent or distancing. Encouraging them to make a list. You know, we talk about making our own self esteem list. Well, they can also make an esteem list for other important people in their life and start writing down the good things about each of those people on their independent sheets and countering. Anytime they start fault finding, remind themselves, okay, I found a fault here. Let me think of three other things. I have teenagers at home and they make mistakes and it can be kind of frustrating sometimes. But I also have to remind myself, okay, they're not doing this the way they're supposed to be doing it. However, what other things are, they are wonderful about them. You know, they're compassionate, they're good students, they're, you know, yada yada. It's important that we also do that for ourselves when we fault finding ourselves to find I usually say one to three. So if you find one fault, find three good things. Encourage people to take calculated risks, to get outside of their comfort zone, including intimacy building so they can learn how strong they are. It may be terrifying to get into another relationship, however it can also be very rewarding. And some people. Gloria Gaynor has the song I Will Survive. Very, very old song, but encouraging people to make, you know, a playlist of positive, uplifting, encouraging songs that can help them feel supported and self support in becoming the person they want to be. Encourage people to get healthy, to nurture their emotional stability and strength. Eat well, get enough sleep, get enough sunlight, set those circadian rhythms, yada yada yada. I've said it a million times. Develop emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills. This is dialectical behavior therapy 101. You know, you can Google the acronyms improves and accepts and DBT and come up with a lot of different posters and stuff that have suggestions for techniques for doing this. When people have good emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills, then when they go through everyday life and they experience a triggering situation, more often than not they're actually able to self regulate without having to reach out to that attachment relationship which makes them feel more independent, more empowered and that other happy stuff. We also want people to increase insight and understanding so they can identify when and why they are using unhelpful relationship strategies. If they start feeling anxious or jealous or paranoid or whatever feeling they're feeling in a relationship, number one, recognizing that they're feeling that way is probably the biggest step. And then figuring out why they're feeling that way, is it because of something this person is doing that is potentially malicious? Or is it because this person is doing something similar to what somebody else did 20 years ago and you're just expecting the same sort of results? You want to encourage the person to look at the facts. In the current situation, maybe you have a couple that's together and in this current relationship, I'll say Jim Bob has started spending more time in his den watching tv, less time with the family, isolating some over the past three months. And Sally, when that's happened in prior relationships, that meant that there was probably three to six months left of and then the relationship was going to end. So Sally starts getting freaked out. Well, that could be one explanation. That's what's happened before, that's what she's expecting. But what else, what other things could be causing Jim Bob to start being withdrawn right now? Maybe work's gotten really challenging right now and that's how he deals with it. Introverts tend to spend more time alone and think about problems, and then they'll share later. But they don't typically solve problems while they're talking. They need more thinking time. The more stressed they get, the more thinking time they need. So maybe Jim Bob is just going through something that has nothing to do with the relationship, and he's trying to deal with it. Challenging that mind reading and some of those cognitive distortions is important. Increase mindfulness so everybody in the relationship is aware of how they're feeling and what their needs are. And going along with that. Decrease mind reading. When people are in a relationship, if they don't communicate what their needs are, then it's harder to get their needs met. So if I'm in a relationship and I have these needs and my partner is not meeting those, and I start to feel abandoned, I need to look at what's going on and I need to say, well, did I bother to tell him what my needs were, or did I just expect that he knew? And if we just expected that he knew, if we expected mind reading, that's not real realistic. So mindfulness helps us become aware of our needs, and then we need to become assertive and authentic. Telling people, these are what my needs are right now. This is what would be helpful for you to do. And this is how I feel being authentic. Not everybody's going to like what you have to say all the time, but if you are authentic, then you can deal with it. If you can say, even, you know, I am feeling jealous of your work partner, well, there may be no foundation for that jealousy, but if you put it out there, I am feeling this way and you're being authentic, then you can start a dialogue about it and start exploring why that might be happening. Encourage people to stop reacting and learn to resolve conflict and compromise from a we perspective. Instead of, okay, this is going wrong, this is what you need to do, because this is why you did it. Looking at it from a we perspective, what part did I play in this? What part did you play in this? And how can we come together to create a solution? Attachment problems often arise out of past traumas. These traumas may have contributed to thinking errors. Having people, when they start having attachment triggers, attachment issue triggers, have them examine what are their beliefs? What are their beliefs? What are they telling themselves? That it's making them feel insecure or anxious or just ready to cut ties and run? What are the facts for and against this belief in this context, with this person, in this situation? I know that's a lot, but the context is so important because in the past, with a different person, in a different time, in a different situation, that belief may have been spot on. But in this context, with this person in this situation, are the beliefs rational and helpful or are they based on emotional reasoning or cognitive distortions or whatever? Am I using emotional or factual reasoning? Emotional reasoning is I'm feeling insecure in this relationship, therefore you must be getting ready to abandon me. Well, what are the facts for that? We don't know that insecurity could be coming from a myriad of different places. Fact based reasoning is I'm feeling insecure in this relationship because you have been being withdrawn lately. You've been disappearing for hours at a time. You have been doing these sorts of things. That's why I'm feeling insecure. It doesn't necessarily mean that insecurity is warranted. Like I said, it could have other explanations. But at least if the person can state the facts and identify these, this is the evidence that I have that is making me feel, or these are the facts that I'm going by that are making me feel insecure. What are other factors that may have contributed or other explanations for what may be going on? And are you using extreme words? You always do this whenever we have a fight, you always. Or every time we go out to dinner, you always ogle other people. Whatever the case may be for the person, we want to check some of those extreme words. Attachment theory was first proposed by Bowlby as an adaptive survival function for helpless infants. And it makes sense. We need to have that connection with somebody when we need to have our food brought to us and our own diapers changed. And, you know, we can't even get our own blanket. Bowlby proposed that the infant caregiver relationship was the relationship that all future relationships would be built from, which is kind of true. If it's left unchecked, then that's probably true. However, the person has the ability if they have a bad or insecure avoidant attachment with their primary caregivers, it doesn't mean that with work they can't develop healthy attachments to other people in their future. Likewise, if they have a great secure attachment with their primary caregivers, that doesn't mean that somewhere along the way the person won't become attached to someone else. And that attachment, you know, ends in disaster, which influences future relationships. But yes, the initial imprint usually begins with that first relationship. People's self esteem develops from and is impacted by how loved and secure they feel. Adults show similar attachment behaviors to their significant others more or less in an age appropriate fashion and attachment styles can be changed by developing self esteem, emotion regulation skills, self awareness, interpersonal skills including boundaries and communication and self confidence. Between writing notes, filing insurance claims and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That's why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy to use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. 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