What are Attachment Styles? | Secure and Insecure Attachment

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this brief presentation on attachment styles. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to define what attachment is. We'll look at each of the different attachment styles, the consequences of insecure attachment, and ways to create secure attachment. So let's start at the beginning. What is attachment? Well, there's a lot of different slight variations on the definition, but basically it's a shared social, emotional connection between two people. Now, I might argue that we can also have an attachment with ourself. We can demonstrate secure attachment behaviors with ourself. But attachment comes in two basic flavors. Secure, where the person does not have a high level of anxiety about abandonment or rejection, and insecure. The characteristics of an attachment relationship include a desire to be close, a safe home base. That means the person feels safe when they're at home. They're safe when they're around that person. They also feel like they can go out and explore floor. They can get out of their comfort zone, and if things go bad, they can come back and they recognize or they believe that they will be welcomed back. And separation distress. And I don't want you to overthink this. Separation distress. When we are in a relationship with somebody that we love, that we feel securely attached to, we will also exhibit separation distress. Or when somebody you love goes on vacation for two weeks or is gone for on a business trip or whatever, there's a little bit of distress after a certain period of time. Now, yes, I know in secure relationships there may be a period where you're like, oh, I got the house to myself. How awesome is this? However, there also is a situation or a period at which you will start to miss that person. Person. And that's the separation distress. We're talking about insecure attachments. So separation distress in and of itself is not pathological. It's the degree to which people become distressed upon separation. What are the functions of attachment? Secure attachment. When children experience it, it helps them have a sense of safety. Again, they have that safe home base. They recognize that their caregiver will be there to meet their needs when they are scared, when they are angry, when they are hungry, cold, whatever, so secure attachment provides a sense of safety. It also helps people develop emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is more than just knowing what emotions are. Emotional intelligence also involves identification of feelings. What am I feeling right now? Happy, mad, sad, glad, scared, curious, whatever. The emotion is regulation of those feelings through using distress tolerance skills to recognize that even unpleasant emotions are tolerable. They're not going to consume us. Developing coping skills to regulate those emotions. When I'm angry, what do I do with that? We don't. It's not effective to just sit there and hold this anger and stew on it. That doesn't solve anything. Regulation of the feeling means saying, okay, I feel angry. Now what can I do to address this feeling? What's it trying to tell me? Emotional intelligence also involves identification of triggers for that emotion and vulnerabilities or situations which make you more likely to feel that emotion. And emotional intelligence helps people learn how to respond to others, how to empathize and respond appropriately. And all of this develops within the context of secure attachment. Secure attachment behaviors also help people develop communication skills, learn how to set boundaries and maintain them, and develop a sense of self esteem and self efficacy. And self efficacy is that belief that you are able to affect your environment. You are capable of handling distress. You are capable of making good things happen. So. So let's jump right into those attachment styles. I said they came in two basic flavors, secure and insecure. The first attachment styles we're going to talk about are the insecure ones. Anxious preoccupied is one of the most common insecure attachment styles. People who are anxious preoccupied have a high level of what we often call abandonment anxiety. In general, they're just very anxious. They don't feel safe. They don't feel empowered, so they don't feel like they've got a safe home base. They don't have a sense of self efficacy, so they're just generally anxious. In general, they don't have a lot a high level of emotional intelligence. They have difficulty identifying the triggers for and regulating their emotions, especially anxiety. They may have extreme distress at separation from their significant others. Now, why do I say significant others? Because attachment can be adult or child. Your first attachment relationship develops with your primary caregiver. However, every successive important person in your life, you develop some level of attachment to. And when you're separated from those people, you may experience distress. The person who's anxious or preoccupied experiences extreme distress. There's this terror that that person is not going to return. That person is not going to reappear. When the person does return, the insecurely attached person, the anxiously attached person, has a difficult time being comforted. They're just not happy. They are a combination of relieved that the person returned and angry that they went away in the first place. And they may behave very passive aggressively, exhibiting even children exhibiting what appears to be a desire to punish the person for leaving. How dare you leave me the anxious, preoccupied person. When they are in relationships, they are preoccupied with that relationship. They are hyper vigilant to every micro expression, every move. They are constantly questioning the motivations of the other person. They are preoccupied with the fear of abandonment. The anxious, ambivalent attachment is a little bit different. People who are anxious and anxiously attached and ambivalent are often wary of strangers and resistant toward intimacy. They're ambivalent. They want it, but they don't want it at the same time. It's terrifying to be alone, but it's terrifying to be in a relationship at the same time. So there's a lot of anxiety and they don't know what's going to make them feel good. They've probably been in relationships before in which a caregiver or a significant other has let them down, has been inconsistent or unresponsive to them. So part of them doesn't want to experience that again. But there's a huge part of us that wants to be connected. We have an entire neurotransmitter hormone that is dedicated to bonding and that's oxytocin. Anxious in general. Obviously the name of the attachment is anxious. And people who are anxiously attached, whether it's anxious, ambivalent or anxious, preoccupied, are often anxious in general, they exhibit extreme distress as separation. So once the person has gotten past that ambivalence and has decided, okay, I may get into a relationship with somebody, they may experience extreme distress at separation from that person, have a difficult time being comforted on return, and a desire to punish them for leaving. But they also may go back and forth between feeling that extreme distress and whatever who needs them. And so that ambivalence keeps coming back. They're anxious, they feel insecure, they feel unloved, they feel overwhelmed. But they go back and forth between not knowing, you know, exactly what's going to help them feel safe and secure. The avoidant, dismissive attachment style. This person, as the name implies, is ambivalent in general. In life. They don't tend to be too anxious. They don't tend to be too happy. They're just. They're ambivalent, they don't care. They tend to be very avoidant of relationships, especially intimate relationships, and sometimes may avoid people in general just because it's been too painful in the past, so why bother now? They often exhibit little distress at separation. A lot of times people who are avoidantly attached have been abandoned before. They've been down that road and they have built up a wall. So they often don't connect Emotionally and. Or they just expect abandonment. So there's little distress at separation. They may avoid reconnecting upon return. So even if the person left, but maybe they left on a trip and they came back, the person who's avoidant or dismissive isn't going to welcome the person home with open arms. It's going to be, oh, okay, you're home, fine, whatever, we need to do the laundry. And so the partner can feel very slighted in that relationship. People who are avoidant or dismissive often resist intimacy and emotional connection. Now remember, intimacy is not just sex intimacy. Intimacy involves sharing of our personal or sensitive emotions, thoughts, and just our general status. Letting people know how we are, who we are, what we're thinking. And people who are avoidant or dismissive because they don't trust other people because they expect to be abandoned often resist intimacy because intimacy makes a person feel vulnerable. And when you feel vulnerable and you're abandoned, it hurts. It's terrifying. So a lot of times people who are avoidant just avoid that altogether. They may also have difficulty sharing thoughts and or feelings. This may be because it's been too painful in the past when they've done it so they have built this huge wall. It may be that they've disconnected from their own thoughts and feelings because it was too painful to have them and not have anybody to share them with. Or it could be that they never learned how to identify their own thoughts and feelings because the prior relationships they've been in have been either so toxically enmeshed they weren't allowed to have their own thoughts or feelings, or toxically avoidant, they weren't helped by their primary caregiver to even identify. Learn how to identify their thoughts and feelings. There could be a lot of reasons for this. The key here in any of these attachment styles is behavior is communication. Insecure attachment represents a person who feels terrified in their own skin. They feel terrified in getting in relationships. They feel terrified if they're not in relationships, sometimes depending on your attachment style. And their attachment style that they currently have represents the best method they found to survive interacting with others until now. So we want to look at what particular behaviors, the way people, each individual exhibits their attachment behaviors and ask ourselves why might that have developed? How might that have been helpful or protective in the past? And our final attachment style is what they call disorganized. And this person tends to be all over the map. Sometimes they are anxious, preoccupied, and then they may swap over if to. If they're too avoidant, dismissive. And this can be with the same person. It's also important to recognize that attachment styles may be very different with different people. They may have a different attachment with their child than they do with their caregiver, than they do with their significant other, than they do with their best friend. Some may be secure. Some may be avoidant, dismissive. Some may be insecure. Think about it. Okay, let's just take a scenario. If you have Sally, we'll call her Sally. And she grew up in a very toxic household where the caregiver was very emotionally abusive and frequently was abandoning, either emotionally abandoning or physically abandoning Sally, she may develop an avoidant, dismissive attachment with that caregiver. However, she may have children of her own now, and she fears that they are going to abandon her the way her caregiver abandoned her, so that she may have an anxious, preoccupied attachment with her children. She may constantly obsess about the attachment and fear rejection and abandonment from her children. And then hypothetically with her significant other, she may have a secure attachment where that person is responsive to her needs in a healthy way. Now, it's unlikely that you're going to have somebody who has all three attachment styles. But know, I'm just kind of giving you a hypothetical so you can understand that just because a person behaves in one way with one person doesn't mean that they're going to behave that way with everyone. Issues associated with insecure Attachment People who are insecurely attached have demonstrated significant deficits in attention. Well, it makes sense if they are insecurely attached, they don't feel safe, they don't feel empowered, they constantly feel stressed. That HPA axis, that threat response system, is always a little bit on. They may be frequently hypervigilant to what's going on. And as a result, because of the stress hormones and stress chemicals, it's harder to pay attention to what's right in front of you. So attention deficit issues are common. Inflammation is also common in people with insecure attachment. Chronic stress leads to systemic inflammation. Enough said. Borderline personality disorder is also very common, and of the personality disorders, it is the most frequently associated with insecure attachment. And when you look at the criteria for borderline personality disorder, the going from I love you to I hate you, the switching in relationships, the difficulty with an emotional regulation, well, both of those things are things that we learn in when we have secure attachments. So it makes sense that someone without a history of secure attachment may develop compensatory strategies. Depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are all associated with neuroinflammation systemic inflammation and insecure attachment substance abuse. Now this one is interesting because it's what I call bi directional. People with insecure attachment are at a higher risk for developing substance abuse issues. Self medicating that anxiety totally makes sense. And people with substance abuse issues are at risk for developing insecure attachment. They may have a good relationship, they may have some secure attachment and then for whatever reason they start developing a substance use issue and it negatively impacts their relationships and those relationships become much more chaotic and insecure. So that's kind of an interesting thing. And eating disorders are also strongly correlated with insecure attachment. People with insecure attachment are often more likely to develop eating disorders in order to develop secure attachment. And I know I've done other videos on this, so I'm just going to go over this really quickly. The mnemonic is craves Consistency, Responsiveness, Attention, Validation, Encouragement and safety. I suggest, you know, with infants they can't do it with themselves. But from young childhood on through adulthood, we want to encourage people to develop a secure attachment relationship with themselves. To be mindfully aware, consistently aware of how do I feel? Consistently checking in on themselves, consistently responsive to their own needs, willing to pay attention and, and do nice things for themselves, willing to treat themselves as they want to be treated, willing to validate or acknowledge their feelings as real. Their feelings are what they what they are. It not everybody may share them, but if they're scared, they're scared. Okay? So validating their own thoughts and feelings, maintaining those emotional and cognitive boundaries, encouraging themselves and creating a sense of safety which comes with self love and self esteem. People who are insecurely attached, this whole list, doing this for themselves may seem totally overwhelming. It may seem like a completely foreign concept. And however, by practicing secure attachment behaviors with themselves, it helps them learn what they deserve from other people. Consistency with others or secure relationships with others. When you're in a securely attached relationship, each person is consistently or reliably available for the other person. I can count on you to be there. Maybe not 100% of the time. I mean, in adult life, nobody can really realistically expect somebody to pick up the phone on the first ring every single time. But I know if I call my best friend, she will call me back when she gets a chance. When she gets at her first opportunity, if I need her to, I can count on her to be there and be supportive. Responsiveness, consistency is great. The person is there. But if they're not responsive, if they show up and they're like, well, what do you want me to do about it. That's not really helpful. Responsiveness in childhood means helping the child identify the feeling or need. The same thing when we're responsive to ourselves, checking in and going, okay, what's going on with me right now? What is my feeling or need? De escalation. When we are in a stress moment, whether we're in pain, we're hungry, we're cold, we're scared, we're angry, that HPA axis, that fight or flight system stress response is triggered. When that is triggered, the it is hard for us to think clearly. We need to be able to de escalate or down regulate that emotional response so we can think about or explore the triggers. You know, what caused me to feel this way? And alternatives. What can I do to address this situation and then make a choice and take action? Now you can see this is a mnemonic within a mnemonic. Responsiveness. The mnemonic is idea identification of the feeling or need. De escalation, exploration of triggers and alternatives and action is taken so back to craves. In a secure attachment, in a secure relationship, the person is consistent. You can count on them. They're responsive. They help you identify what's going on and regulate it, manage it. They provide attention not just when things are bad, but they are wanting to spend time with you. They are wanting to, you know, use your love language. They want to communicate with you, they want to develop an intimate relationship. This again, this isn't just in response to distress. This is someone who truly says, you know what, I like you and want to spend some time with you. Validation or acknowledgement is also important where the other person can say, this is how you feel. I may not agree, but I see that you're scared. I see that you're angry. Children often get scared about things that as adults we're like, yeah, that doesn't even exist. There are no monsters under your bed. However, with validation we're saying, I can see that you're scared that there are monsters under your bed. I'm acknowledging this is your thought, this is your fear. I'm not telling you that it's correct. I'm not telling you that it's fact based. But I'm acknowledging this is how you feel and what you're thinking at this moment. And then we'll talk about how to address it. Encouragement. Important in relationships, it's not just reactive. When you're in distress, I'll show up and help you muddle through it. But paying positive attention, providing encouragement to the person to get out of their comfort zone and providing a safe home base for them to come back to should things not go so well or even if they do go well, a safe home base where somebody can come back and go Let me tell you about my success. We see this developing first in infancy when the caregiver responds to the child's cries and helps them not be cold, in pain, scared, overwhelmed, whatever the infant is feeling. We see this in toddlerhood when the caregiver responds to the child's distress and helps them start developing that emotional vocabulary and learning distress tolerance skills skills and coping skills and supports them in trying to address it, helps them figure out what do I need to do so I can feel in control of myself and encourages them to pursue their dreams, pursue what's important to them, providing a safe home base to return to in adulthood we have these same types of relationships Now. The interesting thing is in adult attachments, one person may not serve all of these functions. One person may not be there for everything. You may have one person that you go to for relationship advice and another person you go to for business advice, or you may have different types of relationships with people, but they all are based to some extent on consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement, and safety. Attachment is a quality of adult and child relationships with self and others. So as a child, how do I interact with myself? How do I interact with other people? As adult, how do I interact with myself? How do I interact with other people? Attachment is initially formed with a primary caregiver and creates what some call a love map for future relationships. Insecure attachment causes a sense of unsafeness and disempowerment and a sense of unsafeness and disempowerment or trauma often leads to insecure attachment. Insecure attachment causes a variety of biopsychosocial problems. However, attachment style can be altered at any point in life. As soon as the person recognizes that there's a problem, there are strategies, steps they can take, which often again begins with developing a secure attachment with self so they're not as reliant on everybody else to provide those functions for them. It.