By Lenni Ferren, LPCC
For many people, love feels good, but it can also feel scary! For some, commitment is terrifying - primarily relational commitment. For others, the thought of losing the one they love can leave them feeling panicked. Attachment theory is a helpful lens for understanding our feelings about relationships and commitment.
Attachment Theory History: The brief version
Attachment theory began with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth (1950s-1970s). While they both contributed to what we now know as attachment theory, it wasn’t positively received when the theory first came out. Bowlby was criticized by academic psychologists and ostracized by the psychoanalytic community! But that sentiment didn’t last long. Building on Bowlby’s theories, Mary Ainsworth completed extensive observational studies on the nature of infant attachments in Uganda. Her innovative methodology and comprehensive observational studies informed much of the theory as we know it today, expanded its concepts, and enabled some of its tenets to be empirically tested. Based on Bowlby and Ainsworth’s work, attachment theory has become the dominant approach to understanding early social development and has given rise to a significant surge of empirical research into forming children's close relationships.
What is Attachment Theory?
Attachment theory focuses on the interpersonal relationships between humans. In other words, a person’s attachment style is the personal way that one relates to and forms close bonds with others in relationships.
The initial attachment relationship is between parent and child and occurs in romantic partnerships later in life. You are born helpless, so you attach to your caregiver for survival. The reliability and quality of your caregiver(s)to meet your needs will affect your overall attachment style. Therefore, your adult attachment style is based on how your primary caregivers met your needs.
But this doesn’t mean your attachment style is set in stone. Your attachment style can be affected by trauma, infidelity, and betrayal later in life. And with the presence of a strong, healthy relationship, you can even develop an earned secure attachment later in life (more on attachment styles in the next blog)! Your attachment style can also change depending on your relationships. While you have a primary attachment style, you may feel more secure with one person than you do with another. Often times our attachment styles are most prominent in relationships with a romantic partner(s), family members, or close friendships. Because attachment styles originate in the relationship (with our caregivers), insecure attachments are also healed in a relationship. Alongside individual therapy with an attachment-based therapist, the opportunity to develop earned secure attachment in adulthood often occurs in a mutually committed, long-standing relationship.
Attachment and Our Development: An Overview
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A child’s confidence and security in their caregiver's ability to meet their needs consistently and lovingly help them explore the world confidently and securely. In turn, this allows them to learn new skills. When a child feels protected and safe, they do not have the burden of fear and anxiety that comes with feeling alone or abandoned, which can have a physical, psychological, and emotional toll on their development. The more secure the child feels, the more joy, enthusiasm, and curiosity they have to seek understanding and try to make sense of the world. This ability positively affects their worldview and helps a child create a secure attachment.
Teenagers will start to individuate and venture further away from their caregivers to explore themselves, intimate relationships, and community. A secure attachment is essential in helping teens achieve autonomy from parents and is necessary for creating quality peer relationships, finding social acceptance, building well-functioning romantic relationships, feeling self-confident, and building positive self-esteem.
But what happens if you don’t have a secure attachment?
If you have dysfunctional or maladaptive coping strategies, it is because they served an adaptive function by helping you meet your needs at a specific time in your life. For example, you may have learned to be a people pleaser or perfectionist because, during your early childhood development, you learned this fulfilled your need for love, respect, or connection. Unfortunately, if you believe these are the only ways your psychological, emotional, or physical needs will get met, you may continue to use them despite the negative effect on your mental health. Attachment theory can help you find alternative ways to meet your needs by understanding these maladaptive coping strategies in relation to others. I will speak more about this throughout this series.
So, what’s next?
Attachment is ingrained in our bodies and nervous system. This looks like activation and/or shut down in our nervous system. Some examples of attachment activation are feeling annoyed or angry when you feel overwhelmed by too much time together or if you think you are being controlled. It can also manifest as panic when you feel abandoned. Attachment shut down can feel like being paralyzed with the fear of losing someone or being engulfed in a relationship. When you can understand your own body's threat responses to attachment, you can have more awareness of your patterns. In addition, understanding your patterns allows you to communicate with others to help them know what you need to feel more secure.
Understanding how your attachment style affects your intimate relationships can help you make sense of your own behavior, how you understand your partner and their attachment style, and how you react and respond to intimacy. Identifying and understanding these patterns for yourself can help you clarify what you need in a relationship, nurture your attachment bond in a relationship, and work with problems or attachment conflicts.
By doing body-centered attachment work, you begin to heal attachment trauma on all levels: physically, psychologically, emotionally, and relationally. If you are interested in body-centered attachment therapy, please reach out to Evolve in Nature to work with a therapist today.