Are you aware of your attachment style and how it influences your behaviour?

Are you struggling because of your attachment style? 👫👭👬

Following on from “living with childhood trauma”, this informative piece explores attachment styles as these are developed during childhood. Attachment styles have been gathering a lot of attention as of late, and there is no better time then the present to get to know YOU better 🧠💜. Being aware of your attachment style can help you to understand why you behave in certain ways, and how you relate to and build connections with other people✅.

👆Attachment Style Theory (Bowlby 1950 expanded on by Ainsworth 1970). Mary Ainsworth developed an experiment building upon the work of John Bowlby. Aiming to investigate the style of attachment and attachment behaviours in young infants (between 12-18 months of age). This research involved covertly observing the children's behaviour in eight different scenarios. For example, to provide you with a brief idea, one scenario was the mother and child are alone, another scenario was a stranger joins the mother and child, and a further scenario was the mother leaves but the stranger stays with the child. The observer then identified the child's interaction behaviours (e.g., proximity and contact seeking/resistance to contact and comforting, etc.,) and their exploratory behaviours such as playing, search behaviours including banging on the door, and affect displays such as crying. This research experiment led to Ainsworth (1970) identifying three attachment styles, secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure ambivalent/resistant. The disorganised attachment style was later identified by Main and Solomon (1990)

👆Development of attachment styles - What leads to you having a certain attachment style?

🔷 Secure You can develop this attachment style when your caregivers throughout childhood provided you with an environment where you felt safe and able to ask for comfort, validation, or reassurance without being concerned you might be negatively judged or receive a punishment. Your childhood caregivers are likely to have a secure attachment style themselves and be aware of their own emotions and accurately able to express these.

🔷 Insecure avoidant (You may have heard this referred to as anxious-avoidant) You can develop this attachment style when your caregivers throughout childhood were emotionally distant or absent and may have been very strict. For example, your caregivers may have judged you or punished you when you depended on them for something or shared your own emotions or needs, expecting you to be more independent.

🔷 Insecure Ambivalent/resistance (You may have heard this referred to as anxious-ambivalent) You can develop this attachment style when your caregivers throughout childhood were inconsistent. For example, they may have sometimes responded appropriately to you depending on them for something or sharing your emotions with them. But, other times they may have responded differently and pushed you away or appeared indifferent.

🔷 Disorganised (You may have heard this referred to as fearful-avoidant) You can develop this attachment style when you experience abuse, neglect, or trauma throughout childhood.

👆 Attachment styles and their characteristics - What does each attatchment style look like?

🔶 Secure When you have a secure attachment style you can regulate your emotions, effectively express these emotions to others and seek emotional support when it is required. You will feel content and relaxed when you are alone and in relationships with others. You’ll have high self-esteem, trust yourself and be able to easily trust others.

🔶 Insecure avoidant When you have an insecure avoidant attachment style you will be very independent, spend a lot of time alone, and feel uncomfortable when other people try to build a relationship with you. You’ll consistently avoid both emotional and physical intimacy and feel uncomfortable expressing emotions to others. You’re likely to have a hard time trusting people and be dismissive of others.

🔶 Insecure Ambivalent/resistance When you have an Insecure Ambivalent/resistant attachment style you will experience increased sensitivity to any form of criticism and seek approval from others as you’ll likely have low self-esteem and feel you don’t deserve love. You’ll have a serious fear of being rejected or abandoned by others and find it very difficult to trust other people but also find it difficult being alone.

🔶 Disorganised When you have a disorganised attachment style you’ll experience elements of both insecure ambivalent/resistance and insecure avoidant attachment styles. You’ll be scared of rejection, and unable to regulate your emotions. But you’ll also have difficulty trusting other people and experience high levels of anxiety.

👉 Example of attatchment styles in the real world: John has recently started dating someone. But John and his partner have many arguments surrounding John’s jealousy. John also experiences low self-esteem and this results in him feeling terrified that his partner will leave him. Because of this, John will text his partner a lot throughout the day. This causes John’s partner to feel quite overwhelmed. John has this over-the-top texting behaviour because when his partner replies to his text, he can relax for a little bit as he feels reassured his partner isn’t leaving him. John doesn’t trust his partner so he seeks constant reassurance from them throughout the day, every day. When John's partner doesn’t reply shortly after his text, he begins to panic that he is being rejected and abandoned. John is experiencing a severe insecure ambivalent attachment style.

Mary also has an insecure ambivalent attachment style. However, Mary is aware that she has this attachment style. This led to Mary being able to identify which behaviours she exhibits that are not healthy for neither her nor her relationship's wellbeing. After Mary was able to successfully identify these behaviours, Mary was able to recognise when she was exhibiting them. For example, Mary’s partner didn’t send her a morning text. Previously, Mary would have feared the worse. Mary would have confirmed in her mind that her partner is leaving her and doesn’t love her anymore. However, now Mary reminds herself that her partner does love her and has previously confirmed this to her. Mary recognises her critical voice in her head knowing it comes from a place of fear and she replaces it with self-compassion. Instead of letting this ruin her day, Mary decides to use this as an opportunity to text her partner first for a change.

✍️ Attachment Style Exercise: ✍️ Think about what attachment style you have, this might be obvious to you straight away or you may need some time to consider which style you think describes your experience and behaviours best. ✍️ Once you have thought about which attachment style you have, begin to identify any behaviours you might be exhibiting that could be improved on. Write these down into a list. ✍️ Pick one behaviour you would like to work on this week and take the week to focus on where this behaviour stems from and how you could change the behaviour to better benefit you. For example, if you have an insecure avoidant attachment style and identify that you find it very difficult to trust anyone maybe you could think of something that you feel comfortable sharing but wouldn’t normally and share it with someone.

👆If you feel your attachment style is not secure, there are different things you can do to help yourself develop a more secure attachment style 🙌. It’s important to remember you’ve had this attachment style since childhood, to change it overnight is an unrealistic expectation. A lot of the behaviours you may exhibit because of your attachment style, until now you may have assumed it to be just who you are as a person (e.g., being upset when you don’t receive a text from someone you’re dating). Moving into a more secure attachment style is difficult but here are some tips to help you with your journey... ❇️ Focus on building your own self-esteem and self-worth. This involves accepting and honouring yourself for who you are! ❇️ Create and develop a happy and healthy relationship with … YOU. This involves lots that we have already spoken about such as identifying and honouring your values and goals, setting boundaries, and healing from any trauma. ❇️ Learn to identify your needs. Stop putting everyone else's needs before your own and think about what it is that you need! Once you can identify what it is you need, the next step is beginning to get comfortable with expressing these needs to other people.
❇️ Practice self-compassion. Learn to identify when you are talking/treating yourself negatively and challenge these beliefs and behaviours from a compassionate point of view.

🤗 Happio is here to help you on your journey of self-discovery 🤗