It is a human tendency to get attached to the people around them. It is a trait found in early childhood. The first attachments of children are formed with their caregivers that primarily tend to be their parents. Here, it is worth mentioning that how these attachments are formed impact our attachment styles in future.
How many relationships you have, how you interact with your partner, how attached or detached you act towards them are all influenced by your attachment style. Even if you are not in a relationship, the way you act around people closest to you, including your family and friends and how you treat and interact with them can also help you determine your attachment style.
There are several ways a person can form attachments. What do you know about attachment styles? Let’s have a look!
What is an Attachment Style?
The attachment style or you may say ‘The Attachment Theory’ in psychology, is a way to describe your emotional attachment with a person in any relationship. These attachments are not merely related to romantic relationships, but they also determine the connections we form with all the people around us.
This theory differs from Enneagram and Myers-Briggs’s theory because the attachment theory underlies childhood and various past experiences before determining your attachment style. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth worked on attachment styles and found that the way children and infants get their basic needs met from their parents affects their attachment style with them in future and for the rest of their lives.
Before going down memory lane and remembering how your parents treated you or how you interacted with them in your early childhood, I would recommend you take the quizzes. These simple questions about how your relationship panned out with your parents can determine your attachment style. Your attachment style doesn’t always explain everything in your relationship because your style may vary depending on the type of relationship, whether it’s with your spouse, siblings, parents or friends. But it can help you understand why you gravitate towards certain people and why the same problems occur in your relationship.
Different Attachment Styles
Humans form one of the four major attachment styles in their early childhood that influence their attachment throughout their adult life.
1. Secure Attachment
People with a secure attachment style are easy going and can easily display affection with others, specifically loved ones. If you have a secure attachment style, you will find yourself comfortable and confident in showing affection to your loved ones, whether it’s a romantic relationship or your family. Depending on others and emotionally attaching yourself to others comes easy to you; whether your best friend, partner or family, you trust them and connect with them effortlessly.
Such people had a secure foundation in their childhood. Feeling protected and having the freedom to venture and explore the world independently were part of their childhood, significantly impacting a person when they are in their adult relations. It doesn’t mean that they don’t go through hardships and conflicts; it just means that they do not shut down or react with anxiety in the face of conflicts.
Signs of People with Secure Attachment Styles
· Good self-esteem
· Share feelings comfortably
· Trust others
· Avoid blaming others when arguing
· Ability to grieve, learn, and move forward
2. Anxious Preoccupied Attachment
The title is pretty self-explanatory, which means that the people who have an anxious preoccupied attachment often feel anxious and insecure in their relationships. Most of the insecurities they confront usually revolve around the end of their relationship or do not like being alone, so they think that their partner doesn’t care about them anymore. These people require constant validation from external sources and have a hard time trusting anyone, even those closest to them. The anxious preoccupied attachment also includes manipulative and controlling behaviors such as insulting and embarrassing your friends and loved ones to feel better about yourself and snooping behind your spouse’s back, and going through their things.
Signs of People with Anxious Preoccupied Attachment Styles
· Need constant validation
· Struggles being lonely
· Fear of rejection
· Feel insecure
· Oversensitive and overly kind
· Have a history of emotional turbulence in relationships
3. Dismissive Avoidant Attachment
People with dismissive-avoidant attachment often emotionally distance themselves from their spouse and loved ones. They tend to be more independent and seek solitude. They incline towards showing fewer emotions and can detach themselves easily. People with dismissive avoidant attachment can also turn their emotions off during tough and heated situations and run away from conflicts by either leaving the room or answering by responding with dismissive reactions, such as “I don’t care” and “whatever”.
Signs of People with Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Styles
· Do not rely on others for emotional support
· Avoid intimate relationships
· Fewer close friends
· Commitment issues
· Distance people who get close
4. Fearful Avoidant Attachment
People who have a fearful-avoidant attachment have a tendency of avoiding attachment altogether. They are afraid of commitment and think that whoever gets close to them will end up hurting them. They are afraid of being too close and too distant from others, which is why they try to keep their feelings and emotions in check, but sometimes get overwhelmed by those emotions and tend to have an outburst.
People with this attachment style are often quite unpredictable and have unbalanced moods. Their mind works in a way where they want to be close to the person they feel safe towards and think that the same person would hurt them if they get too close, resulting in disorganization and having no strategy of getting what they want.
Signs of People with Fearful Avoidant Attachment Styles
· Avoid people due to fear of rejection
· Have low-self esteem
· Have trust issues
· Cannot rely on others
· Have a history of abuse, grief, and abandonment
Effect of Attachment Styles on Your Love Life
Even though there is a saying that goes ‘opposites attract’, there is a greater possibility that you would be attracted to someone similar to you. If you are dismissive or anxious, you find that if the other person in the relationship is also dismissive or anxious, you get used to that behavior and treat it like a norm in relationships. As a result, if you find someone who doesn’t show these characters, you feel less safe around them and think that they are ignorant and less invested in the relationship.
Attachment styles are not the only thing that affects your relationships, but your relationships can also impact your attachment styles and change them. For example, a bad friendship or a toxic relationship can make you feel insecure and overly cautious regarding future relations. It is also possible to change your attachment style by surrounding yourself with secure people who might help you find the comfort and confidence you lack. However, working on yourself is also a huge part of improving and changing your style.
How to Improve Your Attachment Patterns
If you think that you’re doomed to be single or a magnet for failed relationships due to your attachment style, don’t worry! Because there are various ways of healing and improving your attachment styles.
Your brain works by adapting to situations; if you have an anxious attachment style, try surrounding yourself with confident people who encourage you and divulge in self-love to become less anxious.
If you are an avoidant type of person, then challenging yourself to do what you are afraid of greatly helps. Open up to people, go out more, instead of judging people, try empathizing with them. Looking out to people who are secure in their relationships and friendships and surrounding yourself with them will help you learn to love, trust, confidence, and vulnerability.
In Closing…
Lastly, your attachment style was the saving grace you needed as a child. Still, as you grow older, you need to realize that as much as your attachment style helped you in the past, it might be something that’s holding you back now from having a healthy and meaningful relationship.
So, it’s up to you. Do you want to stay the same way and have uncertain relationships for the rest of your life, or do you want to change and have a great and fulfilling relationship?
If you have an attachment style that you want to unlearn, you must learn self-compassion first.
