Mental Health Monday: Introduction to Attachment Styles

Over the next few Mondays, I plan to share some resources that will allow us to learn about attachment styles. There are many wonderful YouTube channels, books, blogs, and podcasts on this topic, and I find them to be helpful as we consider how our relationships function, and how they, and we, can grow.

John Bowlby, a British psychologist and psychiatrist, is the pioneer on this research. He discovered that in early life, young human beings develop ways of attaching and detaching to caregivers in infancy and in toddlerhood, and these attachment styles continue to shape their relationships in the future. These patterns show up in all kinds of relationships, but especially in romantic partnerships and family connections, where attachment needs run the deepest and evoke both present emotional needs and past fears (often, unconscious).

There are four primary attachment styles. There is the secure attachment style, and three insecure attachment styles — 1) anxious preoccupied, 2) fearful avoidant (also sometimes called disorganized or anxious-avoidant), and 3) dismissive avoidant.

— People who are anxious preoccupied value closeness and tend to fear abandonment.
— People who are dismissive avoidant value their space and independence and tend to fear engulfment in other people’s needs.
— People who are fearful avoidant have a mix of both anxious and avoidant tendencies, and they move back and forth between these needs and fears. For this reason, in relationships, they can move closer and farther away intermittently (literally and/or internally where there is a lot of back and forth second-guessing in relationships).

Two important things to remember:
— While we all have a primary attachment style, each of these styles can be a spectrum too. People can simply lean anxious preoccupied, with fears triggered in times of stress. Or people can be dismissive avoidant, impacted by certain fears but still connected to relationships that are meaningful to them, rather than being deeply detached all the time. Or people can be fearful avoidant, but more secure because they’ve become aware of their patterns and worked to meet their needs and heal core wounds.

— No matter what attachment style we developed in early life, we can all work toward healing these fears and patterns. We can work toward having a secure attachment style. Sometimes this is called earned-secure (healed and developed in adulthood).

My favorite YouTube channel on attachment styles is Thais Gibson’s The Personal Development School. It’s also one of my favorite YouTube channels overall. So many wonderful things to learn!

Here is her introductory video about the four major attachment styles:

— Renee Roederer