I don’t get it
Attachment styles was a theory developed to explain psychological disorders in children, by describing how they interacted with their parents.
The styles are: secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant.
These were developed to describe patterns of behavior seen in children to communicate with other psychologists in a clinical context.
In recent years, it has been popular to apply the terms to adult romantic relationships. This has about the same utility as using Meyers-Briggs personality types, or a horoscope. If it is useful to you in troubleshoot your issues, then great! But it isnt good science - which we can tell from the fact that it divides people up into distinct groups. These sorts of groupings can be useful for scientists to communicate about population-level issues - but they are far less useful for the individual. To the extent that they are useful for individual categorization, they would be useful in categorizing the extremes - maybe 1% of adults could each be said to have anxious and avoidant attachment styles, and 0.1% with anxious-avoidant. Because we only care if this is causing real, significant issues in peoples lives - not just normal relationship (or lack-of-relationship) issues that everyone deals with.
The problem is that if you give an average person this framework, they will do a little online questionnaire and think to themselves “Oh no! Sometimes I do question my own worth!! And sometimes I do think that other people suck! I’m anxious-avoidant - I’m the worst, and no one will ever love me!!!” And of course, this now makes them a good target for a therapy course, or a new drug, or to watch your relationships youtube channel.
Is this like the booked Attached? There’s Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant types.
To put it basically:
Secure - someone who is secure in their feelings. They generally take others at face value. Not necessarily in a gullible sense, but to give an example: if your wife suddenly told you that she would have to work late tonight, you will respond back to this with a calm and rational demeanor. You don’t blow up and cause a scene over this. You may or may not accept this at face value. Your type is not that you do accept it. Some secure types of people have doubts, but what separates them is how they will handle it. Someone with a secure type will address this with their partner by being direct and not jumping to assumptions they may have, but being as logical as possible.
Anxious - someone who deals with a lot of anxious feelings and responds to those feelings with behaviors. Like in the previous example, if your wife suddenly told you she was going to work late at work tonight, if you have an anxious type, you will have doubts about the validity of this. And with those doubts, you are the type who be more likely to resort to acting out as a result of this in what they call “protest behavior”. Your protest behavior would be in the form of not directing and calmly addressing this with your wife. Instead you resort to passive aggression, such as texting something like “You can spend the night at your boss’ house after fucking him tonight.” or doing something rash like packing up your stuff and leaving the house because you’re sure that the marriage is over. In essence, you’re more likely to act out in this state over what you perceive as a threat rather than being direct and open to hearing more before making a decision.
Avoidant - someone who is more avoidant in how they interact with others. They usually are more likely to want space from others. This person may get annoyed with a partner who is seeking for reassurance. There was an example in the book of a man and his wife who were part of a game show. His wife was anxious and constantly wanting him to hold her hand. He, the avoidant type, preferred to not do this as he felt this was dumb to keep having to hold her hand and they should just focus on the games instead.
That is to say, you may have anxious or avoidant feelings inside, but the secure type is someone who manages them in a preferable way. They may have feelings about their wife staying longer at the office, but they will be more likely to address it appropriately with their partner and be calm and rational instead of being passive aggressive about it. The secure type is also one who can understand that something like holding their partner’s hand may be silly, but it’s what this person needs in this moment and it’s how they want to support their partner.
The book goes into detail about how these aren’t necessarily bad types, but tries to help guide people into navigating their actions and how to identify others you interact with and understand how they are as people with specific attachment types can behave in different ways and better explain something that may seem foreign to you. To explain that the way they interact may not necessarily be bad, but gives you better clarity. The book also talks about what attachment types are best with others and which aren’t which can greatly impact how feasible a relationship can be.
Edit: forgot to expand on the way it goes. The book addresses this and it says that scientists still aren’t sure how these develop. There are theories, but nothing definitive.
It all goes hand in hand with the “nature vs nurture” discussion in psychology. This tries to investigate whether you develop your personality traits because your parents were that way or is it because you developed it from your environment growing up? I remember my psychology textbook going over twins separated at birth and this being one of the most interesting cases for this. Even though they didn’t grow up together in the same environment, they still had very similar mannerisms into adulthood, things we would assume would develop as they grow up because of how their parents raised them.
It’s the same with attachments. It’s not entirely clear whether someone developed them from childhood environments or from biology.
I feel like it is important to tag onto the top comment and note: anyone reading this does not “have” an attachment style. The way you interact with others will change based on the day of the week and what you ate for breakfast. There is no anxious-attachment neurotransmitter, nor an avoidant-attachment brain region. They are not switches we can flip on and off, nor boxes we can neatly categorize people into. In fact, the boxes themselves are made up, and could have been described in any number of other ways, had the original researchers thought about things differently at the time.
You’re right and I’m actually editing my comment right now to be more clear about this. I feel I wasn’t as clear as I’d like to be in describing these types.
As someone with general anxiety disorder, I am surprised to realize I have the secure attachment style despite this.
On another note: that fact about separated twins is interesting. I am going to have to really look into it. Any books you would recommend?
That is fascinating, but at the same time it shouldn’t be and you should be proud to be that way. I was all over the place when writing my original comment, so forgive how I wrote some of the things I wrote. But essentially what separates a secure and anxious type of person isn’t that a secure person never has thoughts and feelings like that, but it’s in the way they go about navigating their various relationships (familial, romantic, platonic, work, etc.). So in my example, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with feeling doubtful and a little uncertain that your wife suddenly says she has to work late tonight and you feeling like there’s a possibility that she’s cheating, but a secure type will navigate those feelings more rationality than an anxious type who will blow up and act out over it. The secure type will address their concerns in a more calm and relaxed manner despite the fact they may have those feelings. Some secure people don’t have those feelings at all and just take it at face value. Honestly, good on you for being the secure type!
As for books…it’s been a while, so I’ve been going solely off memory from back in college. My college textbook is where I read most of this on so if I were to give a recommendation, it would be that lol. I’m sure there are books others can recommend. I’d say check up on any materials that have to do with the topic of “nature vs nurture” and they will most likely go into more detail about the phenomenon of twins and how alike they can be.
I know a lot about this attachment stuff only because I recently was recommended it by someone I was dating. I read the book “Attached” by Amir Levine & Rachel S. F. Heller. I don’t remember them going into any details about the topic of twins and going deep into nature vs nurture, though. The book has a quiz to help you find out what attachment type you might be.
The person I dated was a secure type with a little bit of anxious. I’m mostly anxious with a little secure. But the book has been helping me understand it and find better ways to become more secure.
Thank you.
Humans, like mammals, like it when we belong. This is pre-verbal and pre-cultural, in the sense that all babies feel good when someone sees them with kind eyes and feel bad when they’re left alone.
However, on top of these pre-verbal drives, we learn about the world through our experience and our thoughts. If our guardians are kind and consistent, we learn to expect that and we ourselves become kind and consistent. If our parents are unkind and inconsistent, we learn that.
By the time we become adults, we bring many of those learnings into relationships. We may be kind and consistent with our partners. Or we may be unkind and inconsistent.
As with many things, we can change. In fact, you can have one attachment style in one context and another attachment style in another context. This depends on the specific schemas or thoughts and experiences that you have.
That makes sense thanks so much! How can you have one type in one situation and one in another? Can you give an example?
Sure. We have schemas, or organized thoughts in our memories. Schemas can be molded with our parents, such that we learn “My dad is abusive toward me because I’m a terrible person”. These types of schemas are built even though the child is not responsible at all for their own abuse. But the reality is that many children find it more likely that they are the problem compared to their guardians being the problem.
That same child could have a wonderful teacher in school, someone who is caring, understanding, curious about the child’s interests, and consistent. The child could then learn “I’m safe here with this teacher and unsafe with my own guardians”. That’s how you get different schemas built in different contexts.
You probably know this already, down in your heart. You probably have people that you like to be around, people that are a bit kinder and a bit more consistent than others. And you also probably have people that you don’t like to be around, people that are unkind and inconsistent.
If you want to learn more about this contextual way of looking at attachment styles, you can check out Piaget’s schema theory and contextual behavioral sciences.
Just got this. That makes sense! It’s a really easy to understand explanation thanks for taking the time to write it out
Yes sorry should have thought to say
Seems like it. Some context in the question would be nice. I’ve never heard of this before.
Attachment of what?
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