According to John Bowlby, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, the attachment styles we display and the types of connection or relationship we play out is actually determined and influenced by the relationship we had with our parents growing up. This means if you grew up in a household where affection was scarce and emotions were often rejected, then you are more likely to have issues showing affection in your friendships, intimate relationships or other types of relationships. Because you didn’t learn how to. Your childhood environment determines your development and sets the precedence for future interactions.
This can play out in what John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth call attachment style. Bowlby first described attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.” Everyone, except the Buddhist Monks, has an attachment to something. You can be attached to your friends, family, partner, devices, home, or pets. Everything has the potential for someone to attach to.
In a bid to understand more about attachment, Bowlby and Ainsworth developed attachment styles to explain how certain influences from a child’s developmental stage affect his/her attachment in adulthood.
Attachment styles
1. Anxious Attachment Style
Ambivalent/Anxious attachment: One becomes very anxious around their partner or friends in the fear of them leaving. This attachment style can develop when growing up, one’s parents weren’t available, didn’t give them a lot of attention, or threatened to leave and never return. As an adult, you may project this unto someone else—scared that they’d leave or abandon you.
This can play out as restricting or limiting yourself from fully being yourself or stating your opinions in fear that people will reject or abandon you.
2. Avoidant Attachment Style
Avoidant attachment: If you have no preference for a parent versus a stranger, or lack the emotional connection between parent and children, then you might be operating on avoidant attachment. This attachment style often develops in neglected children. Perhaps their parents weren’t around often, so they learned to be self-reliant. Or maybe their parents didn’t meet their emotional needs so they closed themselves off from others.
You might avoid or ignore your or others’ feelings in relationships because you grew up thinking emotions weren’t important. You may tend to close yourself off from affection.
People who display avoidant attachment styles are often hyper-independent. They do not like relying on others and will prefer doing things alone.
3. Fearful Attachment Style
Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidant attachment: With a fearful-avoidant attachment, while one may want intimacy and closeness, they are scared of being hurt. They might push others away even though they want to open up to others.
Perhaps when they were younger, they saw what affection looked like with others. But not having it themselves, made them close up and avoid emotional connections, though they want that connection still.
This may play out as walking away from a relationship as soon as things get serious, or in on and off relationships.
4. Secure Attachment Style
Secure attachment: Secure attachment style is the healthiest attachment style. One knows how to regulate their emotions. A person who expresses secure attachment is comfortable with expressing their emotions. This person can easily rely on their partner without feeling insecure. And they have their partners rely on them too.
So, which attachment style describes you?