Attachment Theory question

[Liketheducks]

Curious how many people here identify as having an anxious attachment in relationships?    And, how do you help yourself to feel more secure in healthy relationships?

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Liketheducks,

Great question! Yes, I came out of childhood with anxious attachment style. Learning about it and getting good information about it helped me a lot because then I could look at what I need and what creates safety for me, within adult relationships.

There's a lot of great stuff written about anxious attachment. My current favourite are videos by Patrick Teahan.

Learning about attachment styles helped me because there's a lot we didn't learn if we didn't experience secure attachment as kids. I never got the chance to learn what it feels like to build trust over time, in order to build a secure attachment to a friend or healthy adult. I had to learn that as an adult.

It probably depends on what causes our anxiety to ramp up as adults. For those of us with unreliable parents, reliability becomes the healthy thing we need to experience in our relationships as adults. Over time, when we see that the other person is reliable, this allows us to feel safe in the relationship with them.

If I had reliable adults in my life as a kid, I would have felt valued and seen and important to the adults in my life. Patrick Teahan explains this in a lot of his videos.

People who struggle with anxious attachment are missing some key experiences such as having a relative who is reliable, or who is stable emotionally, or who is attentive and available, or who believes us when we share, or who encourages us when we try new things. When adults are stable and reliable to their children, then children have the emotional states that go along with feeling seen and valued.

Adults with "secure" attachment styles, had 'good enough' experiences with enough of those emotional states - feeling seen, heard, believed, attended to, valued, respected. Gabor Mate's work focuses on this same principle and he teaches a lot about attachment as well.

According to attachment theory, those people become adults who know how to feel those things in their adult relationships because they grew up feeling those things. But for those of us who grew up feeling dread and anxiety instead, we have to find ways to feel safe, and this happens slowly, in my opinion, after finding someone who is healthy enough to offer us those opportunities.

By being reliable, open, kind, patient, they offer us a chance to feel the emotions that come from being securely attached to someone safe. If we are self-aware, we can attend to the anxiety that comes from childhood. Then over time, the trust will build and we will feel securely attached to that person.

Trees