ATTACHMENT STYLES

Hey there beautiful people.
Probably most of us already know about the different five love languages (for those that don’t, I will soon be writting a piece about them). I’m excited to tell you that I have recently come to learn about the four different attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, disorganized and secured.
In short, they are basically a theory concerning relationships between people.

What interests me about these attachment styles is how they describe the type of people we are based off other people when it comes to being socially and emotionally involved. Attachments starts with how the parents or caregivers respond to their infants, particularly during times of distress which navigates the types of attachment their children form later in life. The way parents handle their children’s emotional needs from an early age will go on to guide the child’s feelings, thoughts and expectations as an adult. For example, when a child goes through a traumatic experience and doesn’t get the support from the parents, it creates a moment of distrust and grow up to fend for their emotional needs the way they see fit of which most times can be unhealthy ways. In other cases, attachment styles formed during early childhood are not necessarily identical to those created during adulthood. But what I’m saying is, patterns established in childhood have a huge impact on later relationships. That is why most of the times it is important for young adults to engage in therapy and learn to let go of their childhood traumas to begin a healthy lifestyle for themselves, family and friends.

So understanding your attachments helps to categorize yourself and the relationships you have with others.

Avoidant attachment style
^You tend to be so independent of which forming relationships with others become difficult.
^You were not modeled to meet emotional needs of other people or of yourself in a healthy way.
^You dodge tough subjects and conversations with others.
^You don’t open up about your feelings and expressing how you really feel about something.
^You struggle to involve other people into  your life either failing to introduce them to friends and family or other aspects of your life.

Anxious attachment style
^You often neglect your responsibilities to rather spend time with your people (especially if your love language is quality time)
^You feel offended or gets jealous when your person does something and doesn’t involve you.
^Easily express your emotions on how you feel about people or how people make you feel.
^Struggle with insecurities and trust issues yet you depend heavily on peoples reassurances.
^You tend to be very loving, generous and kind but it can get very frustrating for you especially if people around you are not excellent communicators.

Disorganized attachment style
^It’s a constant push and pull for you.
^You have fear of abandonment.
^You fear getting emotionally intimate.
^Fear of rejection.
^Wants intimacy but also puts up alot of barriers so you don’t get hurt.
^Fear of communicating your needs coz you’re afraid they’ll walk away.
^You say things you don’t even mean sometimes just to hurt others although sometimes that wasn’t your intention.
^You’d distance yourself from people, either reject them or ignore them but as soon as you realise that they are doing the same, you’d want answers.
^You don’t know what is more frightening for you; being alone or getting close to people.

Secure attachment style.
^Rarely feels jealous or questions your partner.
^Easy to connect with others.
^Can regulate your emotions.
^Excellent communication skills, you prefer to speak up and share your feelings.
^Don’t play games because you prefer real commitment.
^Have the ability to seek emotional support.
^Comfortable being alone.

What’s frustrating about every attachment style

Avoidant attachment
They are emotionally reserved and they kind of always keep you at a comfortable distance. They have been through alot in life and they just don’t trust anyone to share their burdens with. Communication and emotional intimacy is definitely a struggle to them and they fear co-dependency than anything. They avoid any relationship that has potential to grow into something meaningful as they don’t know how to function around healthy minded people due to your past experiences. Chasing and pressuring them to talk about an issue will just make them distance themselves more from you but don’t assume they don’t care.

Anxious attachment
Tend to take boundaries personally, like if you can’t keep up constant communication with them or you needing sometime to yourself, the way they process it is either they have done something wrong. So when you are in love with someone like that you’d wanna provide them with constant re-asurerrance. They struggle to believe that people geniounly love and care about them. Example if you don’t respond to their text or calls, they’ll start to have anxiety and make up things, basically overthink.

Disorganized attachment
They are the mystery box. Because they are both avoidant and anxious, you just never know what you’re gonna get. They might be emotionally reserved and closed off in the beggining but as soon as they get used to you, they start experiencing high level of anxiety. It’s so hard to identify what they need from you.

Secure attachment
Most things about them is handled in a healthy way. You might call them boring but that just means you yourself have some healing to do.

It’s important to ask which part of yourself do you need to work on because alot of times it’s ussually due to childhood trauma. Personally, I often mention that it is probably wise to have couples therapy when in a relationship as this is a way you can learn to cater to both your emotional needs, because that is a space where most people are likely to open up on issues that are rarely discussed, but only if both people can agree that therapy is actually needed and they want to change and work on certain aspects of their lives.