Attachment Styles

Secure: Ability to build healthy and long-lasting relationships.

How it develops:

• feeling secure with your caregivers from childhood

• being able to ask for reassurance or validation without punishment

• felt safe, understood, comforted, and valued during your early interactions

• caregivers were emotionally available and aware of their own emotions and behaviors

Signs:

• ability to regulate your emotions

• easily trusting others

• effective communication skills

• ability to seek emotional support

• comfortable being alone

• comfortable in close relationships

• ability to self-reflect in partnerships

• being easy to connect with

• ability to manage conflict well

• high self-esteem

• ability to be emotionally available

How it manifests in relationships:

• grow up feeling emotionally and physically secure

• can engage in the world with others in a healthy way

• tend to navigate relationships well

• generally positive, trusting, and loving to their partners

• trust their partners’ intentions and jealousy is often not an issue for them

• feel that they’re worthy of love and don’t need external reassurance

Avoidant: Inability to engage in physical and emotional intimacy resulting in repetitive failure of long-term relationships.

(Avoidant, dismissive-avoidant, or anxious-avoidant are all words for the same insecure attachment style.)

How it develops:

• have had strict or emotionally distant and absent caregivers during childhood years

• children may learn to adopt a strong sense of independence so they don’t have to rely on anyone else for care or support

Your caregivers may have:

• left you to fend for yourself

• expected you to be independent

• reprimanded you for depending on them

• rejected you when expressing your needs or emotions

• being slow to respond to your basic

• parents are outright neglectful but others are simply busy, slightly disinterested, and more concerned with things like grades, chores, or manners than feelings, hopes, dreams, or fears

Signs:

• persistently avoid emotional or physical intimacy

• feel a strong sense of independence

• are uncomfortable expressing your feelings

• are dismissive of others

• have a hard time trusting people

• feel threatened by anyone who tries to get close to you

• spend more time alone than interacting with others

• believe you don’t need others in your life

• commitment issues

How it manifests in relationships:

• navigate relationships at an arm’s length

• lack need for emotional intimacy 

• romantic relationships are not able to reach any level of depth

• avoid getting emotionally close

Anxious: another type of insecure attachment characterized by:

• fear of rejection

• fear of abandonment

• depending on a partner for validation and emotional regulation

• codependent tendencies

(A.K.A anxious-ambivalent or anxious-preoccupied)

How it develops:

• inconsistent parenting that isn’t attuned to a child’s needs

• children have difficulty understanding their caregivers and have no security for what to expect from them moving forward

• confused within their parental relationships and feel unstable

• experience very high distress when their caregivers leave

• children often grow up thinking they are supposed to take care of other people’s feelings and often become codependent.

Your caregivers may have:

• alternated between being overly coddling and detached or indifferent

• been easily overwhelmed

• been sometimes attentive and then push child away

• made child responsible for how they felt

Signs:

• clingy tendencies

• highly sensitive to criticism (real or perceived)

• needing approval from others

• jealous tendencies

• difficulty being alone

• low self-esteem

• feeling unworthy of love

• intense fear of rejection

• significant fear of abandonment

• difficulty trusting others

How it manifests in relationships:

• feel unworthy of love and need constant reassurance from their partners

• blame themselves for challenges in the relationship

• exhibit frequent and intense jealousy or distrust due to poor self-esteem

• fear of being abandoned, rejected, or alone

Disorganized: Having extremely inconsistent behavior and difficulty trusting others

(aka fearful-avoidant in children)

How it develops:

• most common causes are childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse

•  fear of their parents (their sense of safety) is also present

Your caregivers may have:

• inconsistency

• are often seen as sources of comfort and fear by their children, which leads to their disorganized behaviors

Signs:

• fear of rejection

• inability to regulate emotions

• contradictory behaviors

• high levels of anxiety

• difficulty trusting others

• signs of both avoidant and anxious attachment styles

• mood disorders

• personality disorders

• self-harm

• substance use disorder

How it manifests in relationships:

• unpredictable and confusing behavior

• alternate between being aloof and independent and being clingy and emotional

• desperately seeking for love but will push partners away due to fear of love

• believe that they’ll always be rejected but don’t avoid emotional intimacy

• perceive partners as unpredictable

• behave in unpredictable ways within their relationships as they continue to wrestle between the need for security and fear