July 31, 2022 • 37 mins
We discuss the four attachment styles and their implications for the relationships we have in our 20’s. Where did the idea of attachment come from, how relevant are they and can we heal disordered patterns of attachment? Listen in for the answers to those important questions
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello, it's great to have you
here listening in to the podcast. Welcome, Welcome back, Welcome.
(00:27):
If it's your first time, I hope you stick around. Yeah,
it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me,
but I thought it was a really great time to
talk about a topic that I've kind of had in
the archive, something I've wanted to talk about for a while.
You've clicked on this episode, you know. We're talking about
attachment styles and attachment theory, a big Pandora's box of
(00:53):
information and studies and misconceptions and psychobabble and pop culture. Yeah,
a pretty big topic, one that is incredibly important in
our twenties, probably one of the most important things for
the long term health and stability of our relationships throughout
(01:13):
our lives. But it also has its roots in childhood.
So a very complicated episode, but one that I think
definitely involves a bit of a discussion and some more
information out there to really understand what attachment styles are
I wanted to talk about them because their role in
relationships of every nature, not just romantic relationships, is so
(01:39):
important in our twenties, and like most things, this decade,
this first decade of adulthood is where they really start
to take a hold and solidify and concrete. So, yeah,
they are super important, and they're important because really that
our health and well being is greatly influenced by our
(02:00):
emotional and social connections with others, particularly those that are
our life partners or those were intimate with, or those
we're really close with, like our family and our friends.
And recently, attachment styles, I've seen them cropping up everywhere.
They've become a big part of the psychobabble recently, and
(02:20):
they've been highly popularized to become kind of part of
our communication and part of general conversations. I see tiktoks
about attachment styles all their time, saying like, oh, you know,
I'm an anxious attachment, which is why you know I
need someone to message me back, or you know, I'm
securely attached, Like this is what it's like, and all
(02:42):
of it is kind of you know, using attachment styles
as a source of entertainment or as an explanation for
things that perhaps we all go through, but that is
so far from the truth. Their role in pop culture
and in our daily kind of conversations and dialogue really
deeply misconstrues and differs from what attachment theory really seeks
(03:06):
to explain in clinical psychology, and attachment styles are a
way of explaining a disorder and a disordered way of relating, loving,
and interacting with others. They're not a quick and easy explanation.
They're not a general explanation. They're actually quite serious, and
(03:27):
I think recently they have become almost like horoscopes, almost
like a personality assessment. When I was looking up some
recent papers for to kind of bring into this episode
and kind of doing my research, I found this website
and on the website it was like take a quiz
to determine your attachment style, which I just found so funny.
(03:52):
I found it so so funny because the internet or
self assessment cannot confirm for you what your attachment style is.
It is so much more serious than that, and the
true implications of what your attachment style are, particularly if
you are not securely attached, a much more extreme and
(04:13):
severe and we're going to get into that later, but nonetheless,
on a lighter, less extreme level, they are a really
interesting concept to consider and apply, especially on perhaps a
more scaled down level to our relationships in our twenties
and primarily our romantic relationships. So let's jump in and
(04:34):
discuss what attachment styles mean, the types of attachment styles,
their clinical implications, the history, and why they're not a
death sentence for the stability and sustainability and healthiness of
your relationship. Okay, so we're going to begin with a
(04:56):
bit of a history lesson, as we often do with
these episodes, talking about where attachment theory and the idea
of attachment styles have come from and their origin in
not just psychology but in the world and the context
that kind of led to the theories around attachment style
becoming quite popular and even originating in the first place. So,
(05:21):
as is, although I think attachment styles, and if you
do have some pre understanding of attachment styles and you
know what the four attachment styles are, they might seem
quite common sense, and they might kind of seem quite
intuitive something that we have probably we didn't need a
psychologist or some deep research to tell us. It's just
a pretty yeah, pretty easy to understand concept that people
(05:44):
relate to others and experience their relationships in different ways.
But before the nineteen fifties, which is when research on
attachment styles first began, there really wasn't much of an
investigation into how people relate to others and how that
might be different, the outcomes that that might have for them,
(06:05):
and where it kind of begins. So attachment theory came
from the brain was the brainchild of a psychologist and
a researcher called John Bolby. If you have studied psychology before,
you would have heard this name. He is very famous
in social psychology, one of the first leading social psychologists,
primarily because of his work on attachment styles, which is
(06:29):
obviously what we are discussing today. So John Bolby, he
began his work in the nineteen fifties after World War Two,
and what he observed why he wanted to look into this,
the different ways that people relate to each other, was
because he was observing this strange pattern in a lot
(06:49):
of children, where children were entering their teenage years and
children that were born during World War One, sorry, World
War two, we're entering their teenage years, and there seemed
to be very different outcomes in very different ways that
kids were relating to their caregivers and to their romantic partners,
their teachers, their friends. And what he thought was this
(07:11):
probably has something to do with the role and the
differing role that parents had with their kids during World
War Two. You know, it was a time of war.
People lost parents, people had distant parents, you know, men
and women came back from the front lines and had PTSD,
and that really bled into their relationship and how they
(07:32):
raised their children. And what he found was there were
some kids that seemed to have much more secure relationships,
be a lot less worried about their relationships compared to others.
There was also this emerging idea that how we look
after and care for children when they are infants actually
seems to be quite important. Before this, it was kind
(07:57):
of I think, there was this idea that you know, kids,
all they really need is food and water and you know,
a soft bed and they will be fine. Love and
things like that and comfort and security. Yep, they're important.
They're nice, but they don't really determine what happens to
(08:17):
a child, and they don't really have much of an influence.
But there was a big change in that and one
of the reasons why there was this big investigation or
study into these kids that were removed from their parents
or were orphaned during the war or in the US,
they were removed and they were put into the care
(08:37):
of these nurses and these foster nurses. They weren't put
into homes. They were put into hospital settings almost and
all of these kids received the food, they received water,
they were clean, they had light, they exercised, their health
was taken care of, but they all quite a few
(08:58):
of them started getting really sick or showing real signs
of developmental delay. Some of them even died. And what
they kind of realized from that was it's not just
the basic bare necessities that determine the outcomes for children
and are important to their health, but it's the kind
of love they receive and the love and care they
(09:21):
receive primarily from their caregiver. And in this situation, they
didn't have a stable caregiver. They had people who were
employed to look after them, and these people rotated in
and out of the hospital wards, there wasn't always the
same person to look after you. And importantly, the kids
that formed strong attachments and relationships with a particular nurse
(09:42):
or a particular doctor did seem to do better, especially
when that relationship did contain an extra degree of love.
So John Bolby steps into this saying, thinking and willing
to explore in the wake of this kind of interesting phenomenon,
why is that kids seemed to need love and need
(10:04):
more than just the basic necessities to live. And that
was also meeting some of those observations he was making
about these three to four different categories of children that
were becoming adults and having difficulties in their relationships, some
more than others. So John Bolby he run these experiments
on children, observational experiments where he would have a child
(10:26):
and a parent in a room and he would see
what would happen when the parent left. Pretty simple, but
the outcomes were really really interesting. Some children would naturally
get upset, they would cry, but when someone else came in,
they could be comforted by someone else, but they did
(10:47):
still really want their primary caregiver. These kids, he would assume,
were quite secure, they had a good relationship with their caregiver,
but they also could be comforted by someone else and
had to trust that they caregiver would return. Then there
were the other types of children, and these children were very,
(11:09):
very different in many many ways. So when their caregivers left,
what tended to happen. There were three different types of reactions.
Some of the kids just did not give a fuck,
like they really didn't care, which was really interesting because
caregivers are so fundamental to the lives that we leave
(11:30):
as children. They're fundamental to our survival. We're dependent on
them for absolutely everything. So it makes sense that the
relationship you have with your caregiver, with your primary care giver,
whether that's a parent or someone else, would be really
really important to your outcomes as a child, but also
as an adult. They are just the most important figure
in our lives. So John, mister Bowlby and this man
(11:54):
observed that there was this category of children that when
their parents left, they really did not care. They didn't
they didn't care when they came back, they just appeared
really really disinterested. And then there was another category of
children who got incredibly upset. They couldn't be comforted, they
didn't want to play with anything, but when their caregiver
came back into the room, they ignored them. The caregiver
(12:16):
would try and give them attention and they would turn
the other way, they would still be crying, but it
didn't seem that their caregiver could comfort them. And he
made this observation that how the parents were treating their
children outside of this experimental setting was deeply, deeply important
to how this child would react in this setting. In
this experiment, parents who would consistently show their children love
(12:40):
and show their children care their children would be the
ones who were securely attached, who would be upset when
their parents left, but once they came back in, they
trusted they would return and they could be comforted by them.
But this other group of kids, the kids who really
didn't care, who didn't seem to have any attachment to
their caregiver, or the ones who were almost angry at them,
who had this weird distrust. He kind of made the conclusion,
(13:04):
came to the conclusion that the relationship and the way
that these parents were caring for their kids was probably
not too ideal. There was probably maybe a degree of maltreatment.
There was a degree of distrust and a lack of love,
a lack of consistency, and that really impacted how this
(13:26):
child would react to their caregiver and how children relate
to their caregivers. He also found through this longitudinal study
that he did that the relationships they tended to have.
He tracked kids in all the kids were in the
same condition, but he tracked the kids based on their
reaction for years. So he had three categories initially, and
(13:46):
he found that the kids would have one of those
three reactions, and so he grouped them up and then
he studied a few select members of each of these
groups over the next ten to twenty years, and what
he found was that the relationship and the reaction that
those children had in that experiment was deeply, deeply had deep,
(14:09):
long lasting impact on their relationships as adults, and in
some ways was really unforgiving when it came to their
outer relationships and not just romantic. It is important to
note that a lot of this research was highly heteronormative.
At the time. Gay couples couldn't adopt, children, didn't have children,
weren't recognized as suitable caregivers, which is obviously we now
(14:34):
know is kind of ridiculous. So there has been this
discussion recently of having a look at how the relationship
children have with parents who are both the same gender
might differ, or whether there would be a higher rate
of secure attachment and things like that. There's also heaps
of studies done on single parents and whether the attachment
styles of children who have single parents is different, and
(14:57):
the outcomes of that is that it really isn't doesn't
matter if you have one or two parents unless the
parent that you do have is one that you can't trust,
is one that isn't providing you with love and care,
one that might be might be treating you badly or
abusing you on drugs, or not absent who was absent,
(15:18):
So that's really what matters. But from these observations from
this experiment, John Bolby made the observation that there are
three to four attachment stars and pretty much every single
person would fall into one of these attachment stars. So
let's discuss what they are. So after John Bolby's initial work,
(15:46):
this was expanded on by Mary Ainsworth and she set
the premise along with him about the four attachment stars
that we now know of. And these are secure avoidant
that's also known as dismissive, and which is also known
as preoccupied and disorganized, which is also known as fearful avoidant,
(16:06):
So four categories. Now, it's worth saying the majority of
people would be secure, securely attached, and secure attachment is
kind of what we're all aiming for. The other three
are really characterized by a lot of difficulties with cultivating
and maintaining healthy relationships. But in contrast, the secure attachment
(16:28):
style it implies that a person is healthy in their relationships,
secure in their relationships, and comfortable expressing emotions openly asking
for things, being able to communicate, being able to have
their needs met, and adults with secure attachment styles they
can depend on their partners and their friends and their
family and in turn let their partners and their loved
(16:50):
ones rely on them. It also shows a lot of
studies have shown that those who are securely attached do
tend to have healthier lives overall. They're happier than more content, warm,
easy going. They tend to build deep, meaningful and long
(17:11):
lasting relationships, which is what we know contributes to a
lot of physical health and well being indicators. And they
even seem to be more well liked in the workplace.
They are better parents generally. Obviously we don't like to
make generalizations. Everyone can be a good parent, and as
I'll talk about later on, your attachment style isn't kind
(17:34):
of a death sentence, But secure attachment is kind of
the gold standard secure. If you're securely attached, you had someone,
you had caregivers that you could rely upon when you're
a child, or you've had people in your life mentors, teachers,
family members who have shown you love consistently, who have
shown you that you can trust others, and so these
(17:56):
people tend to thrive in their relationships. But they also
don't fear being on their own, which is a really
important caveat. They don't depend on the responsiveness or approval
of people in their lives, and they do tend to
have a positive view of themselves and others. That sounds
fucking great, sounds awesome, And the chances are if you're
listening to this, you probably are securely attached. There is
(18:18):
this sense that, you know, everyone kind of likes to
label themselves as the other three types, which will go
into but studies and research has shown that the majority
of people, if you haven't experienced some trauma in your upbringing,
you will grow up to become a securely attached adult.
So what about the others? What about anxious and preoccupied?
(18:39):
So for adults with an anxious attachment style, the partner
is often what they would see as their better half.
They also have a lot of anxiety around relationships. They
find that relationships, especially the early stages or even you know,
long term relationships, bring them a lot of anxiety. They
(19:01):
don't bring them joy. They're not easy things to cultivate.
They're filled with ups and downs. They often don't feel
like they can trust their partner, even if there's no
evidence for that. The thought of living without their partner
or being alone in general can also cause pretty higher
levels of anxiety, and people with this type of attachment
style typically have a pretty negative self image of themselves
(19:22):
as being unlovable, whilst they have a really positive view
of others. And in response to that low self esteem,
in response to that sense that people are going to
leave them, they're going to abandon them, they can't trust others,
they can't rely on others, the anxious adult will often
seek approval, support and responsiveness from their partner of those
(19:44):
in their lives kind of really consistently, almost to a
point of excess, and they're often worried and anxious that
their loved ones are not invested or as invested in
the relationship as they are. It's also characterized, and this
is perhaps the main element of anxious or preoccupied. It's
characterized by a strong fear of abandonment. They often feel
(20:09):
that they cannot rely on the people, or especially their
intimate partners, and they're going to leave them. That you know,
even in the early stages of relationships, if you just
started dating someone, you know you might see or might
feel that someone is, you know, minutes away, seconds away
from ignoring you, from ghosting you. They don't want to
see you, and that really hurts. You're looking for red flags,
(20:33):
You're looking for signs they're going to walk away, and
because of that, you often feel really anxious when it
comes to how fast their replies are or whether they're
consistently making plans. You have this really acute kind of
alarm setting for any indication that someone is going to leave,
and it's almost a coping mechanism. It's a security blanket
(20:55):
so that you can be the one who walks away first. So, yeah,
anxious and preoccupied characterized by a lot of anxiety but
also a strong fear of abandonment doesn't sound very pleasant,
does it not? At all? Parents of children who become
anxiously attached, were perhaps not always there for their children,
perhaps they had a parent who left them, who abandoned them.
(21:19):
Often it's seen in kids who had unstable caregivers who
would show them a lot of love and then leave,
which is you know, quite sad. But the next one
we have is avoidant or dismissive, So they dismissing or
avoidant type. We would often see them as like lone wolves,
people who in our lives, who don't really seem to
(21:40):
care or need affection or validation from others. They're independent,
they're self sufficient, and they're quite absent emotionally. The first
two things sound great, you know, strong independent, Sorry first
three strong independent, self sufficient. That sounds amazing, right, But
(22:00):
not so much in our relationships because they tend to
believe that they don't really need anyone. They don't want
to depend on others, have others depend on them, they
don't want to seek support or approval in social bonds,
and it's generally characterized by a lack of emotional closeness.
(22:20):
So although this person may avoid getting attached to people
and may not want to get attached to people, our
relationships and social connection is really really important. So it
is a disordered way of relating to others if you
have absolutely no need to have any level of connection
or emotional closeness with anyone. And they also tend to
(22:42):
hide or suppress their feelings when they're faced with the
potentially emotionally dense or extreme situation. So we can kind
of see what kind of parents these people may have had,
or the kind of early relationships they may have had
that have contributed to this dismissive way of things. They
were not able to rely on someone, and because of that,
(23:03):
they've reacted with a kind of hyper independence, which is
a trauma response, which we know is a trauma response.
They have convinced themselves their brain has trained itself to
not need anyone because no one has ever consistently been
there for them. And that's not a really great way
to live. You know, Love and romance and deep connections
(23:25):
with friends and family is one of the best parts
of life, So not having that does kind of fit
in the category of having some kind of disordered way
of relating to others. And finally we have the last one,
which is disorganized or fearful avoidant. So the disorganized type
tends to show unstable and ambiguous behaviors in the social bonds.
(23:46):
It's often seen as a mix of that avoidant dismissive
and of that anxious or preoccupied. So for adults with
this style of attachment, the partner, their partner, or their
relationships are often the source of both a strong need
and desire but also fear so fearful avoidant people, they
(24:07):
do want intimacy and closeness, they're anxious about receiving it,
but at the same time they really struggle to trust
others and they often push people away. They aren't able
to regulate their emotions well, and they don't really tend
to have strong emotional attachment, primarily due to their fear
of getting hurt. So a person who might have this,
an adult who might have this attachment style, might react
(24:29):
with both anxiety but then a really extreme coldness when
they're not receiving what they want from their partner, when
they feel their partner is pulling away, or even just
in general when everything seems to be going really really well.
But I really just want to quickly talk about these
final three attachment styles, the disordered attachment styles that being
(24:51):
disorganized and fearful avoidant dismissive, and anxious preoccupied a little
bit more Like I've kind of mentioned, there is this
idea that we can kind of self diagnose, and there
is a lot of information online or on TikTok or
Instagram with people very flippantly being like, oh, I'm anxiously
(25:12):
attached or I'm avoidant, dismissive. That might be the case.
You might not know what's going on in their life.
But it's important to recognize that when we talk about
these three attachment styles, we are talking about an extreme disorder.
We are talking about something that is consistent, something that
isn't dependent on who you're with. You know, everyone might
be you know, I think especially with anxious attachment. For example,
(25:35):
if you are with someone who does not treat you
right and who pulls away and who is not consistent,
it's a natural reaction to be very anxious. But the
anxious attachment style, and especially a disordered version, will still
be present when your partner is the most loving, stable,
caring person in the world. But we don't tend to
see these three disordered attachment style in the general population.
(25:57):
Very often. It often shows up in children who have
been abused or people who have been abused as children
or deprived, or have come from a really harsh environment,
maybe from an environment in which they didn't have any
kind of stable caregiver like a foster system, or if
they were moving around a lot without a stable parent
or caregiver in their lives. So it is really important
(26:20):
to recognize that it's probably unlikely. And I'm not saying
I know you're well enough to say this, but it
is important to consider that it's if you are, you know,
if you aren't someone who has experienced severe trauma in
your childhood or early life, it's unlikely that you will
consistently fall into one of the three disordered attachment styles.
(26:41):
They're genuinely, you know, kind of reserve for people who
have experienced something really traumatic that has, you know, just
completely changed the structure of their brain and how they
relate to others. But attachment styles are still important on
a smaller scale, and they can be used to inform
how we treat our relationships. But our attachment styles can
(27:03):
also change, you know, your attachment styles with your coworkers,
with your family and friends might also be different. Must
you might be secure with your family and your friends,
you might experience a level of disorganized or fearful avoid
an attachment style with an intimate partner or with someone
that you love, and that can also be based on
(27:26):
previous relationships that you have had. So one of the
things I said and just previously is that you can
experience the signs of a disordered attachment style based on
the relationship that you in that you're in, it doesn't
necessarily mean that that is your attachment style full stop.
I remember I was in a relationship with someone last
(27:48):
year and they were really not that nice to me,
and they didn't they weren't consistent, they didn't give as
much as they took, and there was always this sense
of like, you really don't seem to care for me
or respect me. At any point you could walk away.
And I think during that point I was really really anxious,
(28:09):
and I was constantly worried about where we were and
where we stood. And then after that relationship ended, there
was that level of fearful avoidant, like I don't want
to end up in a situation like that again, I
don't want to be that emotionally close with someone who
I can't rely on. But it doesn't mean that I
have an attachment disorder. I am definitely securely attached. I
(28:30):
had loving parents, I do have people in my life
that I can trust, and I don't have a problem
trusting them. But it is a sense that you can
float in and out of ways of relating with people
based on what is going on in your life. But
I also think there is a civil lining for people
who have experienced trauma and as a result, do have
(28:51):
an attachment style disorder or aren't securely attached. There is
hope and light at the end of the tunnel, and
I think it is also worth saying that secure attachment
maist it might sound great, isn't the only way that
people can have positive, healthy, long term and stable relationships.
(29:14):
So you might be someone who has experienced experiencing a
disordered attachment style, maybe just for a period, but you know,
maybe it's something that you're dealing with on a long
term basis. I think it's important to note that people
can still have fulfilling, fulfilling relationships and they might not
even experience any problems, but can still be characterized as
(29:36):
being one of the three disordered attachment styles that can
change though as well. You're not kind of locked into
an attachment style from the moment of birth or from
when you start to mature. Yes, you cannot change how
your care givers or those in your life important people
in your life have treated you and how that may
(29:58):
have ended a resulted in you not having the most
great times informing close relationships. But it's not permanent. It's
not something that is stagnant as something that changes. There
is this problem though, of there being a pattern of
seeking people who treat us how our caregivers did, or
(30:18):
seeking people out who are emotionally unavailable and who are
going to make us feel anxious out of in this
weird kind of self fulfilling prophecy way that will reinforce
your previous experiences as ones that you deserve and reinforcing
your behaviors. That's something that we're not always consciously aware of,
and if we're talking about changing attachment styles, it's something
(30:41):
that you do need to be aware of. You do
need to be aware that how you relate to others
is very much in your control, although it might be
influenced by factors that you can't control, like whether your
caregivers were present or absent in your life. When we
do start to gain more conscious awareness, of how we
(31:02):
relate to others. Recognizing that we might be seeking relationships
that reinforce unhealthy patterns or unhealthy attachment styles is really important.
It's a habit, it's a pattern of behavior that we
can unlearn, and that's obviously going to be most successful
when you're guided by a therapist or guided by someone
with clinical experience. But one thing that they might tell
(31:25):
you is that you are able to teach people how
to treat you, and you get to decide how you
want to be treated. I'm just going to say that again.
You get to teach people how to treat you, and
that is a real step towards healing a disordered attachment style.
(31:48):
If you can recognize that previously you may have been
acting or reacting or choosing partners that didn't fulfill your needs,
that didn't understand your unique needs, and you can undo
those harmful learning experiences. And there's heaps of evidence that
shows that you can. There was this study published quite
(32:08):
recently that just suggests that people can change their attachment
styles over time and feel better about their relationships. There's also,
i think a big role there's a big age plays
a really big role in aging and maturing and growing
up plays a really big role. So one study suggests
that attachment styles they just tend to become more secure
(32:30):
over time, simply because the older we get, the less
time we have full relationships that don't meet us, meet
our needs, or make us unhappy, the more learning experiences
we have. But in another experiment, they reviewed twenty or sorry,
seventy I think heterosexual couples, and they got these couples
to complete surveys about their relationship and then participate in
(32:53):
a series of kind of brief activities. Half of the
couples completed activities designed to increase closeness, and so they
took turns answering questions about themselves that the other person
had asked them, and they also participated in partner at
yoga where they held hands or otherwise connected to create poses.
And the other half of the couples discussed more impersonal questions,
(33:17):
ones that weren't really related to you and how you
felt about the other person, and they only did individual yoga.
There wasn't a bonding experience there after the intimacy building exercises.
Participants with more avoidant attachment styles rated their relationship as
higher quality than they had beforehand. Meanwhile, participants with more
(33:39):
secure or anxious attachment styles didn't report an increase in
relationship satisfaction. But for those who didn't participate in those activities,
who had anything but a secure attachment style, they did
report that their sense of closeness to their partner wasn't
really changing or was in some sense to client, And
(34:01):
according to a survey of participants one month later, more
avoidant participants who had done intimacy building activities had actually
decreased in their attachment avoidance. That is really really interesting
because it shows that although we cannot change how we
have grown up, how we've been treated as a child
(34:21):
or in our early formative relationships, being with the right person,
having the right friends, having closeness with mentors or close
family members, and experiencing love in closeness in those relationships
does have the potential to change how we relate to
others in a very much more holistic sense. If you
(34:44):
take the time and actively seek to build trust and
to put yourself in positions with people you trust. When
you can build intimacy and feel loved and experience emotional closeness,
you can kind of begin to heal previously disord attachment styles,
and for those two of us who are securely attached,
(35:04):
that also shows the importance of maintaining those kinds of
activities and maintaining a lifestyle or habits that or boundaries
as well, boundaries of those in our lives. That leaves
no room for anxiety, leaves no room for on and
off again, leaves no room for abuse or for maltreatment
(35:25):
from those we love, but isn't instead founded on trust
and loyalty and a sense of belonging with someone else.
So really really interesting, and I think also an important
disclaimer to make here is that this works best and
if you do think you have one of the three
disordered attachment styles, it's best to see a therapist, to
(35:47):
talk to someone who has clinical experiences, because I can
imagine that the outcomes of those closeness based activities would
be definitely, would definitely benefit and improve if you did
have clinical guidance with someone who really really knew what
they were talking about, really knew what was happening and
had observed it and seen it in the past. But
(36:09):
all really really interesting stuff and so important for our twenties,
when we are beginning to have serious relationships and have
close relationships and maybe even start to see the problems
or the disordered ways in which we attach ourselves to others.
I definitely doing research for this episode, did see and
was able to kind of have a better understanding of
(36:31):
how the relationships we've had in our past does tend
to influence and will influence the relationships we have in
our future. Not just those that we have with our
care givers, that everyone, everyone who has had an impact
on us. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode and
this history lesson and this deep dive into attachment stars.
I hope you've learned something that, if nothing else, I
(36:53):
hope you've learned that you do have the opportunity to
be securely attached and to feel stable and loved in
your relationships and to feel emotional closeness with other people,
which is kind of what we all want, especially when
we're young and we're learning how we want to be
respected and treated. So thank you so much for listening,
(37:13):
and as always, if you do feel called to, please
leave a review of the podcast on either Spotify or
Apple Podcasts. It helps me grow this platform and it
just really makes my day to put things out there
and know that people are listening and that perhaps they've
had an impact. So thank you again for listening, and
we will be back next week for another episode of
(37:34):
the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello, it's great to have you
here listening in to the podcast. Welcome, Welcome back, Welcome.
(00:27):
If it's your first time, I hope you stick around. Yeah,
it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me,
but I thought it was a really great time to
talk about a topic that I've kind of had in
the archive, something I've wanted to talk about for a while.
You've clicked on this episode, you know. We're talking about
attachment styles and attachment theory, a big Pandora's box of
(00:53):
information and studies and misconceptions and psychobabble and pop culture. Yeah,
a pretty big topic, one that is incredibly important in
our twenties, probably one of the most important things for
the long term health and stability of our relationships throughout
(01:13):
our lives. But it also has its roots in childhood.
So a very complicated episode, but one that I think
definitely involves a bit of a discussion and some more
information out there to really understand what attachment styles are
I wanted to talk about them because their role in
relationships of every nature, not just romantic relationships, is so
(01:39):
important in our twenties, and like most things, this decade,
this first decade of adulthood is where they really start
to take a hold and solidify and concrete. So, yeah,
they are super important, and they're important because really that
our health and well being is greatly influenced by our
(02:00):
emotional and social connections with others, particularly those that are
our life partners or those were intimate with, or those
we're really close with, like our family and our friends.
And recently, attachment styles, I've seen them cropping up everywhere.
They've become a big part of the psychobabble recently, and
(02:20):
they've been highly popularized to become kind of part of
our communication and part of general conversations. I see tiktoks
about attachment styles all their time, saying like, oh, you know,
I'm an anxious attachment, which is why you know I
need someone to message me back, or you know, I'm
securely attached, Like this is what it's like, and all
(02:42):
of it is kind of you know, using attachment styles
as a source of entertainment or as an explanation for
things that perhaps we all go through, but that is
so far from the truth. Their role in pop culture
and in our daily kind of conversations and dialogue really
deeply misconstrues and differs from what attachment theory really seeks
(03:06):
to explain in clinical psychology, and attachment styles are a
way of explaining a disorder and a disordered way of relating, loving,
and interacting with others. They're not a quick and easy explanation.
They're not a general explanation. They're actually quite serious, and
(03:27):
I think recently they have become almost like horoscopes, almost
like a personality assessment. When I was looking up some
recent papers for to kind of bring into this episode
and kind of doing my research, I found this website
and on the website it was like take a quiz
to determine your attachment style, which I just found so funny.
(03:52):
I found it so so funny because the internet or
self assessment cannot confirm for you what your attachment style is.
It is so much more serious than that, and the
true implications of what your attachment style are, particularly if
you are not securely attached, a much more extreme and
(04:13):
severe and we're going to get into that later, but nonetheless,
on a lighter, less extreme level, they are a really
interesting concept to consider and apply, especially on perhaps a
more scaled down level to our relationships in our twenties
and primarily our romantic relationships. So let's jump in and
(04:34):
discuss what attachment styles mean, the types of attachment styles,
their clinical implications, the history, and why they're not a
death sentence for the stability and sustainability and healthiness of
your relationship. Okay, so we're going to begin with a
(04:56):
bit of a history lesson, as we often do with
these episodes, talking about where attachment theory and the idea
of attachment styles have come from and their origin in
not just psychology but in the world and the context
that kind of led to the theories around attachment style
becoming quite popular and even originating in the first place. So,
(05:21):
as is, although I think attachment styles, and if you
do have some pre understanding of attachment styles and you
know what the four attachment styles are, they might seem
quite common sense, and they might kind of seem quite
intuitive something that we have probably we didn't need a
psychologist or some deep research to tell us. It's just
a pretty yeah, pretty easy to understand concept that people
(05:44):
relate to others and experience their relationships in different ways.
But before the nineteen fifties, which is when research on
attachment styles first began, there really wasn't much of an
investigation into how people relate to others and how that
might be different, the outcomes that that might have for them,
(06:05):
and where it kind of begins. So attachment theory came
from the brain was the brainchild of a psychologist and
a researcher called John Bolby. If you have studied psychology before,
you would have heard this name. He is very famous
in social psychology, one of the first leading social psychologists,
primarily because of his work on attachment styles, which is
(06:29):
obviously what we are discussing today. So John Bolby, he
began his work in the nineteen fifties after World War Two,
and what he observed why he wanted to look into this,
the different ways that people relate to each other, was
because he was observing this strange pattern in a lot
(06:49):
of children, where children were entering their teenage years and
children that were born during World War One, sorry, World
War two, we're entering their teenage years, and there seemed
to be very different outcomes in very different ways that
kids were relating to their caregivers and to their romantic partners,
their teachers, their friends. And what he thought was this
(07:11):
probably has something to do with the role and the
differing role that parents had with their kids during World
War Two. You know, it was a time of war.
People lost parents, people had distant parents, you know, men
and women came back from the front lines and had PTSD,
and that really bled into their relationship and how they
(07:32):
raised their children. And what he found was there were
some kids that seemed to have much more secure relationships,
be a lot less worried about their relationships compared to others.
There was also this emerging idea that how we look
after and care for children when they are infants actually
seems to be quite important. Before this, it was kind
(07:57):
of I think, there was this idea that you know, kids,
all they really need is food and water and you know,
a soft bed and they will be fine. Love and
things like that and comfort and security. Yep, they're important.
They're nice, but they don't really determine what happens to
(08:17):
a child, and they don't really have much of an influence.
But there was a big change in that and one
of the reasons why there was this big investigation or
study into these kids that were removed from their parents
or were orphaned during the war or in the US,
they were removed and they were put into the care
(08:37):
of these nurses and these foster nurses. They weren't put
into homes. They were put into hospital settings almost and
all of these kids received the food, they received water,
they were clean, they had light, they exercised, their health
was taken care of, but they all quite a few
(08:58):
of them started getting really sick or showing real signs
of developmental delay. Some of them even died. And what
they kind of realized from that was it's not just
the basic bare necessities that determine the outcomes for children
and are important to their health, but it's the kind
of love they receive and the love and care they
(09:21):
receive primarily from their caregiver. And in this situation, they
didn't have a stable caregiver. They had people who were
employed to look after them, and these people rotated in
and out of the hospital wards, there wasn't always the
same person to look after you. And importantly, the kids
that formed strong attachments and relationships with a particular nurse
(09:42):
or a particular doctor did seem to do better, especially
when that relationship did contain an extra degree of love.
So John Bolby steps into this saying, thinking and willing
to explore in the wake of this kind of interesting phenomenon,
why is that kids seemed to need love and need
(10:04):
more than just the basic necessities to live. And that
was also meeting some of those observations he was making
about these three to four different categories of children that
were becoming adults and having difficulties in their relationships, some
more than others. So John Bolby he run these experiments
on children, observational experiments where he would have a child
(10:26):
and a parent in a room and he would see
what would happen when the parent left. Pretty simple, but
the outcomes were really really interesting. Some children would naturally
get upset, they would cry, but when someone else came in,
they could be comforted by someone else, but they did
(10:47):
still really want their primary caregiver. These kids, he would assume,
were quite secure, they had a good relationship with their caregiver,
but they also could be comforted by someone else and
had to trust that they caregiver would return. Then there
were the other types of children, and these children were very,
(11:09):
very different in many many ways. So when their caregivers left,
what tended to happen. There were three different types of reactions.
Some of the kids just did not give a fuck,
like they really didn't care, which was really interesting because
caregivers are so fundamental to the lives that we leave
(11:30):
as children. They're fundamental to our survival. We're dependent on
them for absolutely everything. So it makes sense that the
relationship you have with your caregiver, with your primary care giver,
whether that's a parent or someone else, would be really
really important to your outcomes as a child, but also
as an adult. They are just the most important figure
in our lives. So John, mister Bowlby and this man
(11:54):
observed that there was this category of children that when
their parents left, they really did not care. They didn't
they didn't care when they came back, they just appeared
really really disinterested. And then there was another category of
children who got incredibly upset. They couldn't be comforted, they
didn't want to play with anything, but when their caregiver
came back into the room, they ignored them. The caregiver
(12:16):
would try and give them attention and they would turn
the other way, they would still be crying, but it
didn't seem that their caregiver could comfort them. And he
made this observation that how the parents were treating their
children outside of this experimental setting was deeply, deeply important
to how this child would react in this setting. In
this experiment, parents who would consistently show their children love
(12:40):
and show their children care their children would be the
ones who were securely attached, who would be upset when
their parents left, but once they came back in, they
trusted they would return and they could be comforted by them.
But this other group of kids, the kids who really
didn't care, who didn't seem to have any attachment to
their caregiver, or the ones who were almost angry at them,
who had this weird distrust. He kind of made the conclusion,
(13:04):
came to the conclusion that the relationship and the way
that these parents were caring for their kids was probably
not too ideal. There was probably maybe a degree of maltreatment.
There was a degree of distrust and a lack of love,
a lack of consistency, and that really impacted how this
(13:26):
child would react to their caregiver and how children relate
to their caregivers. He also found through this longitudinal study
that he did that the relationships they tended to have.
He tracked kids in all the kids were in the
same condition, but he tracked the kids based on their
reaction for years. So he had three categories initially, and
(13:46):
he found that the kids would have one of those
three reactions, and so he grouped them up and then
he studied a few select members of each of these
groups over the next ten to twenty years, and what
he found was that the relationship and the reaction that
those children had in that experiment was deeply, deeply had deep,
(14:09):
long lasting impact on their relationships as adults, and in
some ways was really unforgiving when it came to their
outer relationships and not just romantic. It is important to
note that a lot of this research was highly heteronormative.
At the time. Gay couples couldn't adopt, children, didn't have children,
weren't recognized as suitable caregivers, which is obviously we now
(14:34):
know is kind of ridiculous. So there has been this
discussion recently of having a look at how the relationship
children have with parents who are both the same gender
might differ, or whether there would be a higher rate
of secure attachment and things like that. There's also heaps
of studies done on single parents and whether the attachment
styles of children who have single parents is different, and
(14:57):
the outcomes of that is that it really isn't doesn't
matter if you have one or two parents unless the
parent that you do have is one that you can't trust,
is one that isn't providing you with love and care,
one that might be might be treating you badly or
abusing you on drugs, or not absent who was absent,
(15:18):
So that's really what matters. But from these observations from
this experiment, John Bolby made the observation that there are
three to four attachment stars and pretty much every single
person would fall into one of these attachment stars. So
let's discuss what they are. So after John Bolby's initial work,
(15:46):
this was expanded on by Mary Ainsworth and she set
the premise along with him about the four attachment stars
that we now know of. And these are secure avoidant
that's also known as dismissive, and which is also known
as preoccupied and disorganized, which is also known as fearful avoidant,
(16:06):
So four categories. Now, it's worth saying the majority of
people would be secure, securely attached, and secure attachment is
kind of what we're all aiming for. The other three
are really characterized by a lot of difficulties with cultivating
and maintaining healthy relationships. But in contrast, the secure attachment
(16:28):
style it implies that a person is healthy in their relationships,
secure in their relationships, and comfortable expressing emotions openly asking
for things, being able to communicate, being able to have
their needs met, and adults with secure attachment styles they
can depend on their partners and their friends and their
family and in turn let their partners and their loved
(16:50):
ones rely on them. It also shows a lot of
studies have shown that those who are securely attached do
tend to have healthier lives overall. They're happier than more content, warm,
easy going. They tend to build deep, meaningful and long
(17:11):
lasting relationships, which is what we know contributes to a
lot of physical health and well being indicators. And they
even seem to be more well liked in the workplace.
They are better parents generally. Obviously we don't like to
make generalizations. Everyone can be a good parent, and as
I'll talk about later on, your attachment style isn't kind
(17:34):
of a death sentence, But secure attachment is kind of
the gold standard secure. If you're securely attached, you had someone,
you had caregivers that you could rely upon when you're
a child, or you've had people in your life mentors, teachers,
family members who have shown you love consistently, who have
shown you that you can trust others, and so these
(17:56):
people tend to thrive in their relationships. But they also
don't fear being on their own, which is a really
important caveat. They don't depend on the responsiveness or approval
of people in their lives, and they do tend to
have a positive view of themselves and others. That sounds
fucking great, sounds awesome, And the chances are if you're
listening to this, you probably are securely attached. There is
(18:18):
this sense that, you know, everyone kind of likes to
label themselves as the other three types, which will go
into but studies and research has shown that the majority
of people, if you haven't experienced some trauma in your upbringing,
you will grow up to become a securely attached adult.
So what about the others? What about anxious and preoccupied?
(18:39):
So for adults with an anxious attachment style, the partner
is often what they would see as their better half.
They also have a lot of anxiety around relationships. They
find that relationships, especially the early stages or even you know,
long term relationships, bring them a lot of anxiety. They
(19:01):
don't bring them joy. They're not easy things to cultivate.
They're filled with ups and downs. They often don't feel
like they can trust their partner, even if there's no
evidence for that. The thought of living without their partner
or being alone in general can also cause pretty higher
levels of anxiety, and people with this type of attachment
style typically have a pretty negative self image of themselves
(19:22):
as being unlovable, whilst they have a really positive view
of others. And in response to that low self esteem,
in response to that sense that people are going to
leave them, they're going to abandon them, they can't trust others,
they can't rely on others, the anxious adult will often
seek approval, support and responsiveness from their partner of those
(19:44):
in their lives kind of really consistently, almost to a
point of excess, and they're often worried and anxious that
their loved ones are not invested or as invested in
the relationship as they are. It's also characterized, and this
is perhaps the main element of anxious or preoccupied. It's
characterized by a strong fear of abandonment. They often feel
(20:09):
that they cannot rely on the people, or especially their
intimate partners, and they're going to leave them. That you know,
even in the early stages of relationships, if you just
started dating someone, you know you might see or might
feel that someone is, you know, minutes away, seconds away
from ignoring you, from ghosting you. They don't want to
see you, and that really hurts. You're looking for red flags,
(20:33):
You're looking for signs they're going to walk away, and
because of that, you often feel really anxious when it
comes to how fast their replies are or whether they're
consistently making plans. You have this really acute kind of
alarm setting for any indication that someone is going to leave,
and it's almost a coping mechanism. It's a security blanket
(20:55):
so that you can be the one who walks away first. So, yeah,
anxious and preoccupied characterized by a lot of anxiety but
also a strong fear of abandonment doesn't sound very pleasant,
does it not? At all? Parents of children who become
anxiously attached, were perhaps not always there for their children,
perhaps they had a parent who left them, who abandoned them.
(21:19):
Often it's seen in kids who had unstable caregivers who
would show them a lot of love and then leave,
which is you know, quite sad. But the next one
we have is avoidant or dismissive, So they dismissing or
avoidant type. We would often see them as like lone wolves,
people who in our lives, who don't really seem to
(21:40):
care or need affection or validation from others. They're independent,
they're self sufficient, and they're quite absent emotionally. The first
two things sound great, you know, strong independent, Sorry first
three strong independent, self sufficient. That sounds amazing, right, But
(22:00):
not so much in our relationships because they tend to
believe that they don't really need anyone. They don't want
to depend on others, have others depend on them, they
don't want to seek support or approval in social bonds,
and it's generally characterized by a lack of emotional closeness.
(22:20):
So although this person may avoid getting attached to people
and may not want to get attached to people, our
relationships and social connection is really really important. So it
is a disordered way of relating to others if you
have absolutely no need to have any level of connection
or emotional closeness with anyone. And they also tend to
(22:42):
hide or suppress their feelings when they're faced with the
potentially emotionally dense or extreme situation. So we can kind
of see what kind of parents these people may have had,
or the kind of early relationships they may have had
that have contributed to this dismissive way of things. They
were not able to rely on someone, and because of that,
(23:03):
they've reacted with a kind of hyper independence, which is
a trauma response, which we know is a trauma response.
They have convinced themselves their brain has trained itself to
not need anyone because no one has ever consistently been
there for them. And that's not a really great way
to live. You know, Love and romance and deep connections
(23:25):
with friends and family is one of the best parts
of life, So not having that does kind of fit
in the category of having some kind of disordered way
of relating to others. And finally we have the last one,
which is disorganized or fearful avoidant. So the disorganized type
tends to show unstable and ambiguous behaviors in the social bonds.
(23:46):
It's often seen as a mix of that avoidant dismissive
and of that anxious or preoccupied. So for adults with
this style of attachment, the partner, their partner, or their
relationships are often the source of both a strong need
and desire but also fear so fearful avoidant people, they
(24:07):
do want intimacy and closeness, they're anxious about receiving it,
but at the same time they really struggle to trust
others and they often push people away. They aren't able
to regulate their emotions well, and they don't really tend
to have strong emotional attachment, primarily due to their fear
of getting hurt. So a person who might have this,
an adult who might have this attachment style, might react
(24:29):
with both anxiety but then a really extreme coldness when
they're not receiving what they want from their partner, when
they feel their partner is pulling away, or even just
in general when everything seems to be going really really well.
But I really just want to quickly talk about these
final three attachment styles, the disordered attachment styles that being
(24:51):
disorganized and fearful avoidant dismissive, and anxious preoccupied a little
bit more Like I've kind of mentioned, there is this
idea that we can kind of self diagnose, and there
is a lot of information online or on TikTok or
Instagram with people very flippantly being like, oh, I'm anxiously
(25:12):
attached or I'm avoidant, dismissive. That might be the case.
You might not know what's going on in their life.
But it's important to recognize that when we talk about
these three attachment styles, we are talking about an extreme disorder.
We are talking about something that is consistent, something that
isn't dependent on who you're with. You know, everyone might
be you know, I think especially with anxious attachment. For example,
(25:35):
if you are with someone who does not treat you
right and who pulls away and who is not consistent,
it's a natural reaction to be very anxious. But the
anxious attachment style, and especially a disordered version, will still
be present when your partner is the most loving, stable,
caring person in the world. But we don't tend to
see these three disordered attachment style in the general population.
(25:57):
Very often. It often shows up in children who have
been abused or people who have been abused as children
or deprived, or have come from a really harsh environment,
maybe from an environment in which they didn't have any
kind of stable caregiver like a foster system, or if
they were moving around a lot without a stable parent
or caregiver in their lives. So it is really important
(26:20):
to recognize that it's probably unlikely. And I'm not saying
I know you're well enough to say this, but it
is important to consider that it's if you are, you know,
if you aren't someone who has experienced severe trauma in
your childhood or early life, it's unlikely that you will
consistently fall into one of the three disordered attachment styles.
(26:41):
They're genuinely, you know, kind of reserve for people who
have experienced something really traumatic that has, you know, just
completely changed the structure of their brain and how they
relate to others. But attachment styles are still important on
a smaller scale, and they can be used to inform
how we treat our relationships. But our attachment styles can
(27:03):
also change, you know, your attachment styles with your coworkers,
with your family and friends might also be different. Must
you might be secure with your family and your friends,
you might experience a level of disorganized or fearful avoid
an attachment style with an intimate partner or with someone
that you love, and that can also be based on
(27:26):
previous relationships that you have had. So one of the
things I said and just previously is that you can
experience the signs of a disordered attachment style based on
the relationship that you in that you're in, it doesn't
necessarily mean that that is your attachment style full stop.
I remember I was in a relationship with someone last
(27:48):
year and they were really not that nice to me,
and they didn't they weren't consistent, they didn't give as
much as they took, and there was always this sense
of like, you really don't seem to care for me
or respect me. At any point you could walk away.
And I think during that point I was really really anxious,
(28:09):
and I was constantly worried about where we were and
where we stood. And then after that relationship ended, there
was that level of fearful avoidant, like I don't want
to end up in a situation like that again, I
don't want to be that emotionally close with someone who
I can't rely on. But it doesn't mean that I
have an attachment disorder. I am definitely securely attached. I
(28:30):
had loving parents, I do have people in my life
that I can trust, and I don't have a problem
trusting them. But it is a sense that you can
float in and out of ways of relating with people
based on what is going on in your life. But
I also think there is a civil lining for people
who have experienced trauma and as a result, do have
(28:51):
an attachment style disorder or aren't securely attached. There is
hope and light at the end of the tunnel, and
I think it is also worth saying that secure attachment
maist it might sound great, isn't the only way that
people can have positive, healthy, long term and stable relationships.
(29:14):
So you might be someone who has experienced experiencing a
disordered attachment style, maybe just for a period, but you know,
maybe it's something that you're dealing with on a long
term basis. I think it's important to note that people
can still have fulfilling, fulfilling relationships and they might not
even experience any problems, but can still be characterized as
(29:36):
being one of the three disordered attachment styles that can
change though as well. You're not kind of locked into
an attachment style from the moment of birth or from
when you start to mature. Yes, you cannot change how
your care givers or those in your life important people
in your life have treated you and how that may
(29:58):
have ended a resulted in you not having the most
great times informing close relationships. But it's not permanent. It's
not something that is stagnant as something that changes. There
is this problem though, of there being a pattern of
seeking people who treat us how our caregivers did, or
(30:18):
seeking people out who are emotionally unavailable and who are
going to make us feel anxious out of in this
weird kind of self fulfilling prophecy way that will reinforce
your previous experiences as ones that you deserve and reinforcing
your behaviors. That's something that we're not always consciously aware of,
and if we're talking about changing attachment styles, it's something
(30:41):
that you do need to be aware of. You do
need to be aware that how you relate to others
is very much in your control, although it might be
influenced by factors that you can't control, like whether your
caregivers were present or absent in your life. When we
do start to gain more conscious awareness, of how we
(31:02):
relate to others. Recognizing that we might be seeking relationships
that reinforce unhealthy patterns or unhealthy attachment styles is really important.
It's a habit, it's a pattern of behavior that we
can unlearn, and that's obviously going to be most successful
when you're guided by a therapist or guided by someone
with clinical experience. But one thing that they might tell
(31:25):
you is that you are able to teach people how
to treat you, and you get to decide how you
want to be treated. I'm just going to say that again.
You get to teach people how to treat you, and
that is a real step towards healing a disordered attachment style.
(31:48):
If you can recognize that previously you may have been
acting or reacting or choosing partners that didn't fulfill your needs,
that didn't understand your unique needs, and you can undo
those harmful learning experiences. And there's heaps of evidence that
shows that you can. There was this study published quite
(32:08):
recently that just suggests that people can change their attachment
styles over time and feel better about their relationships. There's also,
i think a big role there's a big age plays
a really big role in aging and maturing and growing
up plays a really big role. So one study suggests
that attachment styles they just tend to become more secure
(32:30):
over time, simply because the older we get, the less
time we have full relationships that don't meet us, meet
our needs, or make us unhappy, the more learning experiences
we have. But in another experiment, they reviewed twenty or sorry,
seventy I think heterosexual couples, and they got these couples
to complete surveys about their relationship and then participate in
(32:53):
a series of kind of brief activities. Half of the
couples completed activities designed to increase closeness, and so they
took turns answering questions about themselves that the other person
had asked them, and they also participated in partner at
yoga where they held hands or otherwise connected to create poses.
And the other half of the couples discussed more impersonal questions,
(33:17):
ones that weren't really related to you and how you
felt about the other person, and they only did individual yoga.
There wasn't a bonding experience there after the intimacy building exercises.
Participants with more avoidant attachment styles rated their relationship as
higher quality than they had beforehand. Meanwhile, participants with more
(33:39):
secure or anxious attachment styles didn't report an increase in
relationship satisfaction. But for those who didn't participate in those activities,
who had anything but a secure attachment style, they did
report that their sense of closeness to their partner wasn't
really changing or was in some sense to client, And
(34:01):
according to a survey of participants one month later, more
avoidant participants who had done intimacy building activities had actually
decreased in their attachment avoidance. That is really really interesting
because it shows that although we cannot change how we
have grown up, how we've been treated as a child
(34:21):
or in our early formative relationships, being with the right person,
having the right friends, having closeness with mentors or close
family members, and experiencing love in closeness in those relationships
does have the potential to change how we relate to
others in a very much more holistic sense. If you
(34:44):
take the time and actively seek to build trust and
to put yourself in positions with people you trust. When
you can build intimacy and feel loved and experience emotional closeness,
you can kind of begin to heal previously disord attachment styles,
and for those two of us who are securely attached,
(35:04):
that also shows the importance of maintaining those kinds of
activities and maintaining a lifestyle or habits that or boundaries
as well, boundaries of those in our lives. That leaves
no room for anxiety, leaves no room for on and
off again, leaves no room for abuse or for maltreatment
(35:25):
from those we love, but isn't instead founded on trust
and loyalty and a sense of belonging with someone else.
So really really interesting, and I think also an important
disclaimer to make here is that this works best and
if you do think you have one of the three
disordered attachment styles, it's best to see a therapist, to
(35:47):
talk to someone who has clinical experiences, because I can
imagine that the outcomes of those closeness based activities would
be definitely, would definitely benefit and improve if you did
have clinical guidance with someone who really really knew what
they were talking about, really knew what was happening and
had observed it and seen it in the past. But
(36:09):
all really really interesting stuff and so important for our twenties,
when we are beginning to have serious relationships and have
close relationships and maybe even start to see the problems
or the disordered ways in which we attach ourselves to others.
I definitely doing research for this episode, did see and
was able to kind of have a better understanding of
(36:31):
how the relationships we've had in our past does tend
to influence and will influence the relationships we have in
our future. Not just those that we have with our
care givers, that everyone, everyone who has had an impact
on us. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode and
this history lesson and this deep dive into attachment stars.
I hope you've learned something that, if nothing else, I
(36:53):
hope you've learned that you do have the opportunity to
be securely attached and to feel stable and loved in
your relationships and to feel emotional closeness with other people,
which is kind of what we all want, especially when
we're young and we're learning how we want to be
respected and treated. So thank you so much for listening,
(37:13):
and as always, if you do feel called to, please
leave a review of the podcast on either Spotify or
Apple Podcasts. It helps me grow this platform and it
just really makes my day to put things out there
and know that people are listening and that perhaps they've
had an impact. So thank you again for listening, and
we will be back next week for another episode of
(37:34):
the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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