How an Avoidant Attachment Style Might Impact Your Relationships
Image by Beth Hope/Unsplash
Attachment theory is one of the most important developments in psychology since Freud first developed the ‘talking cure’ with his Viennese patients. Understanding that, like all mammals, human infants have an attachment system in their brain, which primes them to attach from the first seconds of life, is so important. It helps us understand child development and what small children need to feel securely attached: warmth, love, care, safety, attunement. If you received all these key emotional nutrients as a child and felt securely attached, first to your mother (for the vast majority of children, she is their primary attachment figure) and then your father, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, schoolmates and teachers, this would allow you to develop a secure attachment style as an adult.
And if you’re part of the 50-60 per cent of the population lucky enough to have a secure attachment style, adult relationships will come fairly easy to you. You have a hard-wired expectation that people are trustworthy and will treat you with respect, so you feel calm and safe in both romantic and platonic relationships. Sadly, the other half of humanity has an insecure attachment style, which is either anxious, avoidant or (the least common and most troublesome) disorganised, which we commonly see in kids with a highly traumatic or neglectful family of origin. Many of my clients fall into one of these three insecure categories, because I specialise in complex trauma and don’t see a lot of securely attached folks in my practice.
This post will focus on avoidant attachment, because it makes relationships tricky for both the avoidantly attached person and those attaching to them. Before we dive in, it’s important to note that many people with this or other insecure forms of attachment go on to lead happy, flourishing lives, find loving relationships and manage to overcome the painful experiences of their childhood that steered them in this relational direction. There is no perfect way of being, or right or wrong about any of this. Our ways of relating are as varied and subtly textured as, say, our neurodiversity, or temperament. These rich and diverse differences are what make us human.
What is avoidant attachment?
People with an avoidant attachment style often find relationships tricky, because they need a lot of space, feel easily suffocated or hemmed in when their partner wants them to commit, be vulnerable and emotionally available. All of these things are often difficult if you are prone to avoidance, because it’s like having armour plating around your heart. Hard to open up, even if you want to, and a struggle to let others in. This style may develop if we experience a major loss as children, such as bereavement or feeling abandoned by a parent after divorce. It may also form if our parent is somewhat cold and shut down, so we also shut down to protect ourselves from feeling abandoned or rejected by them.
On the other hand, we may have a parent who is overly intrusive, or emotionally demanding – we pull away from them to protect ourselves, learning to keep our heart safe behind an inner wall, which no-one can breach. Let’s look at Peter’s case as an example. Peter grew up in a cold, unemotional family. Both parents were surgeons and prided themselves on their ability to retain a steely calm, however chaotic and intense their work might be. But neither could switch off this professional persona once they got home, so treated their kids like little patients, treating their emotional needs and demands as irrational outbursts, to ignore or overcome with calm, detached logic alone.
Peter was a soft, sensitive little boy and often reached out to his mum and dad for comfort and support. But when they repeatedly ignored him or told him to stop being ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too emotional’, he learned to be independent from a young age. If he felt normal, healthy emotions like sadness or fear, Peter learned to shove them down, back into his belly, so he didn’t feel vulnerable or upset. Doing this again and again, from early childhood on, hard-wires these responses into your brain. You develop a bunch of protective inner parts whose job is to avoid, shut down, detach or intellectualise. Anything to stay safely in your head and keep your heart firmly clamped shut.
Can your attachment style change?
When Peter came to see me, I taught him about attachment and how our styles of relating as adults are formed in early childhood. I also helped him see that his emotions were not weird, excessive or shameful, but natural, healthy and wonderful – they are what help us feel alive, enjoying the vibrancy and richness of a well-lived human life. Crucially, as an internal family systems therapist, I explained that only parts of him were avoidant. And beneath his detached, intellectual and avoidant protectors was a little boy with the same attachment needs as any other child – to love and be loved, to connect and form long-lasting, intimate relationships.
We started working on his Avoidant Protector (the most dominant of his cluster of avoidant parts) and allied with this part, helping them understand that, if we could heal the pain of that lonely, unloved little boy inside, the protector could relax and take a break from its lifetime of vigilance and warding off relational threats. Bit by bit, as this process unfolded, Peter’s attachment style began to change, moving from avoidant to more secure. He started dating, being careful to choose securely attached women and kindly saying no to anxiously attached partners, because that’s a tricky combination for both sides. Peter found a lovely woman, Sara, who had a secure attachment style after growing up in a fairly ‘normal’, healthy family. They formed a close, trusting bond and eventually got married and had three children.
Of course, not everyone with an insecure attachment style will find this kind of long-lasting happiness. But the point of this story is that it is possible. We know from all the research that attachment styles can change over a lifetime and you can move from insecure to more secure, especially if you get some therapeutic help with that. As ever, my message to you is: don’t give up. However daunting it may seem, however hard you have tried, however many therapists/partners you have been through, please do persevere. Healing is always possible, of your internal system of parts and your attachment system.
If you want to know more about attachment, read the brilliant Attached: How the Science of Adult Attachment can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It’s one of my favourite self-help books and I have recommended it to many clients, who all seem to love it.
And if you do struggle with relationships, for any reason, sending you love and strength from my heart to yours.
Love,
Dan ❤️
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