What is Attachment?
When I was a small child, I was fascinated by a picture book called, "Are You My Mother?" There is a good reason for that.
Attachment theory is “a psychological school of thought that says early caregiving bonds (i.e. those with parents and guardians) have a hand in the way we navigate adult relationships—romantic and not. Over time, researchers have established four different attachment styles that most people fall into.”
Psychologist John Bowlby in the mid 1900s ‘defined attachment as “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings” in his book Attachment and Loss.’
Juliet Lam Kuehnle, therapist, and author of Who You Callin’ Crazy?!: The Journey from Stigma to Therapy:
“We are wired to connect with others and so, as infants, as we seek safety, security, and connection from our caregivers, we learn how to relate, what we can expect, and we form a concept of self in relation to all of this,”
Not surprising then that a child first abandoned by her father before her birth and then separated from her mother for 2 of the first 3 years of life has struggled with abandonment and attachment issues.
Secure attachment
If you grew up with healthy relationships with your primary caregivers, and felt seen, heard, and cherished from an early age, you are likely to be securely attached, have better emotional regulation, higher self-esteem, strong social skills, and well-developed empathy.
‘Can you recall being comforted as a child after a time of emotional distress? If so, you’re likely secure, if not, there’s a chance you (and 75% of others, per the Yerkovichs’ research) fall into one of the three following insecure styles.’
Anxious or ambivalent attachment:
An anxious (also called ambivalent) attachment style builds from inconsistent caregiving, explains Kuehnle, where guardians are present for a child at times and not at others. Those with anxious attachment “may be more likely to be codependent in relationships and feel responsibility for others’ feelings,” Kuehnle says. “They tend to worry about the person they’re in relationship with abandoning them or they need a lot of reassurance to truly feel connected.”
Again unsurprising that this would be my modality.
Avoidant attachment:
Avoidant attachment speaks for itself—it’s a product of a caregiver who was “distant, unavailable, or neglectful,” says Kuehnle, which results in a child avoiding closeness to not only said caregiver, but in most meaningful relationships. “These people may grow up to believe they need to be fiercely independent because they can’t rely on, or trust, others,” explains Kuehnle. “It is really hard for them to commit or build emotional intimacy.”
A funny thing about growing up in a family with siblings is that each child experiences the family very differently, depending on innate personality traits and tendencies, as we do not come into the world as a tabula rasa, birth order, and a host of other experiential and environmental factors. So both my siblings for a variety of reasons became avoidant.
Disorganized attachment:
Disorganized attachment, which was later added to Ainsworth’s original three styles by researchers Mary Main and Judith Solomon, is a category that envelops the “Strange Situation” children who didn’t fall into the former three styles by exhibiting a mixture of anxious and avoidant tendencies. It was deduced that those behaviors stemmed from childhood abuse, neglect, or trauma.
3/4 of people falling into the above three categories sounds rough, right? But the good news is that ‘those with insecure attachment styles can rewire towards secure attachment, or what’s called earned security.”’
The good news isn’t unmixed though. While there is the potential for an incredible amount of true healing through loving and healthy relationships, there is always the possibility for further wounding when relationship goes awry, or there develops an asymmetric attachment, where one has become very dependent on the other while the other is much less emotionally engaged.
Rupture or alienation can often have in close friendships and familial bonds as well, which are otherwise also deeply healing:
Dear sister, I try to share with you
Smug, you said
Take your spoils away
And you broke the bridge on your side
In my experience anyway, the trouble with hurts and disappointments with interpersonal relationships does not stem primarily from the person who seems to the the ‘source’ of the wound. It’s mistaken and misapplied expectation and reliance. We are all living our lives with all the struggles those involve, and it is certain is humans will disappoint others.
Ultimately disappointment at its best has the happy result that believers learn to rely more on God, who is always there, who is the ultimate source of security, peace, and love.
Through prayer, regularly drawing strength and guidance from the Bible, living a life of integrity, dedication to God’s way, remaining in Christ, and trusting God in a child-like purity, we depend on God.
I have been frequently reminded as well of how healing and reassuring it is to be grounded in and fully supported by healthy communities of faith on the journey.