Attachments – Necessary but not Always Healthy (part 1)

“We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.” Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

We were created to have relationships. In one of the first stories in the Bible, God created Eve for Adam so that he wouldn’t be alone. Prehistoric cavemen couldn’t survive alone, but only in groups (usually in extended family units).

I remember learning about an orphanage in Romania where the children had hardly any human interaction. They were fed and they had a place to sleep, but they were not held, touched, or nurtured in any way. The grim outcome for many of these children was that they died early or grew up with severe developmental disabilities or mental health disorders. All because they were deprived of compassionate human connection.

We are not meant to be people who survive on our own.

Attachment Systems

We’ve all seen children become distressed and cry out when they get separated from their parent. This need to be close to their parent is an attachment system. This system consists of emotions and behaviors that ensure that we remain safe and protected by staying close to our loved ones. The baby’s crying is what we would call their protest behavior, which is a way to get their needs met. But this doesn’t just happen with babies. It happens when we’re adults too!

Attachment theory has been around since the 1960’s when psychologist John Bowlby studied the relationship between infants and their mothers. Bowlby believed that children are born with an innate desire to form attachments with caregivers. It’s why we see babies seek to be close to their caregivers when they are in distress. When a baby cries, that is their way of communicating “I need you!”.

How the parent responds, and how quickly they meet their child’s needs, teaches the child whether or not someone will be there for them in their times of need. If the parent responds appropriately, it builds a sense of safety, security, and trust in relationships. If not, the child may come to believe that they are on their own and that they can’t trust relationships to be safe and secure.

In summary, an attachment system is an internal working model that provides us with an expectation of relationships based on the first relationship we ever had, which is with our parents or other caregivers. This baseline orientation shapes how one sees themselves in the context of a relationship, as well as how they see the other person in the relationship.

Attachment styles

While an attachment system is more of a worldview, an attachment style is how an individual relates to others in practice. However, there is more to an attachment style than the relationship we had with our parents or other primary caregivers when we were young. Attachment needs are “cradle-to-grave” because we never outgrow them. While relationships with caregivers build the foundation of our attachment style, it can also be influenced by subsequent relationships with friends, romantic partners, and others such as co-workers.  

I’ll talk more in-depth about the various attachment styles in part 2 of this blog post, but now let’s take a minute to see why understanding attachment systems and styles is so important to healing, restoring, and improving present relationships.

Role of attachment in therapy

I love working with individuals, romantic partners, friend groups, families, and even co-workers to better understand and improve their relationships. One of the first things I do with a client who has a relationship concern is to understand their attachment system and style. So naturally I want to learn how they view their relationship with their parents.

The better we understand our first relationship, the more insight we gain into who we are and how it affects our current relationships. This isn’t us “vilifying” our parents if they didn’t do a great job, but rather it allows deeper insight into how those early relationships have shaped our subsequent relationships. We may experience a lot of emotions toward our parents while exploring this, but we may also come to understand them better as well.

Remember, being attached to someone means that your brain is wired to seek support and reassurance from the other person, our attachment figure. As with our parents, this involves their physical availability as well as their psychological proximity. In therapy, we seek to understand not only the cycle of conflict which may exist but also what is happening internally in each person during the conflict. Identifying and understanding our attachment style provides insight into our attachment needs, desires, and fears.

Conflict example (completely fictional and I’m sure has never actually happened lol)

Let’s say you were chatting from work with your husband and asked him to empty the dishwasher before you get home. He agrees, and you’re pleased because that’s one less thing for you to do. But when you get home, you see that he hasn’t emptied the dishwasher and instead is watching a football game.

You become so angry that you start yelling some choice words (your protest behavior). Now, it could be that he simply forgot or was still meaning to get to it, but all you can feel and hear inside your head (based on your attachment system) is:

“I asked you to help me out and you said you would and you haven’t done it even though I called hours ago. But here you are watching a game. I guess when I need something from you, I come second to what you want to do! You obviously don’t care about me or listen to me!”

Your husband becomes upset because you yelled at him and storms out of the room (his protest behavior). All he can feel and hear in his head (based on his attachment system) is:

“I can never do anything right in your eyes! I told you I’d get to it and I will! How does this equal me not caring about you?”

Exchanges like these can happen so fast that many times my clients tell me that they weren’t even aware of everything going on inside themselves. Or at least not why it was happening. And it’s almost always about a lot more than the dishwasher.

What’s your style?

In my next blog post, I’m going to go in-depth about different attachment styles, how you can discover you or your partner’s attachment style, and how to use that information to build healthier relationships. I’ll also explain how each of us can move towards a healthier attachment style!