Breaking the Cycle: Understanding How Attachment Styles Shape Our Relationships

Do you find yourself always gravitating towards partners with similar characteristics or a certain type of relationship? Perhaps you’ve noticed repeating patterns and wonder why your partner can’t support you the way you need. It’s normal to feel confused, uncertain, or even hopeless. When we find ourselves in these patterns it is likely attachment styles have something to do with it.

What is attachment & why is it important?

At its core, attachment is the bond that develops between a child and their caregiver. Babies, unable to communicate verbally, express their emotions or needs through other signals. For example, a baby may cry to signal the need for comfort or smile to show happiness or contentment.

Early relationships between parent and child greatly influence the child’s social and emotional functioning by shaping how they interpret and respond to social experiences. This creates a framework for how relationships “should” be and carries through to adulthood. What a child learns in early life often forms a blueprint for romantic relationships in adulthood.

Different Attachment Styles

Secure

The most common attachment style. Adults with secure attachment are social, warm, and find it easy to build loving, long-lasting relationships. They are comfortable relying on their partners and are available when needed, yet also comfortable being autonomous. They communicate emotions effectively, are trusting, empathetic, and forgiving, and can attune to their partner's needs and respond appropriately in times of conflict. 

Avoidant

Individuals with this style keep partners at arm’s length by being emotionally distant, avoiding vulnerability, or rejecting relationships altogether. They prefer independence and never want to feel “tied down.” They might appear cool, logical, and emotionally unavailable, avoiding emotional conflict if possible.

Tips to manage this style:

• Resist repressing emotions

• Express needs and desires to loved ones in safe ways

• Allow yourself to practice trusting and depending on others

Anxious

Adults with a preoccupied attachment style can be insecure in relationships, constantly seeking reassurance, and are worried about rejection and abandonment. They may focus on past unresolved issues and be hypersensitive to their partner’s negative mood or actions, struggling with emotional regulation, and tending to blame others without taking responsibility.

 Tips to manage this style:

• Resist big emotional reactions, use emotion regulation skills to help with this

• Calm yourself with regulation tools when overly stimulated

• Manage frustration if plans change

• Handle conflict without becoming aggressive by taking breaks if things become escalated

Fearful

Those with this style often have a complex trauma history and struggle to regulate emotions. In relationships, they struggle with emotional closeness but also fear rejection, creating a push-pull dynamic with high conflict levels.

Tips to manage this style:

• Acknowledge your attachment style, recognize triggers, and develop self-soothing strategies

• Practice communicating emotions in helpful ways

• Take a time-out during escalating conflict

• Communicate your needs to your partner

Because attachment develops early in life, it may seem fixed, but you can learn ways to peacefully coexist with your attachment style. The first step is becoming aware of how it impacts your relationships and life. Seeking help from a psychologist or mental health professional who understands attachment dynamics can address root causes and help you find more adaptive ways of coping in relationships.

You can book an appointment at the Schema Therapy Institute to explore your attachment style with a psychologist by emailing admin@stia.com.au or calling 03 9331 2878.

Conclusion

Attachment theory provides a crucial framework for understanding human relationships' complexities. Our early experiences with caregivers shape our relationship expectations and understanding. By gaining insights into our own and our loved ones’ attachment styles, we can foster understanding, compassion, and more meaningful connections with ourselves and others.

References

• Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

• Karantzas, G. C., & Feeney, J. A. (2011). Attachment and relationship satisfaction in couples: The mediating role of intimacy and trust. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(4), 551–559. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025120

• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. Guilford Press.