Altering Attachment Styles
Written by: Barbara Jandu, M.A., AMFT 120259
February 1, 2023
When some people hear ‘attachment style’, they assume it is a fixed part of personality. In actuality, even personality isn’t fixed. Both a person’s personality and attachment strategy can change with conscious effort. To become more securely attached can be personally healing and adaptive.
What is an Attachment Strategy?
In the 1970s, Dr. Mary Ainsworth developed an experiment known as The Strange Situation whereby she determined various attachment strategies that an infant might use to get needs met: secure, ambivalent/anxious, avoidant, or disorganized, depending on the responsiveness of the mother.
Toddlers with a secure attachment had a home base from which to explore their world. This gave them the courage to express their authentic selves and to become autonomous, therefore allowing them to securely connect as adults also. Those with insecure attachments, without intervention or therapy, might grow into adults who became pleasers, avoiders, controllers, or vacillators (discussed below).
Far from a personality trait, attachment strategy can vary with each caregiver or person with whom we interact. With therapy and concerted effort, individuals and couples can learn different strategies for getting their needs met, and therefore shift from an insecure attachment style to becoming a secure connector.
Secure Connectors
While it may seem a lofty goal, becoming a secure connector is not impossible. It takes practice and effort, but it is not out of reach. Secure connectors are self-aware, can identify and communicate their own feelings and needs, and are able to embrace all parts of themselves including imperfections. They neither devalue nor idealize themselves or others.
A secure connector is able to sit with negative emotions, is comfortable with handling conflict in a healthy way, is able to ask for help, and is okay with both giving and receiving comfort. A secure connector can take appropriate risks, delay gratification, and apologize authentically. A secure connector isn’t afraid for others to disagree, to say ‘no’, to ask for help, or to have fun.
How to Become More Securely Attached
Seek out a therapist with whom you feel comfortable to heal any shame or insecurities you face
Learn to identify and honor your own feelings and needs
Communicate using a softened start-up (When____, I feel_____; I need_____)
Courageously risk authenticity with safe people
Do not play games or try to manipulate your partner
Practice self-acceptance and self-compassion
Practice getting grounded and mindfulness daily to become less reactive
Additionally, each attachment style can practice specific ways to grow:
Pleasers:
Allow yourself to not be responsible for your partner
Give yourself permission to just receive, as you allow your partner to hold you
Make space for your partner to express difficult emotions without fixing it
Avoiders:
Tune in and turn toward your partner, taking more responsibility for their well-being
Take turns with your partner being held and cradled, then talk about it
Learn and practice the courage of identifying feelings and saying what you need
Vacillators:
Accept your partner’s human imperfections, rather than holding them to an ideal
Replace fault-finding and past resentments with authentic vulnerability
When your partner does meet a need, don’t punish the behavior you want to see by comparing to times you didn’t receive what you needed
Controllers:
Allow yourself to grieve all the times your caregivers didn’t meet your needs
Give yourself permission to set aside fear and explore what’s under your anger iceberg
Allow your partner to hold you, receiving it with the power of vulnerability
Defining Dependence:
Many people think that the opposite of a codependent relationship is independence. In reality, the healthiest attachment is one where each partner feels comfortable enough being real that they are able to practice interdependence. Just like the children in Dr. Ainsworth’s studies, a securely interdependent relationship gives each partner a secure base from which to explore and a sense of home to come back to. It is in this autonomy that we learn the safety of intimacy. We are no longer afraid of dependency nor craving codependency. Instead, we have learned the beauty of being interconnected rather than insecure.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
~I John 4:18
Photo credit: Priscilla du Preez on Unsplash
