Our style of attachment is established in early childhood and stays with us into adulthood. Children who experience loving nurturing care, typically grow into securely attached adults who can sustain healthy relationships Meanwhile, those who are traumatized, abused or neglected in early childhood cope with their experiences by developing other patterns of attachment that continue to impact their lives even when circumstances change.
Your adult attachment style affects everything from the partners you select and the quality of your relationships to how well you can sustain them over time. Recognizing your attachment style is the first step in understanding why you do what you do in relationships and how to make changes that can heal and strengthen these.
The four child/adult attachment styles are:
- Secure – autonomous;
- Avoidant – dismissing;
- Anxious – preoccupied; and
- Disorganized – unresolved.
Adults with these attachment styles differ in significant ways:
- how they perceive and deal with closeness and emotional intimacy.
- ability to communicate their emotions and needs, and listen to and understand the emotions and needs of their partners.
- modes of responding to conflict.
- expectations about their partner and the relationship (internal working models).
There are three primary, underlying dimensions that characterize attachment styles and patterns. The first dimension is closeness, meaning the extent to which people feel comfortable being emotionally close and intimate with others. The second is dependence/avoidance, or the extent to which people feel comfortable depending on others and having partners depend on them. The third is anxiety, or the extent to which people worry their partners will abandon and reject them.
The outline below explains the four adult attachment styles; the behavioral, cognitive and social aspects of each style; and how they differ regarding closeness, dependency, avoidance and anxiety. It is common for adults to have a combination of traits rather than fit into just one style.
Autonomous (Secure):
If this is your attachment style, you are generally comfortable with intimacy; not worried about rejection or preoccupied with the relationship.
- Comfortable in a warm, loving and emotionally close relationship.
- Depends on partner and allows partner to depend on them; is available for partner in times of need.
- Accepts partner’s need for separateness without feeling rejected or threatened; can be close and also independent (“dependent–independent”).
- Trusting, empathic, tolerant of differences, and forgiving.
- Communicates emotions and needs honestly and openly; attuned to partner’s needs and responds appropriately; does not avoid conflict.
- Manages emotions well; not overly upset about relationship issues.
- Insight, resolution and forgiveness about past relationship issues and hurts.
- Sensitive, warm and caring parent; attuned to child’s cues and needs; children are securely attached.
Dismissive (Avoidant)
If this is your attachment style, you are generally avoidant, uncomfortable with closeness and primarily value your independence and freedom. You are not worried about partner’s availability.
- Emotionally distant and rejecting in an intimate relationship; keeps partner at arm’s length; partner always wanting more closeness; ” “deactivates” attachment needs, feelings and behaviors.
- Equates intimacy with loss of independence; prefers autonomy to togetherness.
- Not able to depend on partner or allow partner to “lean on” them; independence is a priority.
- Communication is intellectual, not comfortable talking about emotions; avoids conflict, then explodes.
- Cool, controlled, stoic; compulsively self-sufficient; narrow emotional range; prefers to be alone.
- Good in a crisis; non-emotional, takes charge.
- Emotionally unavailable as parent; disengaged and detached; children are likely to have avoidant attachments.
Preoccupied (Anxious)
With this attachment style, you tend to be anxious and needy, you crave closeness and intimacy, and you are often insecure in your relationships.
- Insecure in intimate relationships; constantly worried about rejection and abandonment; preoccupied with relationship; “hyperactivates” attachment needs and behavior.
- Needy; requires ongoing reassurance; want to “merge” with partner, which scares partner away.
- Ruminates about unresolved past issues from family-of-origin, which intrudes into present perceptions and relationships (fear, hurt, anger, rejection).
- Overly sensitive to partner’s actions and moods; takes partner’s behavior too personally.
- Highly emotional; can be argumentative, combative, angry and controlling; poor personal boundaries.
- Communication is not collaborative; unaware of own responsibility in relationship issues; blames others.
- Unpredictable and moody; connects through conflict, “stirs the pot.”
- Inconsistent attunement with own children, who are likely to be anxiously attached.
Unresolved (Disorganized)
If this is your attachment style, you generally feel both avoidant and anxious; you can’t tolerate intimacy, yet you also are insecure and needy in your relationships. Any relationships are in a constant state of turmoil, full of anger and pain.
- Unresolved mindset and emotions; frightened by memories of prior traumas; losses from the past have not been not mourned or resolved.
- Cannot tolerate emotional closeness in a relationship; argumentative, rages, unable to regulate emotions; abusive and dysfunctional relationships recreate past patterns.
- Intrusive and frightening traumatic memories and triggers; dissociates to avoid pain; severe depression, PTSD.
- Antisocial; lack of empathy and remorse; aggressive and punitive; narcissistic, no regard for rules; substance abuse and criminality.
- Likely to maltreat own children; scripts children into past unresolved attachments; triggered into anger and fear by parent-child interaction; own children often develop disorganized attachment.
Attachment patterns are passed down from one generation to the next. Children learn how to connect from parents and caregivers, and they in turn teach the next generation. Your attachment history plays a crucial role in determining how you relate in adult romantic relationships, and how you relate to your children.
However, it is not what happened to you as a child that matters most — it is how you deal with it. Many people go from victim to overcomer. With help from a qualified mental health professional with whom you develop a trusting therapeutic relationship, you can make changes that will allow you to heal your relationships and become securely attached.
Looks like I’m preoccupied in attachment. I want more control over having a healthier attachment style. I’d like to know how to be in a healthier attachment style. People have hurt me, or not been there for me, I’ve been judged to much, and Left to my own devices. I’ve been exhausted of late and spent a night, day, night, now day on the lounge trying to get up. I’ve pushed the love of my life away as for what I decide was a good reason, but it’s also to do with a weak attachment style, I’m not good enough I feel, and reason has triggered a play out of potential rejection, so I abandoned the relationship, he is lingering there whilst I’m exhausted on the lounge feeling sorry for my self. Feeling shame for these actions, embarrassed, I’d like to get a more reassuring self to my self and in my personal relationships. To have a better esteem about my self autonomously, know I’m loved.