Notes on Attachment

Recognize That We Are All Creatures Who Need to Attach

Significance of Attachment#

We're born to connect, and as long as we live we never stop needing connection. It affects us from the cradle to the grave.

Only through interdependence do we become our strongest and most authentic selves
Harry Reis, in his university lecture, had said that from these early experiences we form beliefs or "mental models" about what to expect in relationships and how to behave in relationships, and that these stay with us throughout our lives. These mental models persist, Harry explained, because they create "patterns in the brain" and channel our behavior.
If they were shown a blue circle, they knew they were safe, but if they were shown a red X, they knew there was a 20 percent chance that after a period of time they'd get an electric shock on their ankle. "We were making them very anxious!" he said. The subjects did this under three conditions: while holding the hand of a stranger, while alone, and while holding the hand of their romantic partner. "And here's what we found," he said. "If you're alone and in a tube and it's very loud and you're under threat of electric shock, your brain lights up like a Christmas tree." The brain has a lot to do, he explained: hating the experience, wanting to escape, but also self-regulating so you don't actually bolt from the machine. If you're holding a stranger's hand, he said, parts of the brain associated with physical arousal, including heart rate and mobilizing the body to take action, are somewhat less active. But if you're holding your partner's hand, he said, "We see massive decreases in the way the brain responds." People felt less threatened and didn't exercise regions of the brain for self-regulation and release of stress hormones. Instead, the hand-holding—if the relationship was good—seemed to take care of that.
The attachment behavioral system is largely about the management of fear.
"maternity sensitivity scale" based on three precepts: that the mother perceives a baby's signals, interprets them correctly, and responds appropriately
As with all parenting, sometimes it was exhausting, but it was also exhilarating and remains the most rewarding and happiest part of both of our lives.
"Attachment theory raises the question of how well a society creates 'persons.'"
Recognize That We Are All Creatures Who Need to Attach
If you want to feel how a baby sees its mother, listen to Joe Cocker singing "You Are So Beautiful" as if it were sung to the mother by her child.

Origin of Attachments#

"The formation of a bond is described as falling in love" "The romantic love is an adult form of attachment"

The attachment system was designed," he explained, "to do one very simple thing: to create and keep physical closeness between infant and caregiver. Infants who displayed these behaviors and caregivers who responded were the ones whose genes were more likely to survive to the next generation. Infants who didn't do it, who said, in effect, 'pretty tiger' and wanted to go talk to the tiger, or caregivers who were more concerned about themselves and didn't go to pick up the infant, their genes did not get passed on
In the first years of life . . . a child extracts patterns from his relationships . . . [and] stores an impression of what love feels like.
John Bowlby wrote: "The formation of a bond is described as falling in love, maintaining a bond as loving someone, and losing a partner as grieving over someone." To be sure, adult romance is not only about attachment—other factors come into play—but attachment is an essential part.
Drawing on the writings of John Bowlby, she concluded—as had other leading researchers—that romantic love is an adult form of attachment. As such, love exists for the same reason the infant-parent bond exists: when we emotionally bond with loved ones, they become our safe havens and secure bases.
Love is "the best survival mechanism there is," Johnson has written. It "drives us to bond emotionally with a precious few others who offer us safe haven from the storms of life." This need for safe, emotional connection is "wired into our genes" by millions of years of evolution and is as basic to health and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex.
Frightening events, illness and injury, and threat of separation—situations that John Bowlby believed activate the attachment system

The Physiological Initiative of Attachment Style#

The success or failure of that search actually shapes the infant's developing brain, affecting core emotions and personality structure, and thus creating a set of beliefs and expectations about relationships in general.

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)#

Consists of 20 open ended questions designed "to surprise the unconsciousness". Is performed by professionally trained therapists.

The "adjectival constellation" the person is asked to provide on the spot is a synopsis of the "general nature of the childhood relationship." Once the adjectives have been given, the person has in effect "taken a stance" as to the kind of relationship he or she had with that parent. Then the person will be "systematically prodded" for specific memories to support the selection of each word.
Question Lists (incomplete)
1. Describe your relationship with your parents.
2. Think of five adjectives that reflect your relationship with your mother.
3. What's the first time you remember being separated from your parents?
4. Did you ever feel rejected?
5. Did you experience the loss of someone close to you?
6. How do you think your experience affected your adult personality?

The Strange Situation#

The Strange situation is a standardized procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to observe attachment security in children within the context of caregiver relationships. It applies to infants between the age of nine and 18 months.

The procedure involves series of eight episodes lasting approximately 3 minutes each, whereby a mother, child and stranger are introduced, separated and reunited.

If you want to see the quality of a young child's attachment to his or her mother, watch what the child does, not when Mother leaves, but when she returns.
Mothers of anxious babies," said Susan, "are apt to be intrusive like that, to roughhouse or to tickle. I think it's partly that they know they're not going to be able to comfort the child just with contact, and so they try all these other things."
Anxious babies, explained Susan, are not good at using their mothers as a secure base. "That's the essence of the anxious attachment style," she said, "to seek comfort but not to be able to be comforted because it hasn't been consistent and can't be trusted. They want their mother but they can't use the contact, and so they get angry." Or as one researcher put it, "The hallmark of this classification is seeking contact and then resisting contact angrily once it is achieved."
Children with disorganized attachment may try to control the interaction with their parent, sometimes by trying to entertain or reassure them. As one staff worker put it, "Some kids get all parental and try to control the visit so it goes well."
The strange situation isn't wrong necessarily," Jim continued. "It's just that what we take from it is limited. We've omitted a large part of the story. What I fear is that what generates an insecure attachment, whether avoidant or anxious, is an over-reliance on a single attachment figure who can't do it all—'cause she can't."

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)#

Developed by Sue Johnson after discovering most couple therapy don't work. The core of EFT is answering attachment questions "Can I depend on you? Are you there for me? Do I matter to you?"

Johnson called her new approach emotionally focused therapy (EFT). Its core message is straightforward: "Recognize and admit you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing and protection." And to strengthen that emotional bond, "be open, attuned, and responsive to each other."
Love is "the best survival mechanism there is," Johnson has written. It "drives us to bond emotionally with a precious few others who offer us safe haven from the storms of life." This need for safe, emotional connection is "wired into our genes" by millions of years of evolution and is as basic to health and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex.
Fights are really protests over emotional disconnection, says Johnson. "Underneath all the distress, partners are asking each other: Can I depend on you? Are you there for me? Do I matter to you?"
"My clients had to learn to take risks, to show the softer sides of themselves. . . to confess their fears of loss and isolation" and to talk about their "longings for caring and connection." It is this form of healthy dependence, she wrote, that is the essence of romantic love. A key shift in a couple's relationship occurs when both partners can "hear each other's attachment cry and respond with soothing care."
EFT's effectiveness on a neurological basis is demonstrated by Jim Coan's MRI-hand-holding study. Twenty-four women who reported their marriages as unhappy were put alone into the MRI scanner. When threatened with electric shock, their brain activity was the same whether they held a stranger's hand or their husband's hand. But after several months of EFT counseling, when the women were again put into the scanner and held their husbands' hands, their brains were quieter; they reported the shocks as "uncomfortable" but not painful. The researchers concluded: "EFT can alter the way the brain encodes and responds to threats in the presence of a romantic partner."
Notes Sue Johnson, "Love is a safety cue that literally calms and comforts the neurons in our brain."
"It's especially effective with 'escalated' couples," she said, meaning those in a "negative cycle of behavior, blaming each other, feeling hopeless, including couples having affairs."
An anxious person, for example, may feel an intense need for his or her partner but at the same time may never fully trust that those needs will be met. For some, this can trigger behavior that is critical and complaining. For example: "You're not really there for me; you're going to disappoint me again!" Or it can be expressed as an extreme form of self-reliance that is really just a defense mechanism. On the surface, anxious people will often blame their partner, but underneath they're really looking for closeness and connection.
Avoidants, on the other hand, may be unable to figure out how to get their needs met in a relationship and, rather than pursue their partner, will just withdraw. And sometimes a way to withdraw—to exit the relationship—is to have an affair. In contrast, when the anxious partner has an affair, it's often from a feeling of having tried to get needs met and having failed and being burned out. "We call that a 'burned-out pursuer,'" Reena explained.
In this part of EFT, each person has a chance to say what emotions—such as fear, sadness, or loneliness—get stirred up by the other's behavior and to ask for what they need when they are feeling those emotions. This is the beginning of repairing attachment wounds.
Express their underlying emotions, not just the secondary emotions like "I'm angry," but instead the more vulnerable feelings: I'm scared. I'm sad. I'm feeling alone. I miss you. It's a difficult thing to learn, but it can dissolve the negative pattern.

Earned Secure#

However, you can work to change your attachment style — "earned secure" ——"you're still anxious or avoidant, but you know how to deal with it."

Can change from the experience of very mindful parenting; or from a long-term relationship with a secure spouse or romantic partner.
You can learn to subvert the process. Even if you can't change your attachment style, by being aware of its influence, you may be able to change the outcomes, and if you can change the outcomes, then who cares what your attachment style actually is?"
People with earned security are those who by all rights should be a mess but who, through life experiences, have been able to achieve secure attachments. At some level," he added, "you're still anxious or avoidant, but you know how to deal with it."
Earned security comes from one of two things: first, a strong, meaningful relationship with another person—not a caregiver—who somehow substitutes for the caregiver. In childhood or adolescence, that could be an aunt or uncle, a foster parent, schoolteacher, mentor, or coach. In adulthood, it could be a romantic partner or spouse in a successful, stable marriage or a therapist—"some incredibly influential experience with another person that has a profound impact on you," Harry explained. Second, earned security can also come from deep reflection and meaningful insight into one's own experience—often with the aid of a therapist—that convinces oneself, "You know, my early experiences really suck but maybe I can do better."
Earned secure doesn't mean that everything's fine or that you don't struggle. It means you have enough understanding and enough distance that you can describe things with a certain objectivity. That's what being secure in general means.

Attachment Figures#

For a true attachment figure, one has to meet five criteria, i.e. proximity-seeking, safe haven, secure base, separation anxiety and grief of losing.

To help people identify who in their lives fills these needs, attachment researchers, including Cindy Hazan, now at Cornell University, have developed what is known as the WHOTO scale. It's a questionnaire designed to reveal whom we go to when we feel distressed or in need. A question that taps the proximity-seeking need, for example, asks: "Who is the person it is hardest to be away from?" Another taps the safe haven need: "Who is the person you want to talk to when you are worried about something?" Questions that tap the secure base function include: "Who is the person you know will always be there for you?" and "Who is the person you want to share your successes with?"
While a close friend may fulfill these selected attachment needs, it would nevertheless be unusual for a friendship among adolescents or young adults to be a true attachment relationship. For that, the friendship would need to fulfill all attachment criteria, including secure base and also "separation protest"—showing emotional upset over the actual or even potential separation from the friend. As noted by researcher Wyndol Furman: Individuals may seek proximity to their friends and some may turn to them as a safe haven, but most friends do not seem to serve as secure bases from which to explore the world, nor do individuals usually protest when separated involuntarily from their friends.
"Researchers talk sometimes as if only people who are married or have a romantic partner have attachment relationships," Harry had said. "But there are lots of single people, and they're not all walking around without secure bases and safe havens. So how are they getting their attachment needs met?" Often, said Harry, it's through an especially close friend.
That in her teens Jen found in Lucy a friend who could fulfill some of her attachment needs fits a pattern recognized by researchers: as early as middle school and accelerating through adolescence, young people will begin to transfer some attachment needs from parents to same-sex peers.
The first attachment need to transfer is often "proximity seeking"—that is, the desire to keep a friend physically close, or at least in close
Note, however, that studies show the attachment need for secure base—finding in someone's rock-solid commitment the confidence to go out and explore the world—typically does not transfer until a young adult has a romantic partner or spouse. And some people, even after marriage, keep their parents as a secure base well into adulthood.

Criteria for Attachment Figures#

True attachment figures, whether for a child or adult, meet two additional criteria: that the threat of separation from the attachment figure causes anxiety, often accompanied by protest (in the case of a child that would be crying), and that the loss of the attachment figure causes grief.
We mean a person—and it's usually the mother—who fulfills three essential functions of the attachment system. The first is called 'proximity maintenance,' which means the caregiver is someone the child keeps close for safety and comfort. The next two are 'secure base' and 'safe haven': children need a secure base from which to explore and a safe haven to come back to when life gets scary."

Quantity of Attachment Figure#

Typically, children have multiple attachment figures
So if instead of being raised just by his or her mother," I asked, "a kid were raised by six people, men and women in the village—" "Then the kid would see all those men and woman as attachment figures," said Jim, "just as they do the mom in the strange situation."

Religions#

You can be securely attached to God, or you can be anxiously attached: 'I'm worried what God is going to think about me and I'm constantly worried about pleasing God.' Or you can have an avoidant attachment: 'God doesn't care about what happens to me.'"
"There are no atheists in foxholes"
Even so, we understand what it means to be separated from God: if we suffer a tragedy and come to feel that God has abandoned us, that loss of secure base and safe haven can trigger anxiety, anger, and grief. In Jewish tradition, to be cut off from God (karet) is the worst punishment. In Islam, Bagher Ghobari Bonab and colleagues note, "perceived abandonment by Allah" creates among followers "an acute form" of separation anxiety. "Just as the child unable to obtain proximity to its attachment figures cries out in distress, so too, believers lament when faced with separation from Allah, their ultimate attachment figure." In Christian belief, separation from God is "the essence of hell." Christ himself cried out on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
Mary is "a universal symbol of maternal love, as well as suffering and sacrifice,"
First, studies show that if your parents raised you to have a secure attachment and you observed your parents being religiously observant, then you are likely to follow your parents' religion
What if a child is raised in a religious family but without a secure attachment? In that case, asserts Kirkpatrick, the adult child, reacting to a problematic childhood relationship with his or her parents, may shun the parents' religious tradition and perhaps religion altogether. These adult children may, Kirkpatrick adds, become "the apostates . . . or the militant atheists."
Religious affiliation has been declining in the United States, as it has in most Western countries. Among millennials (those born between 1980 and 1994), nearly 35 percent say they are atheist, agnostic, or that religion is "not a big deal." I respect everyone's choice about belief in God, but I do wonder what that 35 percent of millennials might do in years to come when their parents are gone, and they are not in a relationship, and their sister's plane falls into the sea. It's comforting to know that at least they'll always have an option.

Attachment Styles#

These early beliefs are about the self in relation to others," Harry continued. "Am I lovable? Am I someone other people are going to value and care for? How comfortable am I being close, depending on another person, making myself vulnerable to another person? When I need others, will they be there for me?

Population about 55 percent of people tend to be relatively secure, 25 percent relatively avoidant, and 20 percent relatively anxious. "These are pretty constant results," Harry said
Can I count on my attachment figure to be available and responsive when needed?' The three possible answers are yes (secure), no (avoidant), and maybe (anxious)."
It's just one study, but the result is interesting: across all attachment styles, it suggests, people self-disclose more with offline friends than with online friends and, perhaps as a result, most people report greater satisfaction with offline friends than online ones. Except for one group: anxious people. In the study, anxious people showed no difference in rates of satisfaction between offline and online friendships—they turn out to be equally dissatisfied with both types of friendship. Apparently, the factors that often lead anxious people to be dissatisfied in relationships—notably a frustration that friends do not reciprocate the intense level of intimacy and commitment they crave—also apply to online friendships.

Stability over Life Span#

The best current estimate of the stability of attachment styles over the life span is 70–75 percent

Secure Style#

In general, securely attached people are easy company: upbeat, fairly relaxed, and pleasant to converse with. They won't withhold personal information but neither will they over-disclose to the point of sounding needy or too eager
In romantic relationships, they start with the expectation that their partners will also be loving and responsive. They're able to communicate well about their own needs and to respond to their partners' needs. They are not overly sensitive to rejection and do not fear abandonment. If a relationship doesn't work out, they have high enough self-regard to believe they will find another person to love and who will love them
And that's exactly what you want to see: immediate approach. As soon as she's there, he immediately turns to her. 'It's all I can think about!' He reaches and runs right into her arms. That is a hallmark of security,"
In one study, thirty new mothers whose attachment style had been measured with the Adult Attachment Interview were put in an MRI scanner and shown photos of their babies' faces. Researchers reported a "striking difference" in brain activation: mothers who were secure showed significantly more activity in regions associated with "reward processing" than mothers who were avoidant.
"I feel an obligation not to waste people's time if I know in my heart it's not going anywhere," he said. That struck me as something a secure person would say.
The list of benefits that a secure attachment brings to one's ability to make and sustain successful friendships is long: in various studies, friends with secure attachments compared with those with insecure attachments have been found more willing to self-disclose (but to do so appropriately), more comfortable with emotional intimacy, more trusting and trustworthy, better able to commit to a friendship, better able to have smoother and more stable interactions with friends, better conflict resolution skills, and overall greater satisfaction with their friendships.
In a 2009 study, for example, researchers found that older adults with secure attachments had less difficulty falling asleep than those who were insecure. In contrast, those who were anxiously attached, perhaps due to "preoccupation with daily challenges," had more trouble getting to sleep, took more naps, and relied more on sleeping medication.
The findings revealed that while doctors rated only 2 percent of patients with secure attachment as "difficult," they rated 17 percent of anxious patients and 19 percent of avoidant patients as difficult.

Insecure#

"Treat insecure friends in a manner consistent with their defenses," advises Harry Reis. In other words, if a friend is anxious, reassure him often of your availability and commitment. If a friend is avoidant, don't push for too much intimacy and instead give her space.

Avoidant Style#

Avoidantly attached people, in contrast, wouldn't talk about feelings or personal matters much but would focus on things like their jobs or favorite sports teams—nothing personal or deep
No proximity, no safe haven, no secure base. This child may think"—and here he channeled the voice of a frightened infant—"'There is no caregiver available who can take care of me and who will deal with this threat for me. I'm an infant; I can't even crawl. I'll stick around this caregiver because what other choice do I have? But I'm not going to get too close and I'm not going to protest too much because I've already discovered these things don't work.
Whose caregiver is pretty much always unresponsive, learns to shut down and avoid intimacy."
Avoidant individuals—self-reliant and able to function without close proximity to significant others—do especially well at jobs that require solo travel or long hours working independently
When avoidant people are in a relationship, they are relatively poor at giving support when their partner needs it, and when conflict occurs, they tend to distance themselves
I'm uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust or open up to others and difficult to allow myself to depend on others. Often partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being." "Avoidant people," he continued, "are less invested in relationships; they just care about them less. They say things like, 'This intimacy stuff is a bunch of BS.' They believe strongly in self-reliance, that you should be able to solve all your problems yourself. They also don't like to self-disclose, and disapprove of people who do
In another study, participants in the MRI scanner were asked to count dots on a screen and then shown faces—some smiling and some angry—of people they were told were evaluating their performance. In response, people with avoidant attachment showed "reduced activation" in regions of their brains associated with receiving social information while anxious individuals showed increased activation in regions associated with negative social signals. These results were consistent, researchers noted, with findings that avoidant individuals tend not to seek social support, while people with anxious attachments may show "enhanced vigilance" toward threats to the self.
Avoidant people, explains Birnbaum, tend to separate sexual activity from emotional closeness. Instead, they may use sex to avoid emotional intimacy by pursuing short-term relationships to confirm their self-worth and independence. As such, they are more likely than secure or anxious people to engage in one-night stands and short-term couplings. They are also more likely to respond favorably to attempts at "mate-poaching"—i.e., attempts to lure them away from their current partners. When they do have sex with their partners, they tend to focus on their own sexual needs more than their partner's needs. Their sexual fantasies often involve scenes of emotionally distant partners as well as some hostility. And couples where both partners have avoidant attachments report having the lowest rate of sexual frequency.
In practice, they tend not to pair up with each other, often preferring a partner either who is secure or whose attachment anxiety, by comparison, lets them feel strong and self-reliant. If avoidants do pair up, they are likely to withdraw when problems arise.
Avoidants may appear to recover more quickly—they get back into the game sooner—but there may be a large dose of denial in their response so they may not be truly recovered
And how about those with avoidant attachment? "Avoidants would be uncomfortable talking about feelings," Harry explained. "In fact, it might be easiest to spot avoidants. They wouldn't talk about personal things much but would focus on things they do—their jobs, their favorite sports teams, and so on. Nothing personal or deep, though."
People with avoidant attachment tend to reveal little and, consciously or not, may communicate that they really do not need a partner. Anxious daters, in contrast, tend to disclose too much too soon, often before the other person is ready for such intimacy, causing them to seem needy or overeager
It is not the case," researchers at a New Zealand university assert, "that highly avoidant individuals do not want or need care and support; they do. But they also want to protect themselves from the neglect and hurt they expect will occur if they reach for or rely on their partners." The study was done with romantic couples but may also apply to friends. It found that with avoidant people, while average levels of support may only serve to trigger the person's fear of dependence, very high levels of support can break through those defenses and allow the avoidant person to respond positively to a friend's support. Not all kinds of support work, however. Emotional support, such as expressing caring or saying you understand and empathize, doesn't help much. But when avoidant people consistently received very high levels of practical support—offering information, suggesting concrete action, generating solutions to a problem—their defensive barriers fell.
At the same time, however, avoidant attachment styles appear to increase with age. The deaths of so many friends and loved ones, researchers speculate, may gradually cause some older adults to lose their tolerance, or even desire, for relationships.

Anxious Style#

Anxiously attached people, on the other hand, can be funny and engaging, but part of that comes not from a genuine interest in the other person, but from fear of rejection and a desire for the other person to like them and offer them security. They also tend to disclose too much too soon, thus coming across as needy or overeager.
I can't figure out how I get my caregiver to come over and take care of me. I don't know what to do. I'm feeling abandoned, so I better just put all my energy into trying to get that person over here right now.' "Instead of shutting down," Harry explained, "this infant protests and cries even more. He clings and does everything possible to signal that he is really, really distressed and, 'By God, you're my caregiver and you just gotta take care of me!'"
It's experiencing these big ups and downs—'This is it! No it's not!'—plus feeling that intense need for connection but at the same time resenting the insecurity, that produces in anxious people what is so characteristic of this attachment style: a general sense of ambivalence.
Much of this stems from the realization, 'When I wanted my mother to comfort me, she didn't, or at least I couldn't count on it, so I must not be very lovable, and so I have to keep tabs on other people
Tribal members with anxious attachments—ever vigilant to early signs of a threat—would have functioned as "sentinels," alerting others to danger. And tribal members with avoidant attachments—inclined to be self-reliant and act independently—would have functioned as "rapid responders," taking decisive yet dangerous action to protect the community.
Anxious people also have a 'come here, go away' thing—a push-pull quality in their desire for closeness, reflecting an intense need to be in relationship but at the same time resentment for feeling so insecure without one. They tend to be hypercritical toward partners, feeling let down or rejected when their partners show the slightest lack of attention. They also tend to think about this stuff more; they're often preoccupied with it.
Anxious babies, explained Susan, are not good at using their mothers as a secure base. "That's the essence of the anxious attachment style," she said, "to seek comfort but not to be able to be comforted because it hasn't been consistent and can't be trusted. They want their mother but they can't use the contact, and so they get angry." Or as one researcher put it, "The hallmark of this classification is seeking contact and then resisting contact angrily once it is achieved."
People with anxious attachment generally have the toughest time with breakups. For them, the loss of a partner who represents the security they crave is difficult to bear. What causes sadness for those who are secure can cause desperation for those who are anxious. In a survey of five thousand respondents, anxious partners who were broken up with reported reacting with "angry protests, heightened sexual attraction to the former partner, intense preoccupation with the lost partner, and a lost sense of identity." And, somewhat surprisingly, it's the anxious partner who in the aftermath of a breakup is most likely to engage in violence. Unable to accept the loss of a secure base, the anxious partner may stalk or even strike out aggressively—and counterproductively—as a way to regain proximity to the partner
Lead them to succumb to unwanted sexual advances and to engage in unprotected or unwanted sex. While having sex, they tend to try to please their partners while failing to achieve their own desires, and their worries about the relationship can sometimes cause performance anxiety. Couples where both partners are anxious tend to have the highest rate of sexual frequency, although some anxious people may prefer the affectionate aspects of sex (holding, cuddling, kissing) to actual sex. Their sexual fantasies often include submission themes that, as Birnbaum notes, "serve their desire to be irresistibly desired."
Anxious people, on the other hand, tend to use sex to alleviate their insecurities and promote intimacy. They sexualize their desire for affection, notes Birnbaum, and use sex to gain a partner's reassurance.
Of course, some anxious people aren't really interested in the other person. They're interested in the other person liking them and offering them security. It's like that Bette Midler line, 'Enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think about me?' That's an anxious person talking."
"Too much [self-disclosure] early on can signal excessive neediness, and too little in a later stage can signal lack of interest or commitment to the relationship."
Interestingly, researchers have found that the percentage of older adults with insecure attachment changes with advancing age. Anxious attachment styles, for example, appear to decrease with age. This may be because some adults gradually become more secure due to the stabilizing effects of a long-term marriage, the experience of parenting, or other healthy long-term relationships over the course of their lives.
Research has shown that anxious individuals have a lower tolerance of pain—they actually feel pain more acutely than those who are secure or avoidant. As a result, anxious adults may develop an aversion to exercise.

Disorganized Style#

Neglect is a broad concept that includes failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment; lack of supervision or education; and failure to provide psychological safety, through ridicule, hostility, exposure to marital violence, or abandonment
Children with a disorganized attachment show they are in a conundrum: "Their fear is insolvable because the source of their security is also the source of their fear.
Children with disorganized attachment may try to control the interaction with their parent, sometimes by trying to entertain or reassure them. As one staff worker put it, "Some kids get all parental and try to control the visit so it goes well."

Anxious-Avoidant Trap#

Finally—and somewhat perversely—anxious people and people with avoidant attachment styles are often attracted to each other. For those with avoidant attachment, an anxious partner confirms their belief in themselves as strong and self-reliant, as well as their view of the other as needy and dependent. And for the anxious partner, an avoidant mate confirms the belief that one cannot trust a partner's commitment. Plus, anxious people may be so eager to be in a relationship that they're willing to take a less desirable mate. Either way, each fulfills the other's expectations of how a relationship functions—a self-fulfilling prophecy, often with unhappy results. In one longitudinal study, couples that included an avoidant woman and an anxious man were "highly predisposed" to break up within the three-year study period.

Attachment Parenting#

I mentioned the child-rearing movement called "attachment parenting." Advocates encourage a close and frequent physical bond between mother and baby. "Well, they're wrong," he said. "And their advice is dangerous to children. I don't want to overstate it, but kids are resilient, and outside of real neglect and abuse, most of the outcomes they realize have little or nothing to do with parenting styles. This whole 'don't put your kid in day care' thing is bullshit; it's pointless. And socially regressive.
This attachment parenting stuff is all about perfectionism, and to be honest there is an extreme where you do have moms—the more neurotic types—where everything for them is just do or die. That's what the media focuses on, this sensational idea of moms who never leave their babies and breast-feed them until age seven and keep their babies in their beds."
"I embrace the principles of attachment parenting but in a more realistic way because it's not about being a perfect parent—it's just about paying attention to my children."
"Children don't come with an instruction manual," Glen Cooper, a clinician who works with children and families, has observed. "They are the instruction manual, and behavior is how they communicate their needs."
For a baby, aspects of attunement might include timing of feeding, minimizing intrusive touch, moving with and gazing at the baby in predictable patterns, and interacting playfully and in harmony with the baby's mood and at the baby's own timing, not the caregiver's.

Dating#

Past age thirty or so, the insecure mostly make up the dating pool.
First dates, write researchers Mikulincer and Shaver, are likely to activate the attachment system and evoke the "purest effects" of one's attachment style. "They are emotionally charged and can arouse hopes of care and support, as well as fears of disapproval and rejection."
A relationship is like dancing close; we're all drawn together in the beginning because of the attraction but later we start stepping on each other's toes. If we don't have a secure attachment, instead of continuing to dance close, we'll both step back—arms out straight like kids at a middle school dance. Eventually we'll get very far back. That's when affairs happen. And that's when most couples walk through my door.

Work#

Work is a relational activity. Depending on the job and the type of workplace, most people at work are constantly involved in relationships: with colleagues, with managers, with customers. And given that attachment style influences behavior in relationships, research shows that many aspects of work will be affected by individual differences in attachment style. Thus, how we relate to others at work, how satisfying we find work, how we deal with job stress, whether we stay at a job or quit—indeed, how we choose a career path in the first place—all reflect our personal attachment style. And it doesn't matter if an organization is big or small: the influences of attachment are the same
Pleasant Pops would almost perfectly illustrate a recent discovery about a secret to business success: that insecure employees—those with avoidant or anxious attachment—not only contribute unique skills to a work team, but working together with secure employees can, under the right conditions, actually produce superior results.
A secure attachment, noted John Bowlby, permits a child to explore. And for adults, work can be understood as a form of exploration (or "functionally parallel" to exploration, as one researcher has put it).
Researchers found a "clear and statistically significant" relationship between attachment security in infancy and later ability to effectively explore career opportunities. In another study, adolescents who were more secure made more realistic career choices that coincided with their abilities.
In sum, these studies demonstrate that anxious individuals can benefit a group and contribute to its success. They do this by being vigilant to problems and threats, and reliably warning the whole group.
Creating a cohesive group involves, in the words of one researcher, creating an "island of security" by responding to employees' needs for security and protection. For anxious employees, managers can make sure they know they are accepted and valued as part of the team. For avoidant employees, managers can assign them roles that allow for maximum time to work independently. For both groups, managers can be alert to conflicts and help resolve disputes quickly before tensions escalate.
I saw it consistently: in the encouragement they gave staff in facing both work-related and personal challenges, in the sensitivity they showed toward the unsettled nature of their young employees' lives, in the way they dealt with employee errors by assuming good intentions and not humiliating anyone
"Roger and I can take the financial risk and be creative," he said, "but then that opens opportunities for the staff to be creative too, and without the financial pressure. Our goal has been to bring on smart people and give them support so they can succeed. It's empowering when we can do that. Not doing that—having the attitude that only we are the decision makers—that's what holds a lot of small operations down."
"The reason why I'm still here [after two years] at Pleasant Pops is its culture of community," a barista told me. "You spend forty hours a week with these people. If there are problems, you talk it out. I'm sensitive and I like to have trust. I've gone from 'It's just a job' to 'These people are my friends and I have personal relationships with them.'"
At an Israeli university, researchers assigned fifty-two student work teams to complete an academic project. Each team had from three to five members representing a variety of attachment styles. When the work was completed and the results assessed, the surprising finding was that the most successful teams were not the ones with the most secure members but rather those that had a mix of attachment types: some secure, some avoidant, and some anxious. These findings, say the researchers, provide the first evidence of a "significant contribution" of diversity of attachment styles to work-team performance and a "new perspective on the strengths and contributions of individuals" with insecure attachments. "Although insecure attachment patterns may yield undesirable outcomes for individuals," they note, "having individuals with diverse attachment patterns in a group . . . may be beneficial at the group level," enriching the team and improving team functioning. For managers looking to maximize results, they advise, "it may prove beneficial to include individuals with diverse attachment orientations on each team."

Sport#

I'd work with my anxiously attached players to see which part of their workouts caused the most discomfort, and prescribe other exercises, perhaps of longer duration but that cause less pain. As far as hesitancy on the court, I'd work with my anxious players to help them understand how their attachment style may be the cause of the hesitancy. Then I'd reassure them—clearly and often—that I value them regardless of whether the risks they take on the court work out or not.
Research now shows that the players' attachment styles may be a factor that affects group chemistry or cohesion. Studies suggest, for example, that attachment avoidance might cause a person to distance himself from a group and contribute less to group morale. On the other hand, attachment anxiety might lead one to seek security from a group but also to doubt one's worth as a group member. Sports teams, therefore, as close-knit groups of people who spend months together under stressful and changing conditions, are especially vulnerable to the effects of individual members' attachment styles.
"I suspect he knows," said Dr. Cassidy, "because his mother did it to him. So for this coach providing comfort to this athlete—in attachment terms, a safe haven—is probably the natural, automatic thing to do. The script he's learned: if there's distress, then comfort."
"A high-quality coach-athlete relationship," they concluded, "appears to be similar to the fulfillment of the attachment figure properties."
I sensed he understood me and saw my potential, and that made me want to do my best in class.
"Well, I wanted to know each player personally, to understand who they are and what they can do, how they think, what interests them, what their strengths are—" Bud was describing exactly what I'd felt fifty years earlier—his genuine interest in understanding me as a person.
"And I wanted to understand, for each of you, if you could accept challenges, how you reacted to challenges, and if you didn't react well, what I could do to help you, because there are so many challenges every day both in a classroom and on the court. The basic point was to understand what each kid needs and to figure out how I can help the kid get it. That was the basis of my coaching, and my teaching too."
An attuned concern for the player,
Why are some athletes more prone to choking under pressure? It may be, notes researcher Kelly Forrest, that under increased stress, athletes with different attachment styles tend to experience different degrees of "concentration disruption."

Politics#

Leaders with anxious attachment, on the other hand, may seek office "as a means of satisfying unmet needs for attention, closeness, and acceptance rather than as a means of meeting followers' needs and promoting their healthy development," note Shaver and Mikulincer. Once in office, they may exhibit a "self-preoccupied focus" on unsatisfied attachment needs that can "draw mental resources away" from fulfilling their sworn duties.
There appears to be a correlation between secure attachment and beliefs that are centrist, either center-left or center-right. A secure attachment is marked by "self-confidence, empathy, and trust," note researchers Christopher Weber and Christopher Federico, and can lead to a general belief that the world is a "safe, harmonious place" populated by people of goodwill. The secure voter, therefore, will tend to be tolerant of ambiguity and disinclined to embrace a rigid dogmatism. According to attachment expert Mario Mikulincer, a secure attachment produces "more moderate, more flexible, and more realistic political views."
Voters who are avoidant, who often distrust others and prize self-reliance, may be attracted to right-wing conservatism, note researchers Weber and Federico, both in terms of economics (the world is an "uncaring, competitive jungle") and military policy ("we can only depend on our own strength").
"Insecurity is made worse by uncertainty," explains Union College psychology professor Joshua Hart, "so insecure people should also be drawn to . . . extremist ideologies of all stripes that provide a sense of having a strong and unerring view of the world."
Anxious voters, seeking security in a world that feels threatening, may embrace a far-left liberal orthodoxy that advocates redistribution of wealth and political power, and aggressively demands "inclusion" and protection in the form of a caregiving government that takes care of everyone's welfare. But this is not a hard-and-fast rule either. The avoidant voter could embrace the left-wing orthodoxy, and the anxious voter the right-wing conservatism—either way, they will be attracted to the perceived safety of dogmatism.
"I've always been instinctively an optimist, Peter," he said. "I don't care what the problem is. There's a solution out there someplace. (Peter is avoidant)
"Qualities throughout include abstract responses that are remote from memories and feelings, self is described as strong, independent, and if vulnerable, subject minimizes it. . . . There is little expression of feelings and of needing or depending, actually there is an active dismissal of those feelings. There is minimizing and downplaying of negative experiences, emphasis on achievements, academic success, and athletics rather than emotional intimacy."
I could see how aspects of avoidance could be an advantage to someone pursuing public office. Avoidants tend to be self-reliant—a necessary trait among those seeking elective office

Others#

The biggest charge I always used to hear as a kid from my family was, 'You're too sensitive.' It was only recently I told that to a friend who is a rabbi and she said, 'You know, when your family accuses you of being too sensitive, the correct response is, "Thank you."
In fact, despite great effort, no definitive connection between genes and attachment has been found. In one study looking at the genomes of more than 2.5 million people, researchers found no significant relation between genes and attachment style
The genetic lottery may determine the cards in your deck, but experience deals the hand you can play