Are your early attachments affecting your current relationships?

If you’ve spent any time in the mental health world or on social media, you might have heard the term “attachment.” What is attachment? How do we form attachments? How might attachment show up in your relationships and how you generally interact with the world today?

How We Form Attachments

Attachment is an enduring emotional relationship that creates nurturing, comfort, and safety. We first experience attachment as the bond between the infant versions of us and our caregiver or caregivers. 

And we need this attachment because it serves an important function for survival — being attached to our caregivers protects us from danger. Without attachment, we as infants could not survive! We need a caregiver to connect to us enough to feel a strong urge to take care of us in order to have our basic needs met. It is that bond between the infant and the caregiver that compels the caregiver to respond to the infant’s needs and ensure that they are protected and cared for.

Secure vs Insecure Attachments

Through these actions, the bond is formed and strengthened. It is through having these needs met that we learn what to expect from the world. Our brains and bodies are learning and making connections to prepare us for what to expect from others.

Ideally, our needs are met and we learn that we are worthy of love and nurturing and that the world and other people are safe and able to meet our needs.

But if our needs were often unmet, or maybe they were met but our caregiver also inflicted harm simultaneously, then it would make sense that moving through the world in other close relationships we could feel potentially unsafe, uncertain, unstable, or disconnected. We might feel distant in our relationships or perhaps we feel close but there is often conflict, chaos, or a frequent push away and pull towards our family.

As we move through the world we view social and romantic relationships through this unconscious lens. If our early attachment experiences were safe, relatively consistent, and secure, we feel more secure in the vulnerable space of a close intimate relationship. If our early attachment experiences were unsafe, more inconsistent, or nonexistent, we feel generally insecure in our relationships.

Are you secure or insecure in your attachments? 

What exactly does “secure” versus “insecure” attachment look like? Let’s look at some signs of each.

Here are some signs that you are secure in your attachment in relationships (among other characteristics):

• Confidence managing emotions in and out of relationships

• Positive view of yourself and others

• Comfort sharing feelings with partners

• Healthy self-esteem

• Thriving in trusting, long lasting relationships

• Comfort in a space of interdependence

Insecurity in your attachment in relationships could look like this (among other characteristics): 

• Often fearing abandonment or feeling like you are moments from losing a meaningful relationship

• Feelings of low self-worth, as though you aren’t good enough to maintain that relationship

• Experiencing depression or anxiety in relationships, mood swings related to status of relationship or your partner’s moods

• Confused sense of self

• Intense desire or preoccupation with keeping an intimate relationship and/or intense fear of being trapped in a relationship

• Feeling overly dependent or excessively independent

The problem with insecure attachment is that it can prevent you from having truly meaningful, fulfilling relationships where growth and vulnerability are possible and the needs of all parties are met.

Luckily, insecure attachment can be worked through and healed.

If you are interested in learning more and in working towards improving your relationships, I encourage you to reach out to a therapist who can help you learn and explore. 

In joining with a therapist to explore attachment experiences, we can work towards understanding what and why you feel what you feel in and out of relationships. Your work with a therapist can create space for exploration of patterns, learning self compassion, working towards meeting unmet needs, learning to trust yourself and others, and a whole world healing and growth.

Think you’d like to explore this with one of our therapists? Get in touch with us here.