What On Earth are Attachment Styles and How do you Navigate Them?

Maybe you heard it on Too Hot to Handle, in an intro to psychology class, or your ex claiming they’re not clingy, they’re anxiously attached. Basically, if you’ve been anywhere near the internet in the last few years, you’ve probably heard the term “attachment styles” thrown around 

Attachment Theory was coined in the late 1950s by psychologist Mary Ainsworth and psychoanalyst John Bowlby. The theory argues that the interactions between an infant and their primary caregiver directly influence their style of attachment within their close relationships later in life. 

Put simply, Bowlby and Ainsworth claimed that whether your caregiver responded when you cried most of the time, or only some of the time, predicts whether you’re likely to ghost that sneaky link or not. 

Through an experiment called the Strange Situation – which would probably never pass ethics boards today, due to its unfortunate incentive of scaring babies– four main attachment styles were developed: Secure, Anxious/ Ambivalent, Avoidant, and Disorganised/ Fearful. 

It’s believed that about 50% of the population fits into this category. If your primary caregiver was emotionally reliable, came to you when you cried (most of the time) and held you often, you might find yourself with a generally secure attachment style. 

As an adult, if you are generally confident in your relationships and find it easy to trust your partner, this might be you. 

Securely attached people have a consistently interdependent style of relationships, meaning they can balance reliance on both their partner and themselves. They can be both vulnerable and independent, being deeply connected with a partner whilst still maintaining a sense of their individuality. Securely attached people aren’t perfect, and can still struggle with insecurities like the rest of us, however, most of the time within relationships they have a good handle on their emotions. Deep down, secure attachment is rooted in a person’s belief that they are worthy of love and that people are generally good and able to be trusted. 

If your primary caregiver was unreliable in responding to your needs, leaving you unsure whether they would be there for you when you needed them, you may have developed an anxious/ambivalent attachment style. 

People with this attachment style are insecure within their relationships later in life, often having a deep-rooted fear of abandonment and the belief that they are unworthy of consistent, reliable love. 

Unfortunately, this means their actions within relationships often reflect the subconscious fear that their partner will leave them. This causes people to feel anxious, which can sometimes lead to behaviours seen as ‘needy’ or ‘clingy’. 

If your parent or primary caregiver was unreliable, you may have felt rejected. However, rather than becoming anxious because of this rejection, people may create a defence mechanism of avoidance and internalise the belief that they can’t depend on relationships or others. 

As with all the attachment styles, their actions later in life reflect this belief, with intimacy often being a trigger. People with an avoidant attachment style often “freak out” when faced with growing intimacy with a partner, often sabotaging the relationship or distancing themselves from the other. This self-sabotage might look like a “pulling back” from the relationship when things begin to get more serious or committed. 

People with avoidant attachment styles do crave intimacy the same as others but will often behave in ways that ‘protect’ them from getting too close to other people and becoming emotionally vulnerable. People with an avoidant attachment style can have a hard time committing, being vulnerable or relying on a partner, often preferring to rely solely on themselves. 

They often harbour a deep-rooted belief that they are unlovable, as well as a fear that people are inherently unreliable and not to be trusted. 

Disorganised/Fearful: 

During the Strange Situation experiment, Bowlby found a small percentage of infants did not fit into the Secure, Anxious or Avoidant categories, so he created a fourth: disorganised. 

Disorganised attached infants are often the product of extreme abuse or neglect. This can happen when a primary caregiver has unresolved trauma which influences the way they parent, which continues the cycle and causes the child to experience or witness abuse. 

People with a disorganised attachment style often find intimate relationships extremely difficult, as they internalise a direct overlap between love and fear. They deeply crave and desire intimacy and love, but their infant years taught them that love is dangerous, and intimacy often precedes abuse or pain. This means people in this category can find it extremely difficult to let people in, often acting in extremely irrational, contradicting ways, pushing people away before they can get close, seeing rejection where there is none, and fostering a deep-rooted belief that love equals pain.  

So, those are the four main attachment styles, according to the attachment theory. If you’re in the 50% of people who don’t have a secure attachment style, you might now be wondering if you’re doomed to a life of unhealthy relationships. 

The short answer is no, so don’t start freaking out.

Much recent research points in the direction that attachment styles can change and are more malleable and varied than previously thought.

Relationship expert Stefanie Bullock MNZAC, from The Couples Shed, told VICE that “attachment styles can be developed; however, it does take a lot of hard work, under the careful guidance of a trained therapist. It is a gradual process, with the motivation to change often coming from the realisation that the relationship cannot continue if the attachment style continues.” 

As much as we often want to deal with our emotional struggles on our own, most experts in the field recommend seeing a therapist, as attachment styles are deeply ingrained in childhood and therefore require a specific, therapy-based approach to change.

And recent research found that even the desire to develop a more secure attachment style was positively correlated with change over the next four months. In other words, just wanting to change means you’re already on the path to doing it.

So, while attachment styles are by no means a life sentence, learning where you fit (and why) can be extremely helpful in better understanding how you relate in your relationships, and how you might be able to work toward a more secure style, leading to deeper, more long-lasting, and positive relationships in your life – including your relationship with yourself.

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Jennifer Rockwell (she/they) is a writer and award winning poet based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work can be found on her social media @dawnpoems.