Attachment style can have a significant impact on how you form and sustain relationships throughout your life. Many therapy clients find it helpful to consider how their parents raised them and the impact on their attachment style. I originally read this book back in 2011 (it was published in 2010) – but I often use the ideas and attachment assessments in therapy. For psychoeducation, I’ve reviewed this book for my clients who want to understand more about attachment theory (originated by John Bowlby). Book Review – Attached by Dr Amir Levine and Rachel Heller (Identify your attachment style and find your perfect match).
Overview of attachment styles
Research suggests that:
- 50-65% people have a secure attachment
- 20-25% have an anxious attachment
- 15-25% have an avoidant attachment and
- 5-10% have disorganised attachment
Whilst this 270 page book focuses on attachment styles in romantic relationships, it is a concept that will help people in all of their personal and professional relationships. There are many relatable stories illustrating what happens when people with different attachment styles are in relationships together.
It also offers insight into child development and parenting styles. The book (positioned as “the new science of adult attachment”) aims to translate sometimes complex academic ideas into a useful practical resource for everyday life. After exploring the different attachment styles, the book offers insight into developing your relationship skills.
About the authors – Attached by Dr Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
Dr Amir Levine MD is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia University. Amir Levine, MD | Columbia University Department of Psychiatry
Rachel Heller holds a Master’s degree in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University.
The authors interviewed lots of people – and try to translate theory into practical tools. They urge readers to use attachment instincts rather than fight them.
Decoding relationship behaviours
John Bowlby asserted that the need to be in a close relationship is embedded in our genes – we became attached as it was a survival mechanism.
Attachment styles in adulthood are influenced by a number of factors, one of which is the way our parents cared for us and another includes our life experiences. In romantic relationships, we are programmed to act in a predetermined way. 70% to 75% of adults remain consistently in the same attachment style at different points in their life.
A number of situations and stories unfold that demonstrate a range of behaviours that cause issues for many people in their relationships – for example, being anxious and preoccupied when embarking on a new relationship and feeling lonely in a long-term relationship. Adults show patterns of attachment to their partners similar to the patterns of attachment of children with their parents.
Three main attachment styles:
- Secure – Feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving
- Anxious – Crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationship and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back
- Avoidant – Equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimise closeness
These styles also differ in: their view of intimacy and togetherness, the way they deal with conflict, their attitude toward sex, their ability to communicate their wishes and needs and their expectations from their partner and the relationship.
The brain has a biological mechanism (called the attachment system) specifically for creating and regulating our connection with our attachment figures (parents, children, romantic partners). Children crying when separated from a parent are exhibiting protest behaviours.
Although we have a basic need to form close bonds, the way we create them varies. In a very dangerous environment, it makes more sense to get less attached and move on (hence the avoidant attachment style). Another option in a harsh environment is to act in the opposite manner and be intensely persistent and hypervigilant about staying close to your attachment figure (hence anxious attachment style). In a more peaceful setting, intimate bonds formed by investing greatly in a particular individual would yield greater benefits for self and offspring (hence, secure attachment).
The need to maintain contact with an attachment figure at all costs is amplified greatly by anxious attachment style. It can be triggered by the very slightest feeling of danger – such as the person being out of reach. Yet digital devices now enable us to remain in constant contact.
Dependency is not a bad word
Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring the partner’s psychological and physical proximity. Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet need.
The dependence paradox suggests the more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.
The co-dependency myth is that your happiness is something that should come from within and should not be dependent on your lover or mate. Studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one psychological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, heart rate, breathing and levels of hormones. Dependency is a fact, not a choice or preference. Neuroscience experiments show that when two people form an intimate relationship they regulate each other’s psychological and emotional well being
The ability to step into the world on our own often stems form the knowledge that there is someone beside us who we can count on – this is the dependency paradox.
In the Strange Situation Test it was seen that children’s exploratory drive could be aroused or stifled by their mother’s presence or departure. The mother provided a secure base from which the child could explore. If we are unsure whether the person closest to us, our partner, truly believes in us and supports us and will be there for us in times of need, we’ll find it much harder to maintain focus and engage in life.
When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Partners influence how we feel about ourselves and also the degree to which we believe in ourselves and whether we will attempt to achieve our hopes and dreams. “Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralising and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stymie our health”.
Your relationship toolkit – Deciphering Attachment styles
The book includes an Experience in Close Relationship (ECR) questionnaire. (There is an online version here Experience in Close Relationship Scale – Short Form (ECR-S) – NovoPsych)
Two dimensions essentially determine attachment styles:
- Your comfort with intimacy and closeness (or the degree to which you try to avoid intimacy)
- Your anxiety about your partner’s love and attentiveness and your preoccupation with the relationship
If you are both uncomfortable with intimacy and very concerned about your partner’s availability, you have a rare combination of attachment anxiety and avoidance.
There is also a questionnaire to help you determine your partner’s attachment style. There then follows five golden rules for deciphering attachment styles:
- Determine whether he/she seeks intimacy and closeness
- Assess how preoccupied s/he is with the relationship and how sensitive he/she is to rejection
- Don’t rely on one “symptom”, look for various signs
- Assess his/her reaction to effective communication
- Listen and look for what he or she is not saying or doing
The three attachment styles in everyday life
“You’re only as troubled as the relationship you’re in”. There’s a story about how a seemingly well-balanced person can quickly transform into obsessive, anxious wreck when their attachment system (responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of our attachment figure) is activated. You are unable to calm down until you get a clear indication from your partner that he or she is truly there for you and that the relationship is safe.
Anxious attachment style (“Living with a sixth sense for danger”):
People with anxious attachment style:
- Are more vigilant to changes in others’ emotional expression
- Have a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity to other people’s cues
- Tend to jump to conclusions very quickly
- Tend to misinterpret people’s emotional state
- Once activated they are consumed with thoughts (activating strategies – there’s a fascinating list on page 81) that have a single purpose – to re-establish closeness with their partner
- But if they wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, they have an uncanny ability to decipher the world and use it to their advantage
- Their brains react more strongly to thoughts of loss and at the same time under-recruit regions normally used to down-regulate negative emotions
There’s a helpful flowchart (page 83) based on Shaver and Mikulincer’s 2002 integrative model of the attachment system and how to move to move from the danger zone and back to the comfort zone.
There’s also a helpful list of harmful to the relationship protest behaviours (to re-establish connection). This is where your attachment system gets the best of you including: excessive attempts to res-establish contact, withdrawing, keeping score, acting hostile, threatening to leave, manipulation and creating jealousy.
If you are anxious attachment style you will thrive on intimate, supportive relationships that are stable and long-lasting. Uncertainty and emotional unavailability will activate you and make you preoccupied and miserable. Research found that avoidant individuals actually prefer anxiously attached people. Another study showed that anxious women are more likely to date avoidant men.
The authors explore the emotional roller coaster. Anxious people dating avoidant people may feel insecure. Every time they receive a mixed message their attachment system is activated and they become preoccupied with the relationship. The anxious person starts to equate the anxiety, preoccupation, obsession and ever-so-short bursts of joy with love. Over time, you become “programmed” to be attracted to those very individuals who are least likely to make you happy. True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind.
So anxious people should avoid relationships with avoidant people. However, avoidant people tend to end relationships more frequently so there will be more out there in the dating pool seeking new relationships. Secure people take a very long time to reappear in the dating pool – if at all. And avoidant people rarely date other avoidant people. So the probability of meeting an avoidant attachment style is high – much higher than their relative size in the population – 25%.
When an anxious person meets a secure person, they may feel “the spark is missing” because their attachment system remains calm. This is interpreted by the anxious person as boredom and indifference.
Furthermore, common dating advice (don’t make yourself too available, wait for the other person to call you, game playing etc) leads anxious people to behave in a way that ignores their real needs. Yet it appears attractive to avoidant people.
There’s a coaching session for the anxious attachment style on a date
- Acknowledge and accept your true relationship needs (intimacy, availability and security)
- Recognize and rule out avoidant prospects early (there are tips to help your detect avoidants)
- A new way of dating: Be your authentic self and use effective communication (articulate your needs)
- The abundance philosophy (There are plenty of fish in the sea – meet more people to increase your chances of meeting a good match). Those with anxious attachment tend to form strong attachments very quickly – so give yourself more time to get to know a person
- Give secure people a chance – remind yourself that you may feel bored at first. As an anxious attachment system you will automatically interpret calmness in the relationship as a lack of attraction.
Avoidant attachment style (“Keeping love at arm’s length”)
Avoidant types are sometimes known as a lonesome traveller or as those who fly solo. Studies indicate that avoidant attachment style tend to be less happy and satisfied I their relationships. Research has shown the avoidants are quicker than other people to pick up on words such as need and enmeshed. They often feel a deep-rooted aloneness – even while in a relationship.
Avoidants deploy deactivating strategies to reduce intimacy. For example, saying they are not ready to commit, focusing on small imperfections in partners, pining after exes, flirting with others, pulling away when things are going well, keeping secrets, avoiding physical closeness.
Avoidants have some unconstructive thought patterns: mistaking self-reliance for independence, focusing on small faults, seeing the glass half empty, dismissing connectedness, unable to determine how others are feeling and thinking about the perfect partner.
Coaching tips for avoidants include:
- Learn to identify deactivating strategies (don’t act on your impulses)
- De-emphasis self-reliance and focus on mutual support
- Find a secure partner
- Be aware of your tendency to misinterpret behaviours
- Make a relationship gratitude list
- Stop thinking about the phantom ex
- Forget about “the one”
- Adopt a distraction strategy
Secure attachment style (“Getting comfortably close”)
Research shows that the best predictor of happiness in a relationship is a secure attachment style. They also create a buffering effect to raise their insecure partner’s relationship satisfaction. Secure people are programmed to expect their partner to be loving and responsive and don’t worry much about losing their partner’ love.
Secures have more unconscious access to themes such as love, hugs and closeness and less access to danger, loss and separation. They are: great conflict busters, mentally flexible, effective communicators, not game players, comfortable with closeness, unconcerned about boundaries, quick to forgive, teat their partner like royalty, secure I their power to improve the relationship and responsible for their partner’s well-being.
There’s interesting neuroscience evidence (exploring dopamine and serotonin receptors) that we are genetically pre-disposed toward a certain attachment style.
Coaching tips for secure focus on how to provide a secure base for their partners:
- Be available
- Don’t interfere
- Encourage and boost their self-esteem
When attachment styles clash
The Anxious-Avoidant trap is where one partner truly wants intimacy (the anxious) and the other feels uncomfortable when things become too close (the avoidant). Telltale signs of the anxious-avoidant tap:
- The roller coaster effect my relationships like rollercoaster rides? Volatile relationships
- Emotional counterbalancing effect – often avoidants feel independent and powerful only to the extent that their partner feels needy and incapable
- Stable instability – the couple may remain together but with a feeling of chronic dissatisfaction, never finding the degree of intimacy that you both feel comfortable with
- Are we really fighting about this? Rarely about the surface issue, but usually about the amount of intimacy between you
- Life in the inner circle as the enemy – anxious person treated worse instead of better one you become the one closest to the avoidant
- Experiencing the trap – Develop an eerie sense that the relationship isn’t right for you, but feel too emotionally-connected to leave
The intimacy differences are hard to reconcile because the anxious partner is usually the one who has to make concessions and accept the rules imposed by the avoidant partner. Intimacy issue can spill into more and more areas of life. Conflict is often left unresolved because the resolution itself creates too much intimacy. In order to dodge the possible of getting closer, avoidants tend to grow more hostile and distant as arguments progress. With every clash, the anxious person loses more ground.
How the anxious-avoidant couple can find greater security
Research indicates that attachment styles are stable but plastic. It also shows that people tend to become more secure when they are in a relationship with someone secure. Studies have found that security “priming” – reminding people of security-enhancing experiences they’ve had – can help to create a greater sense of security.
There’s also advice to observe secure people around you and how they behave in their relationships. And then conjure up images and recollections of the way they interact with the world. There’s even a suggestion that you consider your relationship with your pet as a secure role model – we tend to perceive our pets as selfless and loving despite their many misdemeanours.
In attachment research, “working model” is a phrase the describes our basic belief system when it comes to romantic relationships. So you might create a Relationship Inventory – considering past and present relationship from an attachment perspective. A table is provided covering:
- Name of partner
- What is/was the relationship like? What patterns do you recall?
- Situation that triggered activation or deactivation of the attachment system?
- Your reactions (thoughts, feelings, actions)
- Insecure attachment models and principles
- How you lose out by succumbing to these working models/principles
- Identify a secure role model who is relevant to this situation and secure principles to adopt. How is s/he relevant?
There are lists of common anxious and avoidant thoughts, emotions and actions to support this activity. Research reveals that whenever we recall a scene – or retrieve a certain memory to our conscious mind – we disrupt it, and by doing so, we alter it forever.
The author describes the quest to break insecure patterns. There’s mention of Dr Dan Siegel who helps people become more secure and uses a technique for people with insecure attachments how to narrate their pat history in a secure fashion. It also notes that anxious people – who feel they are constantly rejected and rebuffed – start feeling inadequate and unattractive. It erodes their self-esteem. There are also accounts where people have let go of being truly intimate with their partner and have found a way to live with limited togetherness.
When abnormal becomes the norm – An attachment guide to breaking up
There’s a story showing how bad an anxious-avoidant relationship can become. There’s a note that avoidants often use sex to distance themselves from their partner. And describes how difficult it is to break up even when you realise that the relationship is unsuitable. Studies have found that the same areas in the brain that light up in imaging scans when we break a leg are activated when we split up with our mate. leadership conversation skills: SCARF model of neuroscience
Once your attachment system is activated another phenomenon occurs – you will get overwhelmed by positive memories of the few good times you had together and forget the multitude of bad experiences. Anxious people may take a very long time to get over a bad attachment. Having family and friends around will ease the distress of a breakup. There are nine strategies listed for surviving a breakup:
- Ask yourself what life is like for you in the “inner circle”
- Build a support network ahead of time
- Find a comforting, supportive place to stay for the first few nights
- Get your attachment needs met in other ways
- Don’t be ashamed if you slip up and go back to the “scene of the crime”
- If you’re having a hard time, don’t feel guilty. Remember, the pain is real
- When you get flooded with positive memories, ask a close friend for a reality check
- Deactivate: Write down all the reasons you wanted to leave
- Know that no matter how much pain you’re going through now, it will pass
The secure way – Sharpening your relationship skills
Using effective communication to choose the right partner
Express your needs and expectations to your partner in a direct, non-accusatory manner. If the person brushes your concerns aside as insignificant or makes you feel inadequate, foolish or self-indulgent you can conclude that this person doesn’t sincerely have your best interests in mind and you are probably incompatible.
With effective communication, you can turn a supposed weakness into an asset. For example, if you explain that you need to be reassured that you are loved and attractive, instead of trying to conceal it you come across as self-confident and assertive. With effective communication, you also provide a role model for your partner.
Often insecure people cannot get in touch with what is really bothering them as they get overwhelmed by emotions and lash out. Avoidant people need to acknowledge their need for space – whether physical or emotional – when things get too close.
Five principles of effective communication:
- Wear your heart on your sleeve (be genuine and honest)
- Focus on your needs (use verbs such as need, feel, want)
- Be specific
- Don’t blame
- Be assertive and non-apologetic
There’s helpful guidance where you answer questions to determine the topic of your script. And several situations where you can see what effective and ineffective communication looks like.
Five secure principles for dealing with conflict
“All couples – even secure ones – have their fair share of fights”
- Show basic concern for the other person’s well-being
- Maintain focus on the problem at hand
- Refrain from generalising the conflict
- Be willing to engage
- Effectively communicate feelings and needs
Insecure conflict strategies to avoid:
- Getting side tracked from the real problem
- Neglecting to effectively communicate your feelings and needs
- Reverting to personal attacks and destructiveness
- Reacting “tit for tat” to a partner’s negativity with more negativity
- Withdrawing
- Forgetting to focus on the other’s well being
“Adult children of emotionally immature parents – how to heal is a book that explores the way in which our parents’ behaviour can affect our development and attachment style.
Other articles on relationships, anxiety, confidence, self-esteem and therapy
My therapy web site is: Tasso Talking Therapy (Please don’t hesitate to telephone or email for an informal and confidential chat about your mental health)
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