The 4 Relationship Attachment Styles You Need to Know

[Music] everybody has their own style of bonding emotionally with the people in their lives this is called attachment style and it plays a central role in the healthiness of our relationships neuropsychologist dr. Judy Howe is an expert in attachment theory and in this series she explains the types of attachment styles where each one comes from and how to recognize your own most importantly she shares how to improve it in order to improve your relationships and enhance your mental wellness dr. Judy I'm so glad that you get to talk to our audience about this topic because it's the most requested topic I think we've had in the last year probably so cool so let's talk about attachment Theory where does it come from I am so excited about attachment theory because it does affect so many elements of your life even as adults but attachment theory is all about the fact that as infants and as very young children we are helpless so we need our caregivers to take care of us so attachment theory is all about how we establish that relationship with our primary caregivers and whether or not that establishment is healthy or not and how that influences how you function as a child both mentally and physically and again pervades into your adulthood and career in love and friendships and every other aspect of your life do we know that it is affecting us or is it affecting us subconsciously I think sometimes you don't realize it and I think unless you hear the word attachment or you've understood the term attachment or had been spoken about to somebody in some way you're not gonna really know that that's attachment but it will explain so many of your decisions in life it explains why you're attracted to the people that you are if sometimes even explains the type of work you do and it explains the kind of friends you like to keep so it really does affect so many areas of your life which is why I think your viewers have requested it so much I talked to ginger Zee she's the chief meteorologist at Good Morning America and in her book she mentioned that part of the reason she wanted to get into weather and become a scientist and be on television was to get this approval from her parents because they always grew up watching the weather or watching the weather on TV and she goes well if I'm on TV then they will sit and watch me and I can add benefit to their life and she goes so Here I am I learned in therapy I built an entire huge career based on this deep deep want to get my parents approval right yeah it totally makes sense if she has really good insight about that and I was gonna say to that people who've been to therapy generally know the term attachment because probably at some point your therapist has mentioned it to you mention attachment or just ask about your parents well I think well both you know but I think most therapists will have mentioned attachment at some point and it's so interesting that even the attachment relationship that you have with your therapist can really influence how well you do in the therapeutic process now it seems obvious to some but why is this so critical to understand attachment theory I think it's really critical because it really talks about your template for building relationships with people mm-hmm period because the relationship that a baby builds with its primary caregiver is literally the most important relationship at that time and then over time you still use that template even if as adults you're no longer the helpless baby you still use the same template over and over because our human brains are so much better at a process called assimilation which is whenever there's new information that comes in you still absorb it into your existing schema or your existing worldview and that gets established from your very first important relationship when you are fully educated on attachment theory how will it impact the different areas of your life well first is you're gonna have much more awareness about the things that you do and why you do them and especially helpful when you're trying to change any unhelpful behaviors people have come to me telling me that they keep having these unfulfilled relationships and they keep having the same relationship over and over again and once you understand that it might be linked to your attachment that's step number one before you can make that positive change so once you know that you can actually start challenging any unhelpful attachment beliefs so that you can have that relationships and so that you can move on and achieve the goals that you want I mean a lot of people because of their attachment issues are afraid to just interact with life in general so we think hold themselves back even in careers and they just end up having more of an unfulfilled existence overall or even the tumultuous existence as we'll talk about it later in the series we're going to go into all of the different types of attachment styles but right now can you just give a high-level overview on the different types that are out there absolutely so the types were first categorized by Mary Ainsworth and this comes from John Bowlby's work an attachment which started in the 1950s Mary Ainsworth came later around the 70s and developed the strange situation where they observed babies and their parents and kind of developed these different ways to categorize the attachments now the best kind of attachment is what's called a secure attachment when Mary Ainsworth did her studies she thought that two-thirds of people would have this attachment honestly I think as further research has come it's probably not true I think it's actually more than minority than the majority but aside from that there's three other types of insecure attachment and the first type is anxious preoccupied so these are people who tend to be more clingy they have a lot of needs that feel on a dress and they often times we even have fantasy beliefs about what a relationship will do for their life I think I dated that person I feel like we all did I know people are like hmm which ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend is this one and then we have the dismissive avoidant attached individuals who as adults tend to be much more independent they tell themselves they don't really need relationships and they tend to kind of escape situations where people want to express strong emotions it makes them very very uncomfortable and then finally we have the fearful avoidant type and this type is sort of a combination of the two types we just talked about that are insecure and they kind of go back and forth so on the one hand they really have this very conscious need to have deep relationships but on the other hand they're so afraid of abandonment that their behaviors are actually very erratic so sometimes they add kind of Clee other times they run away and you can't kind of can't predict them and then of course going back to the securely attached the whole idea is that these guys are able to be flexible and ever relationship they treat each relationship as it is and they have flexible problem-solving as opposed to this one-way approach to try to get their needs met but as I mentioned I think it's a lot less common than was originally thought can people have a mixed bag of attachment styles I think so and I think when you also break down attachment into the different domains of life sometimes you can have a mixed bag meaning some people actually look kind of securely attached in their career but when it comes to intimate relationships that's where their true attachment the deepest fears get realized because again when it's something like a career there's something that you're doing for that career look there's a job that you're doing there's a performance aspect and people who have insecure attachments can sometimes be secure in that domain because it still equates to them doing something yes and so then when they earn respect or care or nurturance through that they feel like they've earned it they worked hard for it but with an intimate relationship it's so much more difficult because it's kind of like are you a lovable person yeah at all yeah even if you do nothing and that's where people's the deepest fears lie is their intimate relationships because there's no place to hide so attachment Styles aren't a diagnosable condition but certainly they can influence a person's behavior later in life and you mentioned in one of these attachment Styles a fear of abandonment yeah which I know is one of the big symptoms for someone who has borderline personality disorder so explain how understanding attachment styles can help people navigate the mental health you know complications that exist out there yeah it's a really good point that you bring up because basically as I see it attachment Styles is one way to explain the etiology or causes of your mental health symptoms so somebody who has borderline personality traits or the actual disorder it's very likely that they have a fearful avoidant attachment style and that is one of the major causes that leads them to express that through the borderline symptoms somebody who has an anxious preoccupy style there's a lot of research that shows that that leads to anxiety disorders make sense and people who have the dismissive avoidant type sometimes they become more narcissus second nature they become even maybe antisocial in nature when we talk about the personality spectrum sometimes they have a difficulty putting themselves in other people's shoes so they have sort of like a lower empathy that's associated with a number of different types of clinical conditions and so for sure I think that it's really about understanding the causation and the factors that lead you to your event all symptoms excellent well we're going to start this conversation in our next session talking about the secure attachment style [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 79,768

Rating: 4.9290242 out of 5

Keywords: attachment styles, relationships, childhood, attachment, attachment styles in relationships, attachment styles explained, attachment styles in children, attachment theory, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, attachment style, secure attachment, anxious attachment style, avoidant attachment style, fearful avoidant, attachment disorder, preoccupied attachment style, anxious preoccupied attachment, science of people, anxious, feeling insecure, relationship anxiety, medcircle

Id: LRSsEP-xEQw

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020