According to Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., our relationship and attachment style is heavily influenced by our childhood family environment. She addresses three attachment styles and how the effect our adult relationships. Those styles are: secure, preoccupied and dismissing.
Securely attached individuals grow up feeling safe, seen, secure and soothed. When we have a secure attachment style, we have faith that we can get our needs met by others and we are able to be giving toward others. We can appropriately depend on others and rely on ourselves. We are capable of and drawn to feeling trust and closeness, but we can also feel secure within ourselves separate from others.
Preoccupied individuals have a more frantic, less-confident approach to getting their needs met by others. They tend to act clingy or needy, because their needs were inconsistently met as children. They may have had a parent who sometimes met their needs, but at other times acted out of their own needs or was intrusive with the child. These unresolved issues from childhood play out in their present day relationships, making them feel anxious and insecure, even when there is no need to feel this way. Think about the person who is constantly jealous or overly worried about his partner's whereabouts, or the person who never believes her spouse really loves her and constantly seeks reassurance. Another way a person might recreate this pattern in their adult relationships is to unconsciously be drawn to partners who are inconsistently available, thus recreating the feeling of their early environment. In essence, they can maintain their defended posture; they may feel miserable but in an old
familiar way.
An individual with a dismissing attachment style has the opposite way of relating. They have learned early on that the best way to get their needs met is to act like they don't have any. As adults, they often act pseudo-independent, taking care of themselves and acting like they don't need anything from others. They rarely have many memories of their childhood, or they will write off whatever took place in their childhood as not mattering. These people often resist seeking out connection or closeness and avoid feeling dependent on others.
Changing your insecure attachment style is entirely possible with hard work
and an understanding of how this developed.
- www.huffingtonpost.com -
Preoccupied individuals have a more frantic, less-confident approach to getting their needs met by others. They tend to act clingy or needy, because their needs were inconsistently met as children. They may have had a parent who sometimes met their needs, but at other times acted out of their own needs or was intrusive with the child. These unresolved issues from childhood play out in their present day relationships, making them feel anxious and insecure, even when there is no need to feel this way. Think about the person who is constantly jealous or overly worried about his partner's whereabouts, or the person who never believes her spouse really loves her and constantly seeks reassurance. Another way a person might recreate this pattern in their adult relationships is to unconsciously be drawn to partners who are inconsistently available, thus recreating the feeling of their early environment. In essence, they can maintain their defended posture; they may feel miserable but in an old
familiar way.
An individual with a dismissing attachment style has the opposite way of relating. They have learned early on that the best way to get their needs met is to act like they don't have any. As adults, they often act pseudo-independent, taking care of themselves and acting like they don't need anything from others. They rarely have many memories of their childhood, or they will write off whatever took place in their childhood as not mattering. These people often resist seeking out connection or closeness and avoid feeling dependent on others.
Changing your insecure attachment style is entirely possible with hard work
and an understanding of how this developed.
- www.huffingtonpost.com -
