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Think of a couple, Sarah and Mark, who are in their living room on a quiet and a Tuesday evening. Mark has been strangely silent, with his work laptop in his thoughts. In the case of Mark, this silence is a form of refuge - a method of relaxation after a hard day. He appreciates his independence and believes that the most responsible means of dealing with pressure is to take space.
The silence to Sarah, however, is a storm coming her way. She senses panic building up in her chest, and she wonders: Is he angry with me? Did I do something wrong? Is he pulling away? She finally queries, Is everything been all right? and Mark, in brief, says, I am all right, I am just busy, Sarah is terribly anxious to continue speaking, to find comfort, and to close the physical distance between them. Mark is too crowded, too prodded, and he is pushed away.
It is not simply a dispute on a Tuesday night. It is a choreography, which was composed decades ago. Sarah and Mark are not simply responding to each other, they are responding to the internal working models of love that they formed during their early years. They are experiencing the end of their attachment styles.
Attachment theory is perhaps the most enlightening theory that we have to explain human connection, first postulated by a British psychologist, John Bowlby and extended later by Mary Ainsworth. The main idea of Bowlby was that human beings are born with an instinct to seek closeness to a primary caregiver; this fact is rather simple and yet revolutionary. This is not merely to eat or to stay warm, but to control emotions.
When we are born, we have an immature nervous system. We cannot soothe ourselves. When we cry we are giving a biological SOS. When we have a consistent response, when the person that is looking after us will pick us, look straight ahead, make us feel safe, our brain starts to have a system of protection. We are taught that the world is a trustworthy place and we deserve to be taken care of.
Nevertheless, when that caregiver is unreliable, unloving, or terrifying, the brain of the infant has to make some adjustments so that it can survive. These adjustments are genius survival mechanisms of a child but they can turn out to be baggage of relationships to the adult.
In order to know what your own relational patterns are, we will have to examine the four major attachment styles. The vast majority of us belong to one of them, although we might be leaning towards others depending on who our partner is.
Approximately, 50-60 percent of the population is firmly attached. These people have been raised with caregivers who were a safe-haven. They were also free to wander the world but they were familiar with the fact that they could always go back to a safe haven.
The Internal Narrative: "I am lovable and other people can be generally trusted.
Adulthood Securely attached individuals do not fear intimacy and autonomy. They do not panic when one of the partners requires his or her space, neither are they so possessive when a partner requires to be close. They express themselves in a straightforward manner and manage conflict in a we-oriented and not a me-vs-you defensive position.
Anxious style persons were prone to intermittent parenting. Yes there were occasions when the parent was present; and there were occasions when the parent became distracted or emotionally unavailable. This was to educate the child that they needed to perform or cling so as to maintain the attention of the caregiver.
The Internal Story: "I will only be safe when I see that I am being watched and when I am reassured.
During Adulthood: This comes in the form of extreme vigilance to the moods of a partner. Similar to Sarah, the anxiously attached individual is a master of spotting the so-called micro-shifts in tone or body posture. They tend to experience a hunger to be connected, and it is never fulfilled fully, which drives such actions as constant texting, overthinking a conversation, or testing the love of a partner.
Avoidant types of people tended to be raised in a setting where the display of emotions was disparaged or disregarded (Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about). They got to know that they were the only ones they could trust. They exchanged sexual freedom with autonomy.
The Internal Narration: It is weak to rely on and to be dependent on others, I will be better off alone.
Adulthood: These are the people that appear to be a good and seem to be the ideal match at first; they are independent and calm. But when it comes to the relationship demanding deep vulnerability, they become deactivated. They may withdraw, concentrate on their work, or identify flaws in his or her partner to excuse distance making. To them intimacy is an identity loss.
This style tends to be as a result of trauma in childhood or frightening/frightened parenting. The child has a biological paradox, the very one who is to be his or her source of security turns out to be the one who causes fear.
The Internal Narrative: I desire to be near you, however, I am so afraid that you will beat me.
In Adulthood: This is the most agonizing style to live in. These men come and go, sometimes extremely dependent and sometimes icy cold. There is usually much drama in their relationships and they are always waiting to see whether the other shoe will fall.
The least popular but most excruciating in adult relationships is the Anxious-Avoidant Trap. The attachment alarm of the Anxious partner sounds when he or she feels that he or she is being distanced. They head to the partner to get some reassurance. The Avoidant partner, who feels an intrusion of his or her independence, hears his alarm bells. They withdraw in order to seek security in seclusion.
This leads to a vicious cycle where the more the anxious partner wants the more the avoidant partner yields away. The anxious partner is abandoned, the avoidant partner is hunted. They are not either wrong, just employing the survival tactics they were taught as toddlers in order to make their way as adults.
What is so difficult about changing these patterns? It is due to the so-called Internal Working Models that Bowlby referred to. These are the mental scripts and they exist below the conscious thought.
When your script is, people always leave in the end, your brain will actually seek to find out the truth. Either you choose a partner that is not available emotionally due to feeling familiar or you unconsciously reject a loving partner in order to get the rejection over.
The picture of the world that we are used to seeing is not what the world actually is. We need to rewrite the script in order to modify the relationship.
Attached is the most beautiful discovery made in contemporary attachment studies, which states that attachment is plastic. We have not been handed a hand that we were dealt when we were children. We are able to be drawn to what psychologists term Earned Security.
It has been found that the most effective indicator of a secure attachment is not the perfection of your childhood but how well you have come to make sense out of your childhood. Once you are able to turn back and say, my mother was cold because she was in the grip of her own trauma, and that was nothing to do with how well I am worth it, then you start to dismantle the old wiring. This is the best place of therapy.
One can be infected with security. When an anxiously attached individual gets into a long term relationship with a secure partner, the consistency of the secure partner is ultimately able to relax the nervous system of the anxious person. The brain learns over the years: I need not cling: they are not going.
To heal we have to shift our response to observation. Instead of: Are you mad at me? when Sarah experiences the panic in her chest. she is able to stop the tenth time. She can tell herself, this is my nervous attachment speaking. The triggers that I feel are that Mark is silent. I am safe." It is that little distance between the emotion and the action that is the place of freedom.
A transition away to the search of security to others to the process of giving the same to ourselves is one of the most empowering changes in the world of therapy. This is what is referred to as Reparenting. We have the power to create new blueprints which we can start to do by altering our treatment of our own inner distress today since our early blueprints were shaped by our treatment.
In case of an anxious style, the appearance of reparenting is similar to being stuck with yourself during a panic flare-up. Rather than picking up your phone to send a text to a partner the tenth time, you put a hand on your chest and tell them, I can see you are scared. I am here with you. We are not, we are only sitting with our mouths shut. You are the constant, relaxing thing you were so much when you were a child.
To the avoidant, the process of reparenting means being tenderly persuaded to remain in the room when things become heavy. It is more about acceptance, understanding that I am driven to run because intimacy is like being deprived of my freedom but I am now an adult and I am safe. Here we gradually change our interior world by providing ourselves the validation, limits and uniformity we are not. We cease to seek someone to work on our attachment and begin to ask him or her to contribute to the security we have established in ourselves.
And, I would say, stop, when you are a parent reading this and you have a taste of guilt. Attachment is not an issue of being an ideal parent. As a matter of fact, according to the study conducted by Ed Tronick, the parents do not have to be in touch with their children more than 30% of the time in order to develop a secure attachment.
The important thing is not whether conflict or mismatch are absent, but rather the Repair. Parents who lose their temper or fail to signal something, only to come back and apologize and re-establish contact, are teaching the child an important lesson: Relationships are not as permanent as you may think. This is what resilience is based on.
The manner in which we were taught to relate with each other in our childhood days tend to be the template through which we relate in our adulthood. It is the unseen design of our love life, that shapes the choice of one, the way we argue and how we fall in love.
Nevertheless, a blueprint is not a building. It is now you who are staying in the house. Knowing your attachment style, you get the master key to your emotional response. You need not blame yourself because you are too much or blame your partner because they are too cold anymore, but just appreciate the dance as it is.
There is no healing in being with someone who does not upset you. It is all about being transformed into being someone who knows how to deal with being triggered. It is having a fear of something and changing into a place of curiosity. It is about understanding that even though you did not decide who you should initially attach yourself to, you still have the choice to make on your subsequent step.
The patterns of learning to connect that we learned in childhood can be the template of how we connect in adulthood, however, with knowledge and awareness those patterns can change.
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