In part two of our series on attachment, we offer some perspective on how to identify attachment styles in adults and how to feel more secure in your relationships. Understanding your own attachment style, and learning to identify the style of other people can help you build a solid foundation for all of your relationships. Keep reading to learn why your partner feels clingy, disconnected, or somewhere in between.

If you missed part one where we discuss how attachment form in childhood, please click here.

BY KELSEY WILLIAMS, MS

Attachment Styles in Adults

As we grow, we learn ever-more complex ways of adapting and coping to meet or mask our needs and handle difficulty. Nevertheless, our attachment styles exist just under the surface of all that we do, and they most often show up in our relationships and in the ways we express our love. For a general overview of adult attachment styles and how they can manifest in our relationships, click here.

If you’re hungry for more knowledge, read on to learn more about the ways your attachment style might show up in your modern-day adult life.

Secure attachment:

When we are securely attached, we often find it relatively easy to express ourselves and our needs and to trust that we will be understood and supported by those we love. Here’s some experiences you might recognize if your attachment style is secure:

• I can step into the world independently and feel confident doing so

• I can often empathize well with others and assume that they have the best intentions

• When things get difficult, I can find healthy ways to cope and I usually maintain a sense of resilience

Anxious attachment:

Those of us with an anxious attachment style have spent most of our lives trying and failing to guess at what will get us the emotional attention we need. Through this, we become hyper-focused on others and often lose touch with our ability to comfort ourselves. Here’s some experiences you might recognize if your attachment style is anxious:

• I tend to be very focused on my relationships and spend a lot of time analyzing them

• I’m frequently quite adept at reading the emotions of others

• I often feel like I’m giving more than I’m getting in relationships

• I get angry or upset when people don’t respond to my words, texts, or messages fast enough or well enough

• I often depend on others to help me calm down, and when they don’t say or do the right things, I feel deeply hurt and misunderstood, often shifting my blame of the problem onto them

• When I’m distressed, you’ll find me being highly reactive, sending lots of messages, seeking external validation and soothing, and distracting myself from my emotions or numbing them

• People sometimes experience me as as needy, dependent, dramatic, or emotional

Avoidant attachment:

As someone with an avoidant attachment style, after living a lifetime of adapting and shutting off our connections to our emotional needs, we often become so far removed from our vulnerabilities and emotions that we don’t actually feel them. Here’s some experiences you might recognize if your attachment style is avoidant:

• Labeling emotions for myself is challenging and often the last thing on my mind

• Understanding and identifying the emotions of others can be challenging

• I often experience others as overly emotional or needy— “I’m fine, you’re the one being emotional”

• I’m highly independent and I like to be in control— “I don’t need anyone”

• I’m often the last person to recognize that I’m feeling a certain way

• When I’m distressed, you’ll find me escaping my overwhelming emotions and self-soothing in all manner of ways: working long hours, playing video games, binging Netflix, watching YouTube videos for hours, scrolling endlessly through social media, using substances…

• I don’t react kindly to having emotions “pushed” on me

• Sometimes I use substances to access my emotions and feel a sense of vitality

• People sometimes experience me as cold, detached, distant, depressed, independent, self-focused, or introverted

Disorganized attachment:

Those of us with disorganized attachment have lived our lives building our personality around the pain and confusion we experienced growing up, all the while without having found any coping skills that work. Because of this, disorganized attachment can present itself in various ways. Still, there are some overlapping experiences you might recognize if your attachment style is disorganized:

• I’m unexpectedly triggered by things I don’t always understand, and I fall into deep emotions and confusion

• I feel a bit chaotic in the way I relate to others

• Others find it hard to guess how I might react to something

Finally, if you’re seeking another data point for your attachment style, or you simply love an online quiz, check out out this “Attachment Styles Test” by Dr. Diane Poole Heller.

How can you change your attachment style and feel more secure?

We’ve now covered the basics of attachment, from childhood to adult attachment, and you might now be wondering— where do I go from here? How can I apply this knowledge to my life? Does my attachment style define who I’ll be for the rest of my life?

Just by reading this page, and learning about attachment styles and reflecting on how they might apply to your life, you have already begun your journey on the path to building more security within yourself. We all have the seeds of security within us, and we are all capable of growing the security we feel within ourselves and within our relationships, no matter where we’ve come from. We all have the capacity for what’s called “earned secure attachment,” which is the ability to build new secure relational foundations within ourselves. The best way that we achieve this is through relationships. If you are struggling to feel secure in your relationship with yourself or with important others in your life, a therapeutic relationship can be a nurturing space for you to grow and expand your security. Therapy helps us to become more self-aware, and that awareness is power. Through therapy, we learn to see ourselves clearly, to tune into our needs, to be compassionate with ourselves, to be vulnerable, and to share parts of ourselves in ways that feel safe for us. Although therapy looks different for each person, here’s a brief idea of what attachment-healing therapy might look like for the different attachment styles:

Anxious attachment:

How do I more deeply investigate and understand my emotions when they arise? How can I understand the deeper security needs that are present within my emotions? How do I learn to be my own secure base? How do I learn to trust in myself and my ability to be okay independently? How do I get to know and embrace the beneficial aspects of my dependency? How do I communicate my needs in ways that aren’t accusatory?

Avoidant attachment:

How do I get in touch with my emotions after I’ve spent a lifetime disconnecting from them? How do I learn to allow myself to experience these emotions without feeling overwhelmed or shutting down? How do I use my emotional knowledge to understand the deeper needs within my emotions? How can I cope in emotionally healthy ways? How do I communicate my emotions and needs to others? How do I allow others to help me meet my needs?

Disorganized attachment:

How can I relate to myself and my experiences in ways that feel safe? How do I create a cohesive and coherent narrative for myself and my experiences? What do safety, security, and support look like to me? How can I build the foundations of security within myself? How can I cope in emotionally healthy ways?

Secure attachment:

Even those of us who are securely attached can have moments of swinging into insecure attachment behaviors. Therapy can help anyone and everyone to understand themselves more clearly, to move through life with more awareness, and to connect more deeply with ourselves and with others.

If you want to dive more deeply into how you relate to others or to yourself, or if you’re simply ready to feel more secure within yourself, your life, and your relationships, click the link below to schedule a consultation and join us on this healing journey.

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