The Toolbox at LisaKiftTherapy.com

If you are one of the many out there who finds yourself in repetitive patterns of unhealthy relationships, perhaps you might benefit from identifying your attachment style – which not only could answer some fundamental questions for you around your relationship “triggers” but also provide clues as to why you attract certain types of people.

There is great deal of research out there on infant attachment (John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth to name a few) about how early interactions with caregivers set up “internal working models” of expectations of how others will behave towards them in the future. Infants that do not feel physically or emotionally safe (responding to cries, mirroring appropriate facial expressions) with their primary caregivers may ultimately become adults who struggle in a variety of ways relationally.

In recent years there have been newer models developed to describe the way adults in intimate relationships relate to each other. Their attachment styles can usually be tied to their own earlier experiences and whether they had their needs met or not. There are four types of adult attachment styles but keep in mind that many people could be classified as an overlap of several.

Take a look at the list below and see if you can identify with any of them:

• Secure-Autonomous: You believe relationships are generally safe. You are comfortable with emotions and intimacy. You are optimistic about relationships lasting and bringing you satisfaction.
• Avoidant: You devalue relationships and may feel as if you don’t need them. You are uncomfortable with intimacy and vulnerability. You struggle with trusting people.
• Ambivalent: You fear and often worry about being abandoned. You are anxious and have a hard time coping when you’re emotionally triggered. You feel like a victim.
• Unresolved/Disorganized: You struggle to function, control your emotions and may dissociate or “space out.”

Do you fit into one of these categories of a combination of a few? If you think back to your childhood and what you know about your experience with you primary caregivers, does it make any sense to you that you might relate to your adult relationships in a similar way? If you think about it – don’t we all still want a “secure base” internally and in our in our intimate partnerships to feel safe and contained in the world?

The unfortunate reality is that many of us have attachment wounds that run the gamut from serious abuse by parents to inadvertent mistakes by parents never learning themselves how to be the best parent they could be to their own child. These patterns tend to repeat themselves down family lines.

However, just because we didn’t form secure attachments in the beginning years doesn’t mean we can’t have it later. It requires developing an understanding of what kind of attachment style we have, making sense of why that fits for us and having new experiences that are counter to our expectations.

The new research around the neuroplasticity of the brain (Daniel Siegel, etc) suggests that there can actually be “new learnings” that cover up “old learnings.” If you can break your unhealthy relationship pattern long enough and experience something healthy, your internal working models can actually shift as your brain forges new neural pathways of experience. So, if anyone tries to tell you that “people can’t change,” this is simply not true.

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Lisa Brookes Kift is a couples therapist and author of The Marriage Refresher Course Workbook for Couples and The Premarital Counseling Workbook for Couples - both cost effective alternative to counseling for the do-it-yourself couple.  Find more relationship articles in The Toolbox at LisaKiftTherapy.com.

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