How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

🧠 BRAIN-TEASER

Keep Your Brain Young With Today’s Brain-Teaser

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Attachment theory is a model for how we form attachments (or not) with those around us, from parents to partners.

  • There are many ways to slice this cake, but the main attachment styles that we can develop are:

    • Secure

    • Avoidant

    • Anxious

    • Disorganized (a bonus combination of the above)

  • We develop our attachment styles as small children, and don’t usually change them later, although we potentially can. For example:

    • We can upgrade to a secure attachment style, if we work on it a lot, perhaps in therapy

    • We can downgrade to one of the insecure attachment styles, if we suffer sufficient attachment injury (loss, betrayal, etc)

  • While we have whatever attachment style we have, it’s good for us to understand what makes us the way we are, what motivates our sometimes seemingly irrational actions and even self-sabotage—and the same goes for our partners, too.

  • Armed with this knowledge, we can be better for ourselves and our partners, resulting in happier, healthier relationships all around.

• If you love the condensed daily knowledge of newsletters, but don’t love clutter, then today’s sponsor Meco is here to help.

  • Meco is an app designed specifically for reading newsletters, and keeps them all in your own personal newsletter library—uncluttering your inbox in the process!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How to Decode Your Body's Messages About Your Mental Health

When we can’t, or don’t, express things verbally, our body will sometimes find other ways to express our feelings. Those “other ways” are not necessarily very eloquent:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

🔗 MAIN FEATURE

How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship

Attachment theory has come to be seen in “kids nowadays”’ TikTok circles as almost a sort of astrology, but that’s not what it was intended for, and there’s really nothing esoteric about it.

What it can be, is a (fairly simple, but) powerful tool to understand about our relationships with each other.

To demystify it, let’s start with a little history…

Attachment theory was conceived by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, and popularized as a theory by psychiatrist John Bowlby. The two would later become research partners.

• Dr. Ainsworth’s initial work focused on children having different attachment styles when it came to their caregivers: secure, avoidant, or anxious.

• Later, she would add a fourth attachment style: disorganized, and then subdivisions, such as anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant.

• Much later, the theory would be extended to attachments in (and between) adults.

What does it all mean?

To understand this, we must first talk about “The Strange Situation”.

“The Strange Situation” was an experiment conducted by Dr. Ainsworth, in which a child would be observed playing, while caregivers and strangers would periodically arrive and leave, recreating a natural environment of most children’s lives. Each child’s different reactions were recorded, especially noting:

• The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s departure

• The child’s reaction (if any) to the stranger’s presence

• The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s return

• The child’s behavior on play, specifically, how much or little the child explored and played with new toys

She observed different attachment styles, including:

1. Secure: a securely attached child would play freely, using the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore. Will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is also present. May become upset when the caregiver leaves, and happy when they return.

2. Avoidant: an avoidantly attached child will not explore much regardless of who is there; will not care much when the caregiver departs or returns.

3. Anxious: an anxiously attached child may be clingy before separation, helplessly passive when the caregiver is absent, and difficult to comfort upon the caregiver’s return.

4. Disorganized: a disorganizedly attached child may flit between the above types

These attachment styles were generally reflective of the parenting styles of the respective caregivers:

1. If a caregiver was reliably present (physically and emotionally), the child would learn to expect that and feel secure about it.

2. If a caregiver was absent a lot (physically and/or emotionally), the child would learn to give up on expecting a caregiver to give care.

3. If a caregiver was unpredictable a lot in presence (physical and/or emotional), the child would become anxious and/or confused about whether the caregiver would give care.

What does this mean for us as adults?

As we learn when we are children, tends to go for us in life. We can change, but we usually don’t. And while we (usually) no longer rely on caregivers per se as adults, we do rely (or not!) on our partners, friends, and so forth. Let’s look at it in terms of partners:

1. A securely attached adult will trust that their partner loves them and will be there for them if necessary. They may miss their partner when absent, but won’t be anxious about it and will look forward to their return.

2. An avoidantly attached adult will not assume their partner’s love, and will feel their partner might let them down at any time. To protect themself, they may try to manage their own expectations, and strive always to keep their independence, to make sure that if the worst happens, they’ll still be ok by themself.

3. An anxiously attached adult will tend towards clinginess, and try to keep their partner’s attention and commitment by any means necessary.

Which means…

• When both partners have secure attachment styles, most things go swimmingly, and indeed, securely attached partners most often end up with each other.

• A very common pairing, however, is one anxious partner dating one avoidant partner. This happens because the avoidant partner looks like a tower of strength, which the anxious partner needs. The anxious partner’s clinginess can also help the avoidant partner feel better about themself (bearing in mind, the avoidant partner almost certainly grew up feeling deeply unwanted).

• Anxious-anxious pairings happen less because anxiously attached people don’t tend to be attracted to people who are in the same boat.

• Avoidant-avoidant pairings happen least of all, because avoidantly attached people having nothing to bind them together. Iff they even get together in the first place, then later when trouble hits, one will propose breaking up, and the other will say “ok, bye”.

This is fascinating, but is there a practical use for this knowledge?

Yes! Understanding our own attachment styles, and those around us, helps us understand why we/they act a certain way, and realize what relational need is or isn’t being met, and react accordingly.

That sometimes, an anxiously attached person just needs some reassurance:

• “I love you”

• “I miss you”

• “I look forward to seeing you later”

That sometimes, an avoidantly attached person needs exactly the right amount of space:

• Give them too little space, and they will feel their independence slipping, and yearn to break free

• Give them too much space, and oops, they’re gone now

Maybe you’re reading that and thinking “won’t that make their anxious partner anxious?” and yes, yes it will. That’s why the avoidant partner needs to skip back up and remember to do the reassurance.

It helps also when either partner is going to be away (physically or emotionally! This counts the same for if a partner will just be preoccupied for a while), that they parameter that, for example:

• Not: “Don’t worry, I just need some space for now, that’s all” (à la "I am just going outside and may be some time")

• But: “I need to be undisturbed for a bit, but let’s schedule some me-and-you-time for [specific scheduled time]”.

Want to learn more about addressing attachment issues?

Psychology Today: Ten Ways to Heal Your Attachment Issues

You also might enjoy such articles such as:

• Nurturing secure attachment: building healthy relationships

• Why anxious and avoidant often attracted each other

• How to help an insecurely attached partner feel loved

• How to cope with a dismissive-avoidant partner

Lastly, to end on a light note…

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

If you enjoy newsletters but don’t enjoy clutter…

Newsletters are a great way to get condensed regular learning on a given topic, that adds up to a lot of knowledge over time. We may be biased, but… Newsletters are great!

What’s not as great is a cluttered inbox, with newsletters buried in with personal correspondence, order confirmations, junk mail, and so forth.

Meco is an app designed specifically for reading newsletters, and keeps them all in one place—uncluttering your inbox in the process!

As a bonus, it also makes it extra easy to look through back-issues, essentially becoming your personal library of newsletter editions.

Click here to check out Meco and let them do the tidying for you!

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• In our blood: how the US allowed toxic chemicals to seep into our lives

• Could spinach extract accelerate wound healing in those with diabetes?

• Tailored online interventions to promote seasonal influenza vaccination

• Do you really know the way the world is heading? Take this quiz on plans to save humanity

• Special mosquitoes are being bred to fight dengue. How the old enemies are now becoming allies

• Can yoga alleviate rheumatoid arthritis severity?

• COVID boosters are back: what scientists say about whether to get one

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Emotional Eating: Set yourself free from binge-eating and comfort-eating – by Allen Carr

We've reviewed books before on quitting drinking; is this book about emotional eating so different?

There are overlaps, but important points of contrast, too. After all, alcohol and junk food are both often unhealthy coping mechanisms for other things, though:

• Alcohol has in principle the stronger grip (making it harder to give up)

• Junk food is so much easier to justify (making it harder to give up)

Author Allen Carr is of course most well-known for his debut book about quitting smoking, and he brings a lot of that expertise to bear on the slightly different beast that is emotional eating.

Focused on reframing quitting as being less about self-denial and more about self-liberation, he helps readers to understand that giving up a substance (in this case, junk food) does not mean giving up happiness—rather, it means finding happiness beyond it.

If this book has a downside, it's that some parts can be a little repetitive, and it can sometimes seem like one of those "this book could have been an article" situations.

On the other hand, many people benefit from repeated messages to truly inculcate an idea, so this could be a positive for a lot of readers.

Bottom line: if you've tried to eat more healthily but find that you keep reaching for an unhealthy comfort food, then this book may make a difference that other methods didn't.

Click here to check out The Easy Way To Quit Emotional Eating, and find your own freedom!

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team