2 Signs of a Secure Attachment Strategy
Attachment is the term psychologists use to describe the quality of our bonds. We can see our attachment style in our comfort and playfulness moving in and out of proximity with everyone important: partners, parents, friends, children, siblings, spiritual advisors, neighbors, colleagues, and even animals.
We can see it in the way we handle stress.
- Do we resolve stress by ourselves or with others, or can we do it either way? (Either way is the secure ticket—with an emphasis on co-regulation.)
- Are we relaxed with intimacy and aloneness and the transitions between? When we are, we can say a relationship is healthy and secure. Three cheers!
But these transitions often bring up anxiety, a desire for space, or even fear—and when that happens, we can characterize the relationship as having some degree of insecurity.
We all have attachment histories. And most of us have a history that brings stuff up. That’s why the move into secure attachment is Heroic.
Research has shown us children as young as 4-months to 3-years-old express attachment styles that stay consistent for DECADES.
And we can predict a child’s attachment style based on how well their emotional needs are either met, neglected, or inconsistently attended to before they’re even a year old.
This isn’t to point a finger at caregivers. It’s not a measure of love. We can be the most important person to our caregivers, and they won’t be able to do better than they knew or experienced themselves. People do the best they can. Capacity and love are not the same thing.
Now trauma can also impact our attachment-style as we age, but because the brain is just beginning to develop, those first few years are momentous.
Even though we don’t remember them, our experiences during those years consistently predict our relationship-quality. Setting us up for joy or pain. Most people continue to repeat the same pattern all their lives . . . relationships remain either mostly comfortable and safe or uncomfortable and insecure in the same ways.
Adapted attachment insecurity can also be situational. We may have a few traits here and there that arise in response to certain triggers.
Here’s the joyful news. Attachment-repair research is wonderfully hopeful and encouraging. With somatic (body-based) reparative experiences, adapted attachment patterns can open the door back into security.
Our innate, healthy relational blueprint can be unmasked.
No matter what’s happened in our past or is happening now, we can use specific strategies to direct our experience and include more fulfilling belonging in our future.
We can become our own StoryKeeper. We can become each other’s.
Attachment is born in relationship. And that’s where it heals.
The process of returning to our natural, secure attachment can feel like magic because turning toward a safe other is always about turning toward ourselves.
Attachment is the term psychologists use to describe the quality of our bonds. We can see our attachment style in our comfort and playfulness moving in and out of proximity with everyone important: partners, parents, friends, children, siblings, spiritual advisors, neighbors, colleagues, and even animals.
We can see it in the way we handle stress.
- Do we resolve stress by ourselves or with others, or can we do it either way? (Either way is the secure ticket—with an emphasis on co-regulation.)
- Are we relaxed with intimacy and aloneness and the transitions between? When we are, we can say a relationship is healthy and secure. Three cheers!
But these transitions often bring up anxiety, a desire for space, or even fear—and when that happens, we can characterize the relationship as having some degree of insecurity.
We all have attachment histories. And most of us have a history that brings stuff up. That’s why the move into secure attachment is Heroic.
Research has shown us children as young as 4-months to 3-years-old express attachment styles that stay consistent for DECADES.
And we can predict a child’s attachment style based on how well their emotional needs are either met, neglected, or inconsistently attended to before they’re even a year old.
This isn’t to point a finger at caregivers. It’s not a measure of love. We can be the most important person to our caregivers, and they won’t be able to do better than they knew or experienced themselves. People do the best they can. Capacity and love are not the same thing.
Now trauma can also impact our attachment-style as we age, but because the brain is just beginning to develop, those first few years are momentous.
Even though we don’t remember them, our experiences during those years consistently predict our relationship-quality. Setting us up for joy or pain. Most people continue to repeat the same pattern all their lives . . . relationships remain either mostly comfortable and safe or uncomfortable and insecure in the same ways.
Adapted attachment insecurity can also be situational. We may have a few traits here and there that arise in response to certain triggers.
Here’s the joyful news. Attachment-repair research is wonderfully hopeful and encouraging. With somatic (body-based) reparative experiences, adapted attachment patterns can open the door back into security.
Our innate, healthy relational blueprint can be unmasked.
No matter what’s happened in our past or is happening now, we can use specific strategies to direct our experience and include more fulfilling belonging in our future.
We can become our own StoryKeeper. We can become each other’s.
Attachment is born in relationship. And that’s where it heals.
The process of returning to our natural, secure attachment can feel like magic because turning toward a safe other is always about turning toward ourselves.
