Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It (4 page)

In addition to offering a safe haven in times of trouble, attachment figures also provide children with a secure base from which they can expand their experience. This is important because people are born with an innate desire to learn about and master their environment. When children successfully get support for this, they gradually become more independent and develop a sense of autonomy, an ability to act from their own inherent interests and values—for instance, a preschooler will curiously explore an unfamiliar playroom or reach out to a kid they don’t know on the playground.

To develop a secure base, children need to feel loved for who they are and for who they are becoming. They need to learn that tensions and differences in interest with their parents can all be worked through. In this process, children also learn that they can explore and venture apart from their parents, and still rely on them for support and acceptance.

To the extent that people are fortunate enough to have a secure base in their parents, they develop high self-esteem and a strong sense of autonomy that will serve them well through life. They are more likely to pursue their interests, be persistent in their efforts, and do well at school and work. In their romantic relationships, they tend to feel connected with, and supported by, their partners as they pursue their own interests. And more generally, they tend to enjoy healthy relationships and can effectively negotiate social situations. But this isn’t the case for everyone.

If you experience at least a fair amount of attachment-related anxiety, reading these benefits of a secure base might highlight some of your intense struggles—such as a failure to explore (or even identify) your own interests and passions, and a hesitancy to express yourself with your partner. As hard as it is to feel this distress, you’re already working on it just by being aware of how you would benefit from having a secure base. Later, in parts 3 and 4 of this book, I will guide you toward ways to develop greater security within yourself and your relationships.

To recap the previous few sections: Children are motivated to stay close to their parents, whom they perceive as a safe haven. And children are motivated to explore the world away from their parents, whom they perceive as a secure base. When all goes well, children learn that they can have closeness
and
autonomy.

Your struggles with attachment-related anxiety can cloud your perception of these patterns in your relationships and make it particularly frustrating to understand what’s going wrong. To help clarify this, I will discuss how people with the different insecure patterns of attachment balance autonomy and closeness. As you read the following sections, think about how they apply to you, your partner, and your relationship.

Preoccupied: Grasping for Closeness

Some children perceive their parents as inconsistently available. It could be because the parents are unavoidably focused on pressing life situations or on their own emotional needs. The child’s inherent sensitivity is also a factor. Whatever the reason, children who come to question whether their parents are available are extremely upset even by the thought of their parents not being there for them. This is characteristic of a preoccupied attachment style.

Driven by their attachment needs, such children do whatever they can to get their parents’ attention—and, as adults, to get their partner’s attention. These
protests
, as John Bowlby (1961), the originator of attachment theory, called them, are a hyperactivating strategy. That is, anxious people “hyperactivate” their attachment system as their cries for attention become more strident, making them more upset and often causing conflict in their relationships. For instance, they might demand that their partner help them in various ways, try to maintain constant contact, or become easily jealous and possessive.

People with preoccupied attachment needs focus intensely on keeping others close, at the expense of their own interests and sometimes even their values. This leaves them empty, without an experience of themselves that they feel good about. Instead, they look to someone else, such as a parent, friend, or spouse, for approval and guidance on what interests to pursue and how to respond to various circumstances. They are also often motivated by external, image-oriented goals (such as financial wealth) as a way to receive approval. Unfortunately, this search for external approval keeps them forever performing, which gets in the way of their feeling truly accepted by an attachment figure. Thus, they are frequently left without the sense of closeness they crave and without a positive sense of themselves, and are incapable of pursuing their own interests.

Dismissing: Making It on Your Own

While some children are preoccupied with trying to get and keep their parents’ attention, others give up trying to connect. As Bowlby (1961) explained, after a child’s protests go repeatedly unanswered, or are mostly responded to harshly, the child experiences despair. Then, when he finally gives up all hope of being reassured and protected, he detaches—attempting to deactivate his attachment system by shutting down his emotions and his need for a caregiver—and becomes extremely self-reliant. As an adult, he is unlikely to experience the closeness that comes with romantic relationships. This characterizes the dismissing style of attachment.

If your partner tends toward a dismissing style, you might feel confused when he distances himself, rather than softening, in response to your reaching out in a supportive way. The reason for this reaction is that he will not risk being let down later; so he retreats and may become even more distant. Similarly, when you are upset with your partner, he is likely to appear emotionally disengaged and unbothered. In all likelihood, however, he fears being rejected.

Dismissive people lose out on two fronts. Unable to act on their desire for connection, they are neither truly autonomous nor capable of feeling close to a partner.

Fearful: Lost in Relationships

Some children grow up with parents who have their own strong attachment issues: they experience their parents as sometimes emotionally available, sometimes scared, and sometimes even scary. This variation is confusing and frightening, and these children are unable to find a way to consistently meet their attachment needs. They don’t find solace in either deactivating (trying to go it alone) or hyperactivating (reaching out for attention and acceptance), so they attempt to use both kinds of strategies in a disorganized way. This creates a chaotic and confusing pattern in relationships known as the fearful style of attachment. In adulthood, their intimate relationships are often filled with conflict and confusing dynamics, as they pursue both closeness and distance. Not surprisingly, they are not able to achieve a comfortable and comforting sense of closeness or a healthy sense of autonomy.

Exercise: How Well Do You Balance Autonomy and Closeness?

Relationships are, of course, more of an ongoing, dynamic balancing act than achieving some continuously held equilibrium. With that in mind, which of the following pictures
best
represents your ideal relationship? And which picture best represents your current relationship, or your most recent one?

These styles are expressed in the following statements:

Secure Style:

• I am comfortable sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with my partner.
  
• I enjoy pursuing interests apart from my partner.
  
• I feel loved by my partner even when we pursue interests separately from each other.
  
• Even when we disagree, I expect that my partner will still respect and value my opinions and me.
  
• I am comfortable depending on my partner and having my partner depend on me.
  

Anxious Style:

• I am most comfortable when my partner and I share all of our thoughts, feelings, and interests—when we seem to have merged into one.
  
• I am inclined to pursue what my partner enjoys, putting aside my own interests.
  
• I am inclined to defer my values and opinions to my partner’s values and opinions.
  
• Whenever I sense my partner being distant, I feel driven to reconnect (for example, frequently calling or texting); or I act angrily, such as by withdrawing or being nasty.
  

Avoidant Style:

• I am uncomfortable sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with my partner.
  
• I take pride in being self-reliant enough not to need my partner.
  
• I am uncomfortable depending on my partner.
  
• I am uncomfortable with my partner depending on me.
  
• I enjoy pursuing interests apart from my partner.
  

In doing this exercise, you might want to draw your own overlapping circles and write your own descriptive sentences that better depict your relationship. (We humans are complicated, so it’s okay if your description includes conflicting sentences.)

Now consider how well your relationship meets your needs for a:

Safe haven:
During stressful times, how much can you depend on your partner to provide you with a sense of comfort, protection, and support?

Secure base:
How much does your partner support your pursuit of interests and goals apart from your relationship? How well does your relationship support your feeling good about your true sense of who you are?

During infancy, children are practically swimming in emotions. Their interactions with their parents are strongly guided by their basic goal of survival and their accompanying need to feel secure. A part of their brain called the amygdala is particularly sensitive to threats to their safety. It is quick to react to possible dangers, such as hunger, being alone, or falling. It reacts reflexively, without evaluating dangers and adjusting its reaction based on the real threat. When you are walking in the woods and feel a rush of fear at the sight of a stick that you mistake as a snake, you can thank your amygdala. Modulating this response is the function of the hippocampus, but that part of the brain doesn’t begin to work until children are between two and three years old. Until then, all dangers are perceived equally and trigger a desperate search for a safe attachment figure to protect and soothe them. This feeling is what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp refers to as
primal panic
(referenced in Johnson, 2008); and it continues to be triggered into adulthood whenever people feel threatened. It also frequently kicks in when they fear losing their partner or other primary attachment figure.

Depending on your attachment style, you will feel primal panic more or less often; and you will be more or less effective in managing it. The same is true of your partner, if you have one. The result of these different experiences has a huge impact on your relationship. In the next three sections I discuss how the anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment styles affect people’s emotional experiences and how they manage those experiences.

Anxious and Overwhelmed

When a child experiences primal panic, it raises her levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. At the same time, it also lowers her “cuddle hormone” oxytocin, which provides a sense of trust, safety, and connection. Feeling overwhelmed, she reacts by protesting—crying, or being demanding. In essence, she is screaming for help. If her caregiver is inconsistent in soothing her, she remains primed to protest—to keep screaming for help until she gets it. This tendency characterizes those who are anxiously attached.

In its extreme form, these children mature into adults who are prone to panic at any hint of distance from their partner, and possibly even others, such as family and friends. They become desperate to feel close to the other party again and try to regain their partner’s attention by intensifying their distress (a hyperactivating strategy). But even with a supportive partner, their fear of rejection can interfere with their feeling comforted.

If you can even somewhat relate to this, you might also sometimes find it hard to disentangle your emotions. Instead, you perceive them as a single distressing experience that you cannot begin to communicate or address. In an effort to cope with this, you might fall back on maladaptive behaviors, such as overeating, smoking, drinking, or even drug use.

When attachment-related anxiety is a problem, people experience a number of other problems in their relationships that you might relate to. For instance, your fear of rejection might prevent you from directly addressing any conflicts or differences of opinion with your partner. It might also be so consuming that you are unable to imagine the world (or your relationship) through your partner’s eyes. As a result, you might have trouble feeling empathic and supportive of your partner (or others). In addition, you might have trouble truly relaxing enough to fully enjoy other aspects of your relationship, such as your sexual desires—and just having fun.

When relationships don’t work out, people with attachment-related anxiety can experience a need for an attachment figure that’s so intense that it practically seeps out of their pores. They may protest angrily, blame themselves, feel a greater attraction to their former partner, and even become preoccupied with that partner, despite knowing that a relationship with that person is destructive for them. In addition, they can struggle with feeling that they’ve lost a part of themselves.

Fortunately, if you are sometimes overwhelmed with attachment-related anxiety, you can change this. In chapter 5 I discuss how to develop a more secure style. Also, you can soothe your distress by choosing a more secure partner; someone who can comfort you. Research suggests that a supportive spouse can help an anxiously attached person feel less anxious and depressed, and feel greater satisfaction in her relationship.

Exercise: Can You Relate to
“Anxious and Overwhelmed”
?

Think about how much and in what ways you relate to the use of the hyperactivating strategies described in this section. Be aware that fully exploring this could take you months (or even years). But, for now, I’m just suggesting that you explore the following questions as much—or as little—as you’d like in order to gain some understanding of how your attachment style affects your emotions. If you do not have a partner now, think about it in relation to a previous partner. You might also find it helpful to identify and highlight a pattern by thinking about how these questions apply to all of your previous intimate relationships.

1. Do you frequently feel that your partner is emotionally distant, or worry that he or she will leave you? Does this thought make you feel crushed and desperate to keep your partner close (primal panic)?
   
2. Even though you might not do it consciously, can you see how you protest against being left alone? What are examples of this?
   
3. Protests often backfire, causing people to feel more upset or overwhelmed. For each example you gave, explain how it made you feel and possibly even led to more distress.
   
4. Do you struggle with feeling helpless, incompetent, or flawed? Think about how your attachment style and protests are related to this.
   
5. For some people, being overly emotional leads to maladaptive ways of coping, such as smoking, drinking, using drugs, or overeating. Do you have maladaptive ways of coping? How have they been a problem for you?
   
6. How does your panic about being left alone (if you do panic) influence your relationship in unhealthy ways, such as by creating conflicts around trust and—purposefully or subconsciously—making it difficult for you to relax and enjoy your partner’s company?
   

Emotions? What Emotions?

Children with a more avoidant style of attachment block their emotional reactions to threats, including their primal panic about the unavailability of caretakers. With time, they learn to keep their attachment system deactivated, and they no longer try to connect with their parents or struggle with separation. Later in their lives, they are similarly disconnected from their partners.

It’s important to understand that the tendency to distance oneself from emotions does not prevent emotions or physiological arousal. It only obscures them. Stress hormones still surge while oxytocin (“cuddle hormone”) levels remain low. So, although ignoring, suppressing, or denying emotions can often help to handle minor stressors, this approach is seriously flawed.

When people with avoidant attachment styles can no longer ignore their feelings because their stress or relationship problems have become so severe and persistent, they often don’t know how to handle their emotions. This puts them at risk for using unhealthy ways to cope. Their emotions are also likely to leak out despite their apparently calm demeanor. For instance, an avoidant man might calmly talk about his girlfriend being “such a bitch,” all the while denying any anger, unaware that his chest is tight and his heart rate is up. You might consider whether this common dynamic is what’s going on when you think you are calm but are uncharacteristically saying or doing hurtful things. (If your partner tends to be the avoidant one, this dynamic might also explain why you are upset at times when your partner seems to be calmly talking about serious problems.)

The Chemistry of “Secure and Happy”

Some children are fortunate enough to have parents who consistently nurture and calm them when they get upset. The more this happens, the better they learn to turn to their parents—and the more they produce the hormone oxytocin, which gives them a sense of trust, safety, and connection. When children (and adults) are upset, oxytocin also brings down their levels of stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. Over time, these responses help them to become comfortable with the full range of their emotions and integrate them into their lives. They grow to be securely attached adults who are capable of managing their own emotions, addressing personal problems, and effectively dealing with conflicts.

It can be heartening to learn that, as an anxiously attached person, you can “earn” secure attachment—along with all of its benefits. This is something I will address more later in this chapter. You can also lessen your attachment-related anxiety and other distress by choosing a securely attached partner.

Exercise: Understanding Yourself in Context

The better you understand how your hyperactivating or deactivating strategies developed, the more appreciation you will have for why you do what you do now. As you complete this exercise, be patient with yourself. Deepening self-understanding in this area can be nurtured, but it cannot be forced to happen all at once. So you may need to revisit this repeatedly over time.

Make note of when you use hyperactivating or deactivating strategies.
Return to your responses for the previous exercise, “Can You Relate to “Anxious and Overwhelmed”?” Think about them—maybe even talk with someone you trust about them. Make sure you have a good grasp of your use of hyperactivating strategies.

If you regularly use deactivating strategies to keep a distance, you may have trouble being specific about how you do this because you are likely out of touch with your feelings. In that case, I suggest that you look for feedback from people you trust and who know you well. Ask them about what you do to distance people.

Consider whether you used these same, or similar, strategies as a child.
If you did, then think about what might have prompted you to do this. Sometimes you can gain insight about this by considering another child in that same situation.

Example: Jane’s last two boyfriends told her, “You are just too needy.” Although she complained that neither of them was very affectionate, she also knew they were right. She was constantly afraid that they were going to end the relationship, so she would incessantly call and text them, looking for reassurance that they still cared. When she considered this dynamic, she realized that it reminded her of how she felt when she was eight years old and her father died. From then on, she had always been afraid of getting close to people, because she feared they would leave her.

Again, don’t expect a deeper self-awareness to appear overnight. Journal, make notes, and talk with trusted people about this exercise. But also give it a rest; then return to it again after you feel you’ve had a chance to grow personally and have perhaps become open to new insights and perspectives. With time, a greater understanding of your patterns can help you to manage your feelings differently, both within yourself and in your relationships.