The concept of “attachment issues” has become a bit of a buzzword, with a distinct lack of clarity around what it means and how it plays out in practice. The picture that comes to mind is of someone who has trouble maintaining healthy adult relationships, who is overly clingy, or behaves in a toxic way.
Understanding Attachment Issues
Understanding attachment issues requires getting to grips with attachment theory and attachment styles, which relate to how a person experienced attachment as a child.
Four attachment styles.
The attachment theory which was pioneered by John Bowlby in 1946 defined attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings”. His work focused on babies who had either strong or weak emotional connections with their mothers. The four main types of attachment, which can apply in childhood through adulthood, include:
1. Secure attachment.
If a baby trusted their primary caregiver and formed a close, healthy bond with them in their early years, this caregiver gave the infant a secure base from which to explore the world. This is the best possible situation because it hardwires the individual’s brain to feel valued and accepted by other people, and they in turn value and accept other people.
In adulthood, people who experienced a secure attachment will likely function well in relationships, trusting people (who merit trust), and being able to regulate their emotions apart from others.
2. Anxious-preoccupied.
If a mother or other primary caregiver was inconsistent or slow in responding to an infant’s needs or failed to meet them in some way, a child may demonstrate an anxious-preoccupied attachment style.
This can lead to attachment issues in adulthood, with the person generally experiencing a negative view of themselves in relation to others. This means that in relationships, they crave intimacy and want to feel secure and loved, but fear being abandoned. They will experience high anxiety levels and need constant reassurance from their partner.
3. Dismissive-avoidant.
In this attachment-style scenario, a child’s mother or primary caregiver is likely to have been insensitive to meeting needs, ignored efforts to have them met, and maintained an emotionally distant stance.
The attachment issues that arise and are consistent through to adulthood include a superior view of oneself as compared to others, which corresponds with defensiveness and a tendency to avoid getting close to people and displaying vulnerability.
4. Fearful avoidant.
This style, also known as disorganized attachment, is the most destructive of the four and is often associated with an abusive childhood, which created a traumatic experience. The person who formed a fearful avoidant attachment pattern tends to have a negative view both of themselves and others. Their relationships with others are often tumultuous due to their emotional instability; desiring intimacy yet simultaneously pushing people away.
Attachment issues are worth investigating, given their lifelong effects on a person’s emotional health. While deeply ingrained, an individual can move from an insecure attachment style to a secure one, together with the help of a trained counselor. Biblical counselors apply similar approaches to secular psychologists, incorporating the incredible power of the gospel in setting us free from the bondage we’re born into.
God desires for us to have healthy self-esteem and to feel worthy of love, and it is when we truly understand and know that he is our “secure attachment” that lasting change becomes possible.
