How Do You “Attach” To People, And To Life?

Attachment Theory is based on long standing research about how children attach to their parents, and how couples attach to each other. The three basic styles are:

• Anxious Attachment
• Secure Attachment
• Avoidant Attachment

These fall along a continuum from very anxious to very avoidant, such as recluses who relate with almost no one.  Where do you fall along that continuum? Are you an Ambivalent Attacher, which means going back and forth between Anxious and Avoidant?

If you can identify the ways that you attach, it will give you a perspective on why you like some people and not others, and perhaps why a relationship failed because you were too different. When one person clings, and the other wants distance, it becomes difficult to resolve conflicts.

I wrote extensively about how to study your style, and that of those you may date or relate with, in Create New Love: How Men and Women can Prepare for a Lasting Relationship. I also have podcasts on CreateNewLove.com regarding the importance of understanding yours and other’s styles of attachment.

Understanding attachment can help you select lovers and friends. It can also help you understand what kind of healing would help you attach in more loving, satisfying ways. Those of us with avoidant styles can shift into lives in which we interact more with others. Anxious Attachers can release their focus on others and be able to claim themselves and their lives more fully. A friend once said to me, “You’re in control of your life.” Yes, I am. She wasn’t, and marveled at this. But Avoiders can be too much in control of their lives, and two little interactive.

Bringing your Attachment style into a more satisfying alignment can be a great focus for healing. It provides information about early life influences on current difficulties, and how to release them. It can make sense out of your relationship difficulties, even work issues.

I am healing my own Avoidant style, and finding the wonderful connection that is possible. I know how it works from doing it myself, along with helping many others remove the effects of theirs, too.

I am completing a novel called Life With Avoidant Attachment, a Novel: Letting go of Loneliness, Separation, Isolation and Shame. If you would like to learn when it is on Kindle, click button on the top right, Free Insights for Healing Sexuality.

More!

1. Healing Avoidant Attachment Style of Interaction

2. Stop Avoidant Attachment from Disturbing Your Relationship