What is Anxious Attachment?
Hi everyone! This week on the blog we’re continuing to look at the different types of attachment styles (if you’ve missed our previous blogs on attachment theory in general, secure attachment, and avoidant attachment, you can click back through the blogs and catch up). Today we’re going to touch on the anxious-insecure attachment style and what it means to have an anxious attachment, how it presents in childhood and adulthood, and how it might affect the relationships you have in your life.
Research suggests that anxious attachment occurs in about 19% of the population, placing it as the third most common attachment style behind avoidant attachment and secure attachment. People with this type of attachment often have a fear of abandonment by others and worry about being underappreciated. There are several factors that can lead to anxious attachment; for example, studies suggest that people with this type of attachment style have caregivers who are unpredictable, inconsistent in their parenting, and sometimes emotionally indifferent. This might look like caregivers who are loving and dependable in meeting needs at one moment but in the next, the caregiver is not meeting those basic needs of security, safety, responsiveness, and love. These inconsistencies can make it difficult for children to understand their caregiver’s behaviour and predict their response in the future. With caregivers who are emotionally distant, children experiencing feelings like anxiety or distress do not receive the comfort or support they need, which in turn leads to increased feelings of anxiety and distress. Another factor that can lead to an anxious style of attachment is emotional hunger, in which caregivers use their relationships with children in order to meet their own emotional needs. In Ainsworth’s Strange Situation (described in one of the earlier blogs), children with anxious attachment are highly distressed when they are separated from their caregiver and are difficult to console when reunited.
Due to the inconsistencies in caregiver behaviour, people with anxious attachment can have a hard time depending on others. They may present as being insecure in relationships, needing consistent contact and closeness to the point of being “clingy”; they may be afraid, or even unable, to be alone. Anxious attachment can also lead to feelings of jealousy in a relationship, as well as a distrust of others. People with this attachment style may also have low self-esteem and a negative view of themselves, leading to them seeking reassurance from their relationships. They may end up pushing people away by trying to hold on to relationships too tight, but at the same time can be hypersensitive to perceived rejection or abandonment; they may also see changes in their partner’s mood or behaviours as a sign that something must be wrong with the relationship.
What can you do?
Check out this article from Psychology Today, which looks at why people with an anxious attachment style attract people with an avoidant attachment style: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/202306/why-anxious-and-avoidant-attachment-attract-each-other
Tune in next week, where we will be discussing another interesting topic on attachment styles.
Written by: Lindsay Mcnena