A Non-Pathologizing Approach to Attachment

Sooo you read a book about attachment styles and now you’ve self diagnosed? Haha, ok I’ll not be snarky. I have mixed feelings about that phenomenon.

But first: In SomaField, Attachment Awareness is one of the Core Principles because it impacts every aspect of your relationship with your client as well as the ways you support them around their relationships. Attachment Theory is simply the idea that a person’s early experiences of attaching and bond-building with primary caregivers shapes the ways they will relate, connect, protect, and behave in adulthood, with others and themselves.

Attachment is also on trend in recent years.

And I have kind of a beef about it. I mean, no, that’s not quite right. I deeply appreciate that more people are gaining an awareness of their attachment systems and understanding that it’s a crucial task in a relationship to build security both with yourself and between partners. That part is great.

But I suppose the first part of my beef with it is the same beef I have with all self-help-type teachings that aren’t individualized. You simply cannot speak as if complex, nuanced, and messy concepts can be contained, tested, scored, easily explained, or put in a box for the masses.

Attachment styles are fluid.

This means that the labels don’t help. He’s avoidant, she’s anxious, they’re disorganized. Yes, these things do have meaning, but the thing that gets lost is that you can have multiple attachment styles within one relationship. Depending on the day. Depending on what’s going on with your partner. Or your community. Or your family. Or your relationship with your body.

You can display characteristics of one attachment style with one friend and others with another friend. You can settle into earned secure attachment most of the time only to swing into one tendency or another when things escalate beyond a certain threshold. (It’ll look different, but still). You can be anxious with one partner and avoidant with another. And they can switch.

It’s true that for some people, they have tendencies and can hang out primarily in one type of attachment response. And they can tend to attract someone who hangs out in a different attachment response. But this isn’t everyone.

Of note, though, is that this idea of attracting the “opposite” style is basically all relationships. It’s typical, not dysfunctional. Even healthy relationships usually have 2 people with 2 different attachment tendencies. What I’ve found to be the most useful thing is for each person to have a relationship with security in which they know how to locate it, are working towards it, or can identify when they’re not feeling secure and can pause in order to try and meet their needs before coming back to the conversation or relationship process.

Now, the second part of my beef. When we do try to contain, test, score, and put in a box, what I see happening with people (my clients, other therapists, anyone really) is that they begin to resent, judge, make wrong, and disparage whatever attachment tendencies they’ve encountered in other people that they find painful.

But all people exhibiting attachment patterns want the same thing: to be able to feel connected with themselves and to be accepted and loved as they are in their connections with others.

If you can’t learn to see your partner’s (or clients, or friends) attachment behaviors as attempts to get here, you won’t be able to build security with them because you will have them labeled wrong in your heart.

When we roll our eyes and say, “yeah, they’re anxious” or “yeah, they’re avoidant,” we make a rift too difficult to cross. Instead of looking at how you both want the same thing and doing some creative problem solving, you position them and their patterns as the enemy.

Instead, let’s see if we can remember that we all want the same thing. And let’s sit down and have some strategic conversations about how we can validate each other’s needs, work to provide them, and honor the pain of not feeling well loved in certain moments. Let’s also be honest about the ways that our attachment tendencies and behaviors can even elicit the “opposite” tendencies and behaviors from our partner.

See what I mean? There’s no blame here. No making wrong. Each of our relationships is its own cute little ecosystem, where everything impacts everything. That might sound overwhelming, but it’s also freeing because you don’t have to worry about changing the other person. Just be in your own process towards security and watch the ripple effect.

My overall message here (and always, really) is let’s try and give each other a break, be understanding, and most importantly: not pathologize each other. Let’s not wield our biases about attachment styles at each other. We’re all in this together. All of us are evolved in moments and purely stupid in others. It’s ok. Because if what we all want is to move towards deeper security within ourselves and with others, this is a necessary part of that path.

Just a note here: It takes a seasoned, attuned, and in-the-know practitioner to truly untangle attachment issues when they’re an issue in relationships because of all of the nuances I’ve mentioned. So keep this in mind when looking for your own therapist or coach. This is also why I love teaching SomaField to practitioners so much, because we get into aaaaaall the attachment nitty gritty.

Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)