The Scoop: Our attachment styles can impact the way we behave in romantic relationships. Since attachment styles develop during childhood, it’s important for you to analyze your past to improve your present and future relationships. This may sound daunting, but therapist Olivia Pelts of Sunshine City Counseling told us not to fear. With therapy and self-work, you can change your attachment style for the better.
Let’s say you crave public displays of affection from your partner. Or, maybe the idea of your boyfriend kissing you in public makes your skin crawl. It’s also possible that PDA makes you uncomfortable, but you fear rejection from your partner even more. Or, if you’re anything like me, all three scenarios ring true in their own ways.
In fact, there may even be times when none of these feel quite right, and you are totally comfortable communicating your PDA preferences to your partner. People contain multitudes — or a multitude of parts or selves — and as these examples show, people also develop varying attachment styles.
“Attachment style” is a word you’ve probably heard before, especially if you’re tapped into the wellness or therapy worlds. We spoke to Sunshine City Counseling’s founder, therapist Olivia Pelts, about how one’s attachment style first develops in childhood, and may later affect your romantic relationships.
Digging through decades of experiences is never easy, especially when some of those experiences are painful. With the help of a therapist like Olivia, decoding your attachment style by digging into your past can be a cathartic, insightful process.
There Are Four Attachment Styles
Olivia told us that our past definitely touches our present and our futures, for better or for worse. “Right now, I’m finishing up an online program that starts with understanding who we are based on our past. How does our past inform our present?”
She primarily helps people identify their attachment style — the specific way(s) we individually bond with other people — and make healthier emotional attachments.
“How does understanding my own unique attachment style inform the ways in which I connect to people, both in healthy ways and in codependent, toxic ways?” Olivia’s rhetorical question made me think about how little I actually know about my own attachment style.
This internal self-work ultimately leads to an even broader question, Olivia told us: “How do I develop healthy relationships?” After all, your attachment style says a lot about how you show and receive love.
According to Olivia, there are generally four attachment styles that determine how you behave in a relationship: secure, anxious/ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized. “One of the biggest things to remember about attachment styles in general is that they’re not locked,” she reminded us. “Neuroplasticity — our ability to create new attachments, new connections, new synapses in our brains — is pretty remarkable.”
“You’re not all one attachment style,” she clarified. “Think of it like a pie chart. You might have 20% secure, 40% avoidant, 30% anxious, and 10% disorganized.”
What matters is the majority, and how your majority attachment style positively and negatively affects your life.
By nature, a secure attachment style is, in many ways, the “healthiest” of the four. But that doesn’t mean you have to change everything about yourself, or go against your own instincts, in an effort to have a secure attachment style. “No one can be 100% secure all the time. That’s impossible,” Olivia reassured us.
After all, humans really do contain multitudes. Sometimes, what we do and what we want to do are two very different things. When you ask yourself “Why did I just do that?”, Olivia recommends digging through your past.
Our Attachments Are Formed During Childhood
Avoidant styles are more likely to avoid intimacy, anxious styles feel insecure about their relationship status, and people with a disorganized attachment style feel pulled between a need for intimacy and a fear of commitment. We’re all a combo of each style, and can probably trace our dominant style back to our childhoods.
Of course, not everyone has a glaring trauma in their past that easily explains their behaviors as an adult. “When you ask (people) about their childhood, generally speaking, they’re like, ‘Oh, it was great… My parents were fine, no big deal. I had a house and food,’” Olivia described. “I was like, wow, that is a low bar.”
If you tend to blanket tough memories with general assurances of “Everything is fine,” you may have developed an avoidant attachment style.
“What’s happening in the avoidant attachment style, generally speaking, is they don’t have memories encoded with emotion,” Olivia explained. Instead of digging into how they felt in those memories, they describe the factual, surface-level aspects instead.
Olivia helps clients access their emotions about particular memories. Let’s say your mom had a bad temper. If she aimed her outbursts at you, you probably realized that being quiet and obedient was the best way to avoid her anger. You felt as if you alone could prevent her outbursts.
“In (a child’s) brain, they can’t rationalize that mom’s an adult. Mom’s the problem. They internalize it as, ‘I must have done something wrong,’” Olivia explained.
“How you perceive and receive love from mom or dad … can often mimic the dynamic you have with a romantic partner.” And when your partner does or says something triggering, you may find yourself reacting to it the same way you would’ve when you were young and facing another outburst from your mom.
In tense moments, your brain may revert back to similarly tense moments from your childhood, and leave you with the same emotional responses.
“The body doesn’t know time, the body doesn’t know gender, the body doesn’t know that (what’s happening) is different from what happened when you were a kid,” Olivia explained.
When the body needs to be brought back into the present, where you’re safe, counseling may help. “I always tell people, ‘You have the opportunity to be so redeeming and healing for your partner and for yourself,’” she said.
When you work on your responses to emotional moments, you work on your relationship at the same time. “Without intentionality, compassion, and curiosity, you (and your relationship) will self-destruct,” she warned.
Can You Change Your Attachment Style?
Short answer: Yes, you can change your attachment style if it isn’t serving you. But remember that each style exists within you. Instead of focusing so much on which style you are, put your energy into self-improvement.
“Both partners (must be) willing to dig in, understand themselves, understand their dynamics, and give context and understanding,” Olivia told us.
To address the issues that arise with your attachment styles, you have to admit that those issues exist in the first place — and they may affect your behavior. “You have to own your side of the situation,” she told us. “You also have to state what you want to move toward.”
True growth is the ability to respect your partner’s response. “The other person has the option to say yay or nay, and that tells us a lot (about them),” Olivia said. Sunshine City Counseling offers couples counseling for people in this situation.
It’s great that you have finally addressed how your attachment style negatively impacts your relationship, but you have to respect it if your partner still isn’t ready to trust you again. In other words: “You cannot make someone drink water. You can only lead them to water,” Olivia said.
What matters more than your attachment style is your ability to recognize when your attachment style is negatively affecting your relationships. Olivia recommends asking yourself a few vital questions. “Can I recognize myself? Can I be curious about my own behaviors, my own reactions, and with compassion, not with judgment? Can I then move to a different attachment style?”
We’re all working toward what Olivia calls a “corrective experience.”
If your family was emotionally distant growing up, you may shy away from your partner’s displays of emotion. You may even react with anger or disgust if your partner willingly shares their feelings with you. Recognizing when your reaction is irrational is an important part of healing from your childhood.
The next time your partner shows emotion, try to recognize it as a brave act of vulnerability, and respond in kind. Instead of following your base-level reaction – anger, discomfort, or disgust – try to show compassion for your partner. This would be a “corrective experience”, or an experience that breaks the unhealthy attachment cycle you’ve been spinning in since childhood.
At first, changing your attachment style is uncomfortable. After all, you’re pushing against your basest instincts. Olivia told us that checking on yourself internally may help you keep a level head. “What does this feel like in my body, in my relationship, in my connection? Do I feel safe? Do I feel heard?”
The more effort you put into figuring out your attachment style(s), the better your chances at achieving real comfort and confidence in your relationship.
