Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Attachment styles. Ep.2. Anxious Attachment

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Attachment styles. Ep.2. Anxious Attachment · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to this next episode in the series about the psychology of attachment.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the last episode, I talked about secure attachment and how it was formed and how it was experienced.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, secure attachment is something which is, in my experience, not very common.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Generally speaking, the people I see have different types of insecure attachment.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there are these different forms, and they find expression through the way in which people experience and manage their relationships and encounters.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I'm going to talk about anxious attachment, how that's formed, how it's experienced, and how it can find expression.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think essentially the way in which other people may experience someone who has an anxious attachment style.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a curious thing because people don't choose their attachment styles, they develop them.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then they become self-reinforcing.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So in this episode, I'll talk about anxious attachment, and I want you to think about whether this is something that you experience, whether you have people who are close to you, who perhaps until now you hadn't thought of as being anxiously attached, but just perhaps needy and wanting reassurance and time and things like that.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Very often, such people will, I don't know, perhaps send you a message, and it at first everything's fine for them, but then as time passes, and they they know you've seen it, but for whatever reason you can't respond right now, they see there's nothing there.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And gradually something begins to happen inside them.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it it isn't just thoughts, it's activation.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking themselves things like, Have I said something wrong or done something wrong?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't I have a reply?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels different, are they pulling away?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so now it's no longer simply about the message, it feels like the relationship itself has become uncertain.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: They check, they replay previous conversations, they monitor tone, timing, energy, meaning.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And beneath it all, there is one terrifying emotional possibility.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: What if I no longer matter to them?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: This episode about attack anxious attachment concerns one of the most emotionally intense and psychologically activating attachment styles.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's fundamentally organized around one central fear, and that is the fear of emotional abandonment.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not always literal abandonment, but emotional withdrawal, distance, disconnection, loss of certainty.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And once that fear becomes activated, the nervous system could become consumed by trying to restore connection.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now this attachment style develops in environments where caregiving has usually been inconsistent.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the caregiver was loving, attentive, emotionally available, and at other times distracted, available, unpredictable, emotionally overwhelmed or psychologically absent.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about what this teaches the child.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because connection matters enormously, but connection isn't fully predictable.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so the child's nervous system begins organizing around monitoring emotional availability constantly.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the child learns I must stay emotionally alert, I must notice changes quickly, I must work to maintain connection.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then what comes with this is hypervigilance.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the most defining features of anxious attachment.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: The anxiety, the anxiously attached individual becomes exceptionally sensitive to shifts in tone, changes in rhythm, distance, delayed replies, ambiguity, silence, and inconsistency.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Things other people might not even register, but for these people it can feel profoundly significant internally because the nervous system has learned small changes may signal emotional danger.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now for me inside, anxious attachment is not simply neediness as people dismissively describe it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional uncertainty becomes unbearable for these people, and for them it feels like there's a fear of escalating rapidly, difficulty self-soothing, obsessive relational thinking, and intense emotional preoccupation.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: The individual may constantly be checking for signs that you are there, seek reassurance, analyze interactions constantly, fear saying the wrong thing, or become emotionally consumed by relational ambiguity.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And importantly, they usually know that the reaction is larger than the situation objectively justifies.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is because the thought sense is being overwhelmed by the felt sense.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The felt sense is central nervous system related, whereas the objective thought sense has to do with cognition and a different part of the brain.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the activation feels real and it's powerful.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the most painful paradoxes of anxious attachment is that reassurance, which very often that's what the person will be seeking, it only helps temporarily.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a sticking plaster.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the wound or wounds are considerable.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the partner reassures, connection returns, the nervous system settles briefly, and then the next moment of uncertainty arrives.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the outline fear, which has nothing to do with the present, remains unresolved.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The fear is not truly about the current moment alone, it is attached to a deeper internal expectation, and that is that connection may disappear unexpectedly.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: When anxious attachment people become activated, they often move towards urgent connection, calling, texting, clarifying, seeking reassurance, trying to restore emotional closeness.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now this might feel like manipulation, but in fact it's something different.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like protest behavior, because the attachment system is protesting what is perceived as disconnection.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And psychologically the individual is trying to reduce the emotional danger through proximity.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here is where relationships become really complicated, because anxiously attached individuals are often powerfully drawn towards emotionally avoidant people.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because avoidant individuals recreate emotional inconsistency, warmth followed by distance, closeness followed by withdrawal, connection followed by ambiguity.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And for the anxiously attached nervous system, this feels emotionally familiar, even while simultaneously producing enormous suffering.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this creates the classic anxious avoidance cycle.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: One person pursuing closeness, the other creating distance, which one which then intensifies further pursuit.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to be doing something on the avoidant the avoidant attachment type, which I think may very well resonate with a great deal of you.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, in my work, I come into contact with people.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: More often it's it's the people who've been on the wrong end of the avoidant attachment type, because generally speaking, the avoidant types themselves are unlikely to seek therapy because they want to maintain control, and therapy challenges that, in as much as it actually probes, it asks questions, it reveals things.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So many of the people that I've worked with have been at what I call the wrong end or the sharp end.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they haven't all been anxious attachment stars, there have been others.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But that's for that's for a different episode.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, underneath anxious attachment, there is often significant shame.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Many anxiously attached individuals secretly fear that they are too much, too emotional, too needy, too sensitive, too difficult to love.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this creates another painful dynamic because the individual may suppress legitimate needs while simultaneously feeling chronically deprived emotionally.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to childhood and the origins that find themselves repeated in adulthood because this is very important psychologically.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The anxiously attached adult is often not reacting to the present relationship.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're reacting through an attachment system that was shaped long ago.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, once again, I use the word reacting.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is not about responding.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Reacting comes from the felt sense, responding comes from the thought sense.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So they have a nervous system that learned that connection is precious but unstable, and therefore has to be constantly monitored.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So adult relational ambiguity may activate profoundly old emotional states which will be experienced in the present.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not they're not activated metaphorically, they're activated neurologically, emotionally, psychologically, and behaviorally.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, working with people who have this style is about enabling them to not suppress needs, and it doesn't mean pretending not to care about things.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It begins with the recognition of the activation, what the activation is saying, and what is the fear beneath it, and the difference between present reality and attachment panic.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will often talk to patients about that was then, this is now.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that can sound that that could be interpreted as a kind of that was ages ago, forget it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not a very therapeutic approach.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not what's being said.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: What's being said is what you're experiencing now has to do with the past.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here in the present, the past has in a in a nanosecond contaminated the present.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Helping the person to see and hold the past anxiety in the present and see it for what it is is the task.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because that then reduces the volume, reduces the level of anxiety that the person is experiencing.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had one patient who said, This this is what I do now.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think about what you said, and when when something happens, I ask myself, is this now or is it then?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think really is is helpful because to do that you have to step to one side of the emotional reactivity and use the thinking sense.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And just that one shift changes something.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it doesn't conclude in an answer, it produces a shift.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: What we're teaching is the person's capacity to reflect rather than you're making me anxious, you're doing you know, and whatever else comes along with that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually about a kind of self-awareness that is quite sophisticated, but actually it's a very simple principle.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we help people to understand that another person's temporary distance doesn't automatically mean abandonment.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It means part of you that fears that has been touched.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: The other person is probably completely unaware.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, though, what can happen as a consequence is emotionally self-relationships can develop, consistency, self-awareness, and the internal boundaries that are required start to develop.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the person then has repeated corrective experiences.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about origin correction, and I refer to the work of Bruno Bettelheim in the orthogenic school, and that means origin correcting.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: The style never goes away, but it is acutely triggered under stress.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Helping people to position themselves slightly differently with themselves means that they remain open to the corrective experiences because the relationships that you have as a grown-up don't have to be repetitions of the ones that you had a child as as a child, but you have to learn that, and you can't you can't just learn it through being told that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to learn it experientially.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to allow yourself to have the experience of being activated and staying with it hard, but very, very doable.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: People with anxious attachment can develop what is sometimes called earned security, not by becoming emotionally numb, but by developing the capacity to remain psychologically grounded even when attachment fear becomes activated.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that changes relationships profoundly.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps one of the saddest things about anxious attachment is how often deeply loving people come to believe there is something fundamentally wrong with them simply because they fear losing connection.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, the nervous system learned long ago that emotional closeness felt uncertain.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the nervous system can learn something new, it's never too late.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: They learn to monitor, pursue, anticipate loss and try and prevent the loss of that.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: But not because they're weak, but because somewhere inside them love and intimacy became associated with unpredictability.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps change in healing begins when the individual realizes they do not need to earn emotional safety through hyper-vigilance and pursuit and self-abandonment.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: If this is something which you can identify with, it could be in yourself or it could be with others.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this episode provides some clarity, but also signposting towards how it's possible to manage this differently and live in a less hyper-vigilant way, because it's costly, it really is.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And many of the patients I work with who have this anxious attachment style fear me disappearing, fear me rejecting them, in some way just not being available.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: They finish they they finish sessions often feeling as if maybe that was their last one, when in truth that's not the case at all.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had a number of patients say to me, there was a time when they used to think I would arrive at your door and you would open it and say, I don't want to see you anymore.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to continue to work with you.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And part of them knew that was completely illogical.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: There was no evidence to support that, no objective evidence, however, they carried with them a range of experiences that prompted them to be alert to that.
• 17:51
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• 17:56
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• 18:01
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• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.