4 Ways Childhood Impacts Your Love Style

So attachment theory is about how we establish that relationship with our primary caregivers and whether that establishment is healthy or not, and how that influences how you function as a child, both mentally and physically, and again permeates

your

adulthood and

your

career in

love

. friendships and all other aspects of your life dr. judy, let's define secure attachment, okay, so a securely attached child in mary ainsworth's original study is a child who when separated from their parents shows some distress, a little stressed, but is still able to calm down to a certain extent and then once the parents return they are so excited to see them that they give them a big hug and then after that reunification they go back to playing on their own and seem relatively happy. and as adults they tend to be more comfortable in relationships in general, they can communicate their needs, they can be independent but at the same time they also approach people without too many problems and in general people say that they are probably the best type of person to have any kind of relationship with when the child makes his mother go away and reunite.

What age range is it? In Mary Ainsworth's study, it was usually between seven and eight months and about two years, and that's because of attachment. In theory, we think that around seven months the baby starts to become very selectively attached to one or two primary caregivers in its life, so they were really testing the strength of that specific bond compared to when a baby is younger. than that, it's a little smaller. a little more indiscriminate, meaning you get to see a lot of people and you know you're hanging out with everyone, it's not a big deal, you don't have that much of a close bond with a couple of people in your life until a little while ago.

Moving on, what are some other signs that a parent might be facilitating a secure attachment

style

in their child? Well, I think generally it's about a parent who can be available for the emotional and physical needs of the child as mammals and as humans, we can't. taking care of ourselves at that age, so it's very important that we feel like we have a secure base to return to so you know that when you're a really good parent and you establish a secure attachment in your babies, it's really about being close, but still let them explore, but then when they want to come back to you for attention or a hug, you're close, if they're hungry they can come to you and you'll give them food, you know that, so it's really about being Available for you. child, but not necessarily overloading him with a lot of affection and not letting him go because that doesn't really develop strong resilience skills in your child, so it's more about being around when your child needs you, but also not being dominant and feel it.

It's nice those times when your child is playing independently and not thinking, "Oh, I should be there," and being a good mom right now, you might be a good mom to let him do that on his own and really let him know. try to have a combination of two, so sometimes you are playing with your child, sometimes you are not, but you are in the same room or the next room and you are available for your child when they need you. Yes, can anyone have a safe place? attachment

style

like me, no, I think I'll find out later that my personality dictates that I didn't have a secure attachment style growing up, but I think I had a great

childhood

, yes, yes, I agree and I think you know that in general. . it's this kind of idealized parenting, idealized, almost you know, I think in the Western Hemisphere we also talk about what we call authoritarian parenting, so authoritarian, being a super bossy parent, a permissive parent is like one who has no rules and then the authoritative.

A father is someone who somehow extends through the middle, knows that he dictates things when he needs it, but also allows you to talk to him and be flexible in negotiations, but that is not a parenting style that is adopted by everyone. the world in certain parts. In many parts of the world, parents are the power structure in the family and you have to do what they say and those children turn out well too, so I think that's what you're talking about, certain families or certain cultures. I'm not just talking about ethnic groups, I'm talking about all kinds of cultural groups, maybe the idea of ​​a secure mother or a securely attached mother is not really the true ideal, maybe you can develop very well although maybe your attachment is more good of avoidance. on the right side, so I think there are some arguments about that and there are certainly criticisms about the original ideas of attachment and what that secure attachment really means, so I think that's a very good point and I think that while it may be something that It's not necessarily the gold standard.

Certain aspects of what we call a secure person are good. You know this idea of ​​being able to be flexible, like you can be independent on your own, but you're also not too codependent, but you can also be close. for people who don't feel comfortable and uncomfortable, I think those are really good things that everyone can strive for, of course, how can a parent foster more of that secure attachment within their child, especially when the child shows an anxiety really intense and almost a tantrum when that? the father leaves, yes, and this is a good question because there is an interaction between the parents and the temperament of the child, so temperament is something that we consider as a nate, you know, certain children are just more smiley, they just do more eye contact with them.

The people around other children are not, they are more picky and these things are related to temperament, it is thought to be something that is born and I think that, in general, parents sometimes encourage everything they see in front of them. them, so if there's a child whose temperament is more clingy and anxious maybe the mother also reflects more anxiety like, oh my gosh, are they going to be okay alone? Maybe I shouldn't go out on a date night with my husband because what if my son needs me? In fact, in some

ways

that reinforces the anxiety in your child, because children are quite intuitive and can sense the emotions of their caregivers, so I think it's interesting because when you see that dynamic you can see that it's almost like a chicken. and egg syndrome after a while, so what is really going on here?

I think that as parents, you should control your own feelings, regardless of your child's temperament, somehow, it is as if he is okay, the child behaves very anxiously, which causes a lot of worries. anxiety in me, so you have to somehow modulate your own emotions and appear calmer so that the child can really learn from that and say oh, maybe there's nothing to be anxious about. I need to start learning how to calm those feelings. So I think part of it is parents being really in tune with that and still maintaining structure despite their child's temperament.

What are some memories that people would have that would indicate that they grew up with parents who really fostered that secure attachment style? Kids have memories where maybe they broke their arm and their parents took them to the hospital right away and but what you know waiting you know you would be surprised and I think maybe that's something that borders on trauma for some people when they remember. For example, they have a fever and their parents say, well, let me finish this meeting and then we will go to the hospital, even those things that don't seem as harmful as the parents, well, it's a fever, I can't. wait 30 minutes let me finish my meeting children remember that forever and remember you as someone who did not meet their needs when they needed you or you know parents who, for example, foster memories in children where you know they walk them to school and then the kid was a little afraid of the door like he didn't want to leave and the parents said you know what we'll be here we'll wait out here for about 20 minutes and you come in and we'll see how it goes and then I like it if not you're back in 20 minutes so we'll drop this idea that I'm still here but I still want you to develop as an individual and I think sometimes kids will mirror those kinds of experiences oh my parents walked me to school but then they left me there um and then they came and checked on me at lunch and then they left again, you know, this idea of ​​talking to your child to do I'm sure you're available to them when they really need you.

So how can a parent cross that line between creating a secure attachment and communicating with their child and not going to the now? I'm flying in a helicopter and I'm authoritative. Actually creating more bad things than good, I think a lot of this is about how parents display their own emotions so you know again if they're checking to see if you're okay, are you okay? and they're starting to act very anxious, that's a different message. for the kid who just hears, I just stopped by during my lunch break to see how your lunch is going and then everything seems fine so I'm going back to work.

You know, that very informal record that seems very emotionally stable. I think it's really helpful for kids, yeah, kids really realize it's crazy. My nephew fell a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting him, he fell and hit his chin on the floor and my reaction was my initial instinct was to leave. oh man, oh, but I knew if I did, he would start crying, so when he fell, I made that face, he didn't see it and I go, good job, can you get up and he gets up and I stay calm, now bring? He gave me that ball or whatever we were doing and he completely forgot about it, but if I had made that big reaction, he would have reacted big, yeah, yeah, what are some typical behaviors of someone with this attachment style a once I'm an adult?

So in romantic relationships, they tend to be able to judge each relationship by that relationship alone rather than having a single pattern of coping style. This way they know they can deal with people's idiosyncrasies flexibly. They seem to feel more comfortable with close relationships. but they can also be independent if you leave them alone or if you don't see each other for a few days they are fine and don't get too distressed when they are alone and even if they have had a bad time in relationships they are still able to recover and move on to the next after a period of grieving instead of completely becoming this person you know says well, all men are bad, he's better off not having relationships, you know things that are very dismissive and black and white, are more characteristic of insecure attachment styles, someone who sure, you know, when they have disappointments, they learn their lessons and move on, and even in their careers they tend to be like that too, so they tend to be able to work in jobs that are independent but they can also work in teams and they don't They get too anxious about being on a team, you know the closeness of a team, the fact that you have to be together a lot and in friendship.

Additionally, they tend to be good friends, meaning they are talkative with their friends. They are not passive-aggressive in their communication. If they are upset about something, they can be assertive about it. I mean, that's why it's so funny, because I feel like Secure Attachment is idealistic, it sounds funny, how many people do that every day. I think most people probably fail here and there, but I think the general pattern of a securely attached person is that you know what they can do with disappointments. They'll still be sad, they'll still have problems, but they won't have this big reaction that feels like an overreaction or a black and white coloring of some kind where you just judge something right away and don't move. go ahead and feel held back maybe by some of your past experiences yes I'm going through the list of everyone I know and I think there's only one person who follows that I know the rest of us struggle no You don't show up every time and I you achieve it perfectly.

How does a secure attachment style impact friendships? Well, I think a secure attachment style

impacts

friendships in the same way that a good friend is someone who is there for you when you need them and have them. reciprocal relationship and that's what a securely attached person is really like in a friendship, they're very reciprocal, like they're happy to give, but they're also accepting, sometimes, you know, and they're secure enough to ask for what they need, to Sometimes people who do you know have an insecure attachment? They can actually be extremely clingy in a friendship or maybe they are even very dismissive in a friendship where when someone has a more emotional need, they run away from that friend, a secure attachment doesn't run away. emotions, but they're also not overly emotional, so they don't engage with you as deeply in the trenches where it feels like your identities are starting to merge, I mean, they still have their own identity and maintain that identity while still being. can I support you yes excellent some final words on secure attachment style yes I think in many

ways

when we talk about secure attachment it sounds like we are talking about this ideal and I really think that securely attached people still have problems so it's no it's not so much so that they never have problems, but rather they approach their problems in an authentic way and have a veryflexible to use their coping strategies inIn general, securely attached people are simply more resilient, they are more resilient in terms of mental health and they are more physically resilient, so we find that people who are securely attached have fewer chronic illnesses and Due to their mental health, they tend to be able to cope better when they have depression or anxiety and are also less at risk of more serious mental health conditions, so It's great when you're someone who really has a secure attachment.

I ask this before we move on to our next session. So can someone who was raised with more than just a secure attachment grow and change and begin to behave as if she had been raised with a secure attachment family? I think you can develop a different family. type of attachment as you get older, okay, that's why it's so important to know, because when you're aware of your attachment problem, if you know it's a difficulty, when you work on it you can start to prepare yourself more authentically toward a relationship. safe. attached person In fact, I have seen many people start with an insecure attachment and throughout their lives develop more resilience and become more secure and be able to express that 99 of the time, Dr.

Judy, what is an attachment style? of dismissive avoidant attachment? So, the dismissive-avoidant attachment style In Mary Ainsworth's study, they showed very little distress when their primary caregiver left, they just kept playing alone and then when the primary caregiver returned, they recognized them, but they didn't run to them either, really. , they just kept doing their own thing and many times they might even be somewhat indiscriminate in terms of their affection toward their primary caregiver versus perhaps toward the stranger who was in the room during this experiment, and as adults, dismissive avoidance types tend to Being very independent, they are very industrial, which means that sometimes they are workaholics and they don't like intense emotions, when someone shows a lot of intense emotions, whether it's a partner or a friend, they tend to get away from it a little bit, like who make up an excuse to They don't get too involved and generally feel very comfortable being alone and tend to invest less in their emotional life and also in deeper bonds with people than the average person you just explained to me.

No, that was a biography of me and that's Kyle. So does that mean my parents probably had the same attachment? Well, it's interesting because as parents, what we often communicate when raising a more dismissive avoidant child is that you probably shouldn't express your negative emotions, that maybe it's a sign of weakness. In some ways, you really shouldn't do it because people might take advantage of you if you express too many of your negative emotions, so they wouldn't reward their children for expressing emotions, especially negative ones, which might be a possibility when a parent is more authoritarian. with more boundaries between the parent and the child, especially in terms of their emotional communication, which could lead to a more dismissive avoidant attachment or parents who are very industrial, parents who were workaholics, instilled that kind of value in their children, so your child also prioritizes things like work and productivity over relationships, so it's not all bad, yeah yeah, does someone with dismissive avoided attachment do very well with another person who has the same attachment?

Yes, I think so, and they tend to do very well with a secure attachment. people too, but you know what a nightmare of dismissive avoidance the anxious and worried person is, oh I bet I'm right, so since we just talked about anxious and worried people, they are much more needy with their requests for affection and they really need to be with you. more often than the dismissive and avoidant person probably wants to be with them, and those relationships usually don't turn out well, unfortunately, in some ways it reinforces the less healthy parts of those attachment styles.

You know, the preoccupied person becomes even more needy and the avoidant person becomes more distant as a result of being in that interaction right into adulthood, how would this person fare in a work environment? They usually do very well in the work environment. A dismissive avoidant. People are very successful most of the time it's the intimate relationships that tend to cause the most problems but at work they tend to choose highly independent jobs where they have a lot of autonomy um if they don't have a lot of autonomy and they have to work with people they tend to be In leadership positions they tend to be more authoritarian on their own too, so if they're going to lead, they're happy to dictate what other people have to do and they're very comfortable with that, they don't necessarily have to be super democratic in the process. that tend have a lot of confidence in their productivity and so at work they choose jobs that are very challenging and can actually take an exorbitant amount of time because that frees them from the need to develop a more developed emotional life with an intimate partner. still you oh yeah oh yeah I mean I didn't even know I was doing that yeah so people go are you dating? are you saying no?

I work too much yes, I'm protected, I'm protecting myself from doing it because of the emotions of a potential relationship, yes, and even if you're not necessarily explaining it out loud and maybe you're not even aware of it, dismissive avoidance types tend to judging people who are too emotional as if there is a judgment that that is too reactive. I'm guilty, yes versus oh, that's an appropriate level of emotion, right, there will be some judgment about how people show or express their distress. Yes, this is why I want people to realize that this is because I went to therapy and worked on my emotional block, I recognized that it was making friendships and relationships difficult.

It served me very well at work. It didn't serve me well in relationships and friendships. People want excitement there. Yeah, I didn't, so I had to go to therapy to find out. I figured out how to do it even when it's not part of my makeup and that has helped me a lot and the reason I shared it is because whatever attachment style you're falling into doesn't mean you have to stay there, it just means you have to be aware. from it, learning the tools and techniques to get out of it exactly and I think understanding it you know the benefits of having a more secure attachment, that's a good point, you know the benefits of that, you know the fearful, uh, dismissive avoidant.

Guy obviously comes with some benefits, especially in the work environment, but as you mentioned in friendships and intimate relationships, it's harder and even with a securely attached person they will eventually start to say "hey, do you know what you're giving me?" " 10 days to see you and that's not okay with me, you know, and eventually they'll need a little more from you, even if they're very close, but again, dismissive, it prevents people from tending to not have that much need. I often see people who disdain avoidance end up in long distance relationships because, well, then I only have to deal with you once a month and it's great and then the rest of the time I just call you to check in, but it's brief, um, and it's interesting that these are types of decisions that they make and they also make certain decisions with their friends, and they tend to feel a little more comfortable with friends who are very busy and so again there is not a big appeal for many, even the The way we sometimes react to people who are sick, you know, people who are more dismissive and avoidant will have a harder time with people who express a lot of fragility because that means they have to step up and care more, so that many times they will negotiate it with someone else, well, let's divide this.

I don't want to have to be the primary caregiver here and so generally people with dismissive avoidant types. They're not as interested in playing a caregiving role, so some dismissive and avoidant people don't necessarily want to have children, and when they do, they tend to keep a greater emotional distance from their children if they haven't worked on it. themselves are fine literally the producer laughs as you say this because he knows it's me he laughs because he says it's literally Kyle we've had these conversations you have a dog I

love

her yeah but she's got the right amount of Well.

Isn't this all on a spectrum too? Yes, I mean, certainly, this is my attachment style, but it doesn't mean that at all times and in all scenarios I am like this. I mean, I think if someone came to me with a real problem, I would do it. be there for them, so certainly this is just a roadmap, not a sure definition, yeah, what can someone, what can we do in the domestic sphere, avoiding people, what can we have better personal relationships? Well, I think there are a couple of tips, it's really about flexing your emotional muscle sit a little bit more and again with that distress, but when an anxious and worried person needs to sit with the distress of being alone, the dismissive and avoidant needs to sit with the distress of being around people who show their emotions and make eye contact when Someone is crying and sitting with them without any agenda, okay, I have 20 minutes and if you don't stop crying then I'll still leave.

It's like this is indefinite. You know, I volunteered to come. I'm here to calm this person down because she's going through something difficult and I've given myself the rest of the night if she needs me to be here during that time, that's what I'm going to do and you know. Again you have to work to get there, but even the act of making more eye contact with someone when they express distress, it's really interesting to watch someone who has a dismissive avoidance style that when other people start crying, they just start crying. Looking the other way, yeah, right, versus the anxious, worried person, basically, you can think of attachment in two dimensions and one is high avoidant versus low avoidant, so the worried person is low avoidant, they don't avoid emotions in absolute, so if someone cries, it's okay. like, come on, come here and they're literally making a lot of eye contact versus the dismissive, avoidant person who's very evasive and when they see that they're like you know, they start looking away and even a simple act of really connecting. with the right person and watching them express their negative emotions and pain to you is a very good place to start.

Yes, last year, Dr. Romney, I made it a point to practice empathy and it was simple advice from Dr. Romney, but it really changed the way I look at self-improvement and to me mental health education is just self-improvement, that It is what it is and she said, Kyle, don't practice your listening, your emotional vulnerability, your empathy only in the big moments. That's not where you're supposed to practice, that's where you're supposed to show up to practice in the moments that don't really matter, when you're sitting on a plane and someone starts talking to you about whatever old Kyle would do. go, okay, whatever you know, put my headphones on, try to get into my own world quickly because I don't want to talk to the stranger, but now I would use it as a time to practice and go, I don't really care what.

This guy has something to say but I'm going to listen to it and I'm going to fake interest I'm faking it but I'm practicing because if I can do it with a stranger then I can Really do it and really connect and really show up and be present for the people in my life that I love, yeah , so by practicing we really mean that practice in the scenarios that life throws at you every day, yeah, yeah, and I think for the dismissive and avoidant person, I mean, that's great advice and I think another piece of advice is really start valuing other things besides your industrial life, your work life, you know, kind of valuing self-care, valuing just sitting with a friend and having tea. you know how to value those things that are different from your high sense of self in the place of your career, you know something like hey, this is as important as finishing this project, like starting to have that right idea about your life, so expand what is important. with you and how you spend your time because now I value emotions more than before I used to see them as a weakness, I say, oh, that's a weak thing, that's a negative trait, yes, but now I look at it because I've learned it. how much I met in the circle, how lucky, what an incredible gift to be able to access your real emotional side and feel comfortable enough to express it to someone, yeah, oh I would love to have that, yeah, what a gift, some of those people.

Yeah, and I will say that as I've gotten older, I've valued things that are much more on the emotional spectrum or I like things that aren't necessarily work related. I mean, I'm definitely a workaholic. Oh yes, and I think I still am, but I have learned to value the time I have with my loved ones at least on the same level, if not sometimes more. You know, maybe I wasn't soproductive this week, but think about all the wonderful time I had with my my friends, my husband and my family they really see that as something important and I think over time you learn you know work can only take you so far and then There is this whole other side of yourself, that also needs to be developed for parents who recognize this attachment style in themselves, what can they do to foster a healthier child?

Yes, you know, encouraging their children to express both positive and negative emotions, sometimes parents again with their own dismissive and avoidant attachment style. They will reward their children for positive emotions but not for negative ones, they will almost even be punitive for negative ones, so it's really about embracing all emotions, all emotions are good, everything is fine, I have this really funny example from a client I was. working with and you know, we have these little emotion cards and little emotion stuffed animals that we used to teach little kids to talk about emotions and it was so fun because it took the negative emotions out of their home game and then they gave to his children.

Just the positive emotions and I was like, "No, it was really funny how I found out that a kid came into the session and it was like you have other ones that my dad doesn't have in his collection, but it's the exact same outfit, but he just removed the negative emotions, wow, so we had to talk about it and he said, I just don't want you to think life is hard, I get it, I get it, but you can't like it, don't stop those emotions, they're going to happen, they're going to happen, you won't know how to deal with it properly, so it's really about letting them down when you still have them in your care and letting them experience it and like to show it that you're still there for them and then yeah, then you have to let them know. that the whole spectrum is fine for me, yeah, um, and then taking that opportunity to teach them coping skills, so I think that's a really good compromise, it's like letting them experience it, but then the dismissive, avoidant part of you can still take advantage that opportunity to say, "Okay, I know you feel sad," but here are some things that you can do right so that you can feel less sad, which is also healthy, which is totally healthy, but um. and it's really interesting because sometimes I've had to tell people things like, hey, sometimes you express a negative emotion and you get that comment from a dismissive parent, you know, even in adulthood, like, oh, well, don't you feel sad, like, why would you feel? sad about it and you literally have to step back and say that you know it's okay to feel sad and you don't have to solve that problem for me, so as the kids get older, I encourage them to give that feedback to their dismissive parents. and avoidants, like Hey, I'm fine and it's okay to be sad and I don't need you to hide it from me just because you're uncomfortable with it, I'm not and I'm trying not to be, you know, that's all.

Let's define someone who would likely have been raised with an anxious and preoccupied attachment style. Well, in Mary Ainsworth's original study these were babies who, even when their mother was in the room, still seemed a little clingy and distressed, etc. once the mother left, it was like all hell broke loose. They were very, very stressed. They would probably be crying the entire time the mother was away and once the mother returned they weren't sued easily, I mean of course they were happy to see. the mother, but even though the mother says I am here, I am with you, they are still crying and find it very difficult to return to independent activities and, as adults, these people will often have great difficulty managing the relationships they tend to have.

To be really needy, they tend to ask a lot from their partners in terms of affection, somehow they don't have stable self-esteem internally, so they have to keep getting validation from people and it's like almost a few minutes later they forget about it. they have to seek that validation again, so many times these individuals will end up in relationships where they are not very happy, they have given up all kinds of their own needs and desires to satisfy the other person's needs and desires and they still feel as if they have been left out and these individuals are also at greater risk of being in abusive relationships because, again, their need for affection is so high that they are willing to succumb to extremely distressing situations to not be alone and these individuals often , they are adults.

You will see them jump from one relationship to another. They date serially. They find it difficult to be alone and when they are alone they become very distressed and this also applies to friendships, so they prefer to be with their friends. alone and will put themselves in uncomfortable situations just to not be alone, so even if all their friends are doing something they really don't want to do, they will go along with the group instead of staying home alone. Go back to the studio. To what extent do you think the child's reaction is only due to the personality he was born with and not how they are being influenced by the parents?

So I think it's a combination. Sometimes there are children with temperaments that are a little more anxious to begin with, a little more clingy, but also parents can produce that behavior in their children if they are a little unpredictable in their parenting, which means that sometimes they are there, They are very sensitive to their children and other times we do not find them anywhere and I think that sometimes parents inadvertently provoke this type of attachment in their children, for example, very busy parents, you know that they are actually working very hard to make ends meet, but when you're a little kid you don't realize that your parents were gone for 10 hours because they weren't working well, so when they're at home, they're actually very engaged with you and they're there to satisfy your needs, but then there are other days when they come home and they're exhausted and then you have a lot of needs and the father says you know what I just need a few minutes alone and then they take it as a personal offense, yeah, and then you can See how sometimes very well-meaning parents can accidentally cultivate a worried child simply due to their own needs and being busy again, right?

Would you say that someone with borderline personality disorder has a high probability of having parents who really encourage this type of attachment style? I think the most common attachment style linked to borderline is actually fearful. avoidant attachment style because the parent is even more erratic and these would be the parents themselves who are erratic for no good reason. I mean, the type of scenario I propose is the type of parents who are just busy or have their own needs and They are trying to deal with themselves and demand themselves, then sometimes they neglect the child, the parents tend to provoke an avoidant style fearful, sometimes they're a little more aware of it and they still do it because they're just not Well, you're right, so I think the boundary is more associated with that attachment style, although I can also see that some of it comes from this .

The fear of abandonment is much greater for a fearful and avoidant child than for an anxious and worried child, and I believe that many times children who are anxiously worried throughout their lives have re-experiences that strengthen that type of attachment style, such as maybe the relationship they choose as adults, they keep choosing disdainful partners or partners who can't meet their needs and then they keep reinforcing that belief about themselves that maybe they're not worthy of being loved and they don't want to stay with that and it's because They find it difficult to be alone, so without awareness we are more likely to imitate the attachment style with which we were raised.

Yes. Yes, and I think there's a theory that you end up looking for partners who are similar to your parents and basically recreate the same thing over and over, whether it's some kind of trauma or not, and if you were a child who You felt like you were constantly looking for support from your parents and sometimes they were there and sometimes they weren't, as adults you are attracted to people who also have those tendencies where they take care of their own lives and, again, maybe they love you. but you know they just don't have a lot of bandwidth to deal with your insecurities all the time and that's why I don't find, for example, that many people who have the preoccupied attachment style end up being together, although sometimes that happens, they tend to look for couples who are different from them in terms of their attachment styles and often replicate the parenting style of their caregivers.

Now it is important to mention here that although my question was the possible causes or correlation. between attachment style and personality disorders there is no single cause for any of them, I mean it can be a hodgepodge of things, but I think it helps people see where what parts of their history could absolutely be influencing in its current behavior today, and so it is. Play that role not only in intimate relationships but even in your chosen career. Yes, people who have an anxious and preoccupied attachment tend to be in jobs where they are part of a pack, they are much more comfortable mixing with a pack.

Instead of even being the pack leader in the group dynamic, they tend to be the followers and they tend to avoid conflict because for them conflict can mean rejection and so they tend to play roles in life that are more passive because They are trying to make sure that they don't lose any support that they might get from someone and they also need a lot of validation so they find themselves in jobs where they are looking for a lot of that validation and it's interesting because some anxiously worried people actually end up getting jobs where Validation is low, like for example acting, oh right, it's really interesting, I've worked with a lot of actors, who have told me, you know what I think, this could be my attachment style and It's strange, I chose a job where I literally have to deal with that attachment issue every day.

Yes, if you recognize these patterns in yourself and want to change, what are you doing right? If you know that you're probably an anxiously worried person and you want to change that, I think the first thing is to establish a stronger sense of self. You know, an easy way to do it would be to just start developing a hobby where you basically do it on your own, it's not a hobby that you have to do. with other people and starting from there, for many of my patients who have anxiously preoccupied attachment cells, I challenge them to go out for coffee alone and then out to lunch alone, so they get used to spending time alone and even in a public setting where you can be afraid of other people's judgment, like who is this person you know, eating alone, no one cares, by the way, no one thinks about you.

The other day I was stuck in so much traffic that I ended up leaving. to this really nice restaurant and I had just five courses, hey, well, for about two and a half hours, it was great because when I was done, there was no traffic, there was no traffic, yeah, it was lovely, but as I was there, I was thinking about how that would be a big challenge for someone whose main attachment style is probably anxious, worried all the time, probably think other people are judging them, think they're lonely, think they're losers. right, and no one thinks about you, that's the funny thing, everyone thinks about themselves most of the time, so I just challenge them to do more independent activities and they like to sit with that angst, yeah, and really start to feel comfortable with themselves, basically, start learning. the self-soothing technique instead of looking to others to calm your distress, excellent, yes, for someone you know started shaking when you told God to eat lunch alone, yes, where could they start?

It's not that, I think starting a hobby that's more independent, I mean even just sitting at home and saying you know what I'm going to do this puzzle by myself and I'm going to do this puzzle by myself without calling a friend and talking to them at same time like Really sit alone or put it on social media exactly like you would do it on your own and also do it in a limited time so I'm going to do this for 30 minutes today and that's why I say you know go. drink coffee for 30 minutes and then if you can do that, then have lunch for an hour, you know, work on being more independent and having your identity in your outside life, because what happens with people who are anxious and worried is that they lose their meaning.

Of themselves they're so passive and they're so busy dealing with other people's needs and wants that they don't even know what they want anymore, but it actually ends up creating the abandonment that they fear because people say, well, you're not interesting. You're too clingy, so by developing your own hobbies and having a good sense of independence, you actually attract the kind of partners you want. You have things to talk about. You know when you are with your partner. Yes, for the person who recognizes them. symptoms themselves, but are also parents or caregivers, how do they begin to change their attachment style so that their child or the person they care for is raised withthat secure attachment?

Yes, I think for an anxious and worried parent it is important for them to modulate their own anxiety and realize that some of that anxiety may be justified and some of it is not rooted in reality, and those that are not rooted in reality They have to learn to step aside, deal with their anxiety, breathe deeply. Do the coping strategies and then go back to the room with your child and introduce yourself calmly because if you show up in front of your child who is very anxious, it can raise a anxious child and therefore you should definitely say, "Okay, do I have to be anxious here?", if not, I'm going to walk away, deal with my own emotions coming back and stay calm and also use it as a moment of teaching if you end up getting very anxious in front of your child later, in an age-appropriate way, have a conversation, so I'm sorry, mom seemed to be having a nervous moment. nervous breakdown mom is fine but she got really worried for a second and when that happened mom started doing some breathing exercises and now I feel better so involve your kids in that conversation so they realize, hey, my parents aren't perfect, but they're actually doing things to try to foster resilience themselves and I can follow that model and the really nice thing about that is that then the child sees that the parents are self-aware, yes, and I hope the child grows understanding that they can also be self-aware, yes.

I didn't learn to be self-aware until I didn't even mean late, late, late, I forgot that I could be aware of my own emotions, I just let them go as they will, before we end this session, what are some things hello good? Coping Mechanisms When parents who have this type of attachment style start to feel very anxious around their children but want to calm down, honestly, breathing is the first thing they should do because when you get anxious you start to really activate the fight. The "flight or flight" system is the sympathetic nervous system, so deep breathing brings you back to that center of "hey, there's nothing to worry about," I can relax, I can let go of that whole fight response. or escape and therefore breathe deeply a few times and then check your thoughts, you know, check your thoughts and say if these thoughts have any relation to reality, yes, yes, and if not, do the diffusion technique of the one we've talked about in some of the other series, you know, attach a sentence. in the face of your negative thought or fear, I am having the thought that I am really not going to finish my work before the deadline, right, I am having the thought that my husband is at home and it means something disastrous, right, and let you understand that there are so many thoughts that They can go through our heads and they have no meaning, so don't get attached to them and start getting nervous.

Yeah, that in the CBT series was not acceptance therapy, yeah, one of our favorites, so yeah, if you haven't seen that series that's available on Med Circle, it's called acceptance and commitment therapy, a one of my favorite therapies of all time, but since we're talking about therapies, we have a little more time for this. session, uh, what kind of therapies would be best to treat or improve these types of attachment styles? I think it's really about therapies that really give you some sense of awareness, so some of the more introspective therapies are helpful, but then you have to mix them up. with real skill sets, yes, and once you have that introspection, it's really about learning self-soothing skills, learning stamps for tolerating distress, very important for the anxious and worried person, so techniques like Distress tolerance or emotion regulation from the dbt literature is a really helpful behavior.

The activation and interpersonal effectiveness of CBT would also be very useful so that these individuals can learn to communicate their needs in a more assertive way that leaves us with a fearful and avoidant attachment style. It's OK? So, actually, this is the rarest of the four types. is an individual who in mary ainsworth's study was showing a kind of discord, a disorganized way of coping when their parents were in the room versus not, so some of these children would actually react very harshly to their parents when They came back and may actually even be dismissive of the parents or seem angry; other times they don't seem to care much when the parents came back, but when the parents left and the video was still playing, they felt very distressed without the parents, and yet when the parents arrived, they acted like they didn't.

They didn't care, so it wasn't a cohesive kind of style, and as adults, fearful and avoidant people tend to have a bigger dialectic about their need for other people, so on the one hand, they really want a close relationship. , so on the other hand, they don't want it, they fear it, and they don't want to invest a lot in it, so they kind of bridge this big spectrum and can act differently depending on how they do it. you're feeling at any given moment what other people are feeling erratic because they don't really know how to predict this person's behavior and sometimes people who are fearful and avoidant as adults tend to be much less stable with their friendships and also like them.

Maybe you have a small group of friends who you know are more comfortable giving, but then with other people they can be very dismissive, so they kind of embody both the concerned type and the dismissive avoidant type to some extent, right? ? Common co-occurring mental health disorders that you might find in someone who has this attachment style, so people who are fearful and avoidant generally confer the greatest psychological risks of the four types and are therefore a a little more prone to anxiety a little more prone to depression and a little more prone to other types of relational problems and one of the most common ones that is associated with the fearful avoidance type are borderline personality traits and particularly the over dimension.

In fact, in many ways, fearful-avoidant types are even more afraid of abandonment than preoccupied types, but unlike preoccupied types, they are not willing to completely give up their sense of abandonment. themselves to be in a relationship, so they are afraid of abandonment, but they are also a little more determined in the sense that they still want to have their own space and their own boundaries, so it creates a lot of difficulties, barriers and challenges to have. relationships, yes, absolutely, if someone feels like this resonates with them, right? like the others, probably because their parents, you know, exhibited the same attachment style, yes, generally, fearful, avoidant, um, the children were exposed to parenting styles that were somewhat erratic and often the parents such Maybe they were struggling with certain things like their own anxiety and their own depression, so they couldn't consistently meet the child's needs and the parents weren't always anxious, sometimes they were anxious but sometimes they were completely dismissive and sometimes they weren't. there for the child, sometimes they were too there for the child and so I think it creates this kind of disorganized attachment in the young child because they're trying to figure out how to navigate the rest of my life if this is my primary model and they don't really have a kind of coping strategy to follow, so they're almost wavering in the wind, it's like people want them to do what they do and sometimes they don't and it's really interesting because a recent study came out about sex. lives of people who have fearful avoidant attachment and happen to generally have more sexual partners than the other three attachment types, but also who can generally say yes to dating and sex with people who aren't even necessarily that interested and , again, this idea of ​​well, I'll just follow the setting and the moment, but I'm not sure how much further I want to take it beyond that, you know, do I really want to? becoming more intimate with this person over the long term, so in many ways, as you mentioned, this ultimate attachment style is a lot like a hybrid of anxious, preoccupied, dismissive avoidance, yes, absolutely, and the way manifested in terms of behavior is that the person wants that closeness and then they will suddenly move away and they will want that closeness and they will move away and so on at the beginning and they will not move away to get the closeness, no, because you know how some people move away because they want to be pursued, yes of course it's less, it's more about walking away and isolating that person and not looking back, and sometimes they may think that this relationship is getting too serious or maybe this person has done something that really hurt me and in instead of giving me that person a second chance a fearful and avoidant person might do something that actually severs that relationship so that there is no prospect of continuing.

It's really helpful for people to be aware of this because part of my recovery from depression came from my awareness of my depression my depression is a symptom, it's a condition, it's not who Kyle Kittleson is, yes it's something I can handle appropriately to be able to continue to live my life the same way with these attachment styles, these are not diagnosable conditions, but if we can start to see them as something that is here and say: "okay, this is not really me, this is my attachment fearful avoidant that has taken my entire life to condition me, so let's go a little easier on myself and recognize that maybe I need to sit down and not completely distance myself from this person who means well and attack them with that awareness absolutely and I think awareness is key because even people who struggle with fearful-avoidant attachment can have satisfying relationships and can have satisfying friendships, work lives, and overall people.

People with fearful avoidance don't necessarily have problems with work per se, but when they feel like too much is being asked of them, they can actually get a little distressed, they don't like it, they might, you know, withdraw too much. responsibility if they feel like they're being asked to do too much, um, but in relationships and friendships, people with fearful-avoidant attachment, as soon as they're aware of those attachment influences and they're willing to work on them, they can have wonderful relationships like Well, sometimes you get me, I'm dismissive about avoiding attachment almost to the end, but I imagine there are a lot of people who heard all those attachment styles and thought, "Okay, actually I'm not, I'm a little bit of this." . a little bit of adam a little bit of that yes, what do people do with that information?

Well, I think there's definitely a spectrum and I think when you know you're on a spectrum you understand your own strengths and also some areas for improvement and that's I think really what people need to learn to understand their attachment styles is not to pathologize yourself, It's not like, Oh my god, you're insecure, what does this mean? It is not intended to label anyone, although of course there are categories and therefore they are inherent labels. but if you understand yourself on the spectrum, then you can say "okay", objectively, here are the things that I'm good at and these are the things that are maybe most challenging for me and then you really ask yourself: Is it important for me to work on them? these challenges and I think sometimes you have to feel like it's impacting your life in a negative way to want to work on those challenges, that's so true.

I didn't work on my emotional challenges until I recognized that they were problems right before That's your problem, I'm not emotionally available to you, that's how I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then once you realize, you know what. that maybe I should take responsibility for some of this and maybe I could be better with my friends or maybe I could create an environment that would be better and more welcoming for a romantic couple. Then you do those things like you have skin in the game to be able to want to invest well, but I think that's just a way of being. -improves you know, you understand where your difficulties come from and you know that there are ways to challenge them for someone who has a fearful avoidant attachment.

It's actually about establishing consistency because there is a huge level of erraticness and therefore it is a very important exercise for people who are afraid. Avoidance is allowing yourself to stay in a distressing emotion or distressing situation for a period of time. Oh, that's hard, just sit with it, yeah, sit with it and sit with the fact that you might want to run away or you might want to clean up, so I think. An example would be when you're dating someone and you know that person maybe isn't giving you what you need in various ways, either because they're being too clingy or too dismissive and sitting there allowing you to say what you say.

You know what I'm going to give him one more appointment or give him a few more hours to call me back and be okay with it instead of acting on it right there because people who are fearful sometimes get super clingy. at that moment orThey'll be super dismissive and say, you know what, forget it, I'm done with you if you call me back I'm not even going to answer the phone, so it's really about pushing their boundaries in the face of ambiguity. the gray ones the in between so you're not so black and white in your thinking and decision making so when do we become gray in our thinking and willingly be with someone who treats us badly because maybe you're supposed to call?

I came back after two days, right, and I think that's when you really have to check in with yourself and also with your family and friends, the people who love you, and say, Do you think this is acceptable behavior? Maybe I'm oversensitive and just want to cut things? off or it's okay, you know, because we've only been on two dates and maybe it's okay that he hasn't texted me back in five hours, maybe it's okay that he contacts me tomorrow, it's not a bad thing. I know, so I think sometimes you have to trust your friends when you're not sure if your own barometer isn't unduly influenced by your emotions and attachment style.

Yes, I get it because I rely on other people to tell me things I couldn't do if you see areas in your life where you can improve and other people in your circle can help you fill those gaps, why wouldn't you take advantage of that? Yes and even that is a great exercise, even asking a friend for help is a great exercise in avoiding fear because usually they want that closeness but they don't think they can trust people, so it's like they want it, but they think they can trust them. people yes. I'm going to let them down, so they don't even put themselves out there, but of course over time that just reinforces the idea that no one can be there for them because they've never given anyone the chance, so attachment theory is about about how we behave. establish that relationship with our primary caregivers and whether that establishment is healthy or not and how that influences how you function as a child, both mentally and physically, and again permeates your adulthood and your career in love, in friendships and in all the other aspects of your life.

Do we know it is affecting us or is it affecting us unconsciously? I think sometimes you don't realize it and I think unless you've heard the word attachment or you've understood the term attachment or you've talked to someone about it at some point. This way, you won't really know what attachment is, but it will explain many of your decisions in life. Explain why you are attracted to the people you are. Sometimes it even explains the type of work you do and explains the type of friends you like to have, so it really affects many areas of your life, which is why I think your viewers have requested it so much.

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