And why it is important to know your attachment style
As we get older, we start noticing our reactions to the important people around us, and we begin to see patterns. Those patterns are clues to your style. There is no blame and no fault in any of them. It doesn’t make you bad. It means there’s a wound that triggered the style.
Anxious attachment. It can feel like desperation or clinginess, a sense of “I might die if this person backs away from me.” There’s a need to text and get confirmation on the other end that you matter and that they’re there. If the person is talking to someone else, jealousy or anger can come up, or the need to talk everything through a million times. It’s hard to be comfortable with the person being away from you.
Avoidant attachment. This is the style that can feel smothered easily. They may need “space” frequently. They go to the cave, or they want to go out with friends separately, not out of fun but because too much time with one person feels suffocating and too intense.
Disorganized attachment. This one jostles between the two: feeling like you’ll die without contact, and then feeling smothered by too much of it.
Questions to ask yourself: When someone you care about pulls away, do you feel desperate to reconnect? When someone gets close, do you feel the need to escape? Do you feel both, depending on the day? Are you triggered by feeling abandoned, rejected, or disconnected?
Figuring out your attachment style helps to create understanding about your reactions. It helps to learn the attachment style of the people close to you, especially a partner. Understanding attachment styles can help explain behaviors and begin the journey of moving through the healing process and becoming more comfortable in your own relationships.
Next, we’ll look at why we keep choosing the people we do, and how any of this actually heals.
