Anxious Attachment in Adult Relationships
Myira Khan • 16 June 2020
How our attachment pattern, created in childhood, shows up in our adult relationships.
Anxious Attachment in Adult Relationships
Attachment refers to the particular way in which you relate to other people.
Attachment refers to the particular way in which you relate to other people.
It is the way in which we perceive and respond to intimacy in a relationship.
Your style of attachment and attachment pattern was formed during the first two years of your life.
This pattern was created from the repeated experience of an attachment and relationship style your mother or primary care-giver gave you during those first 2 years of life.
What that experience of relating was and how emotionally available, predictable and consistent your mother / primary caregiver was or was not, results in a relationship and attachment pattern being established, experienced and internalised by the infant. This becomes the attachment pattern and relationship blueprint repeated in subsequent relationships.
Once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you relate in intimate relationships and in how you parent your children.
Understanding your style of attachment is helpful because it offers you insight into how you felt and developed your understanding of relationships in your childhood and how these unconscious relationship and attachment patterns play out now in your adult relationships, particularly in your intimate partner relationships.
The Anxious Attachment pattern is created from a relationship where:
• The caregiver is inconsistently attuned to the infant, either appropriate or nurturing at times but intrusive and insensitive at other times.
• The infant is left confused and insecure, not knowing which to expect.
• The infant feel suspicious and distrustful of the caregiver but at the same time acts clingy and desperate towards them.
Your style of attachment and attachment pattern was formed during the first two years of your life.
This pattern was created from the repeated experience of an attachment and relationship style your mother or primary care-giver gave you during those first 2 years of life.
What that experience of relating was and how emotionally available, predictable and consistent your mother / primary caregiver was or was not, results in a relationship and attachment pattern being established, experienced and internalised by the infant. This becomes the attachment pattern and relationship blueprint repeated in subsequent relationships.
Once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you relate in intimate relationships and in how you parent your children.
Understanding your style of attachment is helpful because it offers you insight into how you felt and developed your understanding of relationships in your childhood and how these unconscious relationship and attachment patterns play out now in your adult relationships, particularly in your intimate partner relationships.
The Anxious Attachment pattern is created from a relationship where:
• The caregiver is inconsistently attuned to the infant, either appropriate or nurturing at times but intrusive and insensitive at other times.
• The infant is left confused and insecure, not knowing which to expect.
• The infant feel suspicious and distrustful of the caregiver but at the same time acts clingy and desperate towards them.
In adulthood an Anxious Attachment pattern is repeated in current adult and partner relationships.
This shows up as an Adult:
This shows up as an Adult:
- Craves intimacy
- Often preoccupied with their relationship
- Worries about partner’s ability to love them back
- Self-critical and insecure
- Seeks approval and reassurance
- Feels they are going to be rejected, makes them worried and not trusting, drives them to act clingy and over dependent
- Leaves them turned against themselves and emotionally desperate in relationships
Relationship and Attachment patterns is also the theme for our upcoming Grow To Glow June Book Group on Thursday 25th June at 6pm. To register for the Book Group, please email myira@myirakhancounselling.co.uk to reserve your place.
#relationships #attachment #attachmentpatterns #attachmenttheory #childhood #emotions #emotionalavailability #relationshipcoaching #marriage #partnership #intimacy #avoiance #anxiousattachment #avoidantattachment
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