Couples or group therapy may also be helpful. Other ways a person can overcome insecure attachment include: Learning secure attachment in adulthood: By developing secure relationships in adulthood, a person can change the way they view relationships and intimacy.
Changing your attachment style is possible, but it does take work. It may help to seek the advice of a professional. A therapist can help uncover the cause of your attachment style and provide tools and techniques to form more secure bonds.
The causes of your insecure attachment could include: Having a young or inexperienced mother, lacking in the necessary parenting skills. Your caregiver experienced depression caused by isolation, lack of social support, or hormonal problems, for example, forcing them to withdraw from the caregiving role.
"Disorganized attachment style is said to be the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat or change," Feuerman says. But it's important to know that your attachment style can shift over time — you can develop a secure attachment style by changing the way you act and think.
However, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that people can actually start to change their attachment style over time and feel better about their relationships—and it might not be as hard as we think.
Attachment theory identifies three primary styles: secure, insecure ambivalent, and insecure avoidant. Attachment styles can fluctuate over a lifetime and even from relationship/situation to relationship/situation.
Attachment theory and ADHD are topics that most of us wouldn't think to associate with each other. Yet, attachment disorders and ADHD are strongly linked, meaning that an insecure attachment style has the potential to worsen ADHD symptoms – even in adulthood.
Attachment trauma is associated with developing insecure attachment styles. Children who have experienced attachment trauma may experience emotional disorders, such as emotional dysregulation, and may struggle with relationships as they get older.
Over time, repeated experiences with attachment figures lead children to develop general expectations about the availability and accessibility of those attachment figures, which can lead to chronic anxiety if children come to believe that attachment figures are not consistently available, protective, and comforting.
The good news is that you can change your attachment style with focused self-development efforts. Attachment issues run very deep, so remember to reach out to a trained psychotherapist if you need further support. You deserve to be safe, secure, and loved.
That said, most people will feel complete with their work after 1-2 years of weekly therapy to change your attachment style. Even after therapy, you will likely need to work to understand and adjust your behaviors in relationships throughout your lifetime.
Unhealthy attachments tend to form when an individual experiences inconsistent, neglectful, or abusive care during infancy and early childhood. For example, a child whose parents provide inconsistent emotional support may develop an anxious attachment style.
General signs of an unhealthy attachment include: using a relationship, object, or job to define your sense of worth. relying on others for approval. having a hard time imagining life without the other person or without an object.
Fearful-Avoidant, aka Disorganized Attachment
The fearful-avoidant attachment style is the rarest, and "develops when the child's caregivers — the only source of safety — become a source of fear," according to the Attachment Project, an attachment style education site.
Some studies showed that differences in attachment styles seem to influence both the frequency and the patterns of jealousy expression: individuals with the preoccupied or fearful-avoidant attachment styles more often become jealous and consider rivals as more threatening than those with the secure attachment style [9, ...
Examples of Insecure Attachment Behavior in Children
Actively avoiding parents/caregivers. Frequent bouts of inconsolable crying. Being overly clingy with parents/caregivers. Masking emotions.
Children with attachment issues may have problems expressing or controlling their emotions and forming positive relationships, which might affect their mental health. It's important to make sure children and young people have access to mental health support.
Researchers Philip Shaver and Cindy Hazan, who looked at adult relationships through the lens of childhood attachment styles, estimate that approximately 40 percent of people have an insecure attachment style of one type or another.