What Is Insecure/Secure Attachment?
A guide to understanding attachments styles so that you can start enjoying a healthy relationship
We all desire to feel safe, loved, accepted, and secure in our life, and relationships. So why is it that so many of us struggle with this?
I had found myself alone in the dark with the bathtub water catching my tears as all my worst fears had become my reality. Repetitive thoughts looped like a broken record in my mind:
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“What if I’m alone forever?”
“Maybe I am unloveable…”
The thing is, I was in a loving and safe relationship that had just ended. I went straight from a green flag and into the arms of a red flag. A really big fucking red flag. At this time I had no idea about insecure attachment styles, and I certainly hadn’t tended to my unresolved trauma because that felt like a mountain I was incapable of climbing.
It was during this time that I found myself in the darkest parts of my mind, and the only way to climb out of it was to see the truth of what I had been avoiding— tending to the parts of me that were sexually abused by someone who was supposed to protect me. Tending to the parts of me that were abandoned by someone who I was supposed to be able to trust.
Having inconsistent caregivers, trauma, abuse, or neglect in childhood can lead us to craving close relationships but feeling unable to trust others. A fear of abandonment and rejection can develop, turning into a need of constant reassurance from others.
So you can imagine my extreme discomfort as I lay there alone in my bathtub. No one to reassure me that everything would be ok. No one to turn to to comfort my intrusive thoughts. Just me, alone, with no one but myself to find comfort and solace in.
When we experience insecure attachment it can be hard to regulate your emotions and trust yourself so that you can feel comfortable with intimacy, being alone, or even setting boundaries in relationships. This is why I ran away from someone who was safe, and into the arms of someone who only replicated the abandonment and rejection I experienced as a child with my parents.
With the green flag, I was experiencing deeper levels of intimacy and a safe, consistent love that was new to me. With the red flag it was familiar, and even if it hurts us, we will usually gravitate towards what we know.
After years of doing this work and healing my unresolved trauma, I truly believe that it comes down to exploring shadow work and inner child healing. Shadow work brings up unconscious patterns that were developed throughout childhood and life. Inner child healing helps you reclaim these parts of you so that they don’t keep you overly dependent on someone or something outside of you.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been piling up self-help books and wondering if you’ll ever feel peaceful or safe in a relationship. You might be feeling defeated, and helpless.
Trust me, I get it. Honestly, depending on the season in my life I still find myself here navigating the waters of my insecure attachment. It’s been through learning about my attachment style and it’s patterns that I’ve been able to start making huge shifts. If you don’t know the patterns, how are you supposed to change them? That’s why I am going to share about insecure attachment styles, and more importantly, how to develop earned secure attachment so that you can feel the love and joy that you deserve.
What Is Insecure Attachment?
Insecure attachment comes from ruptures that leave a child feeling a lack of safety and trust between them and their primary caregiver. Children who develop insecure attachment may relate to others in anxious (preoccupied), avoidant (dismissive), or fearful (disorganized) ways. Adults with an insecure attachment style might experience neediness in their relationships, when vulnerable they may act in manipulative ways, or they might completely repel intimacy and closeness to others.
And maybe you’re like me, and can relate to all three.
You can tell that someone might have insecure attachment if they struggle when their partner asks for space, if there is an avoidance of conversations around conflict, or they avoid engaging in emotional or physical intimacy.
Learning about our attachment style is a helpful tool for anyone who experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, or inconsistency in their childhood.
Understanding insecure attachment can help us understand our patterns so that we can begin making more empowered choices that lead to healthier relationships. When we begin to explore our attachment style we can meet the part of us that relates to others from a place of fear with more curiosity so that we can start welcoming in more trust and connection with others.
With 40% of people experiencing some form of insecure attachment, it’s worth bringing curiosity to if this is affecting your relationships.
This means that there is a good chance you could find yourself in a relationship with someone who has a secure attachment, which could help you as you navigate and heal your insecure attachment. That is why it is important to understand and know what your tendencies and patterns are, because you will want to communicate what you are working on with your partner (I can already see some of your cringing at the thought!)
Let’s get into some of the markers for each of the insecure attachment styles.
Anxious Attachment (Preoccupied)
People who experience anxious (preoccupied) attachment are driven by their fear of abandonment and will stay in relationships despite being treated poorly. They become highly dependent on their partners, needing constant intimacy and reassurance. Due to this, they tend to be serial monogamists, who become worried or have an increase of jealousy when there is distance, fearing infidelity and rejection. (hi, it me 🙋🏾♀️)
This explains why every time there was distance in my relationships I would immediately go into fears of cheating looping in my head, even if my partner had given me no reason to believe that to be true. It was like a megaphone in my mind telling me “ask him if he cheated!” and I obeyed like a loyal dog to this story in my mind.
It’s also the reason I bought a relationship book in my early 20s solely because there was a chapter titled: “How to Keep Your Man from Cheating” — spoiler alert: all the chapter said is, “you can’t!” and I threw it at the wall with frustration. Now, after years of healing and finally seeing my need to control things outside of me, I get what they were saying.
Although it may feel like it’s normal to text your partner repeatedly until they respond, or constantly asking your partner if they love you and how much, it’s actually showing a fear of abandonment.
Not tending to this part of you impacts the amount of joy you experience in your relationships.
Identifying your anxious attachment is a huge step towards unlearning the behaviors and patterns that are likely exhausting you and pushing your partner farther away- leading to the very thing you fear: abandonment.
Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive)
People who have avoidant (dismissive) attachment rely on themselves more than others, correlating relationships with a loss of independence. They typically avoid emotional closeness, fearing vulnerability and seeing it as a weakness. They will suppress emotions, avoid conflicts, and shy away from conversations around commitment.
This reminds me of when Justin and I got together, which I share in this weeks podcast episode. He came in, and I pulled away.
When the avoidant person can identify their patterns of being closed off and distancing themselves as the relationship gets more serious, they can address the root of their attachment style sooner. Anxious attachment stems from not receiving the emotional support needed during childhood, leading them to stop seeking or expecting it from others altogether.
The consequences of not tending to this can lead to struggling to form emotionally intimate connections with others, having a hard time communicating in relationships, and withdrawing or self-isolating- which can impact their emotional and mental well-being.
Those who are avoidant have learned to depend on themselves, fearing that others won’t be able to meet their emotional needs, but by keeping people at a distance they don’t allow opportunities for emotional closeness and vulnerability.
Fearful Avoidant (Disorganized)
People who experience a fearful avoidant (disorganized) attachment style have a negative view of themselves and others, leading to a distorted view of relationships. Their lack of trust drives their hypervigilance and they experience high levels of anxiety. Fearful avoidants can self-sabotage and tend to be hot and cold, both desiring closeness and intimacy, but then pulling away when it comes in.
This attachment style constantly struggles between the need for emotional connection and the apprehension that their connections may lead to pain or abandonment. Acknowledging this internal conflict is the first step toward addressing the roots of their attachment style, which typically can be traced back to inconsistent caregiving experiences during childhood.
People with a fearful-avoidant attachment may have encountered caregivers who were both a source of comfort and a source of distress.
In my experience, my dad taught me how to play sports, but was also my abuser. My mom was someone who I loved and admired, but also the one who told me it was my fault.
Tending to fearful avoidant attachment involves navigating the delicate balance between fear and intimacy. Since those who experience fearful avoidant attachment have a strong desire for closeness but, simultaneously, feel anxiety about the potential risks associated with vulnerability, this can manifest in relationships as a push-pull dynamic. The push-pull dynamic or being hot/cold is a constant back and forth between seeking connection and withdrawing to protect oneself.
Tips for Building Earned Secure Attachment
I share parts of my story because I want others to see the beauty and joy that can come from adversity. This is resilience, babes. This is remembering that no matter how broken a past might be, we have the power and ability to change our future. We all deserve happy, safe, loving, and reciprocal relationships, and that begins with our relationship to ourselves.
1. First, we need self-awareness
That means that the more you redirect your attention and focus inward, the less pressure and stress you will be putting on your relationship and partner to be the provider of your safety. Learning how to cultivate that safety through giving yourself reassurance is how to begin building earned secure attachment, which leads to healthier ways of relating and more joy in your relationships.
To achieve earned secure attachment, you have to continually reflect, especially when you are triggered. When my partner asks for space and I want to move in closer or I want to make him feel bad for asking for it, I use those as my markers for going inward and journaling.
When I am triggered I will write: “What am I afraid will happen?” and then write from a stream on consciousness. This usually helps me see what is really going on for me, and it’s usually my fears of abandonment and rejection coming up.
Instead of projecting my fears onto my partner, I tend to them myself by asking this part of me that is triggered: “What do you want? What do you need? How can I meet that need for you, right now?”
When you do this, you develop a deeper awareness around your patterns and thoughts, which help you in your relationship because you start meeting core needs rather than pushing your partner away with your suffocating them or blaming/shaming them in the process. When I started tending to this part of myself instead of ignoring my partners request for space, our whole relationship changed. It shifted because I was coming into a deeper, more loving relationship with myself and that helped me stop needing him to be the provider of my good feelings about myself or our relationships.
Pro tip: Doing this will actually give space in your relationship for your partner to come towards YOU.
2. Next, we’re calling vulnerability to the stage
The best way to tend to insecure attachment styles is to start exploring ways to express emotions with a safe person. It’s important to stay curious about the thoughts, emotions, and fears that come up around intimacy.
Confronting our fears around vulnerability can lead you to feeling more comfortable sharing your feelings and seeking support from others.
By doing this you are better equipped to handle challenges and setbacks without resorting to avoidance or isolation.
When you start exploring vulnerability and intimacy with yourself and others, you begin to learn more about empathy, connection, and communicating which are key components to a healthy relationship where both partners feel supported, respected, and cared for.
3. Finally, it’s time to take radical personal responsibility
By bringing awareness to our insecure attachment styles and beginning to see our part in the relational dynamics we are apart of, we can begin the journey of taking radical personal responsibility.
This means we are moving away from blaming others for our experiences or relationships, and we are getting curious about the role we play. Through our self-awareness practices and vulnerability we will start experiencing greater emotional resilience, improved communication skills, and the capacity for deeper, more satisfying connections with others.
I do this in my life by constantly coming back to this question:
How do I desire to feel?
If what I am experiencing in my relationship isn’t aligned to how I desire to feel I ask myself:
What needs to change in order for me to feel that way?
Maybe it’s a thought I need to re-write, or maybe it’s something in my environment that needs to change. Set aside time for regular check-ins with yourself.
If you want to step into earned secure attachment, these check ins and reflections with yourself are so important because the answers you receive are going to give you the blueprint and actions steps for cultivating the life and relationship that you desire, rather than continuing to experience more of the one that feels like suffering.
And if the idea of these reflections makes you feel overwhelmed, remember that achieving earned secure attachment is often a result of intentional self-work, self-reflection, and, in many cases, support.
If you’re looking for support, you can join our Codependency Alchemy membership, a community of women that gather virtually every month to connect and learn about healing from insecure attachment styles, codependency, and tending to unresolved trauma.
You can join the Codependency Alchemy membership for 25% off when you sign up before 1/31.
Need a place to start?
I hope this guide on insecure and earned secure attachment has been helpful. If you take anything away from this guide, remember that you are deserving of unconditionally loving and peaceful relationships— and having that is dependent on you.
I share about the practices and tools I use everyday, and have taught hundreds of women over the past several years, so that you can learn how to trust yourself and step into your power.
Sometimes we don’t know the questions to ask, as we bring more self-awareness to our patterns, and that’s why I’ve laid it all out in my course.
What you'll get:
Five in-depth modules filled with teachings on common codependency patterns
Shadow work reflections to get to the root of your tendencies
Inner child work to reclaim all parts of you
Somatic work to bring your nervous system into deeper regulation and resilience
Workbooks to support you in exploring these patterns deeply, so that your newfound awareness and reflections can begin to make lasting change
Guided Exercises and prompts- more than you could ever need to solidify and integrate all that you learned
This course will give you a starting point as you leave behind arguing in circles and start making strides towards deeper intimacy with yourself and others.
To help you get started, you can get the course today for $22 when you use the promo code: SUBSTACK
ILYSM 🤟🏾
Alyssa