What is anxious attachment?

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0:38Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberley Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex. The psychology podcast to help you navigate your way through the tsunami of information that's out there about our mental health.

0:58Kimberley Wilson:in today's episode i'm exploring attachment styles and in particular the one we call anxious attachment now this has been one of our most requested topics so far following on from an early episode on avoidant attachment which you can find on the complex feed on bbc sounds lots of listeners have emailed asking for a follow-up on anxious attachment and so i'm very glad that we're giving that to you today.

1:31Kimberley Wilson:Now attachment theory is something psychologists are very very familiar with but awareness of it is spreading more in the general public. In fact our assistant producer looked for online quizzes that claim to identify your attachment style and she stopped counting at 50. And that's really interesting because my dear listener I only know of one or two trustworthy attachment style assessments. So come on in because this is the place where you can find reliable qualified advice, especially with my guest expert today. Now attachment describes how we form meaningful relationships. Its roots are established in early childhood and depend on how we're cared for by our parents or significant others.

2:21Kimberley Wilson:There's secure attachment, avoidant, disorganised styles and anxious. So let me be your guide from the abandoned shack of misinformation to the sleek mobile home of understanding.

2:42Kimberley Wilson:And my guest is Dr. Fatumata Jatta, a clinical psychologist specialising in attachment styles. Fatimata welcome back to Complex thank you for being here with us we talked about avoidant attachment the last time how are you feeling about being back here today to talk about anxious attachment? I've been really looking forward to it to be honest so yeah just really happy to be back thank you for having me. So all psychologists will have learned about attachment styles but what draws you to this aspect of the work? I think it's really helpful if you're thinking about child development, but we know that it plays out in adult relationships too.

3:23And it plays out in how people experience the world. I actually think that most therapists, that's kind of the main thing that we're doing is building secure attachment for people. The number one factor that determines success in therapy is the therapeutic relationship. And what is the therapeutic relationship? It's a kind of secure attachment.

3:43Kimberley Wilson:Reliability, honesty, openness, compassion. Yeah. Thank you. This is going to be such a good conversation.

3:56Kimberley Wilson:Now, listeners know that I love to start with a definition. So, Fatimata, could you please describe anxious attachment? I think the name says it all. So it's a sense of feeling insecure around the availability of one's attachment figures. And it's underpinned by a belief that they can't be there for you or they won't be there for you because there is something wrong with you. Am I good enough for them to be available to me? And so you often have a lot of things like protest behaviours that make it very difficult for somebody who's anxiously attached to actually feel safe in a relationship. What do you mean by protest behaviours?

4:48So in the strain situation, which is the original study done on children and attachment styles, the mother would leave her child and the child would become distressed, which is fairly expected. but the difference would be that in a securely attached person when the mother returned to the child would be able to kind of reconnect with her fairly quickly and be soothed and calmed very quickly whereas with an anxiously attached child the child would stay distressed even when the

5:21Kimberley Wilson:mother returned yes the pain of the disconnection lingers much more and they can't kind of really fully connect with but she's back now she's present my connection is re-established yes exactly the connection has been so insecure that they can't trust it and so protest behaviors become things like you know crying to make sure that mother doesn't leave or you know being quite angry and upset so in adult relationships that can show up like reassurance seeking you know where were you? Do you like me? Do you care about me? And of course, it can be a bottomless pit, because no matter what the other person is doing, often it's very difficult for them to get that sense of security.

6:09Kimberley Wilson:Yes, I often think about it like pouring sand into a colander. You can pour as much reassurance sand in there, but it's going to keep seeping through. Yeah, absolutely. It's the sense of okay well if you have been given water through your life I give you a glass of water you're going to just drink that water and actually forget that the glass is there because you'll know that you know you can get water whenever you need it but if you've been starved of water for whatever reason we can call that emotional connection or emotional safety then I give you the same glass of water with the same amount of water in it you're going to experience that glass very differently.

6:50You're going to first drink it all and then second be wondering where is the water? Is water coming? Do I have enough water? And it's that thing of understanding that maybe you are getting the reassurance but it's that bottomless pit because of your previous experiences.

7:10Kimberley Wilson:Yes and I think that's a beautiful example. And what percentage of adults do we think are anxiously attached? The research is that there's about 50 % of the population is securely attached and then the other 50 % is divided up by anxiously attached, avoidantly attached and minority is the fearfully avoidant group. So dear listener, if you've ever been described by your family or your friends, maybe a partner as needy or clingy or oversensitive, then what we're going to do in today's episode is to give anxious attachment a bit more of a framework and a bit more of the complex compassion. So let's get into the complexity.

7:59Kimberley Wilson:Now this is where I like to bring in a listener's experience and this time we have someone that we'll call Cleo to protect her identity. Cleo has emailed us and Fatimata I would like you to have a listen and tell me what you think. Cleo says, I love the podcast. Thank you, Cleo. More importantly, she then says, I really enjoyed your recent episode on avoidant attachment and found it very helpful in terms of understanding my own avoidant behavior. Thankfully, I can recognize healing in my own life and I'm starting to identify when I feel alone or feel like I have to rely on myself. Which is great.

8:40Kimberley Wilson:she then says from the episode I recognize that my dad is avoidant and my mum has an anxious attachment which plays out in a very complicated way I was wondering if you could do another episode on anxious attachment so I can better understand my mum's behavior I'm learning to take a step back from stepping in and rescuing her when really she needs to fight her own battles there's a lot in there um and i think what she describes is actually a surprisingly common dynamic yes in relationships that avoidant anxious connection great question cleo thank you for sending that yeah absolutely any couples therapist will say that that's most of the work that we're doing is dealing with the anxious avoidant dance that happens with couples.

9:35Kimberley Wilson:Why are they drawn to each other? Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, securely attached people generally will find each other and are more likely to stick together. And we know that two avoidants were trying to date each other. There's probably not enough of glue to keep them... Just like the magnets repel. Exactly, exactly. Whereas with the anxious and avoidant, they almost like are playing out each other's fears. So the avoidance fear is people are too much for me, they're going to suffocate me. And the anxious person's fears are people aren't there for me. I'm not good enough for them. They can't be trusted.

10:14And so that's why they get stuck in that sort of dance, but are also very attracted to each other because I think there's also a sense of, you know, we complement each other and there's something in this other person that I want and I need.

10:31Kimberley Wilson:Yes, that kind of classic opposites attract kind of thing. Yeah. Thank you very much, Cleo. As you can hear, we've started to delve into this. So let's dig into the complexity.

10:46Kimberley Wilson:so thinking back to Cleo's email tell me about the anxious attachment style relationships for somebody who's anxiously attached one of the helpful things is to really understand that for example if you have a relationship breakdown and suddenly your whole sense of identity seems to have like shattered, which is a very common risk factor for depression, anxiety, you know, working in a crisis service, even something like suicidality. Why? Because romance gives us a sense of I am good enough. Someone wants to be with me. I'm someone's favourite. I've been chosen. Yeah, exactly. I found thinking about Imago theory really helpful, which is if you can help each other overcome your differences in an anxious avoidant relationship that often can be the most satisfying relationship that you'll ever have and it's precisely because all relationships are sort of mimicking your original relationship with mum and dad and so we're all looking to either have more of what we had with our parents or to fix the things that you know we couldn't have with our parents.

11:57And so if you're able to sit in a relationship with someone and actually have them give you that thing that you need, that you're so desperately seeking, it can be incredibly powerful and very rewarding.

12:10Kimberley Wilson:So we've been thinking about romantic relationships, but how does anxious attachment play out in our other relationships, for example, with our friends? So you might be anxiously attached when it comes to romantic relationships, but securely attached when it comes to friendships. And people do have different identities in different places. So you may be, as you say, insecurely attached in a relationship, but maybe you've had a really good group of friends. But I guess also it's possible to be anxiously attached in your friendships as well. Yes, absolutely. It could be the opposite way. I have many clients who have strong romantic figures and maybe have had a partner for many years, but they struggle to make friendships.

12:50And then maybe as a therapist, what I'm trying to do is often sort of like transfer those skills across to these other areas where you're also having difficulty.

12:59Kimberley Wilson:So if we're imagining someone with an anxious attachment and how they move through the world, I often think about it in terms of relationship credits, almost like building up your bank balance. so that if you're securely attached and you've had a friendship for a year, you've got a year's worth of credits built up from interactions and kind things that are said and time spent together. But for the anxiously attached person, it's as if none of that matters. They don't have any of those credits built up. And so every new encounter is coming at zero. Everything feels really fraught because they have to prove themselves at every moment in their relationships because they don't feel like they've got anything to fall back on.

13:44Yes, that sense of like, I don't feel secure anywhere because I don't feel good enough and I don't trust myself anywhere. I don't feel like I have the skill set to be a healthy adult.

13:55Kimberley Wilson:Yeah. And on that, what is it that people with this anxious attachment style carry within them? If you think about attachment, it comes from, you know, our early childhood experiences when the human brain has not been fully formed yet. You know, so the human brain is like this incredible machine, one of the most beautiful things on this planet. But children are born very vulnerable. What that means is that we don't have a lot of the emotional processing that adults have. So if our caregivers aren't there for us in our early years, for whatever reason, it can be so many things. the child doesn't have the emotional process in to say to itself oh it's because my mom has postnatal depression it's because my dad worked away exactly so a child will go it's because of me it's because I'm not good enough and that's that sense of they don't have theory of mind yet so really the world evolves around them and so that's the underlying belief that an anxiously the attached person holds.

15:00And it's very similar to an avoidant person's underlying belief as well, but it's just expressed in a different way. With avoidance, it's much more sort of there's no one there for most of the time. Or if they are there, it feels very suffocating. There might be parents who are very anxious themselves. Or intrusive. And intrusive. And therefore the child feels a sense of this is too much.

15:27Kimberley Wilson:Yes. And so is there a difference between being anxious in terms of how we live our daily lives and anxiously attached or do they overlap? Good question. I would say that if you're anxiously attached, you're much more likely to have anxiety and to be anxious. People who are struggling with anxiety certainly look into your attachment styles and there might be some answers there. But I think I can also envision many situations where there's a securely attached person who perhaps has OCD or has, you know, health anxiety. It's like a Venn diagram. And we talked about how many online quizzes there are for identifying attachment, But how clinically do we identify someone's attachment style?

16:24For me, I tend to really notice the way that the person is interacting with me in the room and the way that they're describing their relationships. So an anxiously attached person will spend a lot of their energy and a lot of their time being preoccupied with their relationship and with whether they are good enough.

16:49Kimberley Wilson:And there's also, in a very clinical sense, the adult attachment interview, which is a semi-structured, usually quite long kind of two-hour interview where someone will sit down and ask you about your history and your memories and your current relationships. But those are really the kind of very best gold standard reliable interventions, as well as sitting down with a professional who we can use our experience to make an assessment of someone's attachment style. Absolutely.

17:22Kimberley Wilson:Now we've had a question from one of the production team and she has asked if we might show up as anxiously attached if we're in a relationship with someone who is toxic or rejecting, but then securely attached if we're in a relationship with someone who is kind and secure. Absolutely. Yes. And I think that's really important to understand that different dynamics in a relationship can bring out different sides of us. So yeah, you might be in a relationship with someone and actually you're the avoidant one. And then suddenly in another one, you are the anxious one. but securely attached people, let's say relationship masters, that one of the tricks is trying to find someone who's securely attached and receiving some of their sort of learning and being healed in that.

18:18Kimberley Wilson:I'm just imagining people going on dates and they'll be like, okay, so what do you do? And, you know, where was the last place you went on holiday? Also, how did your parents resolve arguments? Yeah, these are really important things to understand. You know, we laugh, but in a sense, securely attached people are often doing that. You know, they're doing it in subtle ways. They let you know very early on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What they want. Maybe that's one thing worth saying explicitly is that, you know, that stuff like, what does it mean? What does that text message mean what does it if you're in a connection with a secure person you never have to ask those questions yeah and they'll make it clear like I'm looking for a relationship I'm interested in you right now I'm I'm not looking for a relationship and I just want to hook up and you know an anxiously attached person or an avoidant person might be like oh my god that's like that's too much I shouldn't give too much information away early on because that might make them confused or it might make them turn away from me.

19:26And so you play in these internal games, but actually a securely attached person would just be like, yeah, these are my needs. Can you meet them or not?

19:37Kimberley Wilson:So would you say that someone who is anxiously attached is more vulnerable in relationships? Are they more at risk perhaps of being manipulated as a function of their attachment style. Yes, I would. A securely attached person is less likely to stick around when they receive behavior that sort of makes them feel bad about themselves. Because they'll again go, well, I can get this from somewhere else. There's nothing wrong with me, but this person isn't making me feel good. So I'm going to step away. I don't deserve this. I don't deserve this. Whereas an anxiously attached person is like well maybe it's me maybe I'm too much maybe I'm too little and so they're sticking around looking for confirmation that actually like they are good enough and that makes them more vulnerable to staying in situations that aren't good for them.

20:36Kimberley Wilson:Yes that you spend so much time trying to prove yourself to one person rather than understanding that there are different relationships out there that might be available to you. Yeah, the more confident you feel in yourself, the more entitled you feel, the more you can go out in the world and get, you know, one person's needy is another person's lovebird, right? Like, you know, there are many couples who are securely attached who call each other, you know, every day and they're messaging pictures all the time. And whereas an actually attached person might be asking all of those things from somebody who's avoidantly attached.

21:13The avoidant person's like, no, that's intrusive. And then they're feeling like I'm too much, I'm too needy, when actually maybe you're not.

21:21Kimberley Wilson:Yeah, that's a really good point that sometimes you might be asking for the right things from the wrong person. That's very true. Absolutely.

21:35Kimberley Wilson:I think we have a pretty good sense of not just a definition of an anxious attachment but also how it presents what the person carries around inside them and also what it looks like in terms of their relationships but the good news is our attachment styles can shift throughout our lives and the research demonstrates that this is about a skill, a set of skills that we can learn, that we can improve the way we feel and absolutely that our attachment styles can shift. So Fatimata, what are some of the things that we can do? I mean, one thing might be just understanding why do I see the world like this?

22:15Reading the books and speaking to people and listening to podcasts, that's really helpful. But as many anxiously attached people know, including myself, You can do all the reading in the world and you'll still be hit with, you know, the same old responses. And it can be the most frustrating thing. So there are a couple of tricks. One is you might look to people in your life, especially friends who are securely attached, and you might ask them, like, this is the situation. What would you do? And, you know, take their advice.

22:48Kimberley Wilson:Yes. And then there's learning how to ask for what you want in more assertive ways. so going on a first date and saying I want a relationship and just being super scared of saying that but then just trying it out and you'll realize that oh the world doesn't end and actually maybe people really respond to that in in a way because suddenly they're like oh this person's like really clear about what they want I really like it I can relax yes it's about re-experiencing and kind of building up a new set of evidence right so if you're if your anxious attachment is built on historical evidence of a lack of consistent care then actually it's almost as if you need to build up a bigger evidence base for your brain this isn't simply just theoretical work yeah another thing I would add to that listening to affirmations and I will often get people to do this as homework because I've realized that you can work on it at a rational level all you want but just we are stuck with our wiring and so one of the most powerful things you can do in terms of changing the traffic in your brain and so affirmations like I am good enough I am able to love it's not even about doing anything with them it's just about listening to them in the background on a regular basis I have found works amazingly alongside all the other work.