Reversing Insecure Attachment

The majority of my practice consists of patients struggling with relationships, especially intimate relationships. They unconsciously and compulsively repeat unhealthy and problematic patterns due to early programming established from their first relationship.

When a child is born an important process begins that will influence the child for a lifetime. This process is called Attachment.  Attachment is the development of a deep and enduring connection between an infant and caregiver, usually the biological mother.  The infant communicates his or her needs, such as hunger, discomfort, fatigue, stress or pleasure to the mother through behaviors such as crying, cooing, smiling and movement of arms and legs.  If the mother or caregiver is sensitive to the infant’s needs and responds with consistency and caring, the infant will develop a healthy and secure attachment to the caregiver.  If the caregiver does not respond to the needs of the infant, or responds in unpredictable ways or worse, neglects or hurts the infant, the infant will develop an insecure attachment to the caregiver. Furthermore, the world will be perceived as a dangerous place.

Infants who have responsive mothers or caregivers, come to believe that they are lovable, worthy of caring and those relationships are trustworthy and protective. Infants with insecure attachments come to believe they are unlovable and that close relationships are not where one receives caring, understanding and safety. Instead, isolation is the safest place as no one can hurt them. Over time these beliefs about relationships become internalized in the brain of the child and influence the development of the child’s future relationships for a lifetime.

In later childhood and adolescence insecure children continue to repeat problematic patterns in relationships.

The repetition of these difficult relationships also confirms for insecurely attached children the belief that they will not find comfort, consistent caring and security in intimate relationships. By adolescence and adulthood these attachment patterns are firmly established.

Similar to childhood, adults want to be understood, find support and feel nurtured in their close relationships. However whether an adult will be able to achieve this in a healthy manner will depend on the combination of early attachment experiences plus the failures or successes in relationships in childhood and adolescence.  Adults who had caring parents or caregivers and continued to seek and find positive relationships in adolescence will have secure relationships as an adult. Those adults who had poor early care giving experiences and continued to develop impoverished relationships in childhood will have deprived adult relationships.

Can adults with insecure attachments develop a more positive view of themselves and change the long-term interactive patterns they demonstrate in relationships?  Since these patterns have existed since childhood and are deeply embedded in their unconscious beliefs and neurological pathways change is not easy, but certainly possible.  Luckily, the brain possesses plasticity and the insecure attachment can be reversed.

Change can come about in a number of ways.

Some adults, despite their insecure attachments, may engage with a partner who is able to accept and understand their insecurities, not respond in negative ways and over time repair the damage from the early childhood relationships. In time the positive experience in the adult relationship overrides the early belief that intimate relationships are not trustworthy and safe.

Although such a positive experience can occur, most adults with insecure attachments will need to enter therapy to change their beliefs about and patterns in relationships.  They will need to develop a relationship with a therapist who has knowledge about Attachment Theory, who will understand their attachment patterns in relationships and allow this pattern to develop in the therapeutic relationship. Over time the therapist will need to help the adult client/patient to develop insight into himself/herself, work through his or her losses and hurts from childhood and risk change in both the therapeutic relationship and natural intimate relationships.

The insecure person may have to mourn for what they did not receive from their parents as a young child. Longing for the early nurturing and closeness is a normal feeling but must be understood and resolved in order to develop a secure and realistic adult relationship. This can be a painful stage in the therapy and it is important that the therapist allow for the sadness to be supported until the mourning process is complete.  Without the resolution of this longing, individual adults will seek what they missed as a child in an adult relationship, when this is no longer appropriate.

Adult relationships differ from infant/child relationships in that they are mutually interactive. In parent/infant relationships the parent is the giver, not expecting the child to meet their adult needs.  Each individual in an adult relationship must be both a giver and receiver. At times in an adult relationship one partner may be more stressed and in greater need of support, requiring the other partner to be more nurturing and giving. At other times of stress, the other partner may be more the recipient of the support and nurturing. It is this mutual give and take with understanding and the capacity to receive less for a period of time, which characterizes healthy adult attachment relationships.

Redeveloping a secure adult attachment is indeed possible and essential if one is going to be a healthy parent, develop satisfying intimate loving relationships and have self-awareness and a feeling of self-worth. There is good evidence that if a mother has an insecure adult attachment she will have an insecurely attached child. Individuals who have mutually satisfying marriages and partnerships have secure attachments, whether from good childhood experiences or resolving poor early childhood experiences.  Individuals with secure attachments have self-awareness, are able to accept differences in others and have a positive view of themselves and of relationships. Redeveloping a secure adult attachment is possible through Attachment Focused Therapy and worth the effort and pain required to achieve this.  It’s never too late!