Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Leslie Becker-Phelps
that although you have a particular, characteristic style, it will likely vary a bit with different relationships.
Another way you can assess your style of attachment is to graph your ratings on the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance. Get a clean sheet of paper. (Graph paper is best, if you have it.) Draw a horizontal line and label it
Anxiety
. Place evenly spaced tic marks along it, numbering them from 0 to 10 (from left to right). Then, at the 5, draw a vertical line and label it
Avoidance
. Again, place evenly spaced tic marks along it and number them from 0 to 10 (from bottom to top, placing the 5 where this line crosses the horizontal line). Now you have a graph that looks like figure 1. Copy the style descriptions from figure 1 into each of the quadrants on your graph. To determine your rating for attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance, look back to the exercise “How Much Anxiety and Avoidance Do You Feel in Your Relationships?” Using your two ratings, plot where you fall in the quadrants and place a dot there. Not only will you see the style quadrant into which you fall, but you will also see how close you are to each of the other quadrants. The less extreme you are on each of the dimensions, the less your traits will match the prototypical style of the quadrant that you are in.
A third way of determining your attachment style in intimate relationships is to use an online survey (including the empirically validated “Experiences in Close Relationships—Revised” questionnaire) developed by researcher Chris Fraley and colleagues (Fraley, Vicary, Brumbaugh, and Roisman, 2011). You can find a link to this questionnaire on my website: http://www.drbecker-phelps.com/insecure.html . Along with revealing your attachment style, it also shows where you fall on a graph of attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance.
Once you are clear about your own attachment style, you might want to look at the attachment style of your partner or past partners. You can rate them the same way you rated yourself, using your observations about them and their behaviors. You can also have current partners rate themselves if they are open to it; the advantage of this is that it can open some illuminating and intimacy-building conversations. In both cases, understanding their style of attachment will help you to better understand them and the relationship the two of you have or had.
Finally, knowing your attachment style is an effective first step to changing it. So you’ve already accomplished a lot just by getting to this point. Understanding how your style developed is also important. And this is what I’ll discuss next.
Chapter 2
Understanding Why You Relate the Way You Do
My goal in this chapter is to clarify the development of attachment styles well enough that you can look at yourself (and your partner) and honestly say, “Well, of course you’re struggling with that. The ways you are thinking and feeling make perfect sense.” As with any problem, the first step toward a solution is to approach it with a positive attitude and true understanding.
To start, it’s essential that you understand the attachment system’s three basic functions:
Proximity:
People naturally strive to keep their attachment figure (usually a parent or romantic partner) close.
Safe haven:
When people feel threatened, they look to an attachment figure for protection, comfort, and support.
Secure base:
When people feel safe and supported around an attachment figure, they feel freer to pursue goals apart from that relationship.
Your experience in adult relationships is very much related to how well each of these functions was met by caregivers during your childhood, and how well they’ve been met by attachment figures in subsequent relationships. No, you can’t blame it all on your parents. But a healthy, informed look back can go a long way toward putting you on the road to healthier relationships, by clarifying
Another way you can assess your style of attachment is to graph your ratings on the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance. Get a clean sheet of paper. (Graph paper is best, if you have it.) Draw a horizontal line and label it
Anxiety
. Place evenly spaced tic marks along it, numbering them from 0 to 10 (from left to right). Then, at the 5, draw a vertical line and label it
Avoidance
. Again, place evenly spaced tic marks along it and number them from 0 to 10 (from bottom to top, placing the 5 where this line crosses the horizontal line). Now you have a graph that looks like figure 1. Copy the style descriptions from figure 1 into each of the quadrants on your graph. To determine your rating for attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance, look back to the exercise “How Much Anxiety and Avoidance Do You Feel in Your Relationships?” Using your two ratings, plot where you fall in the quadrants and place a dot there. Not only will you see the style quadrant into which you fall, but you will also see how close you are to each of the other quadrants. The less extreme you are on each of the dimensions, the less your traits will match the prototypical style of the quadrant that you are in.
A third way of determining your attachment style in intimate relationships is to use an online survey (including the empirically validated “Experiences in Close Relationships—Revised” questionnaire) developed by researcher Chris Fraley and colleagues (Fraley, Vicary, Brumbaugh, and Roisman, 2011). You can find a link to this questionnaire on my website: http://www.drbecker-phelps.com/insecure.html . Along with revealing your attachment style, it also shows where you fall on a graph of attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance.
Once you are clear about your own attachment style, you might want to look at the attachment style of your partner or past partners. You can rate them the same way you rated yourself, using your observations about them and their behaviors. You can also have current partners rate themselves if they are open to it; the advantage of this is that it can open some illuminating and intimacy-building conversations. In both cases, understanding their style of attachment will help you to better understand them and the relationship the two of you have or had.
Finally, knowing your attachment style is an effective first step to changing it. So you’ve already accomplished a lot just by getting to this point. Understanding how your style developed is also important. And this is what I’ll discuss next.
Chapter 2
Understanding Why You Relate the Way You Do
My goal in this chapter is to clarify the development of attachment styles well enough that you can look at yourself (and your partner) and honestly say, “Well, of course you’re struggling with that. The ways you are thinking and feeling make perfect sense.” As with any problem, the first step toward a solution is to approach it with a positive attitude and true understanding.
To start, it’s essential that you understand the attachment system’s three basic functions:
Proximity:
People naturally strive to keep their attachment figure (usually a parent or romantic partner) close.
Safe haven:
When people feel threatened, they look to an attachment figure for protection, comfort, and support.
Secure base:
When people feel safe and supported around an attachment figure, they feel freer to pursue goals apart from that relationship.
Your experience in adult relationships is very much related to how well each of these functions was met by caregivers during your childhood, and how well they’ve been met by attachment figures in subsequent relationships. No, you can’t blame it all on your parents. But a healthy, informed look back can go a long way toward putting you on the road to healthier relationships, by clarifying
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