What Is Attachment? 7 Signs That You Can’t Detach Yourself From Others
Does attachment exist when we get older? How does it manifest? In this article you can find information about the types of attachment that exist and how they develop in adult life.
When someone is too attached to others, they do not value themselves. Therefore, the importance that he or she really has in her life is not given. Work in the attachment It is fighting to give ourselves the care and appreciation that we all need in our lives. Attachment, therefore, is the ability to love oneself without the need for others to do so. That is why it is very important for your emotional well-being.
Attachment is the emotional bond established between a baby or child and an adult caregiver. The child constantly tries to stay close to his/her caregiver, usually a father or mother, and has a hard time when separated from his/her caregiver. But the attachments They not only wreak havoc in childhood, but also affect us in our adult lives. Although attachment is something that develops in childhood, having experienced one type of attachment or another determines possible problems in adult life.
Types of attachment
Attachment was studied on a psychological level through a very important experiment. It involved leaving a mother with her son in a room playing with toys. After a while the mother left and we observed what happened to the child when she left and when she returned. From this discovery it can be said that there are different types of attachment:
When the attachment It is safe, the child remains calm as long as his caregiver is there, regardless of whether there is a stranger next to him. However, if the mother leaves, the child becomes upset and reacts by missing the mother. When she returns, the child calms down immediately. In the relationship the child feels protected and supported. When this type of attachment develops, the child, upon becoming an adult, normally becomes a self-confident person, is collaborative and shows both positive and negative emotions. The social relationships that she establishes are also secure and the partner seeks and maintains each other out of pleasure and not out of necessity. She feels that she is valuable and can be loved, while at the same time trusting others. He is usually flexible and has low levels of anxiety.
Now, there are three types of attachment in which problems can appear and this is usually related to difficulties in adulthood or the appearance of personality disorders.
Insecure-avoidant attachment
In these types of attachment Parents are often unavailable and unaffected. When the mother/father leaves, the child is not affected (although he feels threatened) and when the caregiver returns, the child ignores him/her. Apparently it may seem that this attachment is good, since the child does not suffer excessively and seems to be independent.
Characteristics of people with insecure-avoidant attachment
However, this generates negative consequences since in adult life they tend to be people who have little contact with their emotions or directly reject or hide them (for example: it is not me who is worried, it is your mother), they are usually lonely people who They do not provide their support and learn that suffering or complaints should not be shown. They consider themselves unlovable people, they do not consider themselves valuable and they focus on taking care of themselves without worrying about others; Therefore, they tend to distrust others, are incoherent and rigid.
People who have suffered avoidant attachment They tend to develop a false image of strength and coldness. When they feel ignored or believe that the person does not contribute enough, they feel alone in the world but far from showing it, they end up generating anxious symptoms or somatizations. These are the most frequent disorders in the adult who has experienced this attachment, along with phobic and avoidant disorders.
Anxious/ambivalent attachment
The child who develops one of these types of attachment He seems insecure even if the mother/father is present. When the caregiver leaves, he may appear angry or passive and does not calm down with the reunion. Parents tend to be figures who are sometimes there and sometimes not, who show positive affection but other times blame.
Characteristics of people with anxious/ambivalent attachment
Adults who have received these types of attachment They tend to be fearful, passive or aggressive people. They are anxious people who consider themselves unworthy and undesirable, do not feel responsible, tend to blame others for their problems and develop a very strong feeling of intimacy with people. Furthermore, they tend to be people who have little emotional support, the emotion is triggered and then contained, they are dependent and victimizing people.
who has suffered ambivalent attachment, once an adult he needs comfort from the other. If what you receive from the other person is not enough, the emotional reaction is excessive (aggression or uncontrolled sadness). He ends up generating conflicts due to these reactions and feels worse than at the beginning, which is why he tends to be a person who asks for forgiveness many times but continues reacting in the same way; and they relate based on interests, they constantly change friends. The most common disorders are emotional dependence and mood disorders.
disorganized attachment
The child appears disoriented and ambivalent towards the mother. When the caregiver leaves, he does not cry or feel threatened for a long time but stops doing what he was doing. When meeting the mother who has left, the child usually shows himself giving attention or ignoring her. His behavior is ambivalent. Parents tend to be people who are inconsistent and changeable, often unavailable. The child is not overly dependent on the caregiver. In adulthood this is usually a person with low self-esteem, who considers himself invalid, responsible and does not trust others.
Characteristics of people with anxious/ambivalent attachment
The people who develop these types of attachment They need others to meet their needs. If they see that the other cannot do it, they try to contain their emotions but when they come out they do so in an exaggerated and uncontrolled way. They usually try to take control of the situation to manage that feeling and they change roles, they act as caregivers and appear excessively responsible, caring for and at the same time hating the other person. In adulthood they can develop borderline personality disorder or histrionic disorder. They tend to generate emotional dependence, since the same people who care for them are the ones who make them suffer and cling to them as a lifeline.
In conclusion, it is important to clarify that not all people who have not had a secure attachment will develop psychological disorders. However, it is true that many disorders are related to some attachment problem in the childhood. I recommend the book To love or depend? by Walter Risowhich makes a simple analysis of attachment in adults.
How to free yourself from emotional attachment?
Walter Riso, writer and psychologist, have approached to attachment and how this manifests itself in adulthood. According to research in this regard, we can work on emotional attachment through the following.
Practice solitude: People with emotional attachment tend to view loneliness with a bad light. In this way a way to leave behind attachment and its meaning It is precisely trying to enjoy solitude and your own company. Through this, you will be able to leave behind the emotional dependence that may exist in a couple.
Differentiate being from having: One of the keys to leaving the attachments that exist, is precisely trying to value ourselves for what we really are and not for what we have. That is, reward our values and essence more, rather than our work, knowledge or everything we have in the form of matter.
Differentiate the ideal ego and the real ego: There is a difference between what we want to be and what we are. In this way, a synonym of attachment It is precisely giving too much importance to the ideal ego against what we currently are. In many cases, insecurities are born from the distance that exists between the real ego and the ideal ego.
Don’t confuse love and obsession: As we have said, emotional dependence is one of the signs of the attachments in people. In order to leave it behind, it is important to know how to leave our partner aside and have a full life of our own without his or her presence. So much so that the more independence between the two, the more love and union is created in the bond.
Be yourself: Sometimes people who they have attachment They can hide behind a veil so as not to show their authentic inner being. Thus no person achieves a healthy bond with others. For this reason, you must work on your insecurities and fears to be able to show yourself as you really are.
Fall in love with yourself first and foremost: Low self-esteem is also synonym of attachment To be able to detach yourself from others, working on it is one of the basic requirements. For this reason, if you want emotional detachment in your life, you must start by loving yourself before others.
Leave idealism behind: In Walter Riso’s books we are taught that the attachment It is an obsessive attachment to someone or something. In this way, when we suffer from emotional attachment we tend to believe that that person will make us completely happy or even that he or she brings meaning to our lives. This not only makes your relationship unhealthy, but it also makes you not fight for your own goals or meaning in life. Detaching therefore also means ending romantic idealism.
Work to leave behind emotional attachment It requires a lot of effort. For this reason, you can always turn to a professional psychologist to give you the concrete tools so that you can become a happy person in yourself. The key to happiness always lies within ourselves.
