How Does Avoidant Attachment Influence Adult Life?
Much of how we are and how we think and act can be explained by the way we have become accustomed to relating to others. And to understand the latter, it is usually important to look at the way in which we experience social relationships in our childhood.
In this sense, Attachment theory provides interesting explanations to understand how the first years of development guide our personality needs and vulnerabilities towards certain behavioral patterns and ways of managing our emotions.
Here We are going to focus on the avoidant attachment established by some people in their childhood, and on its influence many years later when they enter adulthood.
Attachment theory is a series of explanatory and theoretical proposals that attempt to explain the emotional ties based on social interaction that serve as support and guide for people’s psychological development.
These bonds are especially important during childhood because it is in this first stage when children need the support of their parents or guardians not only to have access to the resources they need, but also to learn and explore the environment, and to put into practice their ability to establish connections with other people.
However, attachment is not only present in the first years of life but is also projected towards adolescence and adulthood, although based on what happened in childhood.
Thus, according to psychologist John Bowlby, attachment is constituted at its most basic level by behavioral patterns that generate a predisposition to maintain proximity with another individual, who is recognized as an entity different from oneself. It involves recognizing the existence of the other in a nearby space and giving signs of knowing that they are there, validating their presence.
But beyond these objective events, Attachment also has a mental dimension linked to emotions and subjectivity: through attachment, each person involved in that relationship integrates the other into their idea of everyday life and their own identity, and associates that concept of “the other” with a series of emotions. That is to say, attachment not only involves tolerating the presence of the other person, but in a certain way, an attachment figure is made a reference and support to structure day-to-day routines and what one wants in his life. Therefore, attachment is closely associated with love and affection.
The principles of attachment
To understand the way in which attachment is formed as a bond between people, the main pillars of attachment have been theorized, which are the following:
1. Attachment is an intrinsic need of the human being
The human being is a social animal, and therefore, we are all born with the need to establish attachment bonds from the first days of life. It is known that children who are subjected to social isolation, despite having their most immediate biological and physiological needs met (food, water, adequate temperature, etc.), develop serious health problems in a short time.
2. The well-being provided by attachment bonds is based on the regulation of emotions
Attachment creates a relational context between individuals that makes adequate regulation of emotions possible, and in this way, helps to feel good. This happens thanks to the ability we have to empathize with other individuals and get an idea of how they feel
By establishing an appropriate attachment model, it is possible to adapt to the psychological state of the child and provide them with what they need in real time.
3. Attachment allows you to gain autonomy and the ability to adapt to the environment
Although the word “attachment” often suggests togetherness (and in some sense, rightly so), in the context in which it occurs, it helps people gain autonomy
If the type of attachment is right, a good balance is achieved between protection and advice, on the one hand, and the freedom to explore the environment and learn for oneself, on the other.
What is avoidant attachment and how does it affect adulthood?
As we have seen, attachment is something that serves as a “way” or scaffolding on which one’s own psychological development unfolds, both in terms of how we think and in terms of how we feel and relate to others. The way we do it depends on the type of attachment we have established in our early years
On the one hand, secure attachment is that which is established in people who in their childhood have managed to have a balance between parental protection and freedom to learn and make certain decisions adapted to their stage of growth.
Secondly, there is ambivalent anxious attachment, which occurs when the child feels bad when parents or guardians are not available, but still does not feel good when they are close, given that these attachment figures do not offer them everything. what you need.
Thirdly, we have avoidant attachment, characterized by uncertainty and not being able to predict what the behavior of the attachment figure will be, which generates anxiety and anguish in boys and girls. That’s why, Children who establish this type of attachment tend to look much less for their fathers, mothers or guardians and their emotional state changes relatively little when the latter are available.
This form of attachment has implications for adulthood. If they never have psychological support, these people tend to establish relationships characterized by the search for a very high level of independence even dysfunctional in many aspects: emotionally significant relationships are avoided to avoid creating emotional ties that could generate dependency, and even the possibility of suffering rejection is avoided.
This predisposes these adults to suffer from social isolation and loneliness, noticing that they are missing something in their lives but at the same time refusing to look for that element in personal relationships.
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