It's Attachment: A New Way of Understanding Yourself and Your Relationships

Author

PROLOGUE

Iam a Social Worker/Psychotherapist. I became a Social Worker in my early twenties. At that time, I wasn’t interested in being a therapist. I wanted to be a Community Organizer and help people from the inner city become a stronger force in the decisions that landlords and politicians were making in their community. I did this for a number of years. Doing such work was important and I felt that I was successful in helping disadvantaged people find a voice in their community. It was only in my later twenties when I began to work in a psychiatric hospital that I realized that I had difficulty dealing with the strong emotions of my clients. It was this realization that led me to enter therapy for the first time. I joined a therapy group and realized after a few weeks that I became somewhat of a co-therapist. Other members of the group were able to share their pain and sadness, cry, get angry, and join in all the exercises that promoted emotions. I thought all these exercises were phony and useless and refused to participate. In one of these games the other people in the group decided I would be the perfect person to have on a desert island because I was so rational and calm; not because I was an emotional support and sexually attractive.

I wish I would have realized then that maybe I was too rational, had great difficulty being in touch with my feelings and expressing them, had great fears of getting close to men, in particular. I was much more comfortable being on my own and focusing on my career, my hobbies, my fitness and my friends. It would take me many more years to recognize how significant these issues were for me. I did try a number of different therapies in my journey of self-awareness: group therapy, psychoanalysis, gestalt therapy and traditional psychotherapy. Most were helpful to some extent but none of them had a profound effect on my emotional expressiveness or difficulty with intimacy. I continued my patterns in relationships, which was to stay distant.

I developed my interest in Attachment Theory when I became the clinical director of a Children’s Mental Health Centre. The theory helped me understand that the relationship between the mothers and children that led to these very young children being so challenging. I read about Attachment Theory, went to workshops on Attachment and then began working with Adopted Children and their Families from an Attachment Focused Model. I spent years developing my knowledge and skills in this model, working with Dan Hughes, a well-known specialist in Attachment, and other professionals. But the therapy was focused on the children and parents. I still didn’t apply this to myself.

I became more interested in Adult Attachment and the different types of Adult Attachment in order to understand the parents of these adopted children and why they personalized the difficulties of their adopted kids.

As I read about the categories of Adult Attachment, particularly those developed by a researcher named Dr. Mary Main, I was startled to read about myself. All the behaviours that I demonstrated in relationships: my avoidance of the men I was interested in, my difficulty being in touch with feelings, my focus on my career, my valuing being smart and intellectual and my need to be active and busy were all described in one category of Attachment: Avoidant or Dismissing.

So now I knew what kind of Attachment I had and how I got to be this way. But how could I change this? There was very little in the books and articles I was reading that offered guidance on how to change one’s Attachment Category.

There have been more books about this in the past 10 years but most of these are written for professionals. There are very few that are written to help people like you understand your Attachment Category and how to change it. This is why I have written this book.

Perhaps you also have difficulty becoming close and making commitments in intimate relationships. Or maybe you become dependent and demanding very quickly in relationships. Or perhaps close relationships terrify you.

All these problems are described in Attachment Theory. I hope you also will find yourself described in an Adult Attachment Category and suddenly have a new and profound way of understanding your personality and why you behave the way you do in relationships. I hope this book will bring that understanding to you in a useful way and offer you guidance on how to become a secure person with good self-worth, how to pick healthy partners/spouses and how to become a parent who passes this security on to your children.

I have offered ideas and guidelines on how to change the patterns that you know are problematic for you so you can develop mutually close, healthy and loving relationships.

INTRODUCTION

If you picked up this book, you’re probably having problems in your relationship with your spouse, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend or perhaps a close family member. Or maybe you’re feeling insecure and want to find a way of feeling good about yourself. You may have read other books on how to solve your relationship problems or your feelings of insecurity. You may have tried couple or individual therapy.

You may know some one who is struggling in a relationship and want to help. You may be just curious about yourself or others and want a new way of understanding your behaviour and that of others in relationships. Whatever reason motivated you to pick up this book, please keep reading.

This book is designed to offer you a new way of understanding yourself and the close relationships that you develop. I hope it’ll help you understand why you chose the partner/spouse you did and why you react the way you do in your close relationships. I hope it’ll help you be kinder to yourself, more understanding of your partner/spouse and change your harmful patterns in relationships.

This book is about a psychological theory called Attachment Theory. What is this? How is it different than other perspectives on relationships and on your sense of self? Attachment Theory believes that we come to be the way we are, have the personalities that we do and behave the way we do in relationships because of the way we were parented as infants and young children. There are other theories that have a similar belief and explanation about our way of being, but Attachment has some unique and valuable differences. The chapters in this book will explain more fully what happens in the early years of a child’s life and how it continues to affect us as adults.

I want to share this perspective on understanding yourself and your relationships because it has been so valuable to me both as a professional therapist and as someone who has struggled in my adult relationships. I’ve been counselling and treating children, families, couples and individuals for over 40 years. I’ve been in my own therapy a number of times with different therapists using a variety of models of therapy, including Psychoanalysis, Traditional Psychotherapy, Gestalt Therapy and Group Therapy. Most were helpful and I did gain insight into myself and my challenges in relationships. None were based on Attachment Theory which would have been so much more helpful to me

I have also offered therapy to many many people throughout my career using different therapeutic perspectives and models. I have supervised and trained many other professionals. I was the Head of a Family Therapy Program and a Clinical Director of Children’s Mental Health Agencies so also influenced the clinical direction of programs that provided help to children, adolescents and their families. Although I was familiar with Attachment Theory, I didn’t understand it well or use the theory in my therapeutic work at the time.

As I look back on my career, I wished I would have known what I know now. If I could have translated my insights from Attachment Theory to my clients, my students, my colleagues and organizations I believe I would have created deeper and more lasting change.

I became more interested in this perspective on relationships when I became the Clinical Director of a Children’s Mental Health Centre for preschool children. These children were very young but they seemed so angry and unhappy, and already had significant problems in their relationships with their parents, their peers, and their daycare staff. What had happened at such a young age to cause these children to be so troubled? The answer was very obvious. They had parents, particularly their mothers, who were also very troubled, and not able to meet the needs of their infants and young children. These parents had significant challenges in their adult relationships as well.

Attachment Theory became more relevant to me in both understanding and helping these young children and their parents. My interest in learning more about the theory and its application in helping children and parents led me to read the books and articles that were available and to attend workshops by the leading people in the field. At that time there wasn’t a lot of information or training available.

Attachment Theory was developed by John Bowlby, a psychiatrist from Britain. He and his colleagues, particularly Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main, believed that infants instinctively communicate their needs to their mothers or caregivers through their behaviour, such as crying, smiling, waving arms and legs and making sounds. How a mother or caregiver responded to these signals or behaviours determined whether an infant would be securely or insecurely attached. Ainsworth and Main also developed research protocols to observe and document these behaviours. It was Mary Main who also came to believe that the mothers already had patterns in their way of relating that affected their parenting. She developed the categories of Adult Attachment and how to assess for these categories. I’ll discuss these categories or types in this book. I eventually became a member of a group of therapists who were studying with Dr. Daniel Hughes, a well-known Attachment Focused Therapist at the time. We would meet regularly, share our cases and consult with Dan. By this time, I was working with Adopted Children and their families, applying Attachment Theory in my understanding of the problems of these children.

The field of Attachment Focused Therapy changed dramatically during my years of applying it to adopted children. These children were extreme in their problems and traditional therapies were generally ineffective. There was much experimentation, innovation and research as therapists struggled to understand these children who’d come from orphanages or families where they experienced severe neglect and abuse. These children were often traumatized by their early experiences and had great difficulty trusting other adults who tried to care for them. They often presented controlling, aggressive, defiant behaviour or very dependent, needy, clinging behaviour. The dependent children were willing to attach to any adult who offered some attention. Working with such children was very challenging since they presented similar behaviour in their therapy with me. They wanted to avoid emotional vulnerability and found creative ways to do this.

When a child was adopted, I typically worked with the whole family, helping parents and the child to understand and express the feelings underlying the difficult behaviour. My goal was to help the parents create a safe environment for the child so he or she could risk developing trust in the new family.

Most had adopted believing they could offer a secure and happy family to the child or children. They couldn’t understand why these children didn’t appreciate what the new family was offering and change their distorted perceptions and mistrustful behaviour after receiving nurturing and loving care from their adoptive parents.

Some parents remained calm, patient and understood that their adopted children were mistrustful and hurting because of their experiences in orphanages and troubled families. They were able to use the interventions that I offered and understand that their adopted children needed years to gain trust. Others became angry, rejecting, blaming, and insecure about themselves. They couldn’t use the understanding that their children were deeply affected by their early attachment or use the interventions I offered to help them parent. It became clear to me that their own history of being parented and their attachment as adults was being activated by their relationship with their adopted children.

I began to study more about Adult Attachment which at the time was an excellent theory but mainly used for research. I took a course to understand more about Assessing Adults for their Attachment type. It was a long and difficult course. I wasn’t sure how it would help me with my adult clients. The course was very useful in helping assess and determine the Adult Attachment Categories from listening to, documenting and scoring the answers to particular questions about a person’s childhood story. However, the course confirmed for me that information about Adult Attachment was mostly used as a research tool. The course didn’t help me figure out how to apply this understanding to adults who were having difficulty parenting or having difficulties in themselves and their adult relationships. Yet, the descriptions of Adult Attachment made sense to me as a clinician. I could see Attachment behaviour in the parenting patterns of my clients, in the adults in individual therapy with me and in the couples I was treating in couple therapy. I knew I had to find a way to make it useful.

I began to explain Adult Attachment to my clients and reflect to them the type of Adult Attachment I believed they had. It not only made sense to me but also to most of my clients. It helped them understand why they were struggling with insecure feelings and with harmful patterns in relationships.

Most significant of all was recognizing my own Adult Attachment. It was clear to me that a number of the descriptive factors in the category of Avoidant or Dismissing Attachment applied to me. Both my challenges in relationships and my successes in life could be understood from the perspective of Adult Attachment. I felt deep regret that I hadn’t understood myself and my clients from an Attachment perspective much earlier in my life and my career.

Over the years I have developed more understanding of Adult Attachment and created a model of therapy to use with individuals, couples and parents, based on Attachment. I teach this model to other professionals.

I’ve written this book in the hope that I can bring an awareness of Adult Attachment not only to people who are therapists and professionals in the helping field but to everyone who is an adult, a parent, a partner and a spouse. I hope understanding the categories of Adult Attachment and how it affects your perception of yourself, your expectations in relationships, your patterns in relationships and the challenges of relationships and life will help you develop a new awareness. I’ll also try and offer not only a new perspective but techniques and interventions, using this awareness, to try and make changes in yourself, your relationships and your parenting.

Chapter 1

WHAT IS ATTACHMENT?

By the time we are adults most of us have experienced problems in our close relationships. You may be reading this book because you’ve been challenged by problems in your relationships and want to understand such problems from a new perspective. Such problems may have resulted in a difficult phase in your relationship that seemed to pass without a major crisis. Perhaps such problems created a crisis that led to being in therapy, or a trial separation or even separation and divorce. Or perhaps you’ve decided to remain in a poor relationship because you feel helpless and hopeless to change anything and leaving is too frightening and complicated.

You may be the kind of person who becomes anxious and angry