Why This Attachment Therapist Doesn’t Care Whether You’re Anxiously or Avoidantly Attached

how much does it really matter whether you're the anxious pursuer, or the avoidant walking away?

Do you know your attachment style? Some clients seek me out because they’re concerned their partner might have an anxious or avoidant attachment style, and they believe it’s affecting their relationship. Other clients want to see an attachment therapist because they believe they’re anxiously or avoidantly attached.

My clients are surprised to discover I’m not worried about whether your style is avoidant or anxious. I am interested in whether your style is secure or insecure, and how your style changes in different relationships. But whether you’re anxious or avoidant isn’t terribly important to me.

There are several good reasons why this attachment therapist doesn’t care whether you’re anxiously or avoidantly attached. First, attachment style is actually a grid, not a straight line. In addition to anxious and avoidant, the grid also includes secure and disorganized attachment styles, like this:

And in practice, most people are not all anxious, or all avoidant. Many people are more secure in some relationships and less secure in others. Some people have elements of more than one attachment style. And the focus on either anxious and avoidant attachment means too few people are discussing disorganized attachment.

Being able to identify whether you’re more anxious, avoidant, or disorganized isn’t as meaningful as the fact that you feel insecure in relationships in some way. And that’s important knowledge, because there’s a link between being securely or insecurely attached, and self-esteem.

The Link Between Attachment and Self-Esteem

Secure attachment in childhood is the foundation of positive self-esteem in adulthood. As we explored here, self-esteem begins as other-esteem and other-concept. While you receive other-esteem from many sources in childhood—the people who raise you, siblings, extended family, friends, peers, neighbors, teachers, and strangers—attachment theory holds that your primary attachment relationships (usually parents) will be the most influential. In other words, it’ll matter more to you that your parent doesn’t love you than being the most popular student in your school.

So, if you were raised by a parent who was able to give you positive other-esteem and other-concept, you’ll use that positive other-esteem and other-concept as the foundation of your own positive self-esteem and self-concept. If your parent wasn’t able to give you positive other-esteem and other-concept, chances are high their negative other-esteem and other-concept became the foundation of your own negative self-esteem and self-concept. That makes it hard for you to see yourself as lovable and capable as an adult.

This explains why a lack of secure attachment to self makes it hard to be in a securely attached relationship with someone else. If you don’t like yourself, that will impact your relationship with others. If you have an anxious style, you’ll pursue your partner. If you have an avoidant style, you’ll distance and be dismissive. If your style is disorganized, you’ll pursue sometimes, and be rejecting sometimes.

If you engage in these behaviors, what you need isn’t to focus on your attachment style. Instead, you need more healthy self-esteem and self-concept. It’s your relationship with you that’s the issue. If you aren’t secure in your relationship with yourself, you won’t have the internal security you need to enjoy healthy relationships with others.

This brings us to another reason I don’t focus on attachment style—that is, what I call your attachment pattern. Your attachment pattern is the collection of behaviors you’re subconsciously looking for in a relationship. According to attachment theory, this will be based on your unique life experiences with the people who raise you.

Your attachment pattern is considerably more significant to narcissism recovery than your attachment style. In practice, it’s uncanny how people find relationships that recreate the energy of their relationships with the people who raised them. If the person who raised you was narcissistic, you’ll subconsciously seek out, or settle, for workplaces, friends, and partners who bring the same kind of narcissistic energy as the people who raised you.

Clients are often shocked by my ability to predict what their relationships with the important adults in their lives were like, once I know something about their current relationships. No, I don’t have a crystal ball. Attachment theory allows me to extrapolate from what you’re attracted to now, and predict how that attraction came to be. (If you’re into the science of things, A General Theory of Love beautifully explains how this happens in the brain.)

Ultimately, narcissism recovery is about healing from those childhood experiences. It’s not about whether you’re anxious or avoidant or disorganized. It’s about healing the specific experiences you had of feeling unloved, unseen, unheard, afraid, abandoned, rejected, overlooked, scapegoated, pedestalized, or parentified, which come together to leave you with an insecure attachment style. And attachment style tells neither you nor me anything about those childhood experiences that need healing.

There’s still another reason I don’t focus on attachment styles, and that’s because attachment style is only one part of attachment theory. While I appreciate how discussing attachment style has increased knowledge of attachment theory, secure base is the aspect of attachment theory that’s key for both self-esteem and healthy relationships.

Unfortunately, people don’t talk about secure base anywhere nearly as often as they do attachment style. But not to worry—we’ll explore secure base, and how it’s a key element in narcissism recovery, in an upcoming post next month.

Attachment theory is a vast area of study, and it’s a lot to take in. If you’re feeling overwhelmed trying to make sense of attachment theory and how it can help you, or if you've been working on self-esteem and you're feeling stuck, I encourage you to consider seeking out an attachment therapist who specializes in narcissism recovery. You deserve to thrive!

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