**🔼 Up:** [[Authenticity Over Attachment]] **⏺️ With:** [[Attunement]], [[Holding Environment]], [[Developmental Trauma]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Psychology #Relational #Developmental > **🌱 Planted:** Mon 23 June 2025 --- Attachment is the deep emotional bond between a child and caregiver, and this bond has impact on our thinking, physiology, emotions, relational style, values, and overall life satisfaction. As babies, we are born with a need to connect, love and attach to our mother or mothering equivalent. For our brain, body and mind to develop, we need the experience of a "good enough" [[Holding Environment]]. Relationship and attachment experiences are so fundamental in human development that a secure attachment predisposes us toward a lifetime of good mental health, the ability to have fulfilling intimate relationships, and to parent in such a way that passes on secure attachment to our children. But what is one to do if they weren't gifted with secure attachment? Well, first recognise it is not all that uncommon to have insecure attachment. According to a meta-analysis published by the American Psychological Association[^1] which analysed the data from 285 studies with other 20,000 infant-parent dyads in the Strange Situation Tests, 52% of children had secure attachment. So half the population in this meta-analysis had insecure attachment. # Attachment Theory Attachment Theory came from the work of psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth who's pioneering research demonstrated the nature of our earliest relationship shapes who we become. Bowlby's early work with the World Health Organisation in the 1950s showed us how emotional neglect in childhood leads to empathy deficits, behavioural difficulties, and a higher likelihood of struggling as a parent later in life. Much of the research behind attachment styles was developed off the back of Mary Ainsworth's set of experiments with mother's and their children, conducted all over the world, called "**the strange situation**"[^2]:  We mentioned earlier that attachment refers to the deep emotional bond between child and mother. While this bond is psychological, it is also biological and evolutionary. Like other primates and unlike some other animals, we are a carrying species which means we're born helpless and literally cannot live without our caregivers. In traditional cultures across time, babies were typically held, worn and kept close within the mother's field of gaze. Today, in modern life, a mother in a Western household might be left to raise her child without support while often relying on things like prams which separate the child from touch, connection and visual contact. This change in our way of being alone has the potential to disrupt the ability to form secure attachment. Early experiences with our caregivers don't only have effect on our Psyche (see: [[Object Relations]]), they're also imprinted and stored in our brains, bodies, muscles, fascia, nervous system and cells. That's why secure attachment for a child is so important and formative. Our attachment history shapes the story we tell about ourselves, our expectations for being in relationship with others, and the protective patterns we use to survive. That being said, secure attachment doesn't guarantee a trouble free life. Nor does insecure attachment mean someone is doomed forever. The good news is our way of being and patterns can be brought into awareness and changed over time. # Attachment Styles As per Mary Ainsworth, our attachment styles are formed from birth until around age three. At this stage, this page won't go into each of the attachment styles in depth, it'll only summarise secure and insecure attachment in adults at a high-level. For a deeper look into each attachment style, you can go to [The Attachment Project](https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-styles/). If you're curious to know what your attachment style is, you can take [this free quiz](https://www.web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl). ## Secure Attachment in Adults - Comfortable with both intimacy and independence - Able to trust others and be trustworthy - Able to regulate emotions effectively, even under stress - Positive self-image, feels worthy of love and connection - Maintains stable, long-lasting relationships - Accepts criticism without significant distress - Handles conflict without becoming overwhelmed or withdrawn, able to repair relational ruptures - Able to communicate needs openly and freely ## Insecure Attachment in Adults - Struggles with trust, intimacy or both - Often fears abandonment or possession - Threatened by distance or closeness in relationships - Finds it difficult to express needs or emotions directly - May become overly dependent, overly self-reliant, or alternate between the two - Reacts strongly to perceived rejection or criticism - Has difficulty regulating emotions in the context of connection - Carries underlying beliefs of being unlovable, too much, or not enough # Earned Secure Attachment It is possible to 'earn' secure attachment in our adulthood. There isn't one specific way to achieve this, but I put forward the fundamentals through the idea of [[Authenticity Over Attachment]]. Insecure attachment fundamentally takes place in context of relational failure. Therefore, our relational and [[Developmental Trauma]] is also healed in secure relationship. This can take many forms; a one-one therapeutic relationship, like a coach or therapist, group healing circles, secure and safe friendships or romantic relationships. ## Conditions for Secure Attachment A secure attachment forms when our early relationships see the following conditions present, with [[Attunement]] and [[Loving Presence]]: Secure attachment forms when relationships offer consistent: - **Touch**: Conveys love, security, safety and containment, as well as the appreciation of boundaries. - **Eye contact**: Triggers closeness hormones and neural development. - **Positive emotional tone**: Smiles, tone, and gestures create ‘limbic resonance’, which is the felt sense of emotional connection through the mirror neuron system. - **Responsiveness to needs**: Meeting needs regulates arousal and stress. When unmet, the child feels "bad" because no one is soothing their distress, so they grow to feel bad, broken, defective or deficient as an adult. [^1]: [The First 20,000 Strange Situation Procedures: A Meta-Analytic Review](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10173021/1/Fearon_BUL-2022-0782R2_MS.pdf) [^2]: [Secure, Insecure, Avoidant Ambivalent Attachment in Mothers Babies - YouTube](https://youtu.be/DRejV6f-Y3c?si=y-ubzd2h7JBVvlDx)