The Basics of Attachment Theory

The Basics of Attachment Theory

Based on a psychoeducational workshop given by Bini Stefansky LMSW, Racheli Freedman LCSW

Understanding Attachment Theory: Bringing Your Best Self into Relationships

Human connections shape our wellbeing from childhood through adulthood, influencing relationships and beliefs. Attachment theory provides a framework for understanding how early experiences with caregivers impact us throughout our life and how we connect to others.

What Is Attachment Theory?

Developed by John Bowlby and expanded by Mary Ainsworth in the 1950s, attachment theory studies how infants form bonds with caregivers for survival and emotional development. Ainsworth experimented with infants’, studying their responses to caregiver separation and reunification. This study reveals distinct attachment patterns and how there are different strategies used to seek safety and comfort. Attachment behaviors like crying and clinging are innate survival mechanisms as vulnerable infants attach to survive. 

The Biology of Attachment

Attachment is biological as well as psychological. Humans are created with an innate need for connection, physically in infancy and spiritually as adults. Secure or insecure attachments influence brain areas that control emotion and stress. Quality caregiving shapes neural pathways that regulate emotions and relationships from infancy onward.

Repeated cycles of a baby’s needs being met in the first 18 months create automatic neural circuits that form the foundation of trust and regulation in relationships.

Attachment Styles

Our early attachment with caregivers forms the basis of how we relate to ourselves and others. Attachment styles fall into four main categories:

• Secure Attachment arises from consistent, empathic parenting. This leads to emotional regulation, trust, and stable adult relationships, comfortable with intimacy.
• Anxious Attachment stems from inconsistent caregiving, causing fear of abandonment. Adults may be clingy, seeking constant reassurance; this may also look as obsessive performance or attempts to control outcomes.
• Avoidant Attachment develops from distant or rejecting parenting. Adults often suppress needs, avoid intimacy, and distrust others; they may show perfectionism or procrastination as self-protection.
• Disorganized Attachment is usually a response to trauma or frightening caregiving, marked by chaotic behaviors and emotional dysregulation. Adults often struggle with forming healthy connections and may require specialized therapy.

Attachment Healing and Growth 

Early attachments create the blueprint for connection in our relationships. Healing insecure attachments fosters emotional peace and stronger connections with ourselves and others. With effort and strength, attachment styles can be transformed through intentional healing. 

Healing attachment wounds involves expanding your way of  emotional coping beyond survival strategies and changing them into a healthy way of living.

• Safe Space: Healing needs a setting where you feel seen, soothed, and secure, whether through therapy or mindful self-reflection.
• Mindfulness: Mindfulness cultivates acceptance, openness, patience, and non-judgment to help regulate emotions with compassion
• “Parts Work:” Begin to recognize “child parts” inside us carrying unresolved needs; nurturing these parts with adult compassion can help heal childhood wounds to allow for healthy adulthood.
• Rituals: Simple consistent, personalized practices can help calm inner child fears and replace them with adult-like actions reactions. For example, in anxious attachment, simple practices like daily goodbyes and check-ins reduce abandonment fears.
• Therapy: Especially for disorganized attachment, a healing therapeutic relationship can allow for the “strong, adult self” within you to show up in relationships. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can help regulate intense emotions.

Parenting with Attachment in Mind

No parent is perfect. Our role as parents and in viewing our attachment figure is that parents can only do their best and try providing a good enough parenting to their children. Parents can focus on raising children resilient enough to handle vulnerabilities and secure enough to manage insecurities. Providing consistent, empathic care, while understanding our own attachment histories, helps children develop secure attachments despite inevitable life’s challenges.

Conclusion: Bringing Your Best Self Forward

Attachment theory reveals deep patterns shaping our relationships from infancy. Recognizing your attachment style empowers you to heal old wounds, build secure connections, and enrich relationships, from marriage and parenting to your spiritual life.

For further understanding or to hear more reach out or see attachment part II!

• Attachment-based
• Inner child work
• Life purpose and meaning
• Parenting
• Relationships
• Tapping & Emotional Freedom Technique