LL,

I understand what you mean about the four categories being reductionist. Part of the problem is that human beings behaviors are a complex interplay between genetics and environment and comprised of so many aspects, that whenever you focus in on one aspect of behavior, you are going to lose sight of some of that complexity. However, if you don't paint with broad strokes, it becomes impossible to discuss any aspect of human behavior or development. So I think the most important thing to remember is that while identifying an attachment style may help you understand yourself, you are NOT an attachment style, nor is it even close to be the only lens through which you can seek understanding of your behavior.

As for a source, by far the best book I have ever read is David Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy. Heavy going, but it does treat the subject in a more complex manner that I think you're looking for.

And last but not least, the use of "exaggerated" is not meant to describe a conscious or manipulative behavior on the part of the "anxious" person (btw, I have disorganized attachment and am the opposite of DF as I lean more towards anxious than avoidant although both are there.) This is an unconscious action learned because it was difficult to attract the caregiver's attention. So when the child was distressed, they would often have to express it more strongly in order to attract attention. In some ways, the lack of consistency could teach a child to feel things MORE keenly as the only way to have their needs met.

So a person with anxious attachment is reporting their actual feelings but probably feel more strongly in reaction to situations than a person with secure attachment.

My T had a great analogy for it. If a person in the US gets hungry, it's just not a big deal. They get up, walk to the fridge and grab a bite. Therefore, hunger does not feel threatening. But take someone in the Sudan who may not know where there next meal is coming from and getting hungry is incredibly scary and threatening. The same thing is true of a person with an anxious attachment style, we feel much MORE threatened by feeling lonely or abandoned or angry because we cannot be sure that someone will hear us or meet our needs. Hope that helps.

AG

quote:

In general, going out in the world, I approach with a dismissive style - however, if someone gets past that and I do actually become attached to them (in a usually codependent way, I might add - where I attach a lot of my happiness to their happiness (i.e.: If I can't make you happy, I'm not happy and I'm worthless and incapable is the mantra)). So I switch from not wanting a relationship, to, if one is established I do begin to get scared of abandonment

Wow, DF, that is like the perfect description...except, once someone is past my defenses, if I have allowed a genuine connection/attachment, I do get very clingy...and then swing to avoidant resentment about that.

I agree with what DF has said here, regarding there being factors of temperament and other issues which can kind of influence things that are perceived as "attachment" related behaviors, but could have other sources. I used to identify with the preoccupied attachment style, but that was because I only looked at the relationships which were already very intimate (at the time, it amounted to one or two) and not my style of relating as a whole, which was to avoid ever getting into intimate relationships in the first place, because once I did, the troublesome clinging would arise.

I actually do find myself constantly testing and worrying whether I am exaggerating my feelings to get attention and even confessed that to my T very early on, before I even came on this forum. I think there are several reasons, in my particular case, for this concern. First, I stigmatize attention-seeking, not only because it as seen in a negative light in the world in general, but being noticed was very dangerous and being invisible (living up to expectations, never complaining) was safe. My nearly always performing and never sharing my feelings at home was the difference between my oldest sister getting kicked out dozens of times and me getting kicked out only a few. It was the difference between my mom having screaming matches with others in the street and me getting yelled at in private. It was why I was only rarely physically threatened and most of the bad stuff that happened was the result of being caught in the crossfire. So, the whole concept of wanting attention fills me with anxiety.

The second reason I think I tend to feel like I am attention-seeking, even though I objectively know I am being honest about my internal experience, is that what I now know as dissociation meant I might feel completely overwhelmed one minute and literally numb and detached from those feelings the next. So, to the part who can go, "Whatever? Who the f--- cares?" the freak-out seems totally out of proportion, nonsensical, and so must be attention-seeking. I think this manifests on the forum a lot when I will post something freaking out and delete it less than an hour later, because I am convinced those feelings were never true and I must have made them up somehow. I feel like I've somehow tried to get attention and support when I obviously don't really need or deserve it for something so lame. Then, I project those feelings onto those who are reading and delete the post in a panic. Again, this doesn't directly relate to attachment, but just the sense of exaggeration. One lucky thing about parts work is that I am now a lot less confused in therapy, because I can tell my T the simultaneous reactions I am having all the time, like when I want to get close, but there is also fear, resentment, a desire to quit and never come back. Or, I can tell him about something that was very upsetting to me, while at the same time communicating that it feels like no big deal elsewhere inside, and the feedback I am getting to STFU and get over it already.

I have noticed that there doesn't tend to be a lot of information on the avoidant style, which I would like to see more of, because it seems to be what I consciously chose to do from my early 20s until last year, when therapy triggered the anxious parts. I have called it pathological independence and it meant I literally was only vulnerable with one person, my H, and if I could have avoided that and still called it a marriage, I probably would have. I would not allow myself to rely on, receive from, attach to, crave connection with, any other person, for nearly a decade. And, those were the most stable years of my entire life. It was a sort of phobia of closeness, because it is such a trigger for me.

I have read a lot about disorganized attachment recently, just because it seems to come up in a lot of articles on dissociative disorders, and also BPD and CPTSD. Ugh, I don't feel like I've maybe given much useful at all here. But, I'm sure one of our resident experts can come in here and provide some guidance.

DF, AG and Yaku thanks SO much for your replies. Given me lots to think about - which I'll go away and do and come back later to pick your brains some more, if that's ok.

LL

Hi Lamplighter!

Great thread and great discussion. I think I might have started out one way ... maybe preoccupied but then became avoidant after some bad experiences but still have the preoccupied part and so I'm thinking that now I must have evolved into disorganized. Because God knows I haven't been able to attach to anyone successfully in a really long time. And, so I tend to agree with you that it might not quite as simple as the literature makes it out to be.

I have just started to read Attached by Dr Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It is primarily about attachment styles in relationships - it is a pretty easy read.

It is about working out your attachment style and your partners and understanding the relationship. It only uses 3 modes - Anxious, Avoidant and Secure. I am only starting out with this attachment stuff - so I am finding this book easier for me to grasp as it applies it to your relationships and I am finding it less confronting.

So far I am avoidant - but I am keeping an open mind.

Looking at that Wiki link to attachment - generally I am either dismissive-avoidant or fearful-avoidant (or both) and with my attached people - ie childT, was youngT and hopefully T - I am moving toward anxious-preoccupied.

Does this sound right? For me it looks like I am moving from never being attached to anyone (and not really caring) to being attached to youngT (my first ever attachment in my life) and once I want and need that attachment - I am then anxious-preoccupied with it.

In regard to exaggerating problems etc - I under-do it. My T said to me the other day that she realised very early on that if I said 'things are bad' that it has taken a very long time for me to admit that and I needed help a long time ago. Attention seeking also - not part of my thing.

I am desperate for my attached people to be close to me for survival and I crave that someone thinks I matter and that they "see me". i have spent my life trying to be invisible. i want them to care for me - I don't want every friend I know to care for me - as their care doesn't matter to me.

Am I making any sense? I think i am making some important connections as I type here. Though provoking.

Ok I’ve been thinking about this, and about the comments you guys have made, lol now I’m back with more questions and more stuff to say.

You know DF you’ve made a really important point there with querying whether the way a person is, is actually a mix of different things and not simply one attachment ‘style’. And AG too, that human behaviour is a complex interplay of many different aspects – both of your posts gave me a much needed reality jolt. And Yaku too. Thank you. I was (am) in danger of getting hooked into the stuff I’m reading and seeing EVERYTHING solely in terms of attachment – which is actually easy to do because it does seem to explain an awful lot – but the literature itself presents only attachment theory and doesn’t consider it as part of a greater whole and so it sort of becomes the be all and end all of psychology.

DF if your T hadn’t told you she thought you had a disorganized style, would you have come to that conclusion yourself? I’ve never been diagnosed with anything even when I’ve point blank asked Ts, Ps and the like ‘wtf is wrong with me????’ and I also get the impression that attachment theory hasn’t filtered down to the ground very much in this country so most Ts if I asked, what do you think my attachment ‘strategy’ is, wouldn’t know what the hell I’m on about.

I suppose I’d like very much to just ‘know’ what’s wrong with me so I can set about fixing it. If I could fit myself into one of the attachment styles I’d feel a whole lot more certain about things. It’s the not knowing that does my head in.

AG, Wallin’s book was the very first one I read about attachment (I bought it on the back of your original recommendation, if I remember rightly, way back in another thread on forum). Since then I’ve read so much about this theory and I guess I’m calling it reductionist because where I expected the research and the literature to present a fundamentally simple concept in much more complex detail, it just seems to be becoming more and more rigid and repetitive and narrow instead. Very frustrating. That’s why I so liked that book I recommended in the book forum, on child abuse and neglect in attachment terms, because it related the theory to people. I digress…

Oh and I loved your analogy about being starving. That really does put this whole 'exaggeration' idea into perspective. Thank you.

Found this quote in the current book I’m reading which supports what AG and DF and Yaku are saying, am including it to remind myself in the future not to get too caught up in finding a nice simple answer to who I am.

quote:

‘Although certain dynamics may be associated with a particular attachment style, they are not equivalent to each other… There is little to be gained by attempting to ‘squeeze’ or reduce idiosyncratic clinical patterns into one or other ‘standard’ attachment category when there is not a good fit. Given the current popularity of attachment theory, this is a real danger. This misuse of attachment ideas will not do justice to the complexity of the clinical phenomena. It is also likely that in the course of trying to squeeze everything into the framework of attachment theory, the central concepts, ideas, and hypotheses of that theory will become so diluted as to lose any precision of meaning and any possibility of empirical test. It must be acknowledged that although attachment is a vital area of human functioning and experience, it does not constitute all of personality development and functioning.’

Anyway, what I’m finding interesting in the replies here (thanks also Liese and Somedays) is that no-one is coming straight out and saying hey I’m x attachment style. I’m wondering if attachment styles might fit children much more closely (which is where it all originated anyway) and that by the time we grow up and as we get older too, things become much more complex and get modified and change and overlap etc.

Somedays I found it interesting what you said about moving from avoidant to becoming anxious-preoccupied once you found an attachment figure. I suspect I’m something like that, that normally I’m pretty avoidant of intimate relationships – lol when they’re on offer that is, which is not TOO often – but that that is a defence of the really needy stuff underneath. I wonder if attachment styles aren’t so much ‘strategies’ as defences. Because for sure if I exaggerated my feelings when I was a kid no way in hell would that have gotten me the caregiving I might have been after, quite the reverse. Yet to all intents and purposes I’ve ended up totally trapped in the preoccupied neediness for certainty and reassurance and the terror of rejection and abandonment etc and use the so-called avoidant strategy purely as a defence. Dunno what I’m saying here, just musing aloud I think. Actually yes, I think I’ll start modifying what I’ve learnt about attachment in light of my own experience, and start seeing my ‘style’ whatever that is, as a defence, not as a strategy. Lol because if it’s a strategy, it sure as hell hasn’t worked!

Anyway Somedays I wanted to ask whether if you have been pretty much avoidant most of your life and suddenly whammo, you’ve gotten attached – that must have been pretty unsettling, to say the least? Did it seem ‘out of character’ to you?

Yaku you’ve said something similar too, that you’ve actually been avoidant generally but the preoccupied ‘style’ is what takes over when you’re in a close relationship. It sounds like you’ve got the reverse of the ‘exaggeration’, that YOU think you’re exaggerating, making your feelings up. I wonder if that’s because of the avoidant aspect? Makes me think that actually we could have aspects of all the styles which end up conflicting with each other. Hm, which again says to me it’s all defensive, not strategic...

Hey on the contrary, Yaku, what you’ve written was really helpful and interesting too – and thank you for being so open about yourself Oh re avoidant style, I acquired a book which dealt specifically with it called ‘Trauma and the Avoidant Client’ by Robert Muller. I don’t remember much of it, but know that it dealt specifically with avoidant clients in therapy. Here’s the google book link to it if you want to peruse some pages.

Trauma and the Avoidant Client

Liese interesting that you too seem to shuttle between styles and can’t pin it down to one or the other. I guess I just assumed that most people did fit a style and knew it too, but maybe in the end attachment theory is just a useful paradigm that points the way, rather than being a definitive categorization of who people are.

I see I’ve written an enormous reply and though there’s tons of stuff I still want to know, perhaps I’d better stop for now. I’d still like to hear from more people what they think, especially if they do think they fit a particular style, or conversely, have further ideas about this whole attachment style idea.

Thanks all

LL

Hmm. Looking on Wiki thing, I would say that I am anxious-preoccupied attachment. I have a history of being involved with a few people who are usually very fearul-avoidant. A recipe for emotional chaos unfortunately because the more I clinged, the more they cut themselves off.

These days I feel that I am tending toward dismissive-avoidant with friends and the like.

I just seem to get IMMEDIATELY very, very anxious and preoccupied in intimate relationships. It's terrible. I loose my appetite quickly and they quickly become the centre of my universe. Nothing else matters but them. I think this is what puts me off having an intimate relationship. Though I yearn for it and have done for 10 years (I am a fantasist, wanting the 'perfect' relationship), I am getting to a point where I seem to be setting up walls around me and actively keeping relatively distant from people.

This is ONLY with intimate relationships. With pretty much all other relationships the avoidant/dismissive sort of attachment style comes to me very naturally. I could travel across the other side the world and not miss anyone really.

Strangely though, my attachment to my therapist is not 'romantic' and I am very attached to her. In saying this I remember when I was a child at school and I used to become attached to a few middle aged female teachers. 3 if I remember. They were authoritative but very kind and helpful. T echoes those teachers. I told her that at times she encompasses everything from mother, aunt, sister, friend, lover but I see her as a reflection of those teachers. I have experienced erotic transference and sometimes I feel that I still do but I'm really not sure. I can't fathom the different between attachment and attraction with her. Confusing..

I don't really know why it's getting worse. I guess in therapy I am addressing all sorts of things right now. Who knows.

LL,
The quote you put in your post was very much what I was trying to say. Each person in therapy is unique and I think a good clinician has a LOT of stuff in their toolbox, across a wide range of modalities. If you get too locked into a modality, then there is a tendency to fit a client to a solution, rather than solve what they're facing. It's the old cliche of "if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail."

My T's original training was in Behaviorial therapy but he's very well read and has also learned a tremendous amount through actually being a therapist for 30 years. So his approach is to just "be" with the client and see where it goes and he uses anything he needs to. So although attachment theory was quite important to me, and as a matter of fact, I believe key to my healing, it wasn't the only thing we used or did.

I would definitely classify myself as having disorganized attachment, mainly because of the fact that I always longed for an intimate relationship where I could be fully known, but it terrified me because I also believed that anyone who really knew me would abandon me because I was so repulsive. So when I finally got someone promising that they would stay no matter what I showed them, I would have expected to just want to fight towards them, and work through my fear. But instead, I found myself desparately looking for reasons to leave because getting close was way TOO dangerous. I also based it on the fact that I had to fight through a lot of disassociation and that I was abused by a parent. Disorganized attachment happens most often in the case of abuse by a caregiver.

So I think where it gets confusing is that to be scared of attachment is not the same as being avoidant. Avoidant is someone who honestly believes they do NOT need anyone else. That it is possible to live as an island and always meet their own needs. They shut out the awareness of their own healthy need for connection. Anxious on the other had is someone who knows they need/want relationship but is aware that when they get too close they also get "too needy" and drive people away, so it's scary to get close. It's important to remember how these styles were formed. They were in reaction to the caregivers' actions or lack thereof. Avoidant was for parents who were never available, so you stop asking for something you're not going to get AND the caregiver is happier with you when you have no needs. Anxious was formed in response to someone who was unpredictably available; you stay focused on the caregiver in order not to miss care when it IS available and you "exaggerate" your affect in hopes of drawing out that elusive response. Disorganized was in reaction to an abuser. So you had to go towards for care, but had to stay away because of the danger. And sometimes you just froze.

I think the other confusing thing is that when we're in therapy we're working to change and form an "earned" secure attachment, so that our style should be moving away from the insecure style formed in childhood and towards a healthier way of relating.

So yeah, LL, it's not a real cut and dried kind of thing. There are actually some tests on the internet to analyze your attachment style, that I have taken several times over the course of my healing. The results are actually graphed in a quandrant system and I've watched my placement shift as I have healed.

AG

Ahhhhhh! Suddenly the penny has dropped for me. Thanks very much AG and DF for explaining more about the dismissing/avoidant style. That now makes perfect sense and yeah suddenly I can see the very clear distinction between ‘avoiding’ relationships, intimacy and well feelings generally, based on fear, and genuine ‘avoidance’ based on a true belief that relationships really aren’t necessary (sorry if I haven’t worded it correctly, that’s sort of my interpretation of what you DF specifically said.) Lol if I had a choice I’d opt for avoidant, seems to me that at least you get to experience a good sense of self esteem that isn’t endlessly dependent on the positive reflections of others. I don’t mean to belittle here either or make out that being avoidant is a barrel of laughs, it’s just that I turn myself inside out wondering what it would be like to feel ok about myself, you know, like gazing longingly at something you know you’re never going to get

When I think about my FOO I’d have thought I should have ended up avoidant as there was a nasty mix of abandonment (my mother left when I was 3), open rejection, dismissiveness, negation, arbitrary punishment, and outright physical and pretty vicious verbal abuse. Not much opportunity for a preoccupied ‘strategy’ to succeed and plenty of reason to decide that relationships and trying to get close to people was most definitely a bad idea. But maybe you can only implement a dismissive/avoidant ‘strategy’ if you have somehow managed to find a way of internalising a positive sense of self that then allows you to become not-needy, or maybe being independent got some sort of reinforcement or reward? I’m just speculating here, trying to imagine how different styles would develop from the child's point of view.

About disorganized attachment – would it be fair to say that the push/pull dynamic, the drive to connect and be known that seems to automatically set in motion an equal terror that – in my case anyway – results in an almost intolerable stuck no way in no way out position – both wanting and terrified of taking – would that be categorized as disorganized? From my reading of the attachment theory guff, there seems even less info on disorganized attachment than any of the other categories. But it now makes a whole lot more sense to me about what’s going on in me, taking into account the role of fear. Lol I do feel much better about it all now that this is clear. Right, I’m off now to exaggerate a few feelings, see where that gets me. Sorry bad taste joke.

DF you’re very much onto a wise thing there, with keeping away from researching all this stuff and just allowing the therapy itself to work without having to categorize everything your T does or know in advance what’s going on. I’ve heard you say that before and thought, now that’s smart I think I’m still at the point in my (new) therapy that I’m needing to KNOW everything all the time, too many crap experiences with crap therapists for me to trust that they know what they’re doing without my having some inside knowledge about what it’s all meant to be about. I’m hopeful though that my new T is good enough that one day soon I can drop all this having to know and understand everything and just let the relationship itself work its magic. Oh I live in constant hope. And it will save me a fortune in Amazon fees .

Hello there FMN. Sounds like you’re feeling pretty confused about all this attachment stuff. (Me too, that’s why I keep researching and researching.) Interesting that you, too, see yourself as having one attachment style in intimate relationships, yet other relationships don’t seem to matter at all. Yaku above said something similar. Made me think, and I realized that actually, I’m the opposite, I regard EVERYONE as a potential AF – I don’t make much distinction between people in that way, though obviously in some cases the intensity of the feelings/neediness is less than in others. I WANT A MUMMY!!!!!!! Oops, that just slipped out, I suppose because that’s what’s behind my viewing everyone in this way. Lol someone the other day said that the forum was my AF and they were right. I wonder if anyone else feels that way about this place…

Got to go get dinner now, probably fortunately for everyone otherwise this reply could just go on and on and on...

LL

Yaku! What you wrote really said something to me about me. Wow. Thank you, you've woken me up a bit to questions about why I feel 'bad' for attention-seeking so much. You've given some very useful information, thankyou. The experiences you had really echo mine as well so its definitely some food for thought

quote:

I think this manifests on the forum a lot when I will post something freaking out and delete it less than an hour later, because I am convinced those feelings were never true and I must have made them up somehow

Often I have this habit too. I'll write something in my blog mainly and delete it not so long afterward because it didn't seem real at the time or too exxagurated or 'fake' or whatnot. I can hardly tell what I really feel. I've got used to being very apathetic and numb, so that when feelings come out, I am convinced that they arn't real. I look back on my last session with T where there was quite a bit of crying going on and I am partly convinced that I did it through deliberation, through thinking too much and getting to the point of tears. I tell myself 'You've just thought yourself into all this pain, it isn't real at all. Get over it. Live your life. You're absolutely fine!'. And then when I do have happier/content moments, then I simply justify to myself that I am indeed a happy person and all the past was just faked. Then I feel guilty for it and start monitoring my emotions with a fine tooth comb to convince myself that what I was feeling was at least a little bit real because if it wasn't then I am a bad, attention-seeking, narcissist fake who deserves to be left alone.

Hey LL, hope you are well. Yes it is very confusing. I am starting to wonder how many women I have been really attracted to and how many were simply due to a strong attachment I demonstrated. Hmm, I think there was a degree of attraction but the anxiety that formed from the attachment side of things blurred how strong or weak or how 'compatible' we were together. My last involvement with someone was extremely confusing. I just didn't get it.

It causes me to rethink my entire sexuality...I know I am attracted to women but to what extent? And perhaps I'm in a state of disassociation so much that whatever other feelings there might be, might not be in on the surface as I need them to be? All these questions. Ha..! I shall relay them to T when I see her next.

LL,

Just wondering out loud here if perhaps all the books sound so rigid is because they are all possibly saying the same thing over and over again? Like, how many different ways could someone write a book describing the different attachment styles without starting to sound redundant and rigid. Unless one of them came out with a new way to look at it, or perhaps showed how they can develop and change over the course of someone's life and impact their decisions and their life as well, then maybe it will all just sound rigid and simple, in a sense? I wonder if that's why that child welfare book was so good because it actually did take a different take on the issue?

I haven't done the reading you have so it's hard to say ... but I kind of feel like after reading Wallin's book, unless someone had something new to offer on the subject, I'm not sure if it just wouldn't be just chewing on the same stuff over and over again. Maybe you've identified a real need out there for a book that is more "meaty" so to speak. Anyone?

Ah, I love it when LL is on the forum... (Not to say that others don't have, too, ack! PAD attack!!!) It's just I so often relate so much... I have no idea what my attachment style is, just as, I am the only person I have ever met who has "failed" a Myer's-Briggs personality test... I just don't know the answers to the questions!! It's always different, every time! yarg.

FMG said:

quote:

Often I have this habit too. I'll write something in my blog mainly and delete it not so long afterward because it didn't seem real at the time or too exxagurated or 'fake' or whatnot. I can hardly tell what I really feel. I've got used to being very apathetic and numb, so that when feelings come out, I am convinced that they arn't real. I look back on my last session with T where there was quite a bit of crying going on and I am partly convinced that I did it through deliberation, through thinking too much and getting to the point of tears. I tell myself 'You've just thought yourself into all this pain, it isn't real at all. Get over it. Live your life. You're absolutely fine!'. And then when I do have happier/content moments, then I simply justify to myself that I am indeed a happy person and all the past was just faked. Then I feel guilty for it and start monitoring my emotions with a fine tooth comb to convince myself that what I was feeling was at least a little bit real because if it wasn't then I am a bad, attention-seeking, narcissist fake who deserves to be left alone.

Oh, my goodness, I have never had someone speak their thoughts and have them so deeply coincide with my own. It is just, really, really nice to know I am not alone, FMG!!! Even though...I am sorry you deal with this, too, cause it sucks. For me...it comes as a (very shameful) relief when I discover that others like my T or whatever) think I have clearly, problems...or I want a diagnoses! because it would just be a relief to have some kind of knowledge of myself, to know that my "pain" is justified and real. I don't believe in my own tears...I think they are a fake, and, most definitely manufactured to get attention. It would be so nice to feel "real." I find I guess, I rpobably most identify with this preoccupied/ambivalent...but I tend to think that most people are a mix, most likely, and you could probably get mor3e information by rating yourself as "most like" on a scale system. so that all the categories are included in the analysis, but you rate them according what is most dominant...to least dominant...but still presetn.

Anyway- thank for the thread LL...in answer to your question, yes, I often feel that I really do exaggerate my feelings in order to get attention, and this was particulalrly true in therapy...but I'm also really not sure if that is true, or if that was some kind of...defense agains the pian of experiencing the feelings as actually, real or not.

I can honestly say that I do not have any idea if I miss my T or not. Even though I can't believe how much I miss him. It is actually crazy-making.

Hugs, LL...and all here..

Beebs

Very interesting thread, Liese!

I am fearful-avoidant, I believe. I want close relationships, but they tend to scare the shit out of me and I pull away or put up a wall.

Hey LL to answer your question about my attachment style and how I change when I get attached.

I am generally avoidant but after reading above - definitely chuck in a health dose of schizoid - I can happily do without people....

Anyway - generally avoidant with friends. BUT when I feel a spark of attachment - I crave it, become obsessed. Maybe this new acquaintance is going to be my new best friend and will love me and will actually GET me? Doesn't happen that often anymore (that a friend comes along that I get obsessed with) - and I am not looking for people in my life.

I have been with hubby for over 20 years - we have never had a passionate love affair - but I remember being so in lurve and obsessing over him. Once I had him - that stopped and now we are just friends and we just live together, do things together and look after the kids - you know? I have been reading that attachment style book for couples and I have glossed over 80% of the book because I just can't relate it to my marriage. I have no idea what I feel about it.

NOw. This is what I was meaning. I have never been psychologically attached to anyone - except for youngT and I only realised that when she terminated me. I fought desperately to keep her. As i was falling into attachment (like love) I was anxious, obsessed and desperate. When I was losing her I wanted her to like me, want me etc.

Now is this an attachment style OR my BPD? I feel the same way to childT whom I am attached to. Always making sure she is there and that she gets me, that she is available, hasn't forgotten me. i would never do anything or say anything to lose her etc.

I am more confused than ever about this actually. I do the love /hate bring 'em close - send them away thing - ie desperate for them to be close but when they are too close - I cool everything and become distant. I do all that too, but thought it was BPD.

I have a lot to learn.

LL,
Just one more thing I want to add to the conversation (and a bit of a wrench in the works I'm afraid). I am a big proponent in educating yourself about therapy and being informed, if for no other reason than to be able to assess your care. BUT, I think it's very important to keep sight of one very important fact which is that the healing actually isn't done by learning to understand, it's done by experiencing new things in relationship, and in experiencing your feelings with a caring, understanding other. In other words, no matter how well you understand what is going on and how it all works and all the studies and conclusions in the world, you won't heal until you feel. So it's not important that you completely nail down what is going on with your attachment style LL because whether or not you do, you can still heal.

Don't get me wrong, I found for myself, which was affirmed by my T, that often my learning to understand the process made it easier for me to find the courage to face my feelings, because I understood the necessity (personally I would have been QUITE happy to remain in my left brain full time while healing. Alas, it doesn't work that way). But it was still the messy, chaotic, scary, confusing process of feeling in which the work really got done. I mean, if just understanding worked then therapists wouldn't need their own therapists right?

And I don't know if this is true for you, (I suspect so because of your intelligence) but focusing on the intellectual stuff and gaining more knowledge could sometimes be a defense mechanism for me. I could stay one remove from my emotions and discuss what was happening until the cows came home. What DF said about actually staying away from reading too much made me think about this and I think it's a point well worth taking into account. Somewhere there's a healthy balance but it can be difficult at times to find it.

AG

AG I think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. I certainly use intellectualisation as a massive defence (well, it’s never been conscious, but I’m now becoming very aware of it) and yeah, it always strikes me as FAR easier to understand something, especially from a nice safe intellectual distance, that it is to EXPERIENCE it. But like you, I’ve found it vital to have a certain intellectual understanding of therapy and psychology and, well, feelings generally, otherwise I’d just stay trapped in fear and doubt and uncertainty and wouldn’t get anywhere – it helps me enormously to have some advance idea of what I need to be focusing on and where I need to go. Also the big positive of normalization. It really does matter to me that what I think/feel/believe isn’t so alien and off the planet that it doesn’t exist somewhere else in the world. Which is probably why I’ve been getting my knickers in a twist about this attachment stuff, not being able to fit myself into a category… Also I find that reading about therapy etc sort of keeps me connected to it between sessions. Maybe that’s a defence too though, because it means I get to focus on all these different ideas and thoughts and avoid sitting with how I actually feel. But that’s pretty intolerable so, I dunno... maybe I won't dismantle the intellectualization defence TOO quickly, but certainly something that I need to do a lot less of. Thanks for your words

UV!!! Great to see you here and thanks so much for posting that link. I’ve glanced at it and bookmarked it, want to read it at leisure. I also like the diagram you posted – I think I’ve seen something like it before but seeing it here in the context of this thread, it actually makes sense now. I definitely belong in the lower right hand quadrant, so I guess that makes me fearful/anxious/avoidant. Lol I’m with DF here, I would have liked to hear what you thought your ‘style’ might be – but thanks all the same for the great info.

Just want to thank everyone else too who’s posted since my last reply (((( FMN, DF, Liese, BB, LG, Somedays)))))). Sorry not to respond better, everything you’ve said is really interesting, but if I start rabbiting on individually this reply will just get out of hand so I’d better stop here.

LL

Take an attachment test
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Ninn,
Thanks for posting this. It's been awhile since I last took the attachment test and I was thrilled to see that my attachment style now falls in the upper left hand quadrant. I really do have an "earned" secure attachment thanks to my wonderful T. It was pretty amazing to see that result as I did NOT start out there.

AG

That is really interesting. I am near the middle, but on the high anxiety side and actually slightly more fearful/avoidant than preoccupied, not at all how I feel I am in general. I think it's because it is dealing with my romantic partner when I answered the questions and my relationship has become so ambivalent due to realizing some of the damage and issues there, so I definitely have become more avoidant in that relationship, whereas I used to be preoccupied. Interestingly, H has become preoccupied in response, whereas he used to be avoidant. I wonder how different it would be if I answered this survey in terms of T. I guess being in the middle (literally almost ON the line) between preoccupied and avoidant makes sense for the D-attachment, though. There were several questions that if I was answering about T, I could have answered either agree or disagree based on past experiences...

Edit: The second test was interesting too. I actually got secure with H, although a bit high on the anxiety and near the line between secure and preoccupied. Best friend was secure, with low anxiety and high avoidance. I got Dismissing with mom, duh, low anxiety and high avoidance. I got fearful with Dad, mid-range on the anxiety and only slightly less avoidant than with my mom. Now, I'm curious if other parts answered how different it would be. Fun little tests. I still don't have the guts to answer either about T, though.

quote:

focusing on the intellectual stuff and gaining more knowledge could sometimes be a defense mechanism for me. I could stay one remove from my emotions and discuss what was happening until the cows came home.

Yep - totally me! I get OCD about somehting new I've learned thoughout mu journey and read every book I can find on it. Then, I go to see T, and nothing. I freeze. I don't even bring up the info. I've read becuase I think I'm afraid it will make her question me or dig deeper.

My daughter has RAD. She's been with me for 6 years now and only recently am I aware enough to realize I have attachment problems too ~ DUH! I took the test and fell in the fearful-avoidant category. Now I want to find books on adult attachment and read all I can!

HA HA,

I was firmly smack back in the middle of the Dismissive quadrant - with my hubby. Woops.

SD

SHIT. I am high anxiety--fearful--avoidant.... of course. Not sure if this has anything to do with what's going on in my brain right now. BUT, I pretty much agree with it. Thanks for posting this test. It's quite interesting.

--Hollywood

Hmm the first test, in respect to romantic relationships, was way off. But in respect to friendships, because I keep myself at a distance anyway, I was in the top left box. Secure.

The second one my scores for my parents were almost off the chart on the dismissive/avoidance section. Makes sense really, I don't tell my parents anything about what goes on with me anymore. I'm quite superstitious about telling them because of they're expectations of me.

Anxious-preoccupied with romantic partner. Sounds about right. It's why I refuse to enter a relationship or look for one at all. I know that my anxiety shoots through the roof the moment I become intimate with someone. Abandonment issues are on red alert with romantic partners.

Quite good with my best friend though. Secure. But then I'm relatively detached to friends at the same time. Subconsciously I attach and detach to friends quite quickly.

Very interesting links. Thanks!