How I Discovered My Anxious Attachment Style
Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Models: Zaryn Nicole and Natalie Rose.
Copy by: Ashley Macha
Models: Zaryn Nicole & Natalie Rose
Editor: Jeni Fjelstad
Creative Direction: Catie Menke
I have felt many types of love in my life thus far. Many types of attachment as well. And it’s been transformative to know the differences.
Sometimes, you might think you have feelings for someone or something, but it’s really an attachment to an idea or to a situation that happened during a critical moment, and that is what triggered the attachment. Other times, you know your feelings are real, and you know your attachment is rare.
Depending on trauma, rejection, love, security, safety, or abandonment, our attachment styles can go up and down the attachment spectrum throughout our lives. So breaking it down, there are three main types of attachment: secure, anxious, and avoidant.
One Instagrammer, @thesecurerelationship, is a licensed therapist and creates graphics that are explanatory, digestible, and really puts the types of attachments into perspective. She also shares tips on how to read other people’s attachment styles — either family, your partner, colleagues — and communicate with them in a supportive way.
A little background into my own attachment style: I grew up in two separate divorced households — and just to be clear, I am not resentful about that at all. I had four incredible parents and so much extended family that adopted me as my own. My parents divorced when I was very young and both remarried shortly after. Both sides had two additional children, my half siblings, that are about eight to 10 years younger than me. There were separate vacations, activities, dinners that occurred that always left me, well, feeling left out. Of course I was included in some, but I always felt like I needed to fight for that attention, or that I wasn’t worthy enough to be included in everything on both sides. I now can understand the situation, but even still, I sometimes can’t help but feel that unworthiness creep up. (Hello, anxiety!)
And that attachment style and unworthiness strengthened as a result of other situations in my life. I was together with my ex-husband for almost ten years, and married for five. Throughout, he always struggled with addiction, and I always felt like I wasn’t enough to be around if he was sober. That I wasn’t enough for him to quit the drugs and alcohol. In retrospective and through self awareness, I also now know that addiction is a disease, and that’s not the case. But it still compounded onto my anxious attachment style, to where my validation seeking was at its peak, and I was even more fearful of rejection and abandonment that I kept the wrong people and things in my life for too long.
I share how I got to that place of crippling anxious attachment because a few years ago, a relationship so special and dear to me ended because of my anxiety, my old attachments, my need to people-please. (Damn you, anxious attachment style!). Anything to try to prove my worth. And sometimes — and definitely in my situation — the greatest challenge you will ever face is beginning to believe in yourself again after you feel like all has been lost.
But, I’m proud to be in a place to recognize it. To know that I still feel anxious at times but that I can be more aware of the why. I can pause and think through replies and actions. I can breathe.
And it took a lot of counseling and learning, glasses of wine and long runs, growth and crying, and a huge loss in my life to figure it out.
The biggest takeaways for me when it comes to the types of attachment are:
have an open mind and trust the process
be understanding of all attachment styles and have patience with yourself and others who struggle with theirs and are still learning
always keep a positive, driven, optimistic, goal-oriented mentality, while also remembering to protect yourself (and others) in the process
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