What's Your Attachment Style? Part 3 - Video Transcript

Hey, everyone. I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist. Today is part three of the three-part series I'm doing on attachment. The first two videos talked about attachment in adulthood and in our adult relationships and then today I'm going to be focusing more on how we develop attachment as kids and then attachment as it relates to parenting.

So when we're growing up we develop these mental representations or internal working models that we call Schemas. These are created from the relationships we have mainly the relationships with our caregivers and they basically shape how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. They influence our personality, the way we relate to other people, and how we handle negative emotions. Sometimes these schemas develop in a maladaptive way depending on our experiences. We might think that that's the case or might be more obvious if someone has a traumatic experience, but it's important to note that this schema is more so the result of repeated experiences in childhood or adolescents. So if parents fail to meet their child's needs in a particular situation, that's not necessarily an indicator that the child will develop a maladaptive schema.

We're looking for sort of consistent repeated toxic experiences that lead to this maladaptive schema development and the child's temperament also plays an important role in development. So different children with different temperaments are going to respond differently to different parenting styles. 

Schemas are formed when one or more of our core human needs are not met and then these core emotional needs include a secure attachment. This is going to include a sense of safety, stability, nurturance, and acceptance from our caregivers or someone else close to us. It includes autonomy, competence, and a sense of identity. It includes freedom to express our needs and emotions, spontaneity and play, and then realistic limits or boundaries and self-control.

Dr. Dan Siegel is a renowned psychiatrist who refers to the four S of secure attachment. In order to form a secure attachment in childhood, a child must feel safe, soothed, seen, and secure. When these basic needs are not met a secure attachment cannot develop. This is when we develop these maladaptive schemas and we have one of the other sort of maladaptive attachment styles. We carry this into adulthood and it has a really big impact on the way we develop as individuals.

So someone with an anxious or preoccupied attachment is going to develop this when they have a parent who is sometimes there for them but sometimes isn't. So it's very consistent and the parent might be intermittently available or rewarding but then unavailable and really miss attuned to the child at other times. And so this leaves the child confused and frustrated. So they're in turn likely going to develop this anxious or preoccupied attachment style.

Next is the avoidance or dismissive attachment style. This is when a parent might meet the child's basic needs but has trouble responding on an emotional level. A lot of my clients experienced this growing up where they had everything they wanted or needed from a material standpoint, but the emotional connection wasn't there so chilled in this environment, and learned the best way to get their needs met by their parents is to act like they don't have any. And so they kind of become removed from their own emotions and develop this sort of independent stance that they can take care of themselves. And a lot of times this leads to an over-reliance on ourselves and a difficulty getting in touch with our emotions.

And then the last kind of unhealthy or maladaptive attachment style is disorganized attachment. This forms when a parent is frightening to their child or when they're actually frightened by the child. So in this case, the parent is again going to be unpredictable at one moment, they might laugh and reward a certain behavior and then at another moment they might have an angry outburst toward the same behavior. It's very erratic and unpredictable and so kids don't have any organized sense of how to get their needs met. And so they have this drive to seek out their parents for safety. But then when they get close to the parent, they actually feel more fearful. 

So I think it's important to reflect on our own attachment styles that we developed growing up. And then if you are a parent to be aware of your role as an attachment figure in your child's life. So as an adult, being able to identify the context of your emotional responses to different events is really important. And it's essential to recognize how big life events, like a divorce or a separation or something else that might be somewhat traumatizing to a child might actually alter their attachment style.

No matter where your own child falls in the spectrum of attachment, it's really important that they have the comfort and dependability from their caregivers in order to develop or maintain a secure attachment style. And then this is often how intergenerational trauma develops. This has kind of been a buzzword lately that these attachment styles and these schemas and these maladaptive ways of relating to ourselves and other people in the world. They can get passed down from one generation to the next. And so it's just really important to be aware of your own experiences and how you're passing those on to your own children if you are a parent. 

So I hope this was informative. Feel free to ask any questions or leave a comment and be sure to follow me on social media @catharticspacecounseling. Subscribe to my youtube channel, the Anxiety Therapist, so that you can stay up to date on more content. I release content on a weekly basis, so you'll be sure to catch those videos as they come out. I hope you all have a great week and I'll see you next time.