Looking Beyond Attachment Type to Understand Your Relationship Patterns - Part 2

Dimensions of Attachment

In my previous post, I explored some basic tenets of attachment styles.  In this post, I explore additional ways to look at attachment style by examining dimensions of attachment and how these dimensions can allow us to look at the inherent strengths of all attachment styles.  Hopefully, these ideas offer different views of your own or someone else’s attachment style that may be helpful.  For a deeper dive into these ideas, you can pick up your own copy of the book that I have cited in this post.

Part Two

In her book, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy, Jessica Fern (2020) explores attachment on the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance.  Citing research that looks at how examining these two facets of attachment intersect, Fern (2020), describes how this model of attachment allows for a more nuanced exploration of attachment.  Seeing where you fall on a continuum can allow for a more effective way to look at some of your relationship patterns that may be representative of insecure attachment rather than having to fit yourself into a prepackaged category of attachment.  In this model, we can also see the common ground of different attachment styles.  Attachment anxiety relates to feelings of abandonment, neglect or being separated from an attachment figure.  Attachment avoidance relates to how comfortable or uncomfortable a person feels being close to or reliant on a partner. 

If you imagine an axis for each of these dimensions from low to high and then cross them to form four quadrants, you would end up with a figure like this:

Understanding attachment through this example allows us to see how individuals may fall on a continuum for each dimension.  This model also illustrates how the two dimensions interact with each other.  For example, both secure and anxious attachment are low in avoidance, but this plays out very differently for each one, with securely attached individuals’ low avoidance stems from a sense of being able to approach partners with feelings of ease and flexibility, while anxiously attached individuals usually seek out closeness with a partner in order to quell feelings of anxiety over being alone and to calm fears of abandonment.  If you look at the dimension of anxiety, both anxious and fearful avoidant attachment are high in anxiety, but this plays out differently in each type because of the levels of avoidance.  In the fearful attachment style, high anxiety is a result of the individual wanting the closeness of a relationship, however, this is counteracted by the deactivating quality of high avoidance, which causes a retreat from that same closeness.  In anxious attachment, the individual feels high anxiety and low avoidance, which means they feel anxious when their partner is distant and desire closeness in a relationship as a way of reassurance of their sense of self-worth. 

The advantage to looking at attachment through dimensions is that it allows a sense of understanding where one might fall on a continuum rather than having to understand attachment through criteria meeting set categories, which may or may not always apply to each individual.  For example, not everyone who has a fearful avoidant attachment will come from a childhood marked by abuse or neglect.  Looking at the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance may allow for an ease of understanding the presenting characteristics of one’s attachment style to varying degrees of intensity or expression.

Strengths of Attachment

Measuring attachment through levels of avoidance and anxiety allows us to see the inherent strengths in all attachment styles.  In most views of attachment, secure is seen as the gold-standard of attachment and the other three styles are commonly known as insecure and seen as lacking qualities that allow for secure attachment.  This view fails to recognize the strengths that all attachment styles inherently possess.  As Fern (2020) points out, all attachment styles have at their root, the desire to express the human needs of autonomy and connection.

These two basic human needs are in constant flux within every individual and the ways in which we seek these out can be impacted by stress and/or relationship challenges.  When viewed from this position we can see how each attachment style displays their own unique strengths, rather than just challenges.  For example, someone with a dismissive attachment style uses minimizing and dismissive strategies to cope with attachment distress.  When operating from a place of less reactivity, someone using these strategies can also be seen as more aligned with their needs for autonomy and agency.  In healthy expressions of autonomy and agency, a draw towards self-sufficiency and competence can mean better developed skills that allow for tending to the practical and logistical needs of a situation, while also having the ability to compartmentalize emotions.  When operating from a place of high reactivity these needs move away from healthy expressions of autonomy towards more rigid boundaries which can shut others out and even deny the need for connection or help from others.

Someone with an anxious attachment has a hyperactivating strategy in response to attachment distress, which can often lead to those with this attachment style being seen as clingy or needy, but being higher on the dimension of attachment anxiety also represents a natural affinity towards connection with others.  In healthy expressions, this desire for connection and togetherness can mean being highly tuned in to the emotions of others and can create a sense of ease in tending to the needs of others. 

I have seen examples of this in my own private practice.  In my recent work with a client who has an anxious attachment style, we were able to identify the ways that his attachment style is uniquely equipped to handle recent challenges with his son, who was going through some emotional dysregulation related to recent changes in the family dynamic and routine.  While some of my client’s hyperactivating strategies have caused him to struggle in his relationship with his partner, these same strategies were a strength in his role as a father, as they allowed him to sensitively tune in to the emotional needs of his son in a unique way that allowed for validation and empathy.  This same client also identified how working on shifting his attachment was much easier in his role as a parent than it was in his role as a spouse.  Viewing his attachment from a strengths perspective, also highlighted a possible way for us to work on shifting his anxious attachment patterns that could be more immediate and direct for him. 

Fern, J. (2020). Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy. Portland, OR: Thorntree Press.