Regarding the Stories and Language we have for Love and Attachment.
I am tired of being ruled by pressures, insecurities, fears, and the long, self-imposed limitations created by the neglect and abuse of my childhood. Likewise, I no longer wish to rely on self-isolation as a form of protection. I’ve processed, embodied, and healed as much as I can in that isolation, and I’ve hit right up against the surprisingly high ceiling of what I can achieve on my own.
I’ve done hard, good work; taken care of myself; learned to love myself; and found an internal sense of safety. I would like to think I’ve modeled what sincere and practical self-care can look like for both my friends and my family. And yet, more than one of my trauma-informed practitioners has espoused this nugget of wisdom:
Trauma that was created relationally must be healed relationally.
I’ve been writing about this for months, and this essay—and the forthcoming Part 3—are no different. To move this essay forward, however, I want to be clear and direct about something. In the past year, the most significant gains in my emotional and therapeutic progress have come down to one thing: no longer pathologizing or shaming myself for how I’ve protected myself.
After several years and a long education in self-care—and what felt like a full-time job in trauma work—I eventually achieved a reasonable amount of regulation and ease. At that point, I realized it was no longer the defensive patterns or even the trauma responses that were causing me the most distress. It was the internalized shame I continued to harbor over how damaged and aberrant I perceived myself for requiring coping mechanisms and survival strategies in the first place. I did not see any of it as inherent, intuitive, or intelligent. Instead, it was all proof of my brokenness and unalterable deficiency. Undiscovered neurodivergence, chronic nervous system dysregulation, and complex PTSD will really do a number on a gal.
No more of that, thank you.
In the end, the world-altering tidal wave that began with a dyslexia diagnosis buoyed me up and out of so much heartache and so many self-imposed limits. This recent sea change has washed away much of the shame I harbored over dissociation, maladaptive daydreaming, fawning, freezing, limerence, and so much more.
And so here I land in Part Two, with a commitment to be bold and brave—to face risk in order to find relational healing and co-regulation. Ideally, to let more love into my life while I do. And likewise, to wash away the lingering shame I have felt about love—how I love or fail to love, how or if I allow myself to be loved. In other words, my attachment type.
Allow me to restate my assertion and commitment from Part One. I’m not looking for any one person to sweep me off my feet or mend my broken heart. I am not seeking to sidestep healing for the sake of romance. I’m not even aiming for monogamy, per se. I am hoping to welcome more affection, embodied connection, joyful presence, and attunement into my life. I imagine this as warm conversation, honesty, quiet communing, vulnerability, respect, and a healthy dose of physical presence. I want to engender relational safety and growth.
And to work toward that end, I’ve decided to date.
Great. Super. Bring it.
But also—oh, fuck me.
From the outside, this might look like a reasonable plan. What’s the worst that could happen? What indeed.
A person in my position might coach themselves to take small, deliberate steps. Okay, yes. So far so good. Boundaries, mindfulness, tiny risks—let’s keep it up! I’ve been expanding my once razor-thin window of tolerance for these things, and this is not just talk. I’ve made sure-footed, measurable progress. The control and calm I can now bring to bear feel enormous compared to what I once had access to. But each of us has our own approach, limits, and triggers, and I know I’m working right up against mine.
Historically, the moment I reach overwhelm or intolerance in an intimate—physical or emotional—moment, my brain lights up into some sort of Star Trek–style red alert, and I slam up against so much intense resistance it takes my breath away. And like dissociation, fawning, freezing, and all the rest, my nervous system is not offering me much choice in how I react. It’s automatic. It’s preservation.
I’ve been so bound up in this—both literal self-protection and the stories I tell myself about it—for so long. I’m not sure where one ends and I begin. It’s easy to shame an inclination or behavior when you recognize it as so “on-brand you.” So much of what I’ve come to lament about myself—this necessary but stifling protection, and how I manage relationships—is rooted in attachment theory and specifically in my assignment to what is typically considered the most regrettable and dysfunctional attachment type there is.
I’d like to offer a simple primer on attachment theory. I’m interested in doing so because I’ve recently been given cause to consider attachment through a whole new lens: evolution! And holy shit, I will take any excuse to talk about evolution, any day of the week.
And if that is not reason enough, know that it was through this reframing—this evolutionary lens—that I finally began to shift how I perceive attachment and its impact on me. Here is the UV light with which I could finally sanitize the shame I’ve been dragging along behind me—shame for how I show up, back down, and ultimately run and hide from connection, intimacy, and love. I am so much closer to putting this particular flavor of regret and shame to bed. Maybe this can help you, too. I hope so.
Okay, here we go. Attachment theory was initially proposed in the 1950s. It has expanded tremendously since then, first appearing in developmental psychology and later driving a huge—and arguably beneficial—transformation in modern parenting. This was referred to as attachment parenting. Later, in the 1980s, there was a shift toward using attachment theory to explore and explain a wide range of adult human behavior.
The two names you will see most often when reading about the advent of attachment theory are John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Through his work in the 1940s and 50s, Bowlby observed that infants and children separated from their primary caregiver often suffered emotionally and physically.
Bowlby posited that, as social mammals, our biology and neurology are programmed to seek connection with others and to sustain that connection at all costs. This was not, at its heart, about modern parenting styles or even about culture at large. Bowlby saw this as part of our evolutionary design, bred into us to ensure the continuation of our species. Over millennia, humans who form attachments survived. Human mothers and infants who were appropriately attached meant fed, protected babies. Human adults who formed physical and emotional attachments to one another had more babies.
The intimate bonds formed and upheld through attachment served as an aegis for the larger social group. I can imagine attachment driving this on a macro scale. Individuals and groups with a powerful motivation to stay connected and protect one another produced more offspring with similarly strong attachment drives. Those without this compulsion would not survive and would not go on to produce more people with a similar low attachment. Voilà! Evolution!
Ultimately, this selection for forming and maintaining social bonds was so strong that it was literally branded into our biology and neurology. From birth, neurotransmitters like oxytocin and dopamine rewarded this need for social connection, and as our young brains acclimatized to life with our primary caregivers, they changed accordingly. Neuroscience has shown this: once we settle into attachments with other humans, our brains are intrinsically altered. In neurobiology, this is referred to as the “attachment system.” More on this later.
Back to the theory itself—in the 1960s and 70s, Ainsworth further developed the concept of attachment by identifying and describing three main attachment types, or styles: secure, anxious, and avoidant. Any given person will fall into one of these three groups based on the early life experiences they did (or did not) have with their primary caregivers, or “attachment figures.”
Ainsworth theorized that if a child had at least one consistent, loving, and validating caregiver, they might fall into the secure type. If a child was exposed to inconsistent or unpredictable attention, care, and affection, they might develop an anxious attachment style. Children raised by emotionally unavailable, dismissive, or rejecting attachment figures might develop an avoidant attachment style.
It has always been my takeaway, when reading about attachment types, that everyone but securely attached children were implicitly framed as compromised by their early childhood experiences—shortchanged by less-than-ideal parenting. Maybe not every word I read about attachment hinted at or outright suggested this, but many did.
In any case, in the decades since Bowlby’s initial work, attachment theory has become increasingly accepted and well-regarded. By the 1980s, it was further theorized that the attachment styles we, as modern Homo sapiens, develop in early childhood form a basic blueprint for emotional regulation and relating, shaping how we show up in our intimate adult relationships.
Here is what is generally accepted and widely shared about adult attachment styles:
Adults with a secure attachment style are typically eager for connection, only reasonably concerned about rejection, and able to engage comfortably in romantic and intimate relationships.
People with anxious attachment crave closeness but are often worried about others’ ability to love them. Their relationships are influenced by fear of losing that closeness, and their behavior is therefore often perceived as “clingy.”
People with avoidant tendencies come at intimacy from a very different place. Avoidant attachment is characterized by distrust of—or even distress caused by—closeness, and rather than clinging to others, these individuals are often seen as, well, avoidant, keeping others at an arm’s length.
Even here, we can sense who might be perceived as “better” or—I don’t know—more secure. In their book Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller share an often-cited estimate of how attachment appears in modern adult populations: roughly 50% of people fall into the secure attachment category, about 20% may have an anxious attachment style, and approximately 25% are avoidant.
Levine and Heller go on to report that three to five percent of individuals fall into a rare fourth attachment style, which they refer to as an anxious/avoidant type. Recognition of this fourth type emerged from the work of Mary Main and Judith Solomon in the 1980s. This fourth style is also referred to as disorganized attachment.
Regardless of the label used, it is understood not merely as the result of inconsistent or unavailable care, but as a potential outcome of caregiving that is neglectful, abusive, chaotic, or frightening. The language here is largely unambiguous: disorganized attachment is associated with early traumatic experiences. For the record, this less well-known and less common (or so say Levine and Heller) attachment style is how I self-identify.
Popular psychology loves attachment theory. There are books, memes, and online quizzes galore. It’s not difficult to find a dating guide offering casual, oversimplified, or outright shaming takes on how people with different attachment styles typically pair up—and how likely or unlikely those pairings are to last. In Attached, Levine and Heller go into great detail about what happens when people with different attachment styles mix and mingle. Again, implicit—and occasionally explicit—in much of this popular fluff is the idea that secure folks are great, and the rest of us have a bunch of fucking work to do.
Let’s step away from the meme-worthy conceptions of attachment for just a little longer. For a reason, I promise. Please join me for an expanded evolutionary perspective. It’s here that we can look past pop psychology (and pathology) and consider the attachment types for what they actually are: survival strategies. Even the less-than-ideal-sounding types—not just the secure style—make instinctive and sophisticated sense.
We accept that our evolutionary biology continues to shape and fuel aspects of modern human behavior—from craving high-carb sweetness to the painful yet beneficial reality of adolescents differentiating from their parents. The same is true of attachment. Hear me out. Let’s look again at how babies develop attachment.
Secure attachment looks and feels like the best outcome, right? Right. For a child who receives consistent nurturance and affection from their primary attachment figures, all is well in the world. This child does not need to manipulate, cling to, or reject that caregiver, because the caregiver freely and reliably offers what the child requires and desires.
But what happens when—due to circumstances, environmental pressures, or even cultural factors—a caregiver is unable to provide that reliability? If the child experiences care as coming and going, if affection, protection, and perhaps even resources are not constant or reliable? Evolution might then favor the child who, under these pressures, instinctively adopts an anxious style of attachment. Seeking, insisting, and holding on to what is inconstant might better improve this individual’s chances of survival.
Likewise, if care is conditional or vanishes altogether, a child’s biology may arm them against such misfortune or loss by developing an avoidant style. And when we think about what this might have looked like deep in our evolutionary past, it may not be that our early ancestors were lacking or capricious in their care of offspring, but that people were more regularly eaten by tigers or felled by famine or disease. It might then serve their children to be less reliant on attachment bonds. Less attachment might mean greater flexibility in moving between family or social groups, and greater movement might mean access to more resources and protection.
One could then theorize that the young of our earliest ancestors developed attachment styles based on both their connections with caregivers and the environmental pressures their clan faced in the early years of their life.
This is not established science, but speculatively, imagine with me:
Bountiful times might allow for securely attached babes; lean times may have rewarded the social vigilance of anxious cave babies; and times of strife and struggle may have favored the distancing of avoidant cave folk.
There is nothing disordered or compromised about any of these ancestors of ours. All of them—secure and insecure alike—were perfectly poised to survive the prevailing winds of their early life and, of course, to have the babies to carry their genes onward.
Speculation aside, attachment—after an infant’s instinct to cry when hungry—may be one of the earliest and most important survival strategies of our species. But unlike our biological “hangry” instinct, it is not innate. It’s developmental and formed relationally. And it literally changes your brain.
The neuroscience of the attachment system is fascinating! It illuminates so much about what people do and how they feel. Here are some of the things we know about how human brains diverge due to attachment type:
People with anxious attachment have brains organized in ways that make down-regulation difficult when they perceive an attachment threat. They seek closeness to contend with that threat and often have a higher drive in their social reward system. They are more sensitive to rejection than other attachment types and are prone to nervous system hypervigilance.
Folks who are avoidant have brains that will lean into emotional suppression when they feel relational discomfort. They may crave distance for regulation, and when under perceived threat, rather than seeking reward, these brains are wired to disengage more readily. They are more sensitive to relational risk and are more likely to shift into shutdown in a bid for safety.
So, the next time you consider the buddy who nervously clings to their distant, aloof partner or the jerk who ghosted your best friend, please consider that these less-than-ideal behaviors are often less about what we want to do and more about what our nervous system insists upon. Lamentable outcomes—for sure, but these could actually be survival strategies in action. And while it’s tremendously hard for us humans not to make value judgments about these kinds of interaction, it’s worth trying, if only for a moment, to reframe them not as bad behavior, but as preservation.
And let me be direct: if you are the person who clings or ghosts—especially if these behaviors feel confusing or compulsive—try to release yourself from some of the embarrassment or shame you may carry about these patterns. I’m not suggesting that you are absolved of responsibility for how you treat yourself and other people. But I am saying that working against your attachment type and neurobiology takes real, deliberate, self-compassionate work—work that absolutely cannot be done through shaming or self-criticism alone. Go gently, friend.
For what it’s worth, reading about the neurobiological and developmental differences observed in people with disorganized attachment is eerily similar to reading about the changes in brain function and behavior associated with complex trauma. I suspect this overlap exists because the two are often chicken-and-egg-ing it. That is, if you have endured one (complex trauma), you may also find yourself wrestling with the other (disorganized attachment). And so on and so forth.
Here are some common features of disorganized attachment: when a person perceives a relational threat, two competing attachment directives can activate simultaneously. This often looks and feels like chronic nervous system dysregulation, as the individual attempts to secure relational safety through connection while also shutting down connection in response to perceived threat. Regulation may feel inaccessible, either through closeness or through distance. Their nervous systems often show signs of chronic stress, swinging between hypervigilance and shutdown. It’s a lot to live with—and even more to make sense of after the fact.
If you noticed a marked difference between how I described anxious/avoidant and disorganized attachment, you’re picking up on some real tension. The call is coming from inside the house here, folks. I’m writing from within the system, and the “system” constantly feels like it is chasing its own fucking tail. It’s difficult for me to extend a similar non-judgmental grace to my disorganized attachment because I feel so often afflicted by it.
Nevertheless, let me try this again:
Individuals with disorganized attachment have nervous systems organized around two competing attachment strategies that can activate together under relational stress. Perceived threat can heighten sensitivity to relational cues and compel simultaneous bids for closeness and distanced self-protection. When our attachment system is activated, our nervous system can swing rapidly between hyper- and hypoarousal. In these moments, relational safety can feel largely inaccessible—but this pattern reflects the body’s intuitive mode of protection following prolonged developmental and relational neglect or abuse. It is not, as I may have expressed in thought, word, or any self-assessment, a curse or a self-betrayal.
Whew. That’s better.
Once more, I’m compelled to acknowledge that a coping strategy that has caused me so much pain and frustration may nevertheless exist for a good, thoroughly savvy, and instinctual reason. Furthermore, just as with fawning and freezing, one does not simply decide to stop having attachment-based tendencies and reactions. Your brain or nervous system may not allow it—at least not at first.
Researchers and psychologists are careful to point out that individuals can, in fact, change their attachment type, but it’s not a choice to simply step into a more secure style just because you wish to. It takes steadfast work, self-compassion, awareness, and steady, patient determination. This feels like the last frontier and the wild west of my trauma work, because it’s a design as old as I am, and, for better or for worse, the effort necessarily involves other human beings.
We are all familiar with loaded, over-general proclamations like:
I’m so unlucky in love.
No one ever chooses me.
She’s only attracted to bad boys.
I only seem to go for emotionally unavailable women.
We date people who remind us of our parents.
Most of us carry at least one of these peculiar, often sabotaging beliefs.
In attachment research, internal working models are patterns of regulation and response that develop early in relation to our caregivers. These patterns are mapped onto our nervous systems and translated into largely unquestioned assumptions about who we are, what we are worth, how trustworthy we expect others to be, and how we allow them to show up in relation to us. These unspoken beliefs can play out like prophecy; in turn, our internal working models shape the stories we tell ourselves about love—stories we then work hard to rationalize and explain.
Each of the assumptions we make about ourselves and others can usually be traced back to something our nervous systems learned, and our attachment systems will work overtime to preserve.
For example, “I constantly self-sabotage my relationships” might be an avoidant person’s way of explaining what happens when their nervous system senses threat and reflexively pulls back for self-protection.
A person with anxious attachment might tell themselves, “I want to get close, but they always pull away,” reflecting their nervous system’s keen sensitivity to love that feels inconsistent or unpredictable.
Statements like, “I always repeat the same patterns,” might express anyone’s valiant attempts to find relational safety, but with skewed dictums shaped by their early attachment experiences.
I rock a few classic ones:
I’m only attracted to unavailable men.
And
I will always pull away to protect myself.
Viewed through the lens of attachment, I can see two conflicting yet enmeshed priorities. The first is rooted in my primary attachment experiences with my parents; it reveals a persistent drive to win the love of inconstant and emotionally distant caregivers. The second is driven by the ongoing relational trauma I also experienced with them. This drive runs counter to wanting their love and instead works to shield me from their unpredictability and unkindness through my rejection and withdrawal.
And really, what does wanting unattainable partners do for me? Does it grant me access to the hard-won but ultra-validating love I should have had as a child, or does it allow me to repeatedly enact that self-fulfilling prophecy—one that keeps me safe and at a distance by avoiding all risk and vulnerability? Can you aim for both at the same time? Is disorganized attachment really that intelligent and contrarian? Apparently, yes.
Or is it even more convoluted than that? Are we dating people who remind us of our parents, or are we simply reinforcing how we already treat ourselves? Am I attracted to unavailable partners because I’m unconsciously unavailable to myself—a pattern I learned by imprinting on unavailable parents? Ugh. It’s all so head-spinning. In any case, I think you can imagine how an attachment system that constantly works at cross purposes doesn’t result in much “luck in love.”
One last attachment working model I want to fess up to: the regrettable story that people who offer their love and affection freely and unreservedly are somehow naïve or imperfect—the ones not to be trusted, or, worse, respected. I’ve operated from this muddled, ungenerous place for much of my life. My attachment-fueled biases go beyond knowing high fives with the avoidants or side-eyeing the anxious; they extend to completely warping my perception of people and situations that are stable and healthy. I genuinely believed that people who were steady and able to love were the problem. Best to steer clear of them. That’s some fancy mental-emotional chicanery, Parker.
Historically, whether I’m yearning for the unavailable, pushing away the expectant, or wildly pathologizing the secure, the end result is the same: I never have to face real, meaningful connection.
I’ve come a long way in adulthood. I’ve learned through affectionate and devoted friendships that loving well—and in abundance—is both healthy and preferred. But I can’t help but worry that this unfair bias still lies beneath my healing and good intentions. As recently as last year, I joked that people with secure and anxious attachment were the weirdos. A buddy of mine and I laughed and laughed. It’s been shown that we can move the needle on our attachment type, and I’m confident I’ve clicked a few notches toward secure, but my patched programming still runs on a deeply disorganized OS.
In the first draft of this essay, I shared a lot of excruciating detail about my dating history. In the second draft, I decided to spare you all of that and share something else instead: in every attachment-style assessment I’ve taken, I’ve been left completely frustrated and flummoxed because each quiz assumes active participation in romantic relationships.
I’ve often wondered when I’ll get to unlock the super-secret attachment-style quiz for people who assiduously avoid those relationships. My style isn’t even close to being represented.
In case you think I’m overstating this, please allow me to share the bare minimum detail of my romantic history: in 50 years, I have only used the term “boyfriend” to describe three individuals, and only one of those relationships lasted more than a year. That translates to the vast majority of my life lived alone and without any romantic or sexual connection. My attachment style has historically been neither anxious nor avoidant, but anti. So fine, disorganized it is.
Despite my disorganized style and the complex trauma that made and reinforced it, I still want what everyone else does. The original OS—the one we all share as social mammals, the programming that turns us toward one another, seeking affection, connection, and attunement—is still humming away in the background, driving daydreams, parasocial fantasy, even limerence. And, man, it can feel like a depressing state of affairs when you can’t stop obsessing over the one thing you never let yourself have.
For the last thirteen years, though, I’ve been pretty low-key about it all. I was exiting the only long-term relationship I ever managed, with a toddler firmly attached to my hip like some adorable limpet. I was entering the seven-year period of ultimate burnout caring for my elderly parents. If I was lonely at any point, it went unnoticed. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and at the very beginning of my trauma work journey—the same journey that is inspiring me to write these words now.
And boy, have I been doing the work. Once I get it in my head that I have to heal a thing, I don’t give up; I take no prisoners. The first step in this process is always education. I read as much about a given topic as my dyslexic mind can manage. This predilection is how the Levine and Heller book wound up in my lap. Attached rubbed me the wrong way. And that’s putting it politely. The book reads like an indictment of people with avoidant attachment. It seems to place most relational woes on the heads of the folks who arguably have a harder time feeling closeness and vulnerability. As if we had a choice! Way to get us on board with further relational risk, buddies.
I put the book down and did not finish it; I was so annoyed. And, look, I’ll confess I was reading with a weirdly pro-disorganized bias, but honestly, Levine and Heller’s own bias—at least in the parts I read—seemed beyond obvious, heavy-handed, and frankly, a little unkind. Though I suppose I should thank them for lighting a fire of righteous investigation under my ass. After putting the book aside, I got down to business and knocked out the rest of this essay. But my reaction to Attached also allowed me to shift my focus from merely acknowledging my attachment patterns to actively disarming the demoralized shame and lack of hope I felt over them.
Because here is the thing—the idea that secure attachment is better or more functional than any other type is as unfair as suggesting that winning the lottery is the best way to earn wealth. Being secure is not inherently better; it’s just lucky. And only lucky within the framework of modern (and Western) romantic notions of intimacy, exclusivity, and emotional availability.
Likewise, any literature or resource that frames the other attachment styles as problematic—or worse, broken—is for the birds. We have already established that these are about necessary and involuntary modes of protection. And what, exactly, are we done shaming ourselves for? Hm?
While we are at it, can we talk about the actual fucking words we use for the attachment types? Because friends, any sense that people with insecure or disorganized attachments are, by their nature, “less than” is not just the result of a poor understanding of evolutionary survival strategies; it is, let’s be honest, very much reinforced by the actual names themselves. I mean, really—secure equals good, healthy, ideal, while everyone else is implicitly cast as a provisional partner, just waiting to be replaced when that super-sexy, securely attached mate walks into the room.
Joking aside, it’s extremely easy to pathologize something when the language used to describe it is so unequivocally negative. In order to dispel the systemic, interpersonal, and individual shame we may be lugging around, let us consider a rebranding campaign for adult attachment!
Secures, you can keep your “secure attachment type” label. Good for you.
Let’s see—maybe anxious type could become seeking type? Likewise, maybe avoidant could become protective type? And for disorganized, perhaps we could take a page from neurodiversity and the labeling of ADHD subtypes, and simply refer to it as the combined type. I am willing to forego something with a positive connotation if we can at least move away from the unfortunate ambivalence and ambiguity of “disorganized.”
Or—no. Wait. How about complex type? I like that. It nods nicely toward the “complex” in complex PTSD and, again, the connection between disorganized attachment and C-PTSD—if not something I can cite directly from the research I’ve done—feels so intuitive to me that it registers as truth in my body. So there is that.
Anyone got any great ideas for this semantic reorientation? Setting any dreams of actual diagnostic reform aside, let’s aim for language that removes judgment—both toward ourselves and the ones we wish to love. Let’s make it about how we function, not what is perceived as our failures or fractures—and, for the love of God, let’s stop shaming ourselves for how our nervous systems tried to protect us.
You with me? Good. Let’s go.
Join me for Part Three, where I discuss trauma-informed therapies, my recent adventures with my attachment system, and what it looks like to be on the cusp of the rest of your life.
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