Attachment is a close emotional bond that is built with the people who care for us and provide us with security. Certainly, attachment is very intense at the beginning of our lives, in these early stages we depend entirely on the protection of the people who live together to survive. In this sense, attachment is naturally formed as a guarantee or guarantee of survival, but at the same time marks, and many, the nature of our first relationships.
When the adults who care for us play their role well, we are more likely to develop some kind of safe attachment, regardless of our temperament, we depend on each other, but it does not generate any feeling of anxiety or frustration, on the contrary, when we are neglected or rejected, we are more likely to develop unsafe attachments. It’s a form of addiction laden with anxiety and ambivalence.
- “Enemies like hatred and attachment lack legs.
- Arms and other limbs.
- Besides.
- They have no courage or competition.
- So how did you manage to make me a slave?-Shantideva-.
The way these bonds are built in our early years of life will influence how we maintain loving relationships with people, unless we consciously intervene in that, so it can be said that such bonds leave a very deep, almost indelible mark. what we can see in adulthood is a tendency to reproduce the style of attachment that was the basis of each person in his childhood: somehow, the early attachment relationships have already told us what we can or cannot expect from people. No.
John Bowlby, an English psychoanalyst, became interested in attachment and developed a theory about it, from his observations established that we have a phylogenetic predisposition to develop bonds, links that are especially aimed at all those who provide us with protection and security or, in the absence, who should have been provided.
Subsequently, psychologist Mary Dinsmore Ainsworth identified three types of attachment, which are: safe attachment, ambivalent or resistant attachment, and avoidance or detachment attachment. the other two guys.
Safe attachment creates close and spontaneous emotional bonds. Insecurity (ambivalent and evasive) leads to severe repressions and difficulties in building intimacy with others.
When parents have a positive attitude and adequate availability for their children, safety obligations are formed, in this case children act predictably, if the mother walks away, babies cry and feel uncomfortable for a few seconds, then focus on the environment When she returns, they are happy and express their affection and joy.
If parents are distant or even show signs of rejection of the child or, on the contrary, are highly dependent, the baby (or child) is more likely to develop a type of unsafe attachment. When this happens, children realize that their needs will not be met or they fear that they will not be met in the future, hence their anxiety or avoidance as a means of protecting themselves from early abandonment or indifference.
Children can even learn that demonstrations of affection upset their loved ones in life, their parents. Then the little ones start saving their emotions for themselves. In such cases, when the mother leaves, the child barely reacts. And when he returns, the child also remains distant and engrossed in his thoughts. The little ones thus develop false independence.
The effects of avoiding attachment reach adulthood. Children who have grown up by these standards become adults virtually unable to express their emotions and not only to express them, but also to feel and identify them, they seek to distance themselves emotionally from everything and everyone else, they can be insensitive to others and very indifferent to their own feelings.
They are people who will try to find a solution to the problems of the outside world, because the inner part consciously does not matter to them.
This situation is mainly reflected in the life of a couple. These people are worried about losing their loved one. They believe that by not showing or minimizing their emotions, they are able to protect themselves from possible suffering. They avoid real dialogue and are surprised by unforeseen events. Instead of expressing their dissatisfaction with words, they do so with tantrums and false problems. These people suffer a lot because they cannot love with serenity, but they do so as if they are weighed by a serious threat; a threat they often fail to identify.
While attachment patterns tend to be maintained, it is always possible to mitigate and improve them. Sometimes the experience of losing a loved one provides reflections and changes about them. Sometimes this is done through psychotherapy. It is also possible to become aware of this situation and work individually to learn how to connect with the world in a more constructive way.
To overcome the avoidance of attachment is to restore the relationship that exists between the person and its interior, in many cases it is a question of regaining a much damaged self-esteem that causes a dull (unidentified) pain, it is only when the person heals this relationship that it is possible to consider the interior of the people with which he lives, so that it is only when the emotions themselves that appears the possibility of empathy towards the emotions of others are considered.
In this sense, it is very important to change the modes of communication, open the mind to good and evil, so that there is a controlled expression of these emotions, so that others have the opportunity to accept them, validate them and, in some cases, accompany them.
To say so seems very easy, but if learning is already difficult, unlearning what you have learned is even more so. He thinks that what we learn in childhood, or much of what we learn, is the basis on which we build the rest of the knowledge and habits acquired that characterize us today, so in many cases the help of a professional is recommended, otherwise the earthquake that can be caused by moving a piece as important as the style of attachment can end up destroying us.