Attachment is the intimate, deep and lasting emotional bond between human beings, designed to guarantee their survival. It is established in childhood with parents or caregivers and will condition our personality, our behavior and our way of relating in the future.
After seeing those established by John Bowlby, it is time to stop in a little detail on each of them. In this article we analyze the most common characteristics and emotions in the type of ambivalent anxious attachment.
Characteristics of ambivalent anxious attachment
It responds to a fickle, unpredictable type of emotional care. In this case, the caregiver meets the child’s needs in an ambivalent way. For the child, this behavior is unpredictable, since sometimes he offers calm and affectionate responses, but at other times he responds in an anxious or exaggerated way, depending on his mood, or his response is not available or is excessively delayed.
Thus, there is no real connection between his needs and the response he gets from his parents. Consequently, the child cannot trust his caregivers, does not perceive them as available, and learns that he must attract attention so that their demands are satisfied. Therefore, she expresses herself with all the intensity she knows how to get the caregiver to calm her need.
Interest in the environment is limited by fear, it is hardly exercised, so that it stops exploring the world around it or does so in an anxious and unrelaxed manner, with the detriment that this entails for its independence and personal autonomy. .
Emotional ambivalence produces anguish. This creates children worried, anxious, insecure, very emotional and exaggerated in their demands so that others can detect them, They become excessively anxious about separations.
Normally, the caregiver who fosters this type of attachment usually has a low capacity for own emotional self-regulation and that is what he ends up transmitting to his son. Frequently, this type of attachment in fathers and mothers is also related to overprotection and hypervigilance that they exert on their children.
What consequences can ambivalent anxious attachment have in adult life?
In adulthood, this type of attachment can cause a high emotional dependence. The person tends to look for someone who can calm them down and exaggerate their emotions and needs to ensure that the other person is emotionally close at all times.
You can develop a unfounded sensitivity to the idea of the partner abandoning them, as a consequence of that inconstancy in the emotional relationship of his childhood stage. In fact, it is a type of attachment that becomes evident in relationships.
We can find in this group people who feel unable to be alone and who always seek advice and support from others, insecure, with many doubts, with difficulties functioning autonomously and low self-esteem…
What does the work in therapy consist of to overcome this type of attachment?
Broadly speaking, the work in therapy will focus on modifying the person’s attachment style, on helping them discover that they really do not need anyone else to be calm, that they can manage their emotions autonomously. And that can be supported unconditionally by the other person without needing to draw attention or be absolutely attentive to others.
Therapy will make you gain security and trust to face the world without always having to resort to third parties.
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