The Role of Attachment and Relationships

Emotional connection to others through secure relationships is so important to us because attachment relationships while growing up are a source of protection and safety and are furthermore needed for our brains to develop optimally. When our early attachment needs for love and security are met with inconsistency, disinterest, rejection, critique, or punishment, it creates complex and painful feelings and experiences in relation to the emotional distance that exist within those relationships.

Attachment studies furthermore show that babies are extremely sensitive to the cues they receive about feelings from their caregivers. This means that when parents are uncomfortable with certain feelings, thoughts, and behaviours and when they react negatively to them, we pick this up and learn which behaviours, feelings, and thoughts are acceptable and can be expressed and which feelings, thoughts, and behaviours must be avoided and suppressed as they threaten the connection to our caregivers, and, thus, our sense of safety and security. Therefore, certain feelings, thoughts, and actions become associated with danger and trigger anxiety.

Anxiety can be described as the body’s alarm system as it signals that painful feelings and internal states have come close to conscious awareness and that these internal experiences are perceived as dangerous as they are associated with the possibility of separation, pain, and loss. This is how certain internal states and feelings are connected to anxiety, which we may unconsciously attempt to avoid by using various defences and automatic patterns. Defences gradually develop to try to cope with anxiety and seek adapt to primary attachment figures and their attachment and behavioural patterns. In current relationships, however, attachment urges and experiences become activated and often defensive patterns are intensified.

Avoidance of certain internal states and feelings through defences can be experienced as problems with intimacy and closeness, obsessive and ruminative thinking, minimising or forgetting events, becoming numb or detached, or displacing anger towards others. Avoiding and internalising internal states and feelings can cause depression, anxiety, pain and physical complaints that have no medical explanation, and self-sabotaging behaviours. Therefore, these defences and automatic patterns can end up becoming the problems in our lives as they can significantly affect our self-worth, relationships, productivity, level of insight, and enjoyment in life.