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July 23, 2017 8:58 AM

Where do I get a secure attachment style?

I know that similar questions have been asked before: here, here, and here times, but I don't think any of the advice resonates with me, so I thought I should try and ask again.

I think I have signs of all three - anxious, avoidant, secure attachment styles. I hate how volatile relationships make me feel, and I want to be fully secure, but I don't know how. I already have regular appointments with a therapist, so I am looking for personal stories about how you cope with feeling clingy/jealous/wanting to push people away when they get too close/preferring to go for people who are emotionally unavailable.

Would be very grateful for stories / tips / lifehacks for making it easier to manage my insecure attachment style or developing a more stable attachment style.

Thank you! :)

posted by Crookshanks_Meow to Human Relations (6 answers total)

Hi crookshanks, I'm a recovered borderline, feel free to read my askme history. I'm now married and those attachment issue days are a memory, but I suppose if I were to be in the dating pool again I'd have to do it again, but it'd be easier after my experience in a securely attached relationship.

All I can tell you is that you have to fucking white knuckle it. Your body will be screaming to run away, and you just say to yourself: this is attachment anxiety, and I'm choosing to stay. And then you stay. It's torture the first ten times. But you've finally hit a point where you're sick of bouncing around, and so you decide to stay. You've picked a decent, secure partner, and you make your body stay.

That's all I can tell you my friend. Grab a pencil and bite down on it. No way through but through. Good luck.
posted by serenity soonish at 10:02 AM on July 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

- Realize you can land on your feet whatever relationship turmoil occurs.
- Spend some years alone to reset your internal voices and get happy with who you are.
- Improve your 'chooser' to seek out the healthily, securely attached.
- Know your red flags and hot buttons and have strategies to address them. ("Emotions are good informants but bad advisors.")
- Catalogue your physical responses (adrenaline tingles, jaw clenching, whatever) and develop soothing physical overrides.
- Understand that attachment happens on a continuum and in collaboration with An Other, and get used to telling yourself that everyone has moments when they're afraid, sabotaging, clingy, jealous (serenity soonish's 'white knuckling' it). That's being human. It becomes all about how quickly and healthily you can recover while being able to maintain the relationship with Self and Other.
posted by cocoagirl at 10:15 AM on July 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Have you read the book Attached and worked through the exercises? If not that seems like the place to start.
posted by bunderful at 11:43 AM on July 23, 2017

I completely agree with serenity soonish. I, too, am a recovered borderline and I go to therapy once a week, still. I bounced from guy to guy...and the minute they started looking long term, I'd just ditch them and start over...until I met my husband. He told me early on, "Bliss is not a thing to be conquered, acquired or possessed by outer mens; rather, it must be relaxed into." He was right. Once I gave up fighting him off, WOW. I'm secure now, and it's something I've never been before. It's nice to have settled down but I white knuckled it all the way!! You also might want to read the book, 'I hate you, don't leave me'. Good luck to you.
posted by Amalie-Suzette at 1:35 PM on July 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Somewhere in the book "Attached" it mentions that both insecure attachment types and avoidant attachment types will tend toward secure when partnered with someone with a secure attachment style. Gosh I hope that makes sense. It's been a long day. I visualize it as a meter with insecure attachment on one end and avoidant attachment on the other and secure attachment in the middle. Presumably everyone finds themselves in different areas on this meter at different times in their life depending on circumstances. People with attachment styles tending toward the extreme (either avoidant or insecure) will both move closer to "normal" (secure) when they are in a relationship with someone who has a secure attachment style. I suppose this makes sense, but I remember having a very big "ah-ha!" moment when I read it. I am from the opposite camp as some of the previous posters as a very insecurely attached type (especially if I'm with someone who is avoidantly attached!--makes sense). It too, can be hell on earth. I'm so glad there are people that study this. Knowledge is power.
posted by unicornologist at 7:50 PM on July 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm successfully attached; but my attachment started straight up disirganized and now falls more in the anxious/insecure zone moving into secure.

Things that helped most 1) keeping therapists that worked for me as long as I could

2) Mindfulness about what I was actually feeling

3) more therapy

4) Identifying attachment triggers and working through them (for example;: my partner being sick puts me in a she is going to die state of mind)

5) Really looking at past relationship patterns, what I liked, what I disliked, what went wrong and what went right.

6)more therapy


Really, there is no lifehack but living and loving and being vulnerable. It straight up is anxiety provoking !

I give myself time before acting on strong relationship feelings, for perspective. My wife and I talk everything out. I ask others for advice and follow it. When my therapist tells me not to do something stupid I do not go do the thing.

Surprise, life turns out better that way.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:50 PM on July 23, 2017 [1 favorite]