Hope and Attachment
Therapists often use this fancy word “attachment”. What we really mean is a question: “How are you with relationships?”. Whew - loaded question, right?. For many of us the realm of relationships has been high highs, low lows, and everything in between. For the sake of this blog, I won’t be describing attachment and its different styles and functions. Instead, I’ll be describing its relationship to hope.
Simply put, attachment can be one of two things: secure or insecure. There are different forms of insecure attachment that act in different ways to protect individuals. However, at the end of the day, those with an insecure attachment often find themselves dysregulated by their own emotions, estranged when they desire connection, and feeling a little hopeless. If that’s you, welcome.
Our attachment styles depend on all sorts of factors. Scientifically, different ways of being tended to from ages 0-1 contribute to an infant's attachment style. I’m not here to figure out or ask you to recall how your caregivers were with you when you were 6 months old. I am here to ask you this: “Was emotional connection a regular part of your growing up years?”. This question matters because it will tell us a lot about how safe relationships feel to you. Adam Young (2024), in his podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves, suggests that people who have secure attachments are oriented towards hope. They are aware that conflict will not last forever, anger will pass, mistakes can be made, and that they will be loved at the end of the day. They have hope that beauty will come, eventually. Unfortunately, This kind of hopeful disposition is not what people with insecure attachments experience. The bad and good news is this: relationships always have ruptures. This is bad news for those of us who measure our self-worth, wants, desires, and determination of love considering our good standing with others. This is good news for those of us who are aware that conflict breeds intimacy and desired closeness with another. Without it, we are strangers.
I tell clients often that their hearts are not their enemies. People with insecure attachments can often feel like they are. Their heart longs for connection, yet it shows it through stonewalling, shutting down, anxious thoughts, and accusations. People with insecure attachments not only loose hope for their relationships, but they loose hope for themselves. They become turned off to their own heart’s desires, wants, hurts, and harms. They tend to blame themselves and isolate as a consequence. They are also more likely to surround themselves with insecurely attached people, causing more conflict and strife. However, this is not the end. Because attachment is formed in relationship, it is relationship that can heal it! Only the engagement of one-on-one human contact can heal what was lost or never gotten at all. The beauty of attachment is that it can change.
The hope is this: You are not too far gone for healthy, secure attachment. Orientation towards hope is possible. I’ve seen this happen through communities that stay when things get tough, therapists who do not stop engaging when clients decide they are too broken, and most importantly, I’ve seen this displayed through brave people who want to be known, regardless of how messy it gets. This is why I love the therapeutic relationship. It is a balm to those who need regulating, safe, and secure relationship.
Relationships are scary. We all want intimacy. Some of us go about getting it in funny ways. Yet, we can all heal.
There is hope.
Reference:
Young, A. (Host). (2024, July 1). The critical relationship between attachment and affect regulation. (No. 158). [Audio podcast episode]. In the place we find ourselves. Libsyn.
