Kevin Thompson [00:00:00]:
Hey, welcome back to Change the Odds of podcast where marriage and family were never meant to be a game of chance. We're in episode three of this little miniseries on my book, Love Styles. And so in the first episode we talked about just what is attachment theory? Just a general philosophy of what it looks like. Last time we talked about what does secure attachment look like. And today we just want to do a very brief overview of the three types of non secure pathways you have. Anxious, avoidant and disorganized. And so kind of page 91 is if you're reading along in the Love Styles book. When I was in second grade, so as a child, very sensitive child, and obviously there was divorce with my parents and so some insecurity that was there.
Kevin Thompson [00:00:40]:
And I remember just I kind of always lived on this kind of emotional edge that most mornings I was good and fine, but yet if anything happened out of the unusual, it would kind of trip me into having kind of an emotional meltdown. I remember one specific day that I'm a very picky eater, even to this day. And so we didn't have the things for me to lunch to take to school for lunch. A ham sandwich, chips, a little dessert of some sort. A Capri sun in all likelihood. And so I remember my dad just saying, hey, why don't you eat at school? And me thinking, do you not even know who I am? Like, there's no way I'm going to eat at school. And my mom kind of being stressed about what was going on. She had to get to work.
Kevin Thompson [00:01:20]:
My dad had to get to work. They had to get my sister to school, me to school. Just, you know, typical, pretty typical kind of drama of a family. And so this wasn't happening. So I was kind of breaking down, didn't know what I was going to have for lunch. Then finally my dad's like, hey, I'll just go to the convenience store and pick something up. I remember him coming back and him laying out these things that he had bought at the convenience store and me looking at that going, do you not even know who I am? Like, I would not eat any of those things. And what's interesting to me, looking back now, especially as a dad looking back at that experience, is my parents were doing such a great job in that moment of trying to parent me, of trying to take care of my needs.
Kevin Thompson [00:01:55]:
I mean, think about the compassion of my dad to run to the convenience store out of his schedule, the busyness to pick things up, all those things. And yet my brain interpreted that in a different way than what their intention was at the moment. And so much of the history of what was taking place was kind of played into that moment. But I remember distinctly remembering things, thinking in that moment that my needs are a burden and they may not fully be known by other people. And so I was terrified kind of of being a burden now to my parents who are trying to do so much and they have their own lives to live. But then beyond that, those who should know what's going on in my life, maybe I feel like don't to some extent. And so I remember thinking to myself this idea that, that I'm too much, my needs are inconvenient, that whenever I have needs it's going to inconvenience other people. And the idea that if I'm seen, I'm going to be a burden, that's kind of one of my main pathways of life of that kind of concept of what's going on.
Kevin Thompson [00:03:00]:
Those are non secure pathways. We shouldn't view ourselves that our needs are a burden to others. Instead it should be this idea of we're human, so of course we have needs and those who love us will actually find privilege and some pleasure at times in helping assist us with those, even though they can't do that from a perfect concept. We should be able to see and believe that if we are seen that that's not going to be a burden to other people. It's not going to be too vulnerable for us. Instead we need to be seen and known and understood. And so we want to do just a quick kind of overview of what these three forms of non secure attachment are. So let's begin with this idea of anxious the attachment.
Kevin Thompson [00:03:41]:
So anxious attachment oftentimes is the byproduct of an inconsistent caregiving, not caregivers who don't care. It's not that, it's just an inconsistency. Sometimes life itself got in the way. Their own needs got in their way. Their own non secure pathways then will create that maybe in their offspring as well. But because they can sometimes meet needs very well and then at other times not be as aware of them. What we begin to interpret in our brain is that love is unpredictable. And so we create this great fear now of being abandoned.
Kevin Thompson [00:04:15]:
And so anxious attachment has a fear now, a core fear of abandonment. And so they have some core beliefs. Somebody with an anxious attachment has some core beliefs of I'm not enough to keep someone's love, others will leave me, I must try harder to be lovable. Closeness can be lost at any moment. So somebody with an anxious attachment has this fear even when a relationship is going good, that at any moment the other shoe might fall, something's going to happen, that this is too good to be true. And so it can express itself now, especially in romantic relationships with a clinginess, a fear of loss. So any sense of emotional distance will cause somebody with an anxious attachment to reach out. So if you're watching via YouTube making this reaching motion, that's my picture of what anxious attachment look like is I'm always trying to pull people closer to me to give me some sense of security.
Kevin Thompson [00:05:12]:
And if I don't have that, if there's an emotional distance and I can't get you closer to me, I might protest in some way. Somebody with an anxious attachment might. Over text, I can continually seek reassurance. One of the phrases I use a lot with co workers and friends is hey, are we good? Are we good? I need some reassurance to know that this relationship is okay. That's my anxious attachment that's coming out in friendship. It can look like a jealousy, it can be a very self sacrificing over giving, but not in a reciprocal way. I'm actually giving and serving in a way to get you to give and serve back to me and so. Or I can be jealous that maybe I think you're getting special treatment that I'm not getting in some way.
Kevin Thompson [00:05:54]:
From a parenting standpoint it can look like enmeshment to where literally you're allowing the child to almost have too much power within your own life where they're defining your emotions, you're over identifying. I desperately need to be a good parent because that's going to give me a sense of identity and so we can be overly involved with our kids. From a work standpoint, anxious attachment can express itself in people pleasing can lead to burnout. Any sense of criticism or unmet expectations isn't just a criticism of the job I'm doing. It's a criticism of who I actually am as a person. And then from a faith standpoint it can express itself into a very works based mentality that I'm trying to earn the very favor of God and who he is within me. And so think about this. I write in love styles the psychological state that makes anxious attached individuals excellent at detecting subtle shifts.
Kevin Thompson [00:06:54]:
And so basically somebody with an anxious attachment can read the room with a great kind of perception of any sense of emotional distance, with any sense that this person is taking a step away from me. And now that's going to create A panic within me, and I'm going to do everything I can to draw them back. So somebody with an anxious attachment is really good at reading the emotional temperature in the room. But the problem is sometimes we can overread what actually is taking place. We can misunderstand. So, to use the thermostat analogy previously, somebody with an anxious attachment is always trying to heat the relationship more, to think that it's growing cold, it's becoming distant. So I need to heat it up to some extent. I need to create some kind of connection where somebody with an avoidant attachment is.
Kevin Thompson [00:07:42]:
Is always trying to cool things down. Somebody with avoidant. I feel like we're getting too close, so I need to cool it down to create a little bit of space here to be comfortable, to be safe to some extent. And so within an anxious attachment, there can be shame that's involved, but the shame expresses itself with these ideas of why can't I just be normal? Or I ruin every relationship, or there's this thought now that. That I'm just too much. I just come across now as too much in what's going on. So with an anxious attachment, the pathway now toward a secure attachment, which we'll look at in depth in the next episode, there is this awareness of what's going on inside of me, a compassion to help me understand who am I and how did I become me? And then how can I begin to regulate my body without necessarily thinking I have to have somebody else to do that? So one of the tests of somebody with anxious attachment is they're almost always thinking that they are helpless and that life and security and safety is now found if somebody else would just do something. So I know that whenever I think, man, if Jenny would just do this, or Ellen, Silas would just do this, or my bosses or friends would just do this, Anytime I'm thinking first and foremost in a situation about somebody else, that's primarily anxious attachment and what it's making me a victim in that moment, feeling like I'm helpless, creating a panic within me, thinking I now have to get somebody else to do something for me to feel safe.
Kevin Thompson [00:09:20]:
That's not a secure pathway. That, in fact, is an anxious pathway and something I have to watch out for in every moment. And so what needs to happen is, as I grow into a secure pathway, I will learn to be able to say, look, my needs make sense. My body in this moment is remembering something old. And so that's not them. It's not this. It's actually a past experience. I can honestly Care about people, but I don't have to become clingy toward them.
Kevin Thompson [00:09:49]:
I can name what's going on without apologizing. I think about anxious attachment in some way like this. We used to have an old German shepherd years ago. I didn't train very well and kids were little and so it was outside a lot. So it's so longing for a relationship, being a pack animal, obviously it would desperately want to spend time with me to such an extent that whenever I would go out into the backyard, it would get so excited it would start jumping on me. And so I didn't train it well, obviously, but because it was so excited and jumping on me, that actually made me less likely to go out if I just had a minute or two, if I couldn't just change clothes afterwards, if I was in nice clothes, I couldn't go out because the dog would be so excited it would jump on me. So notice this. What the dog desperately needed was a closer relationship.
Kevin Thompson [00:10:36]:
And yet what it would do in response to that closeness would actually drive me away. That's one of the great dangers with an anxious attachment. We can become so clingy that it scares people to where they begin to keep a distance from, from us. So the very thing that we're afraid of, a distance, our action is actually beginning to cause and we're creating the very outcomes that we want to avoid. So an anxious attachment now overreads the room for any emotional distance and then is constantly reaching to bring people closer to us if at all possible. So let's look at now, what is the exact same thing, a non secure pathway, but one that's expressed in a different way and that is avoidant attachment. So avoidant attachment starts now when love feels distant. And so it doesn't mean that caregivers were cruel, but that they weren't emotionally close.
Kevin Thompson [00:11:32]:
And so when children experience any type of rejection or distance or disinterest from their primary caregivers, they can begin to write a story that my needs don't really matter. They can begin to lose the ability to even recognize their own needs, to express them. And notice this, they create a concept in their brain that vulnerability does not lead to connection. So think about what that means as they begin to grow up. If they don't think that vulnerability leads to connection, it will never literally cross their mind ever. That the idea if I disclose something to my spouse that might draw them closer to me, they just assume it's going to push people further away to some extent. And so for many times I'll talk to maybe let's go gender stereotypes. I'll talk to wives who they're like, man, I just want my husband to emotionally be vulnerable and open up to me.
Kevin Thompson [00:12:23]:
And I think to myself, if they have a voidant attachment, if their husbands have a voidant pathway with them, it will never cross the husband's mind to be vulnerable and to think that vulnerability will lead to connection. So think about what happens in a lot of relationships, especially if somebody with an anxious attachment and an avoidant attachment, she's thinking to herself, what we need most is for him to be vulnerable. And it would never cross his mind that his vulnerability would lead to connection. No wonder relationships are hard. And so avoidant attachment now has this ability of a quiet kind of self sufficiency. And so it results in an emotional detachment. There's an over focus on independence, there's a discomfort with close intimacy. And so people with an avoidant attachment in a relationship can have these core beliefs that I am alone and I must take care of myself, that I should be mature enough to take care of my own needs, that needing others is actually weak or dangerous.
Kevin Thompson [00:13:32]:
If I let someone get close, I will be engulfed or hurt. And to be safe, I must be in control. And so they keep people at a constant kind of distance in order to maintain control. So avoidant attachment can look like this in several different types of relationships. In romantic relationships, it can look like a withdrawal, a low kind of intimacy. Especially if there's any chance of vulnerability coming in, they're going to push that away. They might shut down, they might pull away, they might come across as harsh in order to push the other person away. And friendship and avoidant attachment can look like very surface level relationships.
Kevin Thompson [00:14:12]:
And notice this, they prefer to kind of compartmentalize their relationships. And so they don't want their work friends to interact with their church friends to interact with their social friends. It's an old illustration, but remember that episode of Seinfeld where George was afraid that as Jerry got to know his girlfriend, what he was saying is romantic George and friend George are going to collide. That's a classic sign of avoidant attachment. Because think about what they're afraid of. They're afraid of if who I am over here, if you understand who I am over here and you understand who I am over here, you might know more about me than what I'm comfortable with. So I'm only maybe comfortable disclosing this part of me over here and this part of me over there. And I don't want those Two pieces of information to come together because it might expose me more than I actually want to be exposed in parenting.
Kevin Thompson [00:15:06]:
An avoidant attachment now can create somebody who's very emotionally reserved, and so they have a discomfort or avoidance of emotion. An avoidant dad might say, see emotion in his son and say, well, go see your mother about that. What that does that actually trains the little boy that, hey, real men don't have these emotions. And the next thing you know, here's the thing with avoidant attachment. If you're not very careful, you will lose your ability to recognize what's going on inside of you emotionally. You then won't have any language to communicate what's going on inside of you. And then even if you were able to spot what's happening and had language to communicate it, it would never cross your mind to actually tell the other person, hey, here's what's taking place. And so many times this is a lot of people, not just men, by any means.
Kevin Thompson [00:15:57]:
There's avoidantly attached women in which their partners desperately want them to open up to have these meaningful conversations, when in reality the spouse has no ability to recognize what's going on inside of them, has no language to communicate it, and they would never even consider the possibility of why would you even want to know? So why would they expend the energy to do that? All of that is a sign of avoidant attachment within work standpoint. Workaholics, many times that's a byproduct of being avoidantly attached. And so they can become hyper independent. They can overwork. Why? Because work does not always demand from us an emotional vulnerability. So my choices are I can stay at work for 12 hours and never really have to open up emotionally, or I can go home where my spouse is going to expect me to answer the question, how do you feel? What's going on with your heart? And I don't want that. So I just bury myself in work, convincing myself that I'm taking care of them, when in reality I'm protecting my own heart and not trying to actually engage in a meaningful way. Shame also is at play whenever it comes to avoidant attachment.
Kevin Thompson [00:17:06]:
It just expresses itself differently than from anxious attachment to. So somebody with an avoidant attachment might think to themselves, why can't I feel more? Why do I keep on pushing people away? Maybe I'm just cold or broken. There's something wrong with me to some extent. Here's the thing about somebody with avoidant attachment. Oftentimes they are extremely lonely. But get this, they don't know it because they've written the story that they're supposed to be self sufficient. So they don't understand their need for relationships. They don't understand.
Kevin Thompson [00:17:38]:
You look at them, and yeah, they have a lot of relationships, maybe in their life, but there's nobody that truly knows their heart. Why? Because they don't know how to access their own heart. So they definitely don't know how to express that or show that to somebody else. And so while we're created to be known, seen, valued and loved, why we desperately need relationships, meaningful relationships with other people. If I don't know how to offer that to you, then I'll go through life lonely, but I won't even recognize it. So generally speaking, somebody with an anxious attachment feels more lonely than what they actually are. Somebody with an avoidant attachment actually is more lonely than what they feel or experience. And so we'll look in the next episode of what's the pathway toward a secure or a learned attachment? But for somebody with an avoidant attachment, it's the idea to literally begin to draw people close, to lean in.
Kevin Thompson [00:18:33]:
So at the moment that they're tempted. Somebody with an avoidant attachment, at the moment that they're tempted to stiff arm somebody away to create an emotional distance for their own safety, what they actually need to learn how to do is to not give the stiff arm, but instead to lean in. So the moment they're tempted to step out, they actually need to lean in and begin to think, all right, I can have needs that I can express to other people. I'm not too needy, I'm not too much. How can I now lean into this and say, hey, can you help me with this? A powerful statement, I think we said previously for somebody with an avoidant attachment, what if they looked at their spouse and just said, hey, can you hold me right now? Can you just embrace me? Can we leverage our bodies now for each other in a way that's actually going to calm me to some extent? So let's just begin to think about what this begins to look like. These three anxious, avoidant, and then we'll talk about disorganized in a second. But let's take a break here and let's look at the core fears of these three forms of non secure attachment and then how healing actually comes. So somebody with an anxious attachment, their greatest fear is now being abandoned.
Kevin Thompson [00:19:42]:
Somebody with an avoidant attachment, their greatest fear is being smothered. And somebody with a disorganized attachment, their greatest fear is being hurt. And so the way that we begin to cure that or soothe that. Is somebody with an anxious attachment, whenever they fear being abandoned, they need to learn that, hey, I can meet my own needs. I'm actually safe with or without this person. That's what we talked about. Insecure attachment is I'm good with or without this person. And so the anxious attachment says, without them, I'm nobody.
Kevin Thompson [00:20:13]:
And now I need to tell myself the truth. How can I actually calm my own heart rate? How can I soothe and meet my own needs? An anxious attachment needs to learn how to soothe themselves and not always depend upon somebody else. Somebody with an avoidant attachment, their greatest fear is being smothered. The way they heal from that is they actually stay connected. So I'm afraid I'm going to be smothered. I'm tempted to stiff arm people away, but instead I'm going to stay connected. I'm going to stay with this. I'm going to stay in it when I'm tempted to step out of it.
Kevin Thompson [00:20:46]:
And then somebody with a disorganized attachment, their greatest fear is being hurt. Now they're going to learn to create safe relationships, and I'm going to learn to sense what safety actually feels like and looks like. And I'm not going to put on this current partner, maybe something that's happened from my past. I'm going to remind myself, no, no, this person is safe. So I'm actually safe, even though I don't feel it in this very moment. So let's look at just quickly what disorganized attachment kind of looks like the source of it. So disorganized attachment arises when a child's caregiver is simultaneously a source of comfort and also one of fear. This often stems from trauma or abuse, severe neglect, chronic emotional unpredictability.
Kevin Thompson [00:21:35]:
And the child learns that turning toward the caregiver for safety might also expose them to harm. And so the result is a tremendous confusion within the brain in which the brain is looking for proximity for protection. But those impulses now clash. Think about it. In a normal childhood, we would assume if I'm close to my caregivers, proximity to my caregivers equals protection for me. And yet if those caregivers abuse me, then that closeness and that protection are sometimes at odds. Another time, disorganized attachment can also arise is if there's an undiagnosed mental illness of a parent. Also if there's an undiagnosed learning disability within the child that the child maybe doesn't have some capabilities that the parent thinks they have.
Kevin Thompson [00:22:27]:
So let's say there's an underlying learning disability, a dyslexia or something like that. And the parent can think, oh, you're just being lazy. And the parent can come in and parent the laziness. When in reality the child isn't lazy, they're just incapable in that specific area to learn in that way. And now notice the proximity of the parent now puts the child have this fear of an emotional endangerment because they can't do what the parent is actually asking them to do. That can create a disorganized attachment even in a concept of a very loving and compassionate and grace filled. So the core beliefs of somebody with a disorganized attachment now is I want to be close, but I don't feel safe. Love is unpredictable and possibly even dangerous.
Kevin Thompson [00:23:17]:
If people knew the real me, they'd actually run. And I have to control others or I'm going to be controlled. And so how this expresses itself in relationships is in romantic relationships it's this very hot and cold cycle in which maybe I'll initiate intimacy and then feel shamed about it afterwards or endangered in the midst of it. I'll have a good relationship, but then I'll sabotage it to make it go wrong. Because if I know it's going to go wrong anyway, so I might as well be the one to do it. That way I'm actually in control. I might cling at one moment and then withdraw at the very same moment. I might ask for for comfort and then deny that I even want it.
Kevin Thompson [00:24:01]:
In friendship there's just this great inconsistency, this constant kind of sense of mistrust, a continual testing of the relationship and pushing friends away, desperately wanting closeness, being hurt if we're not invited to something, but then pushing people away and pretending like we don't need it in some way. In parenting there's just this great reactivity. And so literally whenever you have disorganized attachment with a child now the child really is in charge and the parent is just reacting in very negative ways to whatever's going on. There can be this tremendous kind of shutdown, this guilt that's taking place. Sometimes they can collapse expecting the child to actually parent them and to take care of them. And then at the very next moment they'll come in, well, I'm the parent. And so they'll try to over control the child, creating some confusion. They, their own confusion is then passed on to the next generation.
Kevin Thompson [00:24:54]:
In work it could be a very inconsistent kind of effort, very resistant to feedback. They can overwork one minute and then disengage in the next minute. It's just a very confused brain that expresses itself then in behavior that makes very little sense to those who are around them. And so they can flip between a panic and a shutdown at every single moment. One moment they could be numb and silent, they the next moment they could rage and anxiety. You just don't know what you're going to get at any given moment is kind of the evidence of what this organized pathway actually looks like. And internally shame now is expressing itself to them. And they might say, why do I destroy the things that I love? I can't trust anyone, not even myself, and I want connection, but I'm actually terrible at it.
Kevin Thompson [00:25:45]:
So these are these three kind of forms of non secure attachment. Very quick overview. The book Love Styles goes much more in depth. You can go to Lovestyles AI as well and just begin to ask it, hey, what are my primary attachment patterns in these areas? And it will kind of work you through. Begin to see how do these non secure approaches express themselves. It's very important that we understand a basic overview of these three things, but it's also very important that you listen to the next episode. So in the next episode we're going to look at how do you grow beyond a non secure approach and into a secure approach. This is the good news about attachment theory.
Kevin Thompson [00:26:23]:
While our past might define who we are today, it does not have to define who we're going to be tomorrow. And so even though we learn, hey, these are pathways that we have among us that are non secure, anxious, avoidant or disorganized, we're not stuck there. We can then once we identify what we kind of our tendencies, we can now relearn or earn secure attachment so that any relationship we have, we can actually make it secure as we learn to take control of our lives. But we can't do that until we recognize where we are. So join us next time on this Change the Odds podcast Love Styles the fourth episode as we'll look at what does learned or earned security actually look like? Until next time. We'll see you then.