How Childhood Trauma Leads to Anxious/Avoidant Adult Relationships

Attachment styles are developed in early infancy with our parents or adult caregivers. Our attachment style continues to be molded by our early childhood experiences and relationships with others, but the most important indicator of attachment is with our parents. These early experiences of attachment impact future friendships and romantic relationships.

There are four types of attachment styles. You may experience different attachment styles with different types of relationships or different people. For example, in friendships, you may have a secure attachment to one friend and an anxious attachment to another, depending on multiple variables. Below we have outlined each attachment style and how your early childhood experience may have impacted your attachment style. 

Secure Attachment:
A secure attachment is characterized by being comfortable receiving and sharing intimacy, being able to directly share concerns and set boundaries, engaging in independent activities/relationships, being okay spending time alone or being without your companion, and attunement to your own emotions and within the relationship.

Anxious Attachment:
An anxious attachment may manifest as difficulty sharing needs directly and setting boundaries, constantly seeking validation and sometimes creating issues to receive reassurance, being preoccupied with the relationship, difficulty with time away from you companion (dependent), clingy behavior, and automatic negative thinking about the other person’s words, intentions, and behaviors. 

Dismissive-Avoidant:
A dismissive-avoidant attachment is characterized by being uncomfortable with intimacy, being extremely self-reliant, downplaying the importance of the relationship, avoiding emotional vulnerability, pushing people away when they get to close, difficulty being committed to a relationship, and making other things a priority (work, hobby, travel, etc.) over the relationship. 

Fearful-Avoidant:
A fearful-avoidant attachment may manifest as a deep fear of rejection, being more dependent in the relationship, having low self-worth and seeking approval in the relationship, experiencing high inner conflict due to wanting intimacy but also fearing it, and is often associated with challenging life experiences such as abandonment and abuse. 

When We Don’t Form A Secure Attachment:
A secure attachment is developed through consistency and emotional attunement. This means as an infant and a child, we were able to depend on our parents to respond to our emotional needs and be present to help us self-soothe and feel safe. When a parent struggles with their mental health or addiction, their behavior may be inconsistent, emotionally dysregulated, and not present. 
If your parent(s) struggled with their mental health or addiction, your child self might have felt very conflicted. You were torn between enjoying when your parent was healthy and present, but not letting it feel too good. You were cautious because you knew from experience that if you enjoyed it too much, it would only hurt more when they slip back into their mental illness or addiction. This experience is likely to create an anxious, dismissive-avoidant, and/or fearful-avoidant attachment style to keep yourself safe as a child and that attachment style continues into adulthood.

Resources
The website listed below is a great starting point to assess your attachment style to your parents, romantic partners, and friends.

http://www.yourpersonality.net/relstructures/

Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller is also a great resource for navigating attachment styles in romantic relationships.

Information credit: The ACoA Trauma Syndrome by Tian Dayton