» How to Blame Your Parents for Your Problems
Most people have a typical way of being in relationships, particularly of the romantic variety (e.g., your friend who always gets dumped, your friend who fears commitment, your stalker friend). In psychobabble, this is your attachment style, and it originated in your parents’ treatment of you beginning when you were just an adorable bouncing baby.
There are 3 types of insecure (read: bad) attachment:
Preoccupied: these are your clingers. They fall in love with you almost instantly and you can never love them back hard enough.
Fearful-avoidant: these folks kinda long to be loved, but are terrified of being hurt, so they run run run.
Dismissing-avoidant: much like the fearful folks, but here the terror is so strong that the need for love is completely denied.
Then there is secure (read: good) attachment, which comes from having parents who were warm, caring, and consistently responsive to your needs. (“Just like my parents,” you’re surely thinking). “It is easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.” This is how a secure person might describe herself (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Sounds fake right? It seems to me that the only people who fit this description are those I don’t know very well.
Both beautifully and tragically, the attachment system has adapted evolutionarily to be highly flexible. This means that parents who are simply “good enough,” despite some lapses in unconditional positive regard, should be sufficient to produce securely attached offspring. Sadly, it also means that there is plenty o’ room for parents (mom usually gets most of the blame) to screw up your chances of ever truly loving or being loved. It’s tricky because to be a “good enough” parent, secure attachment is a prerequisite. Our grandparents likely didn’t have warm, caring, consistently responsive parents, so neither did our parents, so neither did we… And so the intergenerational transmission of insecure attachment continues ad infinitum. (How to break the cycle? Therapy! But I may be slightly biased).
Perhaps this is due to my line of work (nearly-psychologist) or my reasons for becoming such (edited for length), but I am highly skeptical of the following statistic: approximately 50% of people are securely attached. Come on. Did the “secure” description sound like you or any of your exes? I didn’t think so. So, if 50% are secure, the question is where are they hiding? I don’t know, but if you see one of these mythical beauties, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of his/her childhood, skin glinting like diamonds in the sun, grab this person tightly and hold on for dear life.
I think this is an example of the false consensus effect, as it applies to groups. Unsurprisingly, my friends and family, and even co-workers or fellow students, are much more likely to be like me than the general population are.
I suppose that “birds of a feather flock together”. When I lived in the US, I was mystified that George Bush got approximately 50%+1 of the vote; none of the Americans whom I chose to get to know and spend time with voted for him‽
Don
6 Jun 09 at 8:08 pm
“It is easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.”
Haha, I’m taking part in a study at the moment, and this is one of the descriptors on the weekly survey. I guess it must be standard in the profession.
And, for the record, it’s the one I choose from the list of 4 :p
Kyla
7 Jun 09 at 11:38 am
Don: Oh, now I see the problem… Touché.
Of course you’re right. Particularly in my work as a therapist, clients who present with depression, anxiety, and difficulty relating to others are more likely than your average fairly well-adjusted non-therapy attendee to be insecurely attached. Interestingly, I also recently lived in the U.S. and shared your experiences regarding views of George Bush, Prop 8 in California, etc.
Kyla: Glad to have found where you’re hiding!
I will admit that if forced at survey-point to choose one of the four descriptions, I too would choose that one… I just don’t think it does a very good job of giving a full picture of a person who is influenced substantially by circumstances and whose attachment-related behaviours and feelings may change drastically from one time to another. Happily, I think, psychology is moving in the direction of measuring attachment continuously (rather than categorically), using dimensions such as confidence in self and others, discomfort with closeness, treatment of relationships as secondary, preoccupation with relationships, and need for approval.
Laura
8 Jun 09 at 10:51 am
It was my understanding that attachment styles didn’t really have much to do with parenting, yet parenting may be able to influence it a wee bit and that some parents can have children with all three attachment styles. I have witnessed horrible parents with secure attachment babies. I have also witnessed fantastic parents with avoidant attachment babies and I have also seen babies go from secure attachment in infanthood, to avoidant at the school age.
Karen
9 Jun 09 at 1:23 pm
Laura: it’s definitely tough to put yourself in one of those four categories. The survey makes it a bit easier: the wording (I did my weekly survey today, so I just copied it) is actually: “It has been easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I have been comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I haven’t worried about being alone or having others not accept me”, and only refers to how you’ve felt in the last week. You also don’t just choose a category, you rate yourself between 1 and 6 on each of the four categories.
There’s also a bunch of other (boring) questions.
Kyla
9 Jun 09 at 3:35 pm