What is Attachment?
Attachment is the affective bond that we begin to establish with our care figure (mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle, adoptive figure…). The main function of this attachment or care figure is to guarantee the baby’s survival through physical, emotional and personality care.
Sometimes, more or less physical and/or emotional care may be received, which will have consequences during the development of the child. Which will have consequences during childhood, adolescence and, of course, adulthood, adolescence and of course adulthood. Attachment is bonding.
Bowlby defined attachment as “The need to establish meaningful attachments is innate to human beings and is not and is not acquired during development or as a derivative of other needs, but is a constitutive need. Other needs but is a constitutive need of the human being and therefore requires primary and therefore requires primary satisfaction. Achieving this link guides all subsequent development”.
Why is it useful and necessary to know your Attachment Type?
The first relationship we experience is the bond with our mother. The idea of relationship that we build depends on this moment. It is not the same for the baby to become accustomed to emotional and physical care in a stable way as it is to intermittent, absent or even rejected care.
In this way people develop different types of attachment: secure attachment, avoidant attachment, ambivalent attachment or disorganised attachment.
It is essential to know the type of attachment we have learned because as adults we replicate them.
How do you relate to your environment according to your attachment style?
Your relationship with your environment depends on your attachment style.
Depending on the type of attachment, we will have a different way of functioning with our environment. Especially with those closest to us, because let’s remember that attachment is bonding.
This way of functioning corresponds to unconsciously learned patterns. The moment we work on them, they come to consciousness. It is not the same to be carried away by emotions as it is to detect and name the emotions we feel.
Responses that we make unconsciously and that therefore “control” us may be adaptive. But at another time in our lives they can become maladaptive. This maladaptation is experienced as emotional discomfort.
Therefore, it is important that we know our attachment style. Knowing it helps us to become aware of the pattern we learned in childhood and I would even go so far as to say from even further back.
Therefore, the type of attachment will guide the way we relate to people and will guide the way we maintain relationships, especially with the people we are closest to.
How to deal with attachment in therapy?
The intervention process begins with the assessment by collecting information. Depending on the reason for the request, questionnaires are applied to assess the type of attachment acquired and gradually increase awareness of its pattern of functioning. Through the therapist-patient relationship a secure bond is established where the person can experience a new way of being, thinking and feeling.
The way in which the patient bonds with the therapist provides a lot of information about the type of attachment of the patient. Through situation analysis the person will be equipped with tools, according to their attachment style, for learning new behaviour patterns and communication skills.
