How does avoidant attachment influence adulthood?

This is how the avoidant attachment style influences our adulthood, from our childhood.

Much of how we are and how we think and act can be explained by the way we have become accustomed to relating to others. And to understand the latter, it is often important to look at the way we experience social relationships in our childhood.

In this sense, attachment theory provides interesting explanations for understanding how the early years of development orient our personality, needs and vulnerabilities towards certain patterns of social relationships.needs and vulnerabilities towards certain patterns of behavior and ways of managing our emotions.

Here we are going to focus on the avoidant attachment established by some people in their childhood, and its influence many years later, when they enter into adulthood.when they enter adulthood.

What is attachment theory?

Attachment theory is a series of explanatory and theoretical proposals that attempt to explain the affective bonds based on social interaction that serve as a support and guide for the psychological development of people.

These bonds are especially important during infancyIt is at this early stage that children need the support of their parents or guardians not only to have access to the resources they need, but also to learn and explore the environment, and to put into practice their ability to establish connections with other people.

However, attachment is not only present in the first years of life, however, but also projects outwardIt is also projected into adolescence and adulthood, albeit based on what happened in childhood.

Thus, according to the psychologist John Bowlby, attachment is constituted at its most basic level by behavioral patterns that generate a predisposition to maintain proximity with another individual, who is recognized as an entity different from oneself. It involves recognizing the existence of the other in a nearby space and giving signs of knowing that he or she is there, validating his or her presence.

But beyond these objective events, attachment also has a mental dimension linked to emotions and subjectivityattachment: through attachment, each person involved in this relationship integrates the other into his or her idea of everyday life and his or her own identity, and associates this concept of "the other" with a series of emotions. In other words, attachment is not only about tolerating the presence of the other person, but in a certain way, an attachment figure becomes a reference and a support to structure daily routines and what one wants in one's life. Therefore, attachment is closely associated with love and affection.

The principles of attachment

To understand how attachment is formed as a person-to-person bond, the main pillars of attachment have been theorized as follows:

1. Attachment is an intrinsic need of human beings.

The human being is a social animal, and therefore, we are all born with the need to establish attachment bonds from the first days of life. It is known that children who are subjected to social isolation, in spite of having their most immediate Biological and physiological needs satisfied (food, water, adequate temperature, etc.), develop serious health problems in a short period of time.

2. The well-being provided by attachment bonds is based on the regulation of emotions.

Attachment creates a relational context between individuals that makes possible an adequate regulation of emotions, and in this way, helps to feel good. This occurs thanks to the ability we have to empathize with other individuals and get a sense of how they feel..

By establishing an adequate attachment model, it is possible to adapt to the psychological state of the child and provide him/her with what he/she needs in real time.

3. Attachment allows gaining autonomy and capacity to adapt to the environment.

Although the word "attachment" usually suggests bonding (and in a certain sense, rightly so), in the context in which it occurs, it helps people to gain autonomy..

If the type of attachment is appropriate, a good balance is achieved between protection and guidance on the one hand, and the freedom to explore the environment and learn on one's own, on the other.

What is avoidant attachment and how does it affect adulthood?

As we have seen, attachment is something that serves as a "pathway" or scaffolding on which one's own psychological development unfolds both in terms of how we think and how we feel and relate to others. How we do this depends on the type of attachment we have established in our early years..

On the one hand, secure attachment is that which is established in people who in their childhood have managed to have a balance between parental protection and freedom to learn and make certain decisions adapted to their stage of growth.

Secondly, there is ambivalent anxious attachment, which occurs when the child feels bad when the parents or guardians are not available, but still does not feel good when they are close, given that these attachment figures do not offer them everything they need.

Thirdly, we have avoidant attachment, characterized by uncertainty and not being able to predict the behavior of the attachment figure, which generates anxiety and anguish in children. For this reason, children who establish this type of attachment tend to seek out their fathers, mothers or guardians much less, and their emotional state changes relatively little.and their emotional state changes relatively little when the latter are available.

This form of attachment has implications in adulthood. If psychological support is never made available, these individuals tend to establish relationships characterized by the search for a very high level of independenceIn many respects, the relationship is dysfunctional: emotionally significant relationships are avoided to prevent the creation of affective bonds that could generate dependence, and even the possibility of suffering rejection is avoided.

This predisposes these adults to suffer from social isolation and loneliness, noticing that something is missing in their lives but at the same time refusing to look for that element in personal relationships.

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