Nicholas James

Do you find yourself worried about being apart from your partner when things get difficult in the relationship? Maybe you do the opposite and shut down emotionally and try to create space. You may have noticed you have a pattern from relationship to relationship and you might be frustrated by how difficult it is to change. These patterns are called attachment styles, and we’ll talk about how reframing this concept can help you begin to show up the way you really want to in relationships. 

Attachment style is a popular topic in mental health and relationship discussions. Created by psychologist John Bowlby in the early 60’s, the theory of attachment sought to understand the development of the relationship between self and other through the child/caregiver dynamic. By observing children’s responses to being separated from their mothers, 4 general patterns were created to explain these reactions: secure attachment, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. These patterns have been shown to predict how individuals will then go on to function in other significant relationships in their lives long into adulthood, in particular romantic relationships.

• Secure attachment is reflected by reacting to distress through appropriate boundary setting when needed while retaining the ability to share deeply and intimately. 
• An anxious attachment style is demonstrated by reacting to distress in the relationship by trying to get close, being clingy or demanding, or enmeshing themselves with their partner. 
• Avoidant attachment is reacting to distress by distancing, withdrawing emotions, shutting down communication and focusing on independence without accounting for their partner’s needs. 
• A Disorganized attachment style will respond to distress in hard to predict and often contradictory ways, alternating between seeking closeness and clinging and pushing their partner away and avoiding intimacy. 

We often will talk about what kind of an attachment style a person or even potential partner may have, or describe ourselves as being “anxiously attached” for example. This conception implies that, much like someone can “have” a cough, or identify as “depressed”, an attachment style is a part of you, some thing inside you that seems to have a say in how you show up in relationships. While it certainly can be helpful to understand the feelings and predispositions you may experience in a relationship, thinking of yourself as “having an attachment style” can make it feel like something you have no control over. 

When we are trying to evaluate our own or other’s attachment styles we are looking at their actions, what it is they are doing when experiencing distress. An attachment style is performative, a pattern that you enact, actions that you take to make yourself feel better when things are hard. Asking to come over for the 4th day in a row when you know you or your partner need space. Saying “I’m fine” instead of “I’m worried about our relationship. Asking for reassurance that everything is okay instead of practicing trust. All are actions, behaviors that have a choice in them.

In the moment, it definitely does not feel like there is a choice. Importantly, what drives these patterns is the difficulty people have in ‘not’ taking these actions or making these choices. How we learned to get our needs met as kids was through these actions, and those basic survival skills make it feel very distressing to try and navigate problems in relationships any differently. This is why it can feel like your attachment style is something you “have”, rather than choices you’re making. But the distinction is important, and your ability to reframe attachment as a series of choices creates some wiggle room for change. While you may not be able to change the early experiences you had, you can pause instead of asking for reassurance and self soothe, you can notice the fear of vulnerability and choose to take a risk with your partner in sharing feelings. It is difficult, but that is where therapy can help. We can practice shifting into a mindset less heavily influenced by labels and instead prioritize taking responsibility for our actions in the moment. Finding out what your patterns are, and moving toward the person you truly want to be in relationships. 

Mindfulness and meditation seem to be everywhere these days. If you have been anywhere near self help or well-being social media, everyone is talking about their meditation practice or the importance of being mindful in your life. Meditation and mindfulness is an important part of therapy because it helps you become more aware of your automatic thoughts and behaviors and increases your ability to choose what you want to do and what you want to focus on in your life. The more you’re able to do that, the more you can live a life that is meaningful to you. 

Videos of people sitting with their legs folded like a pretzel while maintaining this serene half-smile, looking so peaceful. Compared to the chatter and chaos that our own minds often contain, these images seem to promise quiet and calm and you may think “I can do that, how hard can it be?” You get out a pillow or a blanket, attempt to contort your legs into that pretzel shape, and close your eyes with that half smile, and maybe for a half second you feel your body relax. Until… 

my leg hurts… am I sitting the right way?… how long has it been?… I need to think about dinner later on… why did I say that stupid thing to my friend yesterday… oh wait I’m supposed to be meditating… just breathe… let the thoughts go… let them go… *cue “Let It Go” from Frozen… this isn’t working… my mind is just as loud as ever… I can’t even relax the right way, just like everything else in my life… this sucks… I could be getting something done right now… and 30 seconds later you stand up frustrated with yourself for not being able to do what seemed to come so easy to those people on social media. 

If this sounds familiar at all, you’re not alone. It can be disheartening to try to meditate and find that the relaxation and peace you hoped for just wouldn’t come, or worse, you ended up beating yourself up for not being able to do it right, leaving you feeling worse than when you started. I’ve talked to many clients and friends about meditation and most of them share some kind of a story like this along with the conclusion that meditation isn’t for them because they just can’t get their minds to shut up. Some share fears about the difficult thoughts, feelings, and memories that seem to come up whenever they slow down and try to sit with themselves. Taken together, there is plenty of reason to leave meditation in the bucket of “tried it, doesn’t work on me”. I felt like this at the start of my meditation practice, and honestly I still feel like this from time to time. But I want to share a shift in perspective that might encourage you to give it another shot. 

We are born with the ability to meditate, it’s the open awareness that a baby enters the world with, that wide eyed gaze that seems to take everything in all at once. As we develop and learn language, the mental chatter starts up to describe the world around us, to navigate new experiences and help with problem solving. This is that endless narration in our minds we call “thinking”; but behind that, where it always has been, is that open awareness. The very fact that you can be aware of your thinking means there is something bigger beyond thought, and it is this space that we are rebuilding our connection to when we meditate. 

That feeling of struggle in meditation can feel like trying to swim upriver against the current of your thinking, trying to force yourself to think relaxing thoughts or to stop thought altogether. The only natural result of this struggle will be exhaustion, frustration, and feelings of shame or guilt for not being able to do something that seems so easy to do on social media. But if you found yourself fruitlessly trying to fight against a current, what could you do? The first instinct might be just to stop trying and let yourself be carried away by the river, but that’s what happens when you just let your impulses, your habits, and your past control you, and you find yourself doing the same old things that don’t work. 

What if instead you were able to swim to the shore, get yourself out and simply watch the river of thinking? Compared to fighting the current, or the despair of being carried away by it, how much struggle do you think you’d experience just sitting on the shore, noticing the river going by? You could watch the swirls and eddies, the leaves and twigs it carries down, the calm parts, the scary parts. Again, pay attention to the difference in the struggle. It still takes some effort, but the more you practice, the longer you’re able to stay on the shore, watching thinking go by, noticing those painful memories, the unhelpful urges, the annoying earworm from that musical you obsessed over years ago. 

This is meditation, the experience of having all the same thoughts you usually do, but instead of being caught up and pushed around by them, you are practicing just noticing them. It’s just as chaotic and just as loud, but much less of a fight. If we could visualize the minds of those people meditating on social media you’d see a room full of thought bubbles with all kinds of crazy thinking going on, just like your mind, and that’s perfectly fine. When you’re sitting and you notice your own thought bubbles, you just notice Oh! There’s thinking and you go back to watching the thoughts flow down the river.

It helps to have guidance when you begin to practice, to be reminded to come back to shore. My recommendation is a free app called Insight Timer, which has thousands of meditations available for all skill levels with no advertisements. Therapy can also be a great place to practice and get feedback on your meditation, to ask questions about your experience and to have another human with a mind just as chatty as yours to relate to. 

I have over 7 years of experience meditating and have led guided meditations for groups of up to a hundred people at a time, and my mind is still just as annoying and loud as ever, but I have seen the benefits of meditation in my own life and in the lives of my clients and I am always excited to help clients on the journey reconnecting with the open awareness they were born with.

Heart racing, chest tightening, throat closing up, mind going a million miles a minute. I sat there on the family couch Christmas day, surrounded by loved ones, wondering what was wrong with me. There were no obvious stressors going on, a familiar environment, even a couple of days off of work, so why did I feel like I needed to run out the door as fast as I could? The shame of feeling so uncomfortable for no obvious reason weighed on me, as I reflected over the last 6 months since I had had a panic attack that left residual anxiety ever since. You’re a therapist! You should know better than anyone how to not feel this way anymore! 

As much as it is true that I am a therapist, it’s also important to remind my brain that I am a human too. Like all animals, humans evolved a unique ability to help them compete for resources and survive. Tigers have their stripes and stealth, bee’s have their stingers, and humans have their problem solving skills. The humans who survived were the ones who could  most quickly, accurately, and reliably spot danger, find a solution for it, and learn from that experience. These surviving humans passed on their genes, progressively strengthening this skill throughout generations. 

Think of it this way, a group of early humans are walking through the tall grass when they see a brown spot off in the distance. Some of them see it and feel a small impulse to run, but they take some time to consider their past experiences with brown spots, and then decide to run away in case it is a lion. Some of them see it, have no impulse and ignore it without worrying about what it could be. Some of them immediately run when spotting it without pausing to consider if it could be a lion or not. 

Now which humans do you think would be more likely to survive? 

The ones that have the stronger fear reaction and impulse to run immediately. If it was in fact a lion they have a stronger likelihood of escaping, allowing them to pass on that gene; if it wasn’t a lion then there is no danger and they still get to pass it on to the next generation. Both other groups would have significantly less odds to pass on their genes containing that running impulse. Us modern humans are the product of hundreds of thousands of years of nature selecting for a strong impulse to react in some way to even just the slightest hint of danger. That impulse is felt by us today as fear. This is also compounded by the fact that we can be afraid of even just the thought of danger, without anything actually dangerous being present. 

Humans have the ability to relate to the world symbolically. If I even just say the word “stove” an image of a stove magically appears in your mind. That mental representation is a symbol of a “stove” that you can now do things with. If I asked you “how long can you touch a hot stove before you hurt yourself?”, you could roughly give me a correct answer without actually having to ever put yourself at risk of a burn injury. Early humans that could use symbolic thinking better than others were more capable of solving problems without actually having to try them in real life, again increasing their odds of survival. A human that could be afraid of the thought of a lion would better know how to avoid it. Taken together, our ability to relate to things symbolically combined with our strong impulses to avoid danger leads to our modern experience of anxiety: we are the only creatures that can be afraid of things we think about. Anxious humans who could worry about the thought of danger and react quickly to it were the ones who survived, and we are the result. Modern day humans who’s nervous systems react to public speaking, socializing, heights, body image, even the thought of anxiety itself as if these were lions ready to eat us. 

So coming back to the couch, I reminded myself there are no lions here, and practiced noticing the sensations as they were without getting too pulled in to them, focused on spending quality time with my family, and thanked my body for its efforts to keep me safe. When we recognize that this is just how our bodies are wired, it can make it easier to just be in the moment, connecting to the things that are important to us.