Does everybody really have a dominant attachment style?

This sounds FA. If you take the Poole-Heller attachment test dianepooleheller.com/attachment-test/ that shows you your composition of all attachment styles in %, dominant FA will come out as about equal quarters for each style, +/- 5%. So, let's say an example might be 23% FA, 28% AP 21% DA 28% secure. This would mean you're an anxious-leaning FA. You'd probably be prone to chasing people more avoidant than you romantically, and exhibiting anxious behavior (looking AP) as a result. But you'd shut down and get more avoidant if you dated people more secure or more anxious than you. You're overall avoidant with your parents, because of their behavior which led to you developing an FA style. And you're secure with friends and people who don't trigger you because they're not overwhelming your nervous system.

As best I can tell, a secure person would come out around 60-65+% secure. An AP would have less than 60% secure and a majority of the rest in AP. DA same, but majority of the rest in DA instead of AP. (So, for another made up example, DA could be 33% DA 10% AP 12% FA 45% secure).

I personally do think it's important to get the overall style right because they all are caused by different types of trauma and all require different approaches to heal. Because, using avoidance/anxiety in attachment theory terms, higher avoidance correlates to higher distrust of others, and higher anxiety correlates to higher distrust of self. Avoidants have a conscious fear of engulfment and a subconscious fear of abandonment. Anxious attachers have a conscious fear of abandonment and a subconscious fear of engulfment. A nervous system overwhelm --> shuts down (deactivation). AP nervous system overwhelm --> flooded (triggered rumination). FA depends on the source of the trigger.

Insecure attachment styles are a defense mechanism to allow you to survive childhood. It is a very common set of coping mechanisms that get programmed into your nervous system, but you don't grow out of it as an adult without awareness and deliberate reprogramming -- even though it no longer serves you.

DA generally experienced neglect as kids, blamed themselves, learned severe distrust of others, and just shut down to numb the pain and rejection so they could continue on. AP generally experienced emotional abuse through inconsistency, blamed themselves, learned from receiving only conditional love that others made the decisions about who was worthy of loving treatment when, and took away that emotions are externally regulated by other people not by self so you need to try to control others to regulate and keep your emotions from spinning out. FA generally experienced disorganized chaos and scary, unpredictable relating (often with unhealthy enmeshment, possibly with physical and/or sexual abuse), blamed themselves, and had no way of emotionally regulating themselves so they distrust both self AND others. They need external validation but get overwhelmed by closeness because they never had the opportunity to form strong and stable identities. They actually often disconnected from themselves to avoid pain, and stuffed everything down to hide. This got replaced by people pleasing or a false persona, and it got so ingrained that as an adult, the person truly thinks the false disconnected self is who they are, yet feels chaos and discontent inside but doesn't know why or how to fix it.

If you are FA, you may need to do several things: understand, confront, and heal childhood trauma. Get to know who you really are and reconnect with yourself, building self-esteem, self-acceptance, trust in self, a solid identity and sense of self. Identify when you're triggered either anxious or avoidant and learn how to self-regulate emotions without relying on external validation. Learn solid boundaries, so that you have a healthy sense of self and can be comfortable both with independence and interdependence with other human beings. Learn healthier coping mechanisms and recognizing if you're disassociating and shutting down to avoid something. And learning how to stop rumination in anxious times (possibly CBT therapy). Model out what a healthy and secure, stable, functional, mature connection actually looks like (which can be done with any good therapist). Learn how to directly communicate needs.

It isn't easy, but it's doable with full internally-driven motivation and commitment. You don't necessarily need an attachment therapist, though they may best understand how to help you and give you the tools you need. But it could be trying a few therapies, such as CBT I mentioned or somatic therapy to help with the trauma stuck in your body.

I know it's possible to earn secure because I did it with my AP, though I took a different journey since AP is correcting different issues than FA. But I've written about what worked for me as AP in other threads. There's also research that shows that, over a lifetime, 25% of people shift attachment styles. You're not stuck in them if you choose not to be. Hope this helps

Have you ever dated someone more anxious than you are? Sometimes, if someone with an anxious or avoidant lean to their FA has only dated a similar type of partner, they may not have experienced or noticed their swing to the other extreme. For example, mrob who is FA has recently mentioned he's dating partners for the first time who make him swing anxious instead of avoidant, and it feels like a whole different experience.

Enmeshment very frequently produces an FA overall outcome, though it's possible it creates AP. Since you mention "scary, terrifying, abuse, enmeshment, and manipulation," I'm still inclined to think FA as those are all associated. However, trauma doesn't necessarily only cause insecure attachment issues. There can be other issues comorbid. Have you ever been to a therapist to see if you have PTSD or something else? I feel like your description of the intense kind of collapsing of your world during triggering must track back to some condition or abuse response... it seems specific enough that it would. It's just out of my scope of expertise.

alexandra, do you know what are these threads?


And am I right to remember you did this without therapy? I think I should find a therapist for myself, but this will be hard because (a) I live in a country whose language I don't speak well enough for talk therapy, so I'll need someone with good English and (b) I work in a different country than the one where I live, and have a child, which means I'm constantly struggling to organise my life. So I'm very interested in what I could do while I find a therapy that works for me.

Thanks for the link, anne12!

Yes, I considered skype sessions. I am reluctant because *so* much of my life already takes place in the virtual space. I am unhappy about this, and crave more "real life" interactions. But it may be the only/best solution for me. Does therapy on Skype really work? Are there accounts of this around?

Here are the threads I wrote about it in:

jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1262/attachment-style-self-help-suggestions

jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1559/anxious-susceptibilities

I did it without a therapist, that's correct, and I talk a bit about that but wouldn't necessarily recommend trying that. A bunch of factors aligned for me that allowed me to do a lot of hard work through it when I was very self-motivated to do so and couldn't find the resources, but if I already had a starting point and a name for my issue (like you do, but I didn't understand about attachment theory yet), I believe it would have been way faster if I had the right therapist.

Yes, I agree your results are coming out to dominant AP style, so if that's accurate then a theory is you may have AP + other issues such as possible PTSD or something else, and that's why your behaviors are a little more avoidant and less typically patterned.

And a few members have started SE therapy on the board and are seeing good results, including tnr9.

Perhaps look for information on Complex PTSD? (C-PTSD) It was a good eye opener for me personally and helped me make sense of a lot of things. I think there are good internet resources for this, as well as books.

C-PTSD often gets associated with FA attachment style, because you have abandonment triggers, and also a bunch of other triggers than can make you feel smothered and invaded. The typical avoidant who runs from intimacy has `engulfment' triggers, but C-PTSD triggers can be specific to you and your upbringing. Sounds like specific forms of control and invasiveness might be yours?

I can attach to all kinds of people, but I do really well in long term relationships with caring guys who communicate well, and negotiate rather than control, manipulate and criticise.