Our bodies are incredibly skilled when it comes to its ability to send us messages regarding what it needs or feels in any given moment. When you are hungry, your stomach may grumble. When you are thirsty, your mouth may feel dry, or you may even have a headache. While these signals may feel obvious, there are additional ways our bodies try to tell us how it’s feeling - even within our relationships.

When coming to therapy for problems and anxieties centered around relationships, it can be really hard for some people to understand why they are feeling the way they are feeling. Genuinely safe relationships with others can provide so much opportunity for connection and support, but they also are capable of highlighting some of our deepest wounds, especially if we are not familiar with them. Developing a stronger understanding of your attachment style, and how it physically shows up in your body, can be a great first step towards navigating relationships with self-compassion and inner safety.

What is an Attachment Style?

An attachment style is a term that categorizes how we each navigate and respond to the world around us based on how secure we felt in our formative childhood and teenage years. If when you were younger, you felt like you could trust that your physical and emotional needs would be met by your caregivers, it is likely that you may have a secure attachment style. However, if there was a lot of uncertainty around whether or not your needs would be addressed as a child, it is possible that you can develop an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized (fearful-avoidant) attachment style depending on the specific circumstances. Let's explore the circumstances of these attachment styles a bit more closely, as well as how they may manifest for you somatically!

Secure Attachment

A secure attachment style is typically formed when we experience consistent and reliable care from our parents or caregivers throughout our childhood and teenage years. This, combined with safe exploration and emotional availability from these caregivers, supports children in becoming adults that trust that they are safe to rely on and connect with other people. When we feel this level of safety and security in our relationships, this can show up in our body as having relaxed posture, comfortability with closeness to others, and decreased physical anxiety symptoms such as a racing heart or sweaty palms in social situations.

Anxious Attachment

An anxious attachment style can be developed when our experiences in our childhood felt inconsistent, unpredictable, or unreliable. Sometimes when caregivers are experiencing their own stressors that they face challenges coping with on their own, this can result in experiences. for the child where they felt their needs could not be met as fully as needed. Somatically, this can show up as experiencing muscle tension, impulses for physical closeness as a reassurance, and increased physical symptoms of anxiety such as increased heart rate or fidgeting.

Avoidant Attachment

While avoidant attachment can mirror similarities to anxious attachment in the sense that it stems from your needs not being fully addressed when younger, the ways of how these needs weren’t met can create a different expression in our relationships. For individuals with avoidant attachment, it is possible that your caregivers may have not been as emotionally open and available as you may have needed. Attempts to receive comfort or support may have been met with rejection, minimizing, or dismissal altogether. Physical expressions of avoidant attachment can include discomfort with physical closeness, tense or closed posture (keeping arms or legs crossed as a barrier), or continuously suppressing emotions even when in emotionally charged situations to maintain an appearance of being unphased or unbothered.

Disorganized Attachment

Disorganized attachment styles can stem from jumbled and confusing experiences throughout your formative years, as the name itself suggests. Many people with this attachment have experienced periods of fear, worry, or trauma in childhood that has left them alternating between desiring the comfort and support in relationships, while also struggling to feel safe to do so, resulting in urges to pull away and disconnect. Physical expressions of this attachment style can look as if you are incorporating the physical expression of all of the previous three attachment styles at varying times. Examples of this include initiating physical closeness, but pulling away out of fear, similarly to how someone with an avoidant attachment style might. This style can also involve a stronger stress response when their fears are activated, seen physically by fast heart rate and breathing.

Am I Stuck With This Attachment Style Forever?

Not at all! Although it can feel like our attachment styles are formed out of experiences that feel too heavy, too broad, or too all-encompassing to work through, it is possible. Having an awareness of these somatic signals can be helpful as you work to explore your patterns in relationships in therapy. Take some time to get curious and reflect on your own experiences growing up, and if you can see how any of these physical signals are present for you today. If you’re comfortable, consider bringing up these observations with your therapist as you continue forward in your journey

connect here