How to Become More Secure

Attachment research is currently a hot topic in psychology. Apparently we can be divided into three attachment styles:

Secure – Warm; comfortable with closeness and intimacy; find it easy to express loving feelings. Tend to have positive feelings about themselves and their partners. 
Anxious - Worry about whether their partner loves them enough and whether they might be abandoned. Tend to be preoccupied with the relationship. Tend to be highly vigilant for signs of lack of approval from their partner and can become overly dependent. They can respond impulsively to their feelings of anxiety.
Avoidant – Feels uncomfortable being close, fears losing their independence. If they get rejected they will tend to distance themselves. They can either be dismissive, and see themselves as not needing close relationships, or fearful and have feelings of ambivalence; both wanting and avoiding closeness at the same time.

Our attachment style is learnt in our early interactions with our parents. Secure parents tend to raise secure children, unpredictable parents tend to raise anxious or avoidant children. However, later experiences can influence our attachment style – lots of rejection or disappointment in relationships can tend to make us more anxious and avoidant; which in turn can make rejection and disappointment more likely. A long term secure relationship can lift our levels of security.

You can take a test here to find what your attachment style is.

Understanding your style and the style of your partner (or prospective partner) can be incredibly useful. If I know I have a tendency to be anxious or avoidant, it might be wise to spend some time considering who I want to be as a partner and then create a 'relationship values statement' for myself (an example of mine is at the end of this earlier post). I can then use Russ Harris’ three questions to help me choose how I will respond when impulses to cling or reject arise. The questions are:

Am I:

1. Moving towards my values or away from my values?

2. Allowing private experience (thoughts, impulses, memories) or avoiding private experience? When we reject or hyper-vigilantly seek reassurance, it is often because we don't want to sit with some painful thoughts or feelings.
3. Connected with the here and now or disconnected from the here and now? Sometimes our impulse to move away is sensible (we are being treated badly) and sometimes it doesn't relate to what is happening in the real world but is more a response to a story our mind has created ('People always leave me in the end', 'When she gets to know me, she will know I am not good enough'). It is invaluable to become skilful at noticing the difference between observable facts and our mind's interpretation of events.

Research on behaviour change suggests that doing some 'If..then' planning can also be useful when we want to adopt a new approach.  What this means is that we take some time to think of situations that are likely to trigger the unwanted behaviour and plan an alternative approach.  For example: My partner calls and says he is feeling tired and cancels our date, I feel rejected and become anxious. My impulse might be to become needy 'If you cared about me, you would want to come over' or avoidant 'That is fine, I am busy anyway'.  If...then planning involves developing a plan for these situations. So I might plan to respond instead with 'Oh, I was looking forward to spending some time with you. Do you want to spend the evening alone or would you like me to come over to your place?'.