Building Healthy ROMANTIC Relationships with Dr. Jessica Waldron
“The need to connect or bond with at least one other person in our life is essential for our own healthy emotional regulation, our self-esteem, and our confidence. It creates a secure base that we can use to go out into the world and be individuals, do new things, and feel comfortable with our emotional needs” — Dr. Jessica Waldron
In this episode, Dr. Jessica Waldron shares insights on attachment theory, why it’s important, and how understanding our individual attachment styles can positively impact our relationships.
Dr. Waldron is a clinical psychologist who specializes in relationships, sexual health, and behavioral sleep medicine. She completed her doctoral training at Stanford and received much of her clinical training at Stanford Psychiatry and top VA hospital systems across California. She trained under Dr. Britney Blair, a board-certified sex and sleep therapist. She’s also supported research on women’s health, chronic pain, and mood and anxiety disorders and has consulted for companies such as Lover, a sexual wellness app. For more information on her background, see her site here.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
What attachment theory is
How attachment styles are formed
How attachment styles impact oour relationships
How to heal from insecure attachment styles
Resources:
Podcast highlights
Aleks: Let's start out by going through what attachment theory is.
Dr. Waldron: This is definitely one of my favorite topics, especially in the work I do with couples, relationships, but I mean also just really any individual — understanding their history and how they relate and connect to significant others in their life and how that's showing up. So attachment theory at its simplest form is really just talking about this emotion, this need, our need for survival — we're biologically wired to emotionally bond or attach to one other person in our life. And it starts as soon as we're born.
And the understanding is that it's a survival thing: if you're an infant and you're just born, you literally can't fend for yourself, right? You can't get food for yourself, you can do nothing. You're literally laying there and your entire survival is dependent on that one other person, usually your primary caregiver, typically a mother maybe a father, or maybe a nanny, something like that. So it's in your interest then to keep yourself as close to this survival person as possible, you want to emotionally bond to them.
This need to connect or bond with at least one other person in our life is essential for healthy relationships, for our own healthy emotional regulation, for self-esteem, for confidence. It creates this, what they call , a secure base that we can use to go out into the world and be individuals and do new things and feel comfortable with our emotional needs and wants and all of that.
Aleks: That makes sense. So basically it starts in childhood and what you experience as an infant and in childhood will have a big impact on how you behave in your relationships further down the road?
Dr. Waldron: Typically the attachment style, and we'll talk about the different types attachment styles, is what you develop in infancy, and then it's pretty stable across your lifespan. So that usually does show up in other significant relationships across your life: in adolescence it tends to be maybe your best friends. and then into early romantic relationships, and then into later romantic relationships. Usually, you will maintain the same type of attachment style you have with your parents and see it showing up in the way that you relate to other significant others in your life.
Attachment styles
Aleks: How many attachment styles are there and what are they?
Dr. Waldron: There are four different styles. One is secure attachment, which is the ideal one, and there are three insecure attachment styles.
Anxious attachment
This is someone who, when they start to feel the threat of disconnection from that attached other, they're going to protest and experience a lot of anxiety. They're going to get super dis-regulated. They're going to fight to have that person stay close. They really crave a high level of closeness. And they have a high level of anxiety about the security of the relationship. You can imagine that maybe this is the frantic girlfriend or boyfriend who, when you don't respond to their text message right away because you were just chatting with a friend or away from your phone, may text or call you numerous times. You may come back to your phone to 20 missed calls.
Aleks: What is that like in infancy? What causes anxious attachment?
Dr. Waldron: The parent of a child that ends up with anxious attachment tends to be inconsistent. So sometimes they're attentive and warm and they want to give you all this affection but then when they're not in the mood or they are having their own issue, they might push you away. It's very confusing and because the kids sometimes get what they want from the parent, they're constantly fighting to get it: “I just have to keep pulling for that, pulling for that, because I'll get it at some point”. It's kind of like that. “If I hit this thing enough times, I don't know how many times I have to hit it, but if I hit it enough times eventually I'll get what I want”. And so the parents are kind of using the kid, I mean, this isn't necessarily happening obviously consciously. The parent may not realize. They’re kind of using the kid when it feels good for them, when it feels good to have the kid around, and to feel affection towards them and then dismissing them when maybe they're having their own issues.
Avoidant attachment
This style is someone who has learned to suppress their needs and wants from the other person. Likely their parent was kind of disengaged or not very affectionate, not very available. Maybe just not very emotional, not hyper attuned to them, and dismissed their needs. So over time they just learned to suppress their needs and emotions. They decided: “If I want to stay close to my parents, I just need to not have needs because this person's not going to meet them for me. And it's too painful to have needs and then not have them met”. So you just go offline with them.
So that person, as an adult are of the mindset “I'm good on my own. I really don't need that, I'm actually fine. I don't really need anybody”. They might scoff if you express emotional needs — “that's too much” — and be a little bit invalidating to those needs. It's not that they don't have the same needs to connect with another person (we all are wired to).
Disorganized Attachment
Dr. Waldron: So the third one is disorganized. This is kind of the most severe of the insecure attachment styles that typically happens from a child who experienced some sort of trauma, emotional abuse, sexual, physical abuse, or they had a frightening parent. Maybe there was a lot of anger or aggression happening in the house, or if your mom was severely depressed, so you were not getting anything from them. That's really scary, right? To have a parent that's really just down and withdrawn.
And this attachment style is really a chaotic feeling for a child and an adult because you recognize that you do crave the intimacy. Whereas the avoidant style doesn’t accept the fact that they crave intimacy, but when you have this disorganized style, you recognize that you want it. But as soon as it comes towards you, the fear clicks in and then you push it away. It's just this chaotic, confusing experience of trying to get needs met, and then not being able to, because it's too scary.
Aleks: You hear all the time about people who sabotage their relationships and they might get into a relationship and somebody might be emotionally available, meeting their needs and somehow they find something off or wrong. Is that similar? I’m just trying to understand how disorganized, what does that look like in today's world, as far as dating goes or couples?
Dr. Waldron: It would be a bigger response than that. So what happens to someone who's had a lot of trauma is that things can get triggered in them and they can get emotionally flooded or super emotionally disregulated. So I think what might happen is, you're dating this person and they're saying they want to be close to you. Or maybe they want to experience sexual intimacy and then you do, and then they panic and freak out and start crying and run away. And you're like, what just happened?
So I think it tends to be a little bit bigger reactions because the stuff that's getting brought up in them is pretty distressing, and it can flood. So I think as a partner it can become confusing.
Secure Attachment
Aleks: And secure attachment. So what does that look like? I obviously know but just asking for a friend.
Dr. Waldron: We are pillars of secure attachment here, aren't we? So basically secure attachment starts when you have a parent who is highly attuned to your needs as an infant. You cried because you're hungry and you're parent shows up with a bottle. You cry because your diaper's dirty or you're scared and your parent is attuned to that. And that just keeps building on itself. So you have an emotional experience: your parents behave in a way that shows you “okay, cool I hear you. What you're asking for and what you're going through is valid. And let me offer you or reassure you or be available to you in the way that you're asking it”.
So it creates a very organized sense of self, right. I have this emotional experience and then my parent is like: “that makes sense, here you go". Here's what you're needing right now”. In the other insecure styles you have these emotions, these needs, and when your parent doesn't meet them, it's very confusing. So you think: “I must be wrong here. What I'm needing must be too much or not the right way to need something” whatever it might be, however you're getting invalidated. So when you have this secure attachment, you get a lot of confidence. You trust your emotions, you ask for things that you need in relationships because you’re confident and you do it in a very authentic, clear way. You don't tip toe or say “no, I don't want you to do something for me” when secretly you do. Also when you have that, you don't have a lot of anxiety about the security of your relationships and you're also not avoidant of intimacy. You're fine with intimacy. So you create these nice relationships.
Aleks: Let's say you were given all these things as an infant and as a child and you have a secure attachment, but somehow you found yourself dating somebody that may have an avoidant style or just in general, be making you anxious in a particular situation. If you have a secure attachment, can you have a relationship that makes you have an insecure attachment?
Dr. Waldron: It could, It definitely can happen. There can be pivotal relationships in your life that sort of flip things on your head — you may have situations where you come out feeling more anxious, you may have had an unexpected betrayal that really flipped your idea and your beliefs about others. So if you have a secure attachment, you have a pretty positive belief about others. For example, I can reach out to another person who is likely available to meet my needs, but if they can't, I don't really need them because I have other people.
But sure, you could have a relationship that you've felt really secure and felt bonded to and then there was a deep betrayal and that could really be a bit traumatizing to your attachment system. Typically if you have a secure attachment, you don't, it tends to actually work well in the other way, where if you do have a partner with an insecure attachment, they can tend to build a more secure attachment by being with you.
healing insecure attachment styles
Aleks: Oh, that's good. That's really good to know. Are there specific attachment styles that are attracted to one another? Like I can imagine that the anxious is attracted to the avoidant. It just seems like because in childhood they weren't given a consistent message. So you were saying, they had to keep pressing that button and eventually, they would get a little morsel of emotion and they would cherish that morsel and want more and more of it. And I imagine that the avoidant person is afraid of expressing their emotions. But, deep down inside they have that need so maybe they will express it from time to time and give that anxious person a morsel here and there. So it works well together.
Dr. Waldron: Totally. Yes, I will say that the vast majority of the couples I see in couples therapy are the anxious-avoidant — it's so interesting. Yes, they're often attracted to each other. There can be false markers of intimacy at the beginning of a relationship for the anxious person who tends to attach very quickly.
To the avoidant person, the beginning of a relationship is a safe space. It's a low place of intimacy for them, so they can show up there. But you better believe as soon as stuff's going to get more serious or they’re going to try to get pinned down, it's going to be a no go. But you also do see these showing up in relationships where it can be a bit of a spectrum. It doesn't have to be exactly like, “oh, you're so avoidant that you can't even be in a relationship”. You just may have more of an avoidant tendency or more of an anxious tendency. And so when there is a tension in a relationship you'll see that really escalate: it can either look like “I need you, I want you, I want you close” or “you never do this, you didn't do this”. It's criticism. And then the response from the avoidant person is that they really shut down.
Aleks: In the case where you don't have secure attachment. How do you heal from these things? How do you heal from your insecure attachment style?
Dr. Waldron: It starts with a deep awareness of how this shows up in your relationships. So you don't have to go back to your early childhood and stay there forever to think about it, but you do really need to start to think about how your needs were met as a kid or as a young child. And obviously, we don't have explicit memory, like memory we can recall during those very early years, but we definitely have implicit memory because we feel. And often, if you still have a relationship with your parent and there was an insecure attachment style, you are probably still being triggered in some way. So you can even reflect on the current relationship if you can't really connect to what those experiences were as a child.
If you're avoidant style, you likely don't have an autobiographical memory of your childhood because of suppressing so much and shutting down the experience of your early childhood. This just isn't accessible to your memory.
So I think starting to get a clear narrative about how your needs were or not met by a primary caregiver. It's hard to do, It just depends on your level of kind of introspective. Some people are closer to that and they've been thinking about that for a long time. And some people really still have a very protected narrative about their parents.
Aleks: Some people just don't want to go there.
Dr. Waldron: I know. Or just to shatter the image you might hold, right? Because an unavailable parent might've been so successful in their career and you've really modeled yourself after that because you really looked up to certain things about them — we adapt and we are resilient. So we will build up these things to make us feel good about the situations we're in, especially because as children, we can't leave, we have to stay there. As adults, we don't have to do that anymore and that's often part of the work.
These things, these ways of coping, are survival. And whatever style you developed was super resilient of you and— for the anxious person or the avoidant person — was a great way that you adapted to your situation to keep yourself close to this important provider of safety and security. So that was really smart and it's not something you did wrong. You're not a bad person because you reacted in these ways, you did what you needed to do. Now, fast forward, you're an adult and you don't need that anymore. It's actually become destructive to your relationships.
So now it's about unwinding the programming, having corrective experiences. So I think the first part is just really starting to understand that narrative. What happens for you when you feel like you're disconnecting from this important other person? Do you tend to protest, get critical? Do you tend to shut down? Do you withdraw? Do you get really overwhelmed and just flooded with emotion and can't even like...
Aleks: If you do want to take a look at your childhood and you're comfortable going there, are you looking at your primary caregiver? Or are you looking at both? Let's say you had a mom and a dad scenario and your mom was your primary caregiver because she was home with you and dad worked. Are you looking at what you got from both of those parents or just your primary caregiver?
Dr. Waldron: Yeah, you can definitely look at both. There seems to be, in my experience, one parent that really gets under you the most where you notice these being triggered by their behaviors or their emotions, or you're really attuned to shifts in their emotions. That you are more kind of navigating them than another parent. However, it can be both and you can have a different style with both parents. I just find that I think there's one.
And yes, unfortunately for us mothers, it is a lot of weight just naturally because we carry them and they feed off of our body, we tend to be the first primary caregiver. Now, of course, that doesn't always happen. But like you're saying, often for a lot of people, it's the mother relationship that shows up, but does not have to be. And like I said, you could have a grandparent or a father or an uncle or someone or anyone who you had that other corrective experience with or not. So it doesn't have to be.
Aleks: So for those people who don't want to look backward, do you have any advice as to how they can work on their attachment style and what are the things that they can do?
Dr. Waldron: Sure. I mean, you don't have to go backward. I don't want to get into all the neuroscience but we do have our more primal brain, our fight or flight and survival brain, and then we have, our frontal cortex, our executive functioning. Often when we get triggered around disconnecting from our attachment person, we're not getting just triggered in our upper analytical, rational brain. We're actually getting triggered in this more primal survival brain. And it's like, alarm bells start going off. So addressing the wiring of that primal brain is important.
But we can look at our most current relationships, we don't have to go all the way back. It is good to consolidate, why? It's very validating to say, “Oh, I understand my reaction in the context, my reaction makes sense in the context of my life or my context of my upbringing”. There's a really validating way that really contains what we're going through — there’s less of “something's wrong with us or something's wrong with the other person”.
So often in the couples work, you can acknowledge that both people are good and want the same things. Unfortunately, when disconnection gets triggered, you go to this old way of survival mode, which might be to attack, or it might be to shut down. But that's not what you really want, that's just the noise. The core of what you guys actually want is the same exact thing. Now, it would be so helpful if we can just learn to reach out to each other when we're needing this, be authentic, be more vulnerable, come to each other, rather than get into these ineffective reactions that are not helpful in our relationships.