0:00

Hey,

0:04

y'all. It's Kia. We're busy getting

0:06

ready for the next season of Invisibilia, but

0:08

we figured since it's the new year,

0:10

maybe you're feeling a bit reflective, thinking

0:13

about making a change, maybe with yourself

0:15

or with your relationships. So

0:18

we're bringing you an episode that I reported with

0:20

our friends at NPR's Life Kit podcast.

0:23

It's about attachment styles and how

0:25

they impact you and your relationships. If

0:28

you haven't listened to Life Kit before,

0:30

think of the show as a friend who has

0:32

all the best advice. They go

0:34

out, talk to a bunch of experts and

0:36

then come back to tell you the best of what

0:38

they learned. This new year's

0:40

life kit has put together a resolution planner

0:42

to help you get your twenty twenty three goals

0:44

in order. Check it out at MPR

0:47

dot orgnewyears. There

0:49

you'll find a fun tool to help you mix and

0:51

match resolutions and the tips to

0:53

help you get there. Again, that's at

0:56

MPR dot orgnewyears. And

0:59

now, here's the episode.

1:06

This is NPR's life kit. I'm Kia

1:08

Myakonides. Today, we're

1:10

talking attachment styles, which are

1:13

very popular these days. You've

1:15

probably seen people online talking about

1:17

how they can help you in relationships. And

1:19

though it might feel new, it's

1:22

an old idea that first started

1:24

in the parenting world.

1:30

So the founder of a of attachment

1:32

theory that with children initially is

1:35

John Baldy, and he made this

1:38

idea leap at the time. This

1:40

was back in the nineteen fifties when the general

1:42

belief was that babies just needed

1:44

food and shelter. And that distancing

1:47

yourself, that holding them too much,

1:49

letting them cry, and generally just

1:51

leaving them alone was good parenting.

1:54

But Bobby thought differently. All

1:56

we thought that it's a different, separate

1:58

type of of basic need that

2:00

humans have to attach to others.

2:03

That's Amir Levine. He's a psychiatrist a

2:06

neuroscientist at Columbia University

2:08

and also the co author of Attached, the

2:10

new science of adult attachment. John

2:13

Boulby's research showed that it wasn't

2:15

actually just about making sure the

2:17

baby has food and a roof over their head.

2:20

A secure relationship with a parent or caretaker

2:23

played a major factor in their

2:25

development.

2:25

You can provide children with

2:28

all of the the physical sustenance

2:30

that they need, like food and shelter, but

2:33

if you don't interact with them and there

2:35

isn't an attachment, they

2:37

will actually fail to thrive. There

2:40

are four basic attachment styles,

2:42

secure, anxious, avoidant,

2:45

and anxious avoidant. Eventually,

2:48

years of research and experiments revealed

2:50

that not only did children have different

2:52

attachment styles, Those styles

2:55

could continue into adulthood, showing

2:57

up in their romantic relationships. That

3:00

said, it isn't just about how you were

3:02

raised. Other dynamics like temperament,

3:05

genetics, and early romantic experiences

3:07

can play a major part in your attachment

3:09

style. The point is that

3:11

we all have an innate need for connection.

3:14

We have a brain circuitry that

3:16

is designed to

3:18

choose a person out from the crowd

3:20

and make them special and important. And

3:23

we do it to a large degree, not just with our

3:25

significant other, We do it also

3:27

with friends, but to a much higher

3:29

degree with significant others. And if

3:31

they're not available to us, it'll sort of

3:34

will will feel a great distress.

3:36

And you're saying it's biological. We actually

3:38

have no choice. We do this whether

3:40

or not maybe we're conscious of it where

3:42

we choose an important person.

3:44

So why would you blame someone

3:47

who is really, really craving

3:49

a relationship? But in our

3:51

society, Sometimes there's judgment

3:54

about that and this whole idea that,

3:56

oh, that means that something is wrong with you.

3:58

You have to learn to love yourself first

4:00

before you love someone else. But

4:03

that's not our biology. Our

4:06

biology doesn't work that way. We're

4:08

extremely social species In

4:10

fact, it's kind of like the opposite

4:12

we can learn to love ourselves better

4:15

through other

4:16

people. And

4:18

though you may not have a choice in which

4:20

attachment style you are, it's

4:22

not just up to you to address

4:23

it. Other people have a

4:25

role to play too. It's something

4:27

that happens in the space between two people. They

4:29

think, oh, I have this attachment style, so I have

4:31

to fix

4:32

it. By fixing myself, but

4:34

it's a relational thing.

4:36

Even just learning about the different attachment

4:38

styles can impact your relationship. And

4:41

actually, there was a recent paper

4:43

that came out that says that

4:45

just by knowing about those attachment styles,

4:47

it helps people become more secure.

4:51

Oh, that's really great news.

4:53

That's great news for anyone who's gonna listen

4:55

now to the show. In

4:57

this episode of NPR's live kit,

5:00

Amir Levine explains the different attachment

5:02

styles how to figure out your own and

5:04

others, plus How to use that

5:06

awareness to have healthier, more

5:08

connected relationships?

5:18

So I know there are different attachment styles.

5:21

What are the different styles? And how do you

5:23

figure out which one you are?

5:25

So there's anxious,

5:28

avoidant, secure, and

5:30

there's a small segment of the population

5:32

that's anxious and avoidant.

5:35

And it all has to do with

5:37

how comfortable you feel with intimacy and

5:39

closeness, but also how

5:41

sensitive of a radar do you

5:43

have for potential

5:46

disruption in that

5:47

closeness? So do you wanna break it

5:49

down from the, like, four different types how

5:51

they respond to that radar system.

5:54

Yeah. If we love love intimacy

5:56

and closeness, but yet we have the

5:58

very sensitive radar system, like,

6:00

we can read a lot

6:02

of things as potential threat, then

6:04

we have an anxious working model. Mhmm.

6:06

And the truth is that research finds

6:08

that people with anxious attachment

6:10

styles are actually better at

6:13

identifying potential threat

6:15

than other attachment styles. So it's not all

6:17

in their head. It's like it

6:19

does there's an advantage sometimes of

6:21

sort of being able to see

6:22

danger. It's like having a sixth sense for

6:24

danger. Right. Sometimes also

6:26

seeing danger where there isn't

6:28

any. So then if

6:30

we love intimacy and closeness, but

6:33

we actually don't

6:35

really have a very sensitive air system. A lot

6:37

of stuff goes over a head. Oh, they're

6:39

there. They're not there. It's fine. We don't really it's

6:41

like we don't notice it even. It's just like

6:44

then we have a secure attachment style.

6:46

Mhmm. Because we love closeness, but

6:48

we're not that. The person they

6:50

didn't they show up late from work or they

6:52

show up like set from work

6:53

or, like, we don't pay much attention

6:55

to that. We don't really see it as

6:57

a threat. Mhmm.

6:59

Okay. But that is the secure. Mhmm.

7:02

And the avoidance is

7:04

they also have this mechanism of

7:06

making someone else special, but

7:09

When that happens, something strange

7:11

happens. They want the closeness,

7:14

but they don't like too much

7:16

closeness. So what

7:18

they do is they use what we

7:20

call deactivating strategies, which

7:22

is any strategy that will actually

7:24

cause some distance in the relation

7:26

ship. Mhmm. In order to

7:29

still be together with someone

7:32

but a little bit more like at arm's

7:34

length, at a distance, So that's

7:36

the avoidant attachment style.

7:39

Mhmm. So you kind of

7:41

mentioned this before, but thinking about,

7:43

like, some of the judgments around

7:45

these attaching styles. And I really appreciate

7:47

the way you describe secure attached

7:49

because as an anxious person.

7:51

And, you know, like secure just seems

7:53

so idealized. But what you're also

7:55

saying is that, oh, they they

7:57

are not also always picking up on

7:59

things that maybe other people are that could

8:01

be helpful. You know, so I guess, Should

8:04

we be judging these styles as like

8:06

good or

8:06

bad? Is there a healthy way to think

8:09

about these categories? It's such

8:11

a good question. Because one of the

8:13

reasons why I love this field

8:15

so much -- Mhmm. -- is because

8:17

it's not embedded in this in the

8:19

medical theory

8:22

way of thinking where a lot of things

8:24

are either healthy or sick or

8:26

sick of pathology. Yeah. It really

8:28

looks at variations normal

8:31

variations in the population.

8:33

So we're not talking about any

8:35

like mental illness here or being

8:37

healthy or

8:37

sick. We're talking about the normal variation

8:40

in the population. Yeah.

8:43

Do attachment styles

8:45

change over time? Are we

8:47

like set in our ways? Or is

8:49

there some flexibility around

8:51

like, can I become a more secure

8:53

person?

8:54

The answer is definitely

8:57

yes. And that's another reason

8:59

why I love these deals so much

9:01

because especially as a therapist,

9:03

to think that there is this framework in which

9:05

people can change and and change a

9:07

lot is very promising to me.

9:09

And not everybody can change to the same

9:11

degree, but we can all try

9:13

and strive for it. One of the main

9:15

things that I think people

9:17

don't don't appreciate is enough.

9:19

Is how scary it can

9:21

be actually becoming more

9:23

secure initially. Just because

9:26

we're so steady in our ways and things

9:28

are so familiar. Then all of a sudden,

9:31

it's almost like reaching,

9:33

like, a different planet. And

9:35

one of the ways of the best

9:37

ways of becoming more secure is surrounding

9:39

yourself by more secure people. Mhmm.

9:41

If your partner is secure,

9:43

you lucked out big time. But even if

9:45

they're not secure, you can find additional

9:47

people in your life that are more secure. But

9:50

initially, sometimes it doesn't

9:52

feel comfortable when you meet

9:54

someone secure because you expect something else

9:56

and you don't know how to handle that

9:58

exactly. Part of the work is

10:00

to tell people just

10:02

take a deep breath and take it

10:04

in and trust me that in the long

10:05

run, it will be worth it. Mhmm.

10:08

Yeah. In the book, you have all these

10:10

different sort of quizzes and

10:12

tables to help people figure out their

10:14

attachment style. What do you do with that

10:16

information? How can we use attachment

10:19

theory to improve our

10:21

connections. It sounds like not just with our

10:23

romantic partners, but with other people that we

10:25

really care about too.

10:26

Right? Yes, definitely. So

10:29

in the book, we did

10:31

two things. We sort of adopted a

10:33

questionnaire about deciphering your own

10:35

attachment style. But we went a step

10:37

further and we put in a questionnaire

10:39

of how you can identify other

10:41

people's attachment style. You can

10:43

pretty easily tell what other people's

10:45

attachment styles Sometimes it's harder

10:47

than others, but a lot of the time it's

10:49

pretty easy. And then

10:51

that really puts you on a different plane.

10:53

For example, I had

10:56

a supervisor at work and

10:58

she had an extreme extremely,

11:00

extremely anxious attachment style.

11:02

So much so, that

11:04

used to drive me to distraction. I just didn't know

11:06

what to do. She would call and call and call and it was like,

11:08

oh, I'm so tired of this person. I was

11:10

just like, I would just hit

11:12

ignore. Mhmm. But you would see that I'm hitting

11:14

ignore. It would make it even more

11:17

anxious than you would call even more. And then,

11:19

like, like, it will be

11:21

unpleasant to say the least in the way

11:23

that you would speak to me. And then

11:25

I realized after thinking, oh, she has

11:27

an anxious attachment style, it doesn't

11:29

work ignoring her. It only makes her

11:31

resort to protests behavior. Mhmm.

11:33

Right? Then she calls me and lashes out at

11:35

me, that's protests behavior. So

11:37

that's very helpful to understand rather than take it

11:39

personally. It's much more efficient in

11:41

a way that you can then understand the situation.

11:43

And it has an immediate

11:46

way of correcting it. And the way to

11:48

correct it is to sometimes it's

11:50

kinda like the opposite of what you think --

11:52

Mhmm. -- is to make yourself

11:54

available to the person. So

11:56

then I've learned to even

11:58

preemptively reach out and say,

12:00

hey, I'm not done with this yet, but I'll be done with

12:02

it in the day. Yeah. We call that

12:04

sort of turning out a small flame before it

12:06

becomes a forest fire. Right. So

12:08

you identify that and you make

12:10

yourself more available. And lo

12:12

and behold, the relationship

12:14

really transformed. It was much

12:16

more calm and we're able to

12:18

get a lot work done

12:19

together. In a remarkable way.

12:22

Yeah. So what it sounds like is that

12:24

you're saying that, like, attachment style a

12:26

can help you outside of romantic

12:28

relationships. It's not just about who you're

12:30

dating. But b also help you

12:32

to navigate, like, points

12:34

of conflict with people. If you

12:36

can learn what they're

12:38

sort of attachment style is and

12:40

how it might be activated

12:42

in whatever interaction, you

12:44

could more efficiently learn how to

12:46

navigate that instead of

12:48

almost I

12:48

mean, we would say, like, two people triggering each

12:50

other. You know, like, if you're

12:51

an avoiding

12:52

or an anxious person, it can kind

12:54

of step in the gap. You

12:56

used one word. That's like the

12:58

keyword and the keyword is efficiency.

13:00

Mhmm. So we're not talking about good

13:02

or bad. We talk about is it working

13:04

for you or is it not working for you?

13:06

Mhmm. For, like, avoided people,

13:09

they think, I don't want too much

13:11

closeness. So I'm

13:13

not gonna text this person like I did

13:15

with my mentor. I'm not gonna I'm like, I'm just gonna ignore

13:17

them. I'm not gonna text them or they're calling me. I'm just

13:19

like, I I don't have time for them now.

13:21

Missing the point that this is

13:23

gonna lead to great inefficiency because

13:25

they're gonna hand up to basically deal

13:27

with the forest fire later. So

13:29

it's actually in their best interest to

13:31

maintain more quiet so they can

13:33

actually not have that much need

13:36

for constant interaction -- Mhmm. --

13:38

to keep this whole attachment system

13:40

quiet and at bay, and you can do

13:42

that doesn't need a lot. That's the most

13:44

surprising thing. It doesn't need a

13:46

lot in today, in our today's world. With

13:48

texting and emailing and all that stuff, you

13:50

can remain connected very

13:52

easily by sort of giving

13:54

small little gestures to your

13:56

partner.

13:56

Yeah. What are those steps of,

13:59

like, quieting and active

14:01

sort of attachment system? And

14:04

understanding that, like, different

14:06

people depending on your attachment style.

14:08

It might manifest differently, but

14:10

either which way it's like, your attachment

14:12

system is activated. How can someone

14:14

quiet

14:14

theirs? I like that people

14:16

oftentimes think about, okay, it's been activated. Now

14:18

I need to look after myself and I

14:20

need to quiet it down. But that's not

14:23

exactly how we think from an

14:25

attachment perspective -- Mhmm. -- because we

14:27

always think about the diet. We don't

14:29

think about, okay, Now activate it

14:31

and now you have to go and quiet down.

14:33

Mhmm. Because that's not how

14:35

it

14:35

works. Okay. You are in

14:36

a diet and something happens

14:38

in the space between two people. Mhmm.

14:40

And if you got activated, that

14:42

means that someone activated you.

14:45

Right? And it's that means that someone

14:47

wasn't in tune enough to what your

14:49

needs and that things got

14:51

spiraled out of control. I'm

14:53

a believer in actually

14:56

figuring out what the other person

14:58

needs. Mhmm. And

15:00

trying to find a way to

15:02

do what they need and trying to find a

15:04

mutual way in which then

15:06

things work

15:07

seamlessly. Mhmm. It's like a

15:09

dance, figuring out how to not step

15:11

on each other and then You can

15:13

dance together as a couple, and

15:15

he looks marvelous. Right.

15:17

Okay. So what I'm hearing you say though is

15:19

that, like, it's a two person process. If

15:21

you're if if attachment is about

15:23

two people, it can never just be on

15:25

one person to say, like, oh, I'm gonna

15:27

go soothe my attachment system

15:29

you're saying, we have to acknowledge that a person's

15:32

attachment system might have been inflated

15:34

by their partner's actions. Even

15:36

if their partner might think, perhaps

15:39

they're reacting in a way that doesn't feel necessary

15:41

because I feel like that's where the traps, at

15:43

least. Now I'm talking about myself, but like you get

15:45

trapped in, like, oh, you had a anxious

15:47

reaction something that's not worthy of

15:49

being anxious about. How do you ask

15:51

for what you need? So one of

15:53

the things that I have to that I tell all of my

15:55

patient, it's almost like you have

15:57

to we have to stop thinking from our

15:59

prefrontal cortex really. Mhmm. And you have

16:01

to understand that attachment has a

16:03

different logic to it. Mhmm. It has a

16:05

completely different logic and it's not

16:07

we tend to think what's right and what's wrong,

16:09

and we tend to sort of fight over the details

16:12

of things. Natasha doesn't care about

16:14

the explicit details. Cares

16:16

about the implicit details. We

16:18

don't care so much about the action of what

16:20

the person does. We care we care

16:22

about the meaning that we assigned to that

16:24

action. From an attachment perspective,

16:26

there's not really overreacting. I've

16:29

learned not to underestimate our

16:31

attachment system. It's a powerful

16:33

force. And if you try to go against it,

16:35

it's gonna win. The thing is to

16:37

understand the logic. And the logic is

16:39

about availability The

16:41

message should be, I'm available.

16:43

I'm here for you. I love

16:45

you. I don't want you to get hurt.

16:48

You're safe here, but when you

16:50

start telling the person you're overreacting

16:52

and you get upset about

16:53

it, the attachment system gets the message

16:55

oh my god, you're not safe here. You

16:58

should --

16:59

Right. -- turn it up a notch because you're

17:01

not safe here. It's also

17:03

important to create yourself a secure village.

17:05

And other secure people around you

17:07

because sometimes maybe you won't get what

17:09

you need from your partner, but then

17:11

what you can do is you can call a secure

17:14

person not someone who's gonna say, oh, yeah, my God. This person

17:16

is a jerk. How can they treat you like that? How can they

17:18

talk to you like that? No. No. No. You need

17:20

someone who's gonna really say, no. They love you

17:22

so much, and you know, here

17:24

yesterday, they brought you food, and they did this for

17:26

you, and that for you. And then you're like, oh,

17:28

yeah. Right. Yeah. I see that. And

17:31

kinda like, it all brings it all down.

17:34

And it's a very important principle of secure

17:37

priming. We can secure prime other

17:39

people and ourselves. And sometimes

17:41

even just watching a movie, where

17:43

you can see, like, a secure relationship that

17:45

can sort of lead to secure priming. It's

17:47

a very powerful thing and it

17:49

can last even for several weeks.

17:52

So The one big thing is,

17:54

like, thinking that we need to go all

17:56

alone. We live

17:58

in such an individualized culture.

18:00

When we forget that we never

18:03

do anything alone.

18:05

Yeah. That's real.

18:09

I mean, III have to say my the

18:11

ways in which I've displayed protest

18:13

behavior in the conflict that I've personally

18:15

experienced because I didn't have

18:17

this vocabulary. To help me understand that

18:19

a, my reaction was normal. And

18:21

b, I didn't have to be alone in it

18:23

of, like, feeling shame and, like, it's

18:25

something I need to fix, but instead, it's

18:27

something that me and my

18:29

partner can discuss as something that

18:31

needs to be resolved between the two of us. I mean, it's

18:33

just so helpful, doctor Levine. Thank you

18:35

so much. Thank you.

18:37

Great interview and great questions. For

18:42

more life kit, out our other episodes.

18:45

We have one on flirting and

18:47

another on composting. You can find

18:49

those in lots more at MPR

18:51

dot org slash life kit. And if

18:53

you love life kit and want more, subscribe

18:56

to our newsletter at MPR dot org

18:58

slash life kit newsletter. This

19:01

episode of Life Kit was produced by

19:03

Claire Marie Schneider. Meghan Kain

19:05

is the managing producer. Beth

19:07

Donovan is the senior editor. Our

19:09

production team also includes

19:11

Audrey

19:11

Winn, Andy Tagle, and Janet

19:14

Ujeng Li. Our digital editor is

19:16

Beck Heartland. Special thanks

19:18

to Annie

19:18

Chen. I'm Kimmyakon Atis.

19:21

Thanks for listening.