I felt him pulling away. I knew we were heading down a road that ended with me being broken up with. I could feel it in my bones. 

Being on the receiving end of a breakup was a first for me and not because I was a rejection-proof dater, but because I was notoriously the one who ran first. However, in anticipation of being dumped, I came to a new crossroads — one I wouldn’t have recognized had it not been for an enlightening dive into Attachment Theory that split my path in two.

“From the work of psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Attachment Theory suggests that within the first two years of life, our brains hardwire our ideas about love.”

I had a choice. I could run out of habit or remain in the vulnerable tension. I have Attachment Theory to thank for the path I chose.

From the work of psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Attachment Theory suggests that within the first two years of life, our brains hardwire our ideas about love. According to the theory, based on early experiences with our caregivers, we develop one of four attachment styles. These styles act as the unspoken framework for how we give, receive, and view love throughout our lives. 

The four main styles are:

1. Secure 

These folks are comfortable with intimate relationships, express their needs and boundaries, and work to resolve conflict in a communicative and mutually beneficial way. 

2. Avoidant (or Dismissive)

The avoidant bunch is hyperindependent, avoids relying on others, and struggles to show vulnerability, keeping others at arm’s length emotionally.

3. Anxious (or Preoccupied)

Those with this style cling to the love they find, becoming overactive in their attempts to increase closeness and hold tight to their relationships.  

4. Disorganized (or Fearful-Avoidant) 

Simultaneously craving and fearing intimacy, disorganized individuals flip between desiring closeness in one moment and pushing it away in the next.

(Curious about where you fall on the spectrum of attachment? Take this quiz to find out!) The good news is our attachment styles can evolve. With eyes to see how our style is affecting our everyday lives, we can begin to notice opportunities, both big and small, that move the needle bit by bit toward secure attachment. 

Here are five ways you can integrate Attachment Theory as an everyday tool for ongoing growth.

1. Recognize bids for connection

In a 14-year experiment assessing thousands of married couples, psychologists John and Julie Gottman identified a vital component of what made marriages last. They coined it “bids for connection.” 

These bids can be big or small, verbal or nonverbal. For example, a bid might be calling your partner’s attention to a sunset you see outside the car window or laying your head on their shoulder on the couch. In these moments, the Gottmans say there’s an opportunity to turn towards your partner to respond kindly to the bid, leading to connection, or to shoot it down or ignore the bid completely, which leads to disconnection. 

In their book, “Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy,” the Gottmans note, “How people reacted to their partner’s bids for connection was in fact the biggest predictor of happiness and relationship stability. These fleeting little moments, it turned out, spelled the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between lasting love and divorce.”

“In addition to romantic relationships, our friends, family, and colleagues make bids for connection with us throughout the day.”

In addition to romantic relationships, our friends, family, and colleagues make bids for connection with us throughout the day. Based on our attachment style, we may be missing those opportunities to “turn towards” more than we realize. 

For an avoidant-leaning individual who finds out-of-the-blue phone calls from a friend intrusive to their workday, is there a way to recognize and honor that bid for connection instead of letting the call go to voicemail? Could you pick it up and assure your friend you’ll give them a call back later or send them a quick text letting them know you’ll check in after work?

For a disorganized attachment style who feels the urge to pull away when their partner wants to spend more time together, is there a gentle way to acknowledge the bid and find a healthy balance of closeness and needed space? 

Keeping an eye out for how your attachment style may be affecting your ability to recognize daily bids for connection gives you a leg up in seeing those “fleeting little moments,” opening the door to respond more thoughtfully. 

2. Learn your body’s signals

Ever waited for a response to a risky text? What did that moment feel like in your body? Was there a flutter in your chest? A churning in your stomach? 

Our bodies do more than carry our brains from place to place. They’re constantly responding to our environments with sensations, feelings, and full-body processes to keep us safe. 

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Aurora Allen, SEP shares, “A first step I take with clients is to learn the language of sensation and begin to listen to the body’s signals. These physiological responses and sensory feelings are designed to keep us safe under imminent threat, but the cascade of chemicals that occur under threat aren’t intended to remain ‘on’ for extended periods of time.” 

“Based on your attachment type, consider the daily interactions that may threaten your sense of emotional safety more than others.”

Because researchers have found we process both emotional and physical pain largely in the same areas of the brain, a threat to our social belonging can cause our nervous systems to send similar, terrified sensations through our bodies as they would in the presence of a lion or bear.

Based on your attachment type, consider the daily interactions that may threaten your sense of emotional safety more than others. 

For anxiously attached folks, this could be unresponsiveness from a friend or being “left on read” for days by a partner, the threat of abandonment looming. Take note of how this registers in your body. What sensations accompany it? 

“Learning tools that support a shift into a parasympathetic, or rest and digest state, can be helpful to restore homeostasis (in other words, nervous system regulation),” shares Allen. She suggests in the event of an overwhelming flood of sensations, “Explore finding safety within […] by making contact with your body. Placing your hands at your heart and slowing down the breath can support a natural slowing of the heart rate.” 

“Attending to those threat-triggered sensations could also look like going for a walk or run, journaling through your emotions, or playing an instrument.”

Attending to those threat-triggered sensations could also look like going for a walk or run, journaling through your emotions, or playing an instrument. Allen adds, “Sometimes it is necessary to do this work with a trusted and educated other,” and, if so, encourages individuals to seek support from a therapist or coach, ideally trained in Somatic Experiencing.

Learning how your attachment style and nervous system work in tandem to keep you safe every day is a step towards gently attending to the alarm bells your body sounds in the presence of a threat. 

3. Implement a vulnerability safeword

I was watching an Instagram Live hosted by holistic practitioner and relationship coach Travis Ambrose when he answered a viewer’s question about how to increase closeness with an avoidant partner.

His answer brought me to tears, so much so that I commented, “As an avoidant-leaning individual, if a partner suggested this to me, I’d liquefy with how safe I’d feel.” 

The magic of Ambrose’s answer was a tool he called a “vulnerability safeword.” This safeword, in Ambrose’s words, is “an agreed-upon keyword to signal to the other person that you’re feeling overwhelmed and perhaps shutting down in a tough or intimate conversation.” 

“For some, vulnerability historically leads to closeness and connection while for others, it leads to inevitable pain and abandonment.”

Our knee-jerk reactions to vulnerability are closely tied to our attachment styles. 

For some, vulnerability historically leads to closeness and connection while for others, it leads to inevitable pain and abandonment. According to Ambrose, our preconceived notions about vulnerability, conflict, and intimacy are created by “subconscious patterning that impacts our nervous system [and] physiologically affects our ability to stay present and have a fruitful resolution” in moments of tension.  

For all styles, a vulnerability safeword can serve as a connection safeguard when friction or intimacy becomes too much.

Ambrose advises his clients to determine a safeword before a conflict ensues and agree on a plan of action to follow when it’s used. After one partner uses the safeword, both parties take an agreed-upon amount of time apart to self-regulate and reflect, promising to return to the conversation once they’ve de-escalated from the inside out. 

“If ‘possum’ is the safe word, for example, then you could use it playfully like ‘I’m possuming right now,’” shares Ambrose, “Perhaps the couple has agreed that that means a 30-minute timeout to regulate and introspect before coming back together to determine if more time is needed or not.” 

Consider how implementing a vulnerability safeword in your relationships can serve as an emotional buoy in the choppy waters of overwhelming conversations or conflicts. 

4. Grow in empathy for those you love

Deciphering why a loved one is the way they are can feel like a puzzle you never have all the pieces to solve. That’s because we’re all wildly complex humans with our own sticky narratives influencing how we live our lives, how we love, and how we let ourselves be loved.

In his book, “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen,” David Brooks writes “…she who looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can.” 

We’re all learning as we go, and a deeper understanding of not only your own attachment style but the styles of those you love can help bridge the gap between two different people with two different stories, carving a path for connection. 

Dr. Brene Brown says, “In order to empathize with someone’s experience, you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be.” 

“Ask questions, grow curious, and listen without judgment.”

Work to understand the environment your loved ones grew up in, the styles they developed as a result, and the messages that fuel their autopilot behaviors today. 

Of course, opening up and exploring one’s childhood experiences can be vulnerable and potentially triggering. Loved ones should only approach these subjects when all parties have consented to the conversation and feel safe navigating them together, using a vulnerability safeword if helpful.

Ask questions, grow curious, and listen without judgment. Allow the narrative of your loved one’s past to color in the lines of who they are today, and as Brown notes, “Be willing to believe them as they see it.”

5. Move toward yourself with compassion

The attachment styles we developed in childhood, and all the coping mechanisms that came with them, were the survival tactics we needed to keep ourselves safe in environments where safety was not guaranteed. 

“Our patterns, however self-sabotaging they may be, were once our only choices.”

In a podcast episode of “We Can Do Hard Things,” Dr. Hillary McBride shares, “I am so grateful for every single moment that I shut sensation out of my body because I needed that to survive. It was the most important thing I could’ve done at that time. It was everything that kept me alive […] It is so important that we understand our dissociated processes as part of our survival response and at some point, we get to update our systems…” 

Though the survival tactics we have wrapped in our attachment styles may not be serving us well as adults, their original aim was pure: Self-protection. 

Our patterns, however self-sabotaging they may be, were once our only choices, and moving gently towards the parts of yourself that are only trying to continue to keep you safe is a chance to care for yourself with the compassion you deserve.  

When I began to understand my avoidant style and geared myself up for getting broken up with, the fork in my romantic road was clear. On one path, I could do what I’d always done. Run first. 

I had the “don’t worry about it” text composed, my thumb hovering above the “send” button, already feeling the relief of pulling the plug before he had the chance. However, with the growing knowledge of my attachment style, I realized my childhood experiences were trying to inform this adult decision. I knew running from vulnerability would never help me build the life I want to live — romantically or otherwise.

“I could become more of the woman I wanted to be by making the deliberate choice to be her.”

I looked down the other path and saw a different option. There, lay a chance to move the needle towards secure attachment where I could become more of the woman I wanted to be by making the deliberate choice to be her. That woman, to my insecurity’s detriment, chose vulnerability, and in that choice, I saw the needle move.

Where do you see Attachment Theory spilling into the nooks and crannies of your everyday life? What is it illuminating? How can you move your needle of attachment bit by bit, day by day? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Cheyanne Solis is a copywriter relieving entrepreneurs to rest and invest more in what they love. She writes on practical wellness and mindful productivity from the perspective of sustainable work-life balance. Explore her work and connect here.