Put on Your Attachment Hat & Change your Romantic Attachment Style: Ashley Harvey (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Ashley Harvey’s talk titled “Put on Your Attachment Hat & Change your Romantic Attachment Style” at TEDxCSU conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

A few years ago, my husband and I got road bikes so that we would have something to do together. But what I noticed is on these road bike dates, I wasn’t very happy. Now, when I rode by myself, I felt scared but empowered. In fact, I was often singing, “I’m bad, I’m bad, I know it,” as I rode along.

The Challenge of Road Bike Dates

But when I was getting ready to go on a road bike date with my husband, I was cranky before we even left the house. Now it’s important to know that Jordan had been mountain biking for years and he was a lot stronger than me. So how these dates would typically go is that we’d start off and he’s up ahead riding with ease and I’m in the back, struggling to keep up and already not having fun.

And my feelings of irritation would just intensify as we began climbing those first hills and he’s way up ahead, standing up on his bike, grinding it out, this cute little spandex butt, and I’m down at the bottom, grumbling.

And he’d often stop to wait for me at the top of the hill, all chipper, and then I’d unleash my fury. If I was at my worst, I’d angrily complain. Things like, “It’s hot, it’s cloudy, my butt hurts, I hate this, I’m a super fun date.” But one day, I decided to do something different.

A New Approach

I put on what I think of as my attachment hat, that’s basically like putting on your thinking cap, but I analyzed how I was feeling from an attachment theory perspective and I managed to share something with Jordan that brought us together rather than pushed us apart.

So more on what I said soon, but first, I want to help you learn how to put on your attachment hat.

Now if you’re new to this attachment business, it’s basically just about the bonding that we have in our close, ongoing relationships. And I’ve been teaching students and couples about attachment for over 15 years in my roles as a university professor and relationship educator.

I’m drawing on the work of so many amazing attachment researchers. What I’m going to be talking about is mainly about romantic relationships, but you can apply it to friends and family as well. I do have to warn you though, attachment tends to stir us up. It makes us feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, hot around the collar, maybe a little queasy in the stomach, you might want to escape the room.

Understanding Attachment

But I promise, you’re not alone in this feeling. We all have to deal with this attachment business together. So what do you need to know to put on your attachment hat? Five principles.

Number one, it’s important to know that neurobiologically, our attachment systems and our fear systems are intertwined, and that’s across our lifespans. So let’s imagine I experience a threat. I get some negative feedback at my job, and so my fear system fires up, and it says, “Danger, danger, you are in trouble,” and stress hormones are released. If during this time I reach out to someone who’s a secure attachment figure for me, like my husband Jordan, and I say, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to lose my job,” he might say, “Okay, that sounds really, really tough, honey, but it’s probably not as bad as you think it is, and if it is, we’ll figure it out together.”

So now my attachment system is turned on, and it helps calm and down-regulate my fear system. That’s pretty straightforward. But what if I call my husband Jordan, and he doesn’t give me what I want? What if he says, “Honey, you are always making a big deal out of nothing, and I’m in the middle of something, so let’s talk about this later.”

The Distress-Relief Dynamic

Now I’m in a bind, because the person who I needed to calm my fear system is just amping it up. And this is one of the things that makes our romantic relationships so hard, and it ties to what Beckes and Coan call the distress-relief dynamic. So I turn to you when I’m in distress, you give me some support, I experience some relief, and we repeat it. It’s pretty straightforward, and it’s the making of a secure attachment in any relationship, but it’s harder than it looks.

ALSO READ: Truth Telling in Relationships, Are We There Yet? - Willie Earley (Transcript)

So if we think back to me on the bike, I was in distress, but I wasn’t expressing that in a way that was going to get me the support and the relief that I needed. So principle number one is that our fear and our attachment systems are intertwined.

Principle number two is that our childhoods do affect our adult attachment experiences. We didn’t get to choose as kids how well our distress was relieved or how secure attachment that we had, and it may have changed over the course of our childhoods.

The Impact of Childhood on Attachment

John Bowlby’s work on internal working models tells us that in our earliest relationships, we form internal working models of ourselves and others. And if our caregivers were mostly safe and responsive, then these models of ourselves and others are pretty positive. But we all struggle in some way with our internal working models. These are the basic attachment fears: Am I good enough? Am I lovable? Can I count on you? Can you handle me?

And we carry these fears into our current relationships, and sometimes they become self-fulfilling prophecies. So back to me on the bike, when I put on my attachment hat, I was thinking a lot about my childhood fear of not being good enough and how that was tying into my current fear of not being fast enough to ride with Jordan.

But this was leading me to come across as angry and irritable, which was just going to push Jordan away and confirm for me that I wasn’t good enough. So principle number two is about how we carry our fears into our current relationships in different ways.

Variability in Attachment Styles

Principle number three is that our attachment styles can vary. So now we’re getting to what you really want to know. What are the attachment styles and what’s yours? So when we are in distress and our attachment needs are not being met, we have two choices. We can either amp up, which is higher attachment-related anxiety, or we can tamp down, which is higher attachment-related avoidance. So when I am at my best, I’m more secure. When I’m at my worst, I’m more anxious. These four attachment styles were originally developed by Mary Ainsworth.

So let’s go through them one at a time, starting with anxious. So if we are higher on attachment-related anxiety, then in our dating relationships, we can be worried about being rejected. We can come across as a little too much in the beginning. We can overshare. We can be hypervigilant to our partner’s cues in ongoing relationships.

“You look a lot more excited to ride your bike with Dave than you do with me. What’s that mean?” And when we’re upset, we ruminate, we spin in our heads, and we can maximize our distress. When we’re upset, you know it. Back to me on the bike. We both knew I was angry.

Managing Attachment-Related Avoidance

So what if you’re someone who tends to minimize rather than maximize your distress? Then we are higher on attachment-related avoidance. And so in our dating relationships, we don’t disclose as much about ourselves early on. We come across as more aloof or game-playing. In conflicts, we want to get out of there, and we tend to minimize our distress and distract ourselves with tasks.

So my husband, Jordan, has higher attachment-related avoidance. And what this might look like is it’ll be a Thursday, and he’ll say to me, “You know, on Monday, I was really upset about such and such.” And I’m thinking, “OK, I was with you on Monday, and I couldn’t tell you were upset. And number two, why didn’t you tell me on Monday?”

Understanding Distress and Attachment Styles

But Jordan has learned to cope with distress by sort of ignoring it for a while. And so it can take him a little while to realize what’s going on, whereas it takes me like 15 seconds. This is why I love to ask Jordan scaling questions. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how upset are you?” Because otherwise, I can’t tell.

ALSO READ: Ziauddin Yousafzai: My Daughter, Malala at TED Conference (Transcript)

Now what if we’re someone who’s higher on both? We’ve got more attachment-related anxiety and more attachment-related avoidance. This is called the fearful-avoidance attachment style. This can happen for us when the people that we were supposed to be safe with, that we were supposed to be able to rely on growing up, just weren’t that predictable, and maybe they weren’t that safe. And so now we’re in this position of really longing for connection, but feeling like it could be dangerous. And so we do higher amounts of both. We move towards, and then we pull away.

Secure Attachment Style

Now we’re on to our fourth and final attachment style, secure. This is like the how-to of relationships, what we’re all going for, right? And it’s when we have lower attachment-related anxiety and avoidance, because we all have some. So people who are more secure in their dating relationships, they’re able to take it seriously, but they’re not holding on to it so tight that they think they’re going to die if the relationship ends.

And this was a personal favorite and a life lesson for me, since I tend to be an over-sharer. People who are more secure regulate their disclosures based on how much the other person is sharing. In their ongoing relationships, they’re better able to give their partners the benefit of the doubt. “If you’re tired or distracted, that doesn’t mean that you don’t care about me.”

Attachment and Conflict Patterns

And in conflict, they’re more out to understand than they are out to win. So let’s talk more about how these attachment styles lead into our conflict patterns. So principle number four is that attachment underlies conflict. So therapist and researcher Sue Johnson helped us understand how attachment-related anxiety and avoidance feed into a very common pattern of conflict in couples called the pursue-withdraw pattern.

So in my own marriage, I tend to be the pursuer because I have higher attachment-related anxiety than my husband, and he tends to be the avoider or the withdrawer because he has higher attachment-related avoidance than me. But let’s talk about a different couple. Let’s talk about Maya and Gabby. So a little background, Maya has higher attachment anxiety, and she’s learned to amp up to get heard.

The Pursue-Withdraw Pattern

Gabby has higher attachment avoidance. She’s learned to cope with the stress by putting her head down and working, which she’s really good at. So Gabby’s working late, and Maya’s home, lonely and getting increasingly irritable. By the time Gabby comes home, Maya criticizes her, “You’re always late.”

Gabby defends herself, “It’s not all the time, and it’s just this temporary project, it’ll be over soon.” But as soon as one person minimizes, another person maximizes. So Maya makes her case louder, better. And Gabby starts to get overwhelmed.

Understanding and Addressing Attachment Needs

She feels like, “Okay, whatever I’m saying is making it worse, so I’m just going to shut down and distract myself with tasks.” And then Gabby’s left, feeling like Maya doesn’t care. And this cycle will repeat itself, maybe on another day, with a different topic. It also shows us the four principles of attachment that we’ve talked about so far.

So it helps us understand that, number one, attachment is intertwined with distress. It shows us what it looks like when that distress-relief dynamic isn’t working. So both Maya and Gabby are in distress, but they’re unable to help each other. Number two, it shows us how our childhood fears can play out in our current ongoing conflicts, right?

Our fears that we aren’t good enough and that we can’t rely on the other person. Number three, it shows us how that attachment-related anxiety and avoidance can feed into a pursue-withdraw conflict cycle. And number four, and perhaps most important, it shows us that a lot of times, couples think they’re fighting about someone coming home late or chores, but what they’re really fighting about is, “Do you see me? Do you value me? Do you need me? Can I count on you?” And until that gets addressed and articulated, they’re unlikely to be able to resolve the conflict. So what do we do about this?

The Key to Connection: Attachment

We can begin to talk and think about our attachment styles. So principle number five is that attachment is key to connection. So we can explore our own attachment style as well as the attachment styles of the people that we’re connected to. We can watch for that pursue-withdraw pattern in our relationships, and when we see it, we can name it. “Oh, we did that thing again where I amp up and then you tamp down and I amp up some more and then you shut down.”

ALSO READ: The Secret of Starting Over: Edward Hartwig (Transcript)

And so once we name it, then we can begin to change it. And then the last one is we can take a risk and share our attachment needs and fears. So if we go back to Maya and Gabby, Maya might have been able to say, “When you are late, I’m worried that it’s about me.”

And Gabby might have been able to say something like, “You know, work is how I bring value, and when you dismiss that, I feel really unworthy.” Here’s how I did it on the bike. So I used all five principles. I understood that I was in distress and I was going to need my husband Jordan to reassure me.

Personal Application of Attachment Principles

Number two, I realized that my childhood fear of not being good enough was getting triggered, and that was leading me to come across as the more anxious attachment style. Principle number three. And that was going to just push Jordan away in that pursue-withdraw pattern. Principle number four.

And I used principle number five to take a risk and tell him what I was feeling. And this is what that sounded like. When he waited for me at the top of the hill, instead of unleashing my fury, I said, “You know what, honey? I’ve been riding along here and feeling really cranky and I wasn’t sure why.” And I realized it’s because I’m worried that you don’t really want to be out here with me. That you wish you were riding with Mike or Dave, somebody faster. That I’m just too slow. That you’re not even getting a workout.

And Jordan, being the supportive person that he is, was able to say, “It’s okay that you’re slow. I was slow once too. And today isn’t about getting a workout. Today’s about being together. Do you want to lead? Because we can go at your pace.” And I said, “Are you sure?”

Because we could just ride separately and meet back at the house. And he said, “I’m sure.” So to wrap this up, talking about attachment is scary. It’s uncomfortable. We hate it. But if we can take the risk and talk about our fears, then we can decrease conflict and increase connection with the people that we love. Thank you.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Ashley Harvey’s TEDx talk, “Put on Your Attachment Hat & Change Your Romantic Attachment Style,” delves into the intricacies of attachment theory and its profound impact on romantic relationships. She begins by sharing personal anecdotes, highlighting the challenges she faced in her own marriage due to differing attachment styles with her husband, Jordan.

Harvey introduces the concept of the “attachment hat” as a metaphor for adopting an analytical perspective towards one’s emotions and behaviors in relationships. She outlines the four attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant—explaining how they influence our interactions and conflict patterns within romantic partnerships. The talk emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing these styles to foster healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

Harvey provides practical advice on how to communicate needs and fears effectively, using examples from her life to illustrate how such strategies can lead to significant improvements in connection and understanding between partners. Ultimately, her message is one of hope and empowerment, encouraging individuals to actively work on their attachment styles to enhance their romantic relationships.