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An athlete kisses a medallion with a photo of his mother before the start. A businessman looks at photos of his wife and children during the day. A crying woman hugs a cat. Are their actions just a habit? Obviously, something more: affection. This is not just a feeling of intimacy, but a stable characteristic of our relationship.
We are attached to partners, parents and friends and communicate with them in a certain style. It largely depends on how our parents treated us in early childhood. If mom was there for the most part, consoled, understood when we needed to feed or change clothes, we form a secure attachment. And then in adulthood, we can build satisfying relationships, as well as experience breakups.
Pass the tests
- Are you too close with your children?
- What kind of psychologist are you for your loved ones?
“We don’t need a good (safe) attachment to get attached, we need it to move on – study, work, live,” explains Mario Mikulinzer, one of the most respected attachment researchers.1. And for someone whose parents were cold, often abandoned the child, did not satisfy his needs, the attachment style will be different. For example, he (or she) may cling to relationships, experience intense anxiety when alone, experience breakups as an unbearable catastrophe – this is what anxious attachment looks like. Or, on the contrary, will avoid feelings of intimacy, expression of emotions, and sometimes relationships in general – this is avoidant attachment.
Read more:
- “By giving up attachment to another, we deprive ourselves of a mirror”
There are areas in the brain that are responsible for attachment. Every time we find ourselves in a stressful situation, our brain turns to them, as we once turned to mom. If there is an image of a good attachment, we calm down, or at least pull ourselves together despite the anxiety. If there is no image of good attachment, anxiety has to be removed by other means – with the help of alcohol, biting nails – and you never know what else.
Mario Mikulinzer has done an amazing series of studies. The subjects were shown pictures of their loved ones so quickly (we call it “sub-threshold”) that they were unaware of what they were seeing. They were then asked to complete various tasks. The participants in the experiment after such a fleeting “meeting” coped better with intellectual tasks, more accurately perceived other people’s emotions, more often described the attitude of other people towards themselves as benevolent, and were generally more efficient than the control group. The conclusion suggests itself: do not forget to put a family photo on your desktop.
1 M. Mikulincer, Ph. R. Shaver “An Attachment Theory View of Psychopathology”, World Psychiatry, 2012, vol. 11, no. 1.