Discovering the Treasure in Relationships - Identifying and Responding to Attachment Styles for more Meaningful Connections

Prologue: How Traditional Therapy Helps Partners Strengthen Relationships

As an expert therapist my clinical experience is founded in providing individualized curriculum plans to children and adults survivors of child sexual abuse. I find fun, lighthearted metaphors to be the most effective approach to unlocking the depths of the child subconscious mind where unpolluted joy and creativity reside.

If I were conducting an actual therapy session with a live client, this would be an art therapy session, complete with a large poster board sized paper, finger paint and colorful markers. Here, my child clients and repressed adult-child clients would tap into the safety of their inner child by drawing an elaborate treasure map.

Each detail equally important for analysis, the minor details such as the clouds, sea, boat all examined as insight into their more minor regressed trauma. The illustrated pirate would be the actual focal point of therapy, representing their perpetrator, historical and contemporary trauma and distress. I not only view what my clients draw but how my clients draw. Chaotic rushed strikes of anguish, methodical painstaked portraits, I observe intently and inquisitive, mental notes of how facial expressions fill the canvas with the beauty of self-expression. Finally, a large “X” would mark the spot of their treasure. The person, places, things, hobbies that bring them emotional safety and joy. In the absence of art-supplies and live clients, today, this article will be a canvas for your amusement.

For children who linguistically and cognitively lack the articulation to express abusive acts, the act of illustrating their trauma allows them to successfully experience secure attachment by a caregiver over an elongated time period. The client’s cries for support are comforted by the active listening of the therapist - intentionally designed to mimic a caregiver-infant dynamic.

The total length of a client’s therapy treatment plan is uniquely tailored to a client's needs based on an assessment of: a). secure base b).attachment style c). outstanding trauma and current stressor(s) d). history and presence of abuse and e). protective v. risk factors.

For child and adult survivors of child sexual abuse, the average length of a therapy treatment plan is one to two years, which is non-coincidentally the span of infancy. In most severe cases of child abuse and disorganized attachment, children and child-adults need to repeat their infancy under the attentive supervision of a caregiver (professional therapist).

If you or your partner have experienced child neglect or abuse and one or both of you struggle to securely attach, keep reading to explore how to unlock the love buried deep within your (un)loved one.

Discovering the Treasure in Relationships - Identifying and Responding to Attachment Styles

Sometimes relationships are obvious, they simply wash onto the sandy seashore like a love letter carefully placed inside a glass bottle. Other times relationships are oblivious, one or both partners are visible but emotionally unavailable resulting in one or both suitors who go searching for the other like one-eyed patched pirates in a treacherous trek across shark infested high sea.

Despite high levels of interest, why do one or more partners easily position themselves for healthy relationships and why do one or more partners hide from relationships? For partners with strong self-identity and purpose for the relationship, the treasure hunt can make one or both partners feel like a pirate on the ultimate treasure quest of their lives.

This article explores the four primary attachment styles in relationships to understand why one or more partners hunt like a pirate and one or more partners hide like the pirate’s gold.

In 1979, John Bowlby-Ainsworth fathered the attachment style theory after studying infant attachment in mistreatment of humans, birds, dogs and monkeys. John discovered a correlation between the quality of the relationship between the infant in early years and the ability or inability for an infant species to socially bond with other related species later in life.

Most notable to his research, John introduced the concept of the “secure base.” The “secure base,” is how a child uses a caregiver as a stable compass of safety (reference point) to confidently explore the world around them.

In sum, the four attachment styles are a sliding scale for ability to securely attach in the presence or absence of a pre-existing “secure base.”

PART ONE: IDENTIFYING THE FOUR ATTACHMENT STYLES - DRAWING A TREASURE MAP

Secure attachment: Trust and safety in relationships

The initial stage of the Erickson 8 stage psychosocial development cycle is “Trust versus Mistrust.” Here, children learn to either trust that their needs will be met by caregivers through timely, appropriate responses to cries for support. Conversely, children learn to mistrust that their needs will not be met following untimely, inappropriate responses or non-responsive cries for support. As children develop into adults, their ability or inability to socially bond with others is a direct consequence of the quality of their social bonding during the infant experience.

Anxious attachment: Clinginess and anxiety about abandonment

Anxiety is the prolonged state of tension and worry. Anxious attachment in adults results from inconsistent caregiving where sometimes a child’s needs are met and sometimes the needs are not met. This causes an infant/child to become excessively clingy with the chronic fear that they will be forgotten by the caregiver and their needs will not be met. For infants and children who lack temporal comprehension, any delay in meeting their needs feel like a complete lifetime abandonment. This unresolved fear of abandonment follows children into adulthood, adults avoid relationships due to a haunting fear that they will eventually be abandoned.

Avoidant attachment: Emotional distance and reluctance to depend on others

Caregivers that are emotionally unavailable or dismissive teach infants to likewise be emotionally distant and self-reliant. These children grow into adults who yearn for attachment but suppress their emotional needs with the belief that their emotional needs will be unmet in the similar fashion they were dismissed and unmet by initial care givers.

Disorganized (messy) attachment: A mix of behaviors often resulting from trauma and inconsistent caregiving.

Disorganized (messy) attachment is the highest tier of caregiver neglect. In the most extreme cases of disorganized attachment, adulthood detachment is marked by caregiver physical abuse and physical abandonment. Here, children do not identify their initial caregivers as sources of comfort but as sources of torment and danger. As these children become adults they lack the cognitive reasoning to foresee their peers as potential caregivers.

The severity of caregiver mistreatment in childhood dictates the severity of non-attachment in adults. The term disorganized (messy) attachment represents the range of messy behaviors in attempts to properly attach to peers in the absence of a pre-existing example of an emotionally healthy attachment (secure base) in childhood.

This behavior manifests as hot and cold mood swings of rejection to acceptance. Robust intimacy followed by disinterest and separation. Extreme excitement turned into bored indifference. Here, the detached is struggling to grasp the mysterious concept of love. The self is spatially re-organizing inappropriate, untimely receipts for conditional care with appropriate, timely bids for unconditional love.

PART TWO: RESPONDING TO THE ATTACHMENT STYLE - HOW TO PIRATE THE GOLD HIDDEN WITHIN

Just like a shipwrecked pirate that is often tossed to and fro by the hostile waves of a stormy sea - sometimes, we must move backwards in love in order to move forward in love. Ideally, your pirate hunt cabin crew would consist of at least one psychotherapist to help you facilitate narrative based therapy. Unfortunately most olympic gold medalists don’t have pirates who moonlight as a therapist. For all the pirates without a private therapist on permanent retainer, here is a brief helpful hunting guide to help you respond to your partner’s attachment style:

Secure attachment conflict: Secure attached children tend to come from emotionally stable two parent homes. They have the advantage of having healthy problem solving modeled before them. These children are properly nurtured and provided with ample extracurricular activities to mimic the love they witnessed at home. They often have excellent communication styles and generational support resulting in young and fruitful marriages

What is the downside of securely attached adults? Children with overly met needs become spoiled children who maturate to spoiled adults who expect an unsustainable/unfair distribution of emotional resources in the relationship.

Secure attachment solution:

What do you give the sweetheart that has everything? What he/she doesn’t have -- your most intimate secret needs. Express your needs in a direct, kind way that does not reference subtracting their needs as a means to have your needs met. Take care not to blame shift your inability to vocalize your own emotional needs as an effect of their pronounced skill to vocalize their needs. Fly with - not against them. Mutual deficiency does not create mutual equality.

Anxious attachment conflict: Anxious children become adults with maladaptive coping mechanisms (addiction, poor short term pleasure providing behavior) in response to chronic anxiety.

Anxious attachment solution: Regular reassurance that you won’t abandon them is key to creating and strengthening their emotional safety. The key to your beloved’s door will be uniquely tailored to their special identity. If you know (them), you know (them). If this innuendo makes no sense, respectfully, just get to know them, first.

Avoidant attachment conflict: Due long term neglect, anxiously attached children de-evolve from innately communal to socially adapted lonely little people. These children were often parentified and became a parent to their siblings and selves. In adulthood, these persons struggle with true relational partnership due to learned hyper-independence. Avoidant attached persons struggle with secretly feeling alone despite being in a committed relationship.

Avoidant attachment solution: My heart always hurts for parentified children. This hybrid life role perversion strips them of their ability to fully be a baby or an adult. Deep down inside, they are secretly the biggest cry babies you will ever meet. In response to not being held and not having their tears wiped, they have come to despise the sound of their own weeping. To help them heal you must respect the mama and papa in them while simultaneously providing them with full emotional safety and permission to cry out like a newborn baby. In due time, their loud cry will become the sweetest song to your trained ear.

These adults require the second highest tier of emotional support and peer care-giving. Avoidant attached children who were intermittently dismissed by their caregivers survived by normalizing the emotional distance learned from their caregivers. The normalization of neglect allows them to rationalize the emotional distance received in childhood. Normalization of emotionally distant childhood rapport occurs by applying a similar emotional distance stance in adult relationships.

To effectively perpetuate attachment here, you must deeply love these adults from a long distance. This mimics the love they received in childhood as close intimacy would shock their emotional immunity causing them to retreat to isolation to secure their sense of familiarity. As these adults become more accustomed to emotional proximity, their tolerance for close intimacy will build over time. Expect long periods of complete silence and withdrawal as the inner child in this adult revolts against incorrect attachment in infancy. Unlimited space is the key to this race.

Disorganized attachment conflict: Disorganized attachment styles present in children who experienced severe physical and verbal abuse accompanied by intermittent neglect and abandonment. For adults who were deprived of physical safety in childhood, once they secure physical safety in adulthood, they have no interest in the very emotional vulnerability that could potentially risk their physical safety.

These adults completely reject therapy because returning to the place of suffering is too painful and uninteresting. For children who were sexually abused, they are repulsed from all forms of intimacy due to prior forced compulsion of intimacy. These adults require professional therapy and attachment is highly unlikely without professional intervention.

Disorganized attachment solution: These adults are the most fragile due to extreme mistreatment and risk permanent admission to the emotional ICU, intensive care unit without professional therapy intervention. They will need the total sum of all the love you have to gift. These adults require psychoeducation to reprogram what emotionally healthy love looks like.

Unfortunately, the existence of healthy emotionally available love is not sufficient. They require a preliminary foundation to affix themselves to. To lure them out of hiding they need a contingency plan for the contingency plan. Clinicians refer to it as a secure base. To love these adults you must first become and next serve as a secure base. They require written evidence that your exchange is not purely transactional. Their insecurity levels dictate the level of discovery required before you may discover them.

Due to extreme malnutrition, these adults must be tube fed on a speciality diet. They are very prideful due to a lifetime of self-reliance and will not admit when they are famished. You must discreetly leave food out and let them feast in full privacy.

They would speak if they could but the thoughts are so discombobulated they cannot string together live sentences. Forgive them for the delayed post scriptum messages, they are doing the very best they can.

To embark on this mission of colonization and naturalization, you must first begin by speaking their language. Disorganized attached adults, deprived of love, do not have a love language. Free game society, master their native tongue and sing songs in it.

Unfortunately, disorganized attached adults do not know true comfort, only false familiarity. To conquer your lady or lad in hiding, camouflage in their surroundings and slowly inch closer by penetrating their cultural competency. Begin by becoming familiar in lieu and enroute to becoming relational.

For those yet insistent on loving the disorganized attached, please continue to part three which expounds upon the necessary preparation to engage and help bless their mess.

PART THREE: PREPPING FOR PIRACY, PACKING THE RELATIONSHIP SURVIVAL KIT

Poorly attached persons have abysmally low success rates of rapport. WARNING! STOP HERE. If you refuse to stop hunting and insist about risking your life for a sheer chance of un-concealing your person, here is a detailed pirate survivalist kit:

1). One eye patch to adjust to the darkness below deck - If you are a Christian pirate, substitute an eye seeing eye for a holy bible

2). Two parrots for each shoulder. Historically parrots were a source of pirate amusement and companionship for lonely long journeys. Parrots reside in exotic places, becoming a source of social status for their pirate parents. Parrots are notoriously monogamous and experience depression without their parrot mate. If the parrot is your desired pet companion, consider getting a pair of parrots instead of just one parrot. Fun fact, parrots became popularized by the book, “Treasure Island” where protagonist John Silver has a parrot named Captain Flint.

3). Three jugs of Grog for your sorrows. Real pirates drink real grog, rum mixed with water, lemon juice and sugar. Grog has practical purposes besides intoxication, grog makes water safer to drink by killing bacteria. During the height of 17th century piracy, scurvy was a fatal killer of pirates. The vitamin C in grog is a natural remedy for scurvy.

4). Four flintlock pistols for close-quarters combat with adversarial pirates that threaten to seize acquired loot. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

5). Five cannon balls for pirate warfare. In 2013, the Coast Guard recovered five cannons from infamous pirate Blackbeard’s sunken ship. The ship sank off the coast of North Carolina.

6). Six months of provisions - The average pirate journey was a half of a year. However, several factors impact the speed of acquiring the pirate’s gold: slow speed of sailing boats, target hiding areas and weather conditions all impact the average time of a pirate voyage.

7). Seven seas to sail far and wide, no mountain too high, no valley too low.

8). “Eight pieces of eight.” The piece of eight was a Spanish silver coin, also known as the Spanish dollar, worth eight reales. It was widely used in trade and often cut into smaller pieces (like quarters) to make change. Pirates loved these coins because they were universally accepted and easily divided.

PART FIVE: PIRATE ORIENTATION - KNOWING THY SELF TO HELP ANOTHER LEARN THY SELF

1). Determine what kind of pirate you will be.

Pirates peg-leg to the beat of their own drum, one red parrot macaw perched on one shoulder, pirates of the high seas have their own code of honor they respect and maintain. Will you be the type of pirate that kills for sport or necessity?

Every pirate ship had a set of articles all new pirates would agree to. Most chiefly, how the loot would be divided and how punishments for disloyalty were determined. In clinical contemporary terms we call these your “fair fighting rules” for relationships. A good relationship doesn’t pretend there will never be arguments - they anticipate and prepare for healthy methods of communication that uphold the highest honor and respect for each partner.

As a former facilitator in couples therapy, I took great pride in restoring full relationships on the verge of legal divorce. Teaching couples how to effectively and respectfully express their needs and wants proved to be the greatest return on investment for all multi-party therapy sessions. In great relationships, couples customize their own constitution to ensure respectful separation of powers between governing forces. Here are some common fair fighting rules directly borrowed from TherapistAid.Com to keep executive power in check.

2). Assemble your Crew Mates

Work backwards to work forwards. Assemble your crew mates. Dear Pirate, these are your crew deck, your boat captain, your therapist, your bridesmaids, your groomsman and the officiant of your marital ceremony. A good support system will help you hunt and or help you hide. A good pirate will hunt you down and still help you hide until you’re ready to bend a knee or unveil your true identity.

3). Study your treasure

Ensure you can properly care for the acquired loot. Gems, weapons and alcohol are the most commonly pirated desires. However, on occasion, pirates have seized boats carrying enslaved people. During the Golden Age of piracy, ships carrying captives were regularly raided by pirates. The capacity of the pirate to take care of the enslaved persons made the acquired persons either a burden or a blessing.

Stealing an enslaved person is not as easy as kidnapping a freed person. Enslaved people require emotional and physical safety, permanent refuge from their captors and for those stripped of identity, a new way of thinking and living.

Throughout history from the age of Ancient piracy to the modern day digital piracy age, pirates are known for subverting traditional employment markets to aggressively take economic resources. Unlike actual gold, love is a non-tangible resource and people like gold are likewise a non-tangible resource, their physical labor is not subject to debate. Honorable pirates won’t forcibly seize enslaved people from their prior masters - equipped with the proper proposal(s) honorable pirates influence previously enslaved people to the forecastle deck.

4). Perfect your hunt

The true treasure hunt is the destination AND the journey. To truly love someone is to equally love your pursuit as well as your eventually finding them. The hunt is the process of self-awareness, healing and growth that the two of you will embark on. Sometimes individually and at other times collectively. This process is unique for every couple. People hunt based on their love language and hide based on their attachment style.

5). Map your Course - Chart your Voyage

Please don’t be Rose from Titanic and leave Jack to die when you simply could’ve scooted over. Pirates have an ethical obligation to safeguard their spoils. The dignity and respect of two poor lovers in a small row boat supersedes disrespect and disloyalty of two wealthy business partners on a large yacht. Possession is 9/10th of the law. Once the pirate removes gold from its hiding place, it presumes the responsibility of protecting the gold from other pirates.

How do pirates plan for the eternal safeguarding of their gold? While no relationship is formidable against every and any attack nor inconvenience, the most honorable pirates methodically plot their voyage to ensure the maximum protection of its gold.

Still not discouraged by the stormy seas? Okay, Ernest Hemmingway, continue to part six to gain more bait for the reel.

PART SIX: BPT - BASIC PIRATE TRAINING

Pirates are born with one life purpose, to get to the booty. Pirates are so goal oriented that like Westpoint cadet graduates - they train a lifetime for the ultimate war of fighting for the heart of their beloved. In contemporary clinical terms, this is a knowledge labor of love. According to the National Institute of Health, most psychotherapists are attracted to the profession due to a deep passion to connect deeply as they can with their betrothed.

Maybe you don’t have the time or energy to attend West Point nor earn a clinical degree. Don’t fret, attached are some helpful hints to help you connect deeply with your beloved to lure them out of hiding:

List of all the reasons you unconditionally love this person to withstand the conditions of not being loved by this person

Detached people need time to know they are loved, independently navigate their outdated definition of love, observe and critique you from a safe distance, slowly engage with you at a comfortable pace, analysis and acclimate to the drowning sensation of falling in love, learn to tread and balance their body in water, swim back to your love. This will take a lot of time. The older they are, the more time they will need to adapt to this scary and exciting new proposal of thinking and co-existing.

Identify unmet needs and postulate a treatment plan to successfully meet these needs in the short term and the long term.

What is the purpose of your love? Personally, mines exist to meet every and all needs. Where there is no way, my love creates a way, a roadway, an easement, a riparian right and a boating license. Love can never be self-serving, that goal is not sustainable, especially for anxious attached and socially disorganized attached persons. Recognizing that persons with attachment disorder lack the core skills to fully love relieves the giver from the expectation of receiving love. This is a supreme love of Christ that extends beyond the selfishness of mortal capability. True love is fueled not by what it can receive but what it can give.

Identify and anticipate defense mechanisms to avoid over-personalizing temporary rejection

I miss conducting therapy sessions. Teaching others how to love invokes the ultimate problem solving that is intellectually riveting and regularly fresh. With a 99/9% engagement success rate, I credit my secret sauce to learning my client’s defense mechanisms in anticipation of client retrenchment from the overwhelming feelings of emotional intimacy.

Tips of the trade: Allow clients to take as much space as they need without prodding, as this would only heighten their fear of intimacy. Remaining committed to their emotional space at all times is tantamount. Never fret - clients always come back! The taste of true love is insatiable, once you have tasted its goodness, you could never live without it. Once clients are comfortably nestled back in, speak kindly and interactively about their defense mechanisms, this disarms them from their arsenal while reiterating emotional safety and no need for an arsenal.

Create an active stress plan to avoid burn out and discouragement

Stress and life strife are unavoidable, successful marriages learn how to work THROUGH conflict not AROUND conflict. The purpose of relationships is to help individuals resolve worldly conflicts together. When your partner becomes the primary source of stress, your entire world can feel non-functional. In these moments you will not be able to think clearly. Having a pre-existing stress response plan helps you overcome stress with healthy coping mechanisms that increase quality of life. Maladaptive coping mechanisms decrease our quality of life.

For my suicide clients, we refer to this a safety plan. What is the survival plan when everything goes to shit? For true lovers that are actively in “hunt and hide detachment phases,” they must ground themselves in absolutely knowing the love is real, the love is unconditional, the love will never ever leave.

For the pirate, he/she has the heavier burden of faith - hence the importance of Christ like faith. For the hidden figure, he/she has the burden of mastering faith in both their ability to love and worthiness to be loved. A skilled pirate pre-anticipates this anxiety and responds to this anxiety years before the pirate boat ever leaves the dock. A skilled pirate gently guides their beloved out of darkness by strategically placing reassurances of unconditional love in plain sight.

Construct your list of non-negotiables

How long and how dedicated are you to this pirate plunder? Till death do you part? Or till life brings you together?

Sunken cost fallacy is non-applicable to pirates. Limbs will be lost, ships will be attacked, in the worst case scenario, ships may sink. Pirates celebrate the loot but they live for the quest. Married couples have varying motives but for true lovers they begin and end each day with one primary goal, helping their beloved love a little more deeply and a tad bit more freely. For true lovers one day is never enough but one of shared love is enough.

Create and become a secure base for secure attachment

This is arguably the grand conclusion of this book. The secret to helping detached people attach is to become a secure base for them to love to and from. The only true security is in unconditional love. Children are not dumb and adults are not dumb. If your beloved happens to be a genius, God bless you, you will be working overtime to build a base more secure than Fort Knox and more complex than Cheyenne Mountain.

In the absence of their own innate joy, create it for them

Become their safety, then become their joy. Your love must become a giant playground for the unhealed child in them to frolic in.

Prepare to be exceptionally patient

The neglect and abuse in infancy has a domino effect on adolescence and early adulthood. The side effects of unresolved abuse in childhood disfigures self worth. These adults require years of consistent caregiving to overwrite the horror of inconsistent caregiving

Attachment Style Summary Review: Discovering the Treasure in Relationship - Identifying and Responding to Attachment Styles

Attachment styles, developed in early childhood, shape how individuals relate to their partners in romantic relationships. Understanding these styles can help couples navigate challenges and build deeper emotional connections.

1. Secure Attachment

Characteristics: Comfortable with intimacy, open communication, trust, and emotional regulation.

How to Identify: Feels secure in the relationship, expresses needs without fear, and provides support to their partner.

How to Grow in Love: Maintain healthy communication, express appreciation, and continue fostering emotional and physical intimacy.

2. Anxious (Preoccupied) Attachment

Characteristics: Fear of abandonment, seeks constant reassurance, and may appear emotionally intense.

How to Identify: Feels insecure about their partner’s love, often worries about being left, and may be overly clingy.

How to Grow in Love: The partner can offer consistent reassurance and emotional validation. The anxious partner should work on self-soothing techniques and self-worth outside the relationship.

3. Avoidant (Dismissive) Attachment

Characteristics: Highly independent, struggles with emotional intimacy, and may downplay the importance of relationships.

How to Identify: Avoids deep emotional discussions, feels suffocated by closeness, and withdraws during conflicts.

How to Grow in Love: The avoidant partner can practice vulnerability in small steps. Their partner can give them space while offering a safe environment to open up emotionally.

4. Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) Attachment

Characteristics: A mix of anxious and avoidant traits, often resulting from past trauma. Craves closeness but fears being hurt.

How to Identify: Push-pull behavior, difficulty trusting, intense emotional reactions, and fear of abandonment and intimacy.

Conclusion: By identifying attachment styles, both partners are more equipped to more effectively respond to each other's attachment style and outstanding emotional needs. Both partners may continue to grow in love by fostering a sense of safety and trust. Therapy may be helpful in processing past trauma and breaking negative relational patterns.

By recognizing their own and their partner’s attachment styles, couples can develop empathy, improve communication, and create secure bonds. Open dialogue, patience, and emotional attunement are key to fostering a love that feels safe, stable, and fulfilling.