This podcast episode dives deeper into the profound impact of attachment styles on interpersonal relationships, an essential topic for understanding the dynamics of human connection.

Klaudia engages in a thoughtful dialogue with Dr. Kathrine Bejanyan, a distinguished dating and relationship therapist, who provides an overview of the four primary attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

Together, they examine the origins of these attachment styles and explore how these formative influences manifest in adult relationships.

Their conversation further delves into actionable strategies that individuals can employ to foster emotional security, enhance communication, and cultivate healthier bonds with our partners.

Hello, happiness seekers. Welcome to the Happiness Challenge podcast. I'm Klaudia Mitura, and I'm on a mission to explore the best happiness habits that science has to offer.

Like so many others, the pandemic cut me off from my family and work. So I decided to use my training as a psychologist to discover what science can tell us about the art of happiness.

What I found set me on a path to joy, and now I'm ready to share my journey with you.

Each month, I'm publishing three linked episodes where I'm speaking to a leading expert, putting their tips to the test and sharing my findings and feelings.

From mindfulness to exercise and random acts of kindness, I'll be shining a light on the simple happiness habits that can bring more joy to our lives. So join me as I embark on my challenge, and together we can become more successful, resilient, and happy.

Seekers, welcome to this month's Happiness Challenge, where I'll be diving into the fascinating world of attachment styles and how they influence our relationships. Helping me with this topic is Dr. Kathrine Bejanyan

dating and relationship therapist.

Katherine will break down for us the different attachment styles explain how they are formed and most importantly, how can we use this knowledge knowledge to build healthier, happier relationships.

So join us as we explore those actionable strategies to foster emotional security, improve communication, and strengthen the bonds with those we love. Welcome, Katherine.

Thank you very much. Hi everyone.

Katherine. We met at the Shambhala Festival where you were giving a talk at one of the venues about attachments to styles.

And it was packed like there were hundreds and hundreds of people wanted to learn about the attachment styles. So clearly it is a very important topic close to many people hearts. Can we start with introduction? What are attachment styles?

What are different types of attachment styles?

Absolutely. And yes, it is a really hot topic because it helps us understand so much about ourselves and our potential partners, romantic partners.

And it just giving us that like, understanding allows us to be aware of what the pitfalls or the challenges might be of our relationship dynamics and allows us to work on it. So at. At the basic level, there are four attachment styles. So secure is the most prominent one, the one that most people apparently are.

Through statistics, they think that most people are secure. It's the individuals that are in a relationship, comfortable, both close to someone and letting someone get close to them.

And then we have the anxious or the ambivalent type. These are individuals that really want a relationship. They really want to be in a close relationship.

However, they have a constant underlying fear that they're not good enough, or that their partner is going to leave them, or that they're never going to quite find someone that is truly going to love them and want to stick around. And then we have the avoidant, dismissive, avoidant types.

Now these are individuals that feel that they deserve a good relationship, but they don't feel that anyone can properly give that to them. So if someone starts to get too close, they get uncomfortable, they're sort of hyper independent.

They don't really like too much closeness in a relationship. And if you are in a relationship with someone who's avoidant, it can almost sometimes feel like there's one foot in and one foot out.

And then lastly, the disorganized types or the fearful avoidance are kind of a combination of the anxious and the avoidant. They both want that closeness and they'll pull a partner in.

But if the partner comes in, then it triggers their avoidance and then they want to push the person away. And then they can go back and forth and back and forth between these two.

Okay, thank you.

So it seems like whether we identify or whether we feel we are secure, anxious, avoidant or disorganized, the fact that we can understand our attachment style ultimately can provide us with that valuable insights of how we generally connect with loved ones and with our romantic partners. So really important to understand that. But very interestingly, where are these attachments coming from?

Because they very different everything you've described a really different approach of how we building that relationship. So what are the origins of those attachments? How do we develop these?

So I'm a therapist. So for therapists, like everything else, everything starts in our childhood with our parents. So our parents are the first attachment. Right.

We come into this world, we have no sense of ourselves, we have no sense of other people, we have no sense of what connections are supposed to be. And so the first thing that we get exposed to are our initial caretakers, whether that's parents or a. If someone else steps in to do that job.

But it's that initial attachment to our primary caretaker.

And depending on how they attach or they allow us to attach to them, if that attachment is inconsistent, sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. You know, sometimes they respond, sometimes they're too busy or there's other things going on that can often create that anxious attachment style.

The child is kind of left feeling like, I don't know if you walk out that room, right, and you're in the other room doing something, I don't know if I need you and I call you Are you going to consistently come back or not?

So they kind of get that sort of hyper anxious, hyper vigilant style where they can't trust that the parent or the caretaker that steps away if they're going to step away permanently or they're going to come back because they're kind of half there sometimes and half not in terms of the caretaker. And then we have the avoidance. Avoidance kind of develops when the parent consistently is unavailable to that child.

And essentially eventually that child kind of learns that this parent is not paying attention, I'm not significant or I'm not important. And they start to go, well, there's not anyone in the world that is looking after me, so I'm gonna have to start to do that myself.

The other way that's not talked about enough that I think an avoidant personality type develops is if you have parents that are too involved, but involved in a way where they're not visible or vigilant about the child's needs. It's like the parents are very available but imposing their needs on the child.

This is what we want from you, this is what you should be, this is what we want you to be like. And so the child is getting lots of attention, but it's kind of like dismissing who the child is. It's imposing the parents expectations on the child.

And so again in that dynamic, the real self of the child kind of gets lost and the child feels like I have to pull away from you in order to be able to be myself. And the disorganized style tends to develop.

It can be different ways, but one of the prominent ways is that the caretaker who the child sometimes is able to depend on is the same caretaker who the child can be fearful at the same time. So let's say if you have like an alcoholic parent or a rage aholic parent, when they're in a normal state, they're available.

They can be carrying for you and then they drink and then suddenly they're like a different person and you have to fear that. So you never quite know what you're going to get.

Now for the secured child, the parents are consistent, they're available, they're responsive to the child's needs, and also when they're respondent to the child's need. That means respondent to when the child wants closeness, but also respondent when the child wants to be left alone and wanting to do so.

They're kind of like a secure base. They're present for the child, responding to child not imposing or detaching from the Kid.

Wow. So much in there. And as always, as you said. Okay, parents again, thank you so much. Here we go.

We form this first attachment with our caregivers, and then we go into the world forming or sometimes repeating those patterns.

So now not understanding those attachment styles and how they deformed and developed, can you give us some examples of how later on in life they influence our behavior in relationships? What kind of patterns do we bring to the relationships? What happens at that adulthood life when we're trying to form intimate relationships?

Yes, absolutely.

So one of the things I will say that Tom sometimes confuses people is that they'll say, well, I have great friendships and stuff, or this stuff doesn't play out in other parts of my life. Yeah, Attachment style largely plays out in our romantic relationships. Sometimes it can play out in other aspects of us.

But the place you're going to see the most is in your romantic relationship. Because the romantic relationship emulates the most like closely the parent child, intimacy bond. Right.

Because parent child, there's a closeness, there's a deep intimacy there. And in our adult romantic relationship, there's a deep intimacy there where we're interdependent on one another. So things like.

So we wanted a couple of examples. So an anxious, attached individual will be hypervigilant to any forms of pulling away from a partner. Right.

Or if they're dating, a lack of interest in the other person. So when they're going on a date or when they're in a relationship, they're very focused on how the other person feels about them.

Does this person like me? Does this person want to be around me?

Oh, my boyfriend or girlfriend said that they wanted to hang out this weekend with their friends, or they're in a new job and they're really liking their colleagues and wanting to spend more time with them, or they're picking up a new hobby. Does this mean they don't want to be with me anymore? Right.

So anytime there's any pulling away or, you know, if they're dating, the person's not interested in them anymore. It's the sense of like, I must not be good enough. What am I doing?

And a fear that they're not good enough and they want to pull the other person back.

So in dating, an anxiously attached individual has to be really careful that they're not just going out with someone because the other person likes them. They have to be really careful to actually also assess the other person and say, hey, is this person compatible for me?

And in a relationship, the anxious, attached individual has to Be able to allow the other person to have some sense of separation without that being a sense of panic that the other person is pulling away from me, they don't want to be with me, they're gonna leave me. They think that someone else is better.

So that's the natural patterns of, like an anxiously attached individual is this constant focus on being abandoned, left not being good enough. In terms of an avoidant individual, their style is they're uncomfortable with too much closeness.

So when they're in a relationship, they're hypertuned to this person, not getting too close to them and not depending on them too much. There is an underlying sensitivity to other people wanting too much from them. They're very independent. They've learned to take care of themselves.

They also don't come like, let's say they're in a relationship. They've had a really tough day at work, Things have gone on.

They're not going to be the type that comes and just like, pours it all out at their partner. They feel like they need to be able to handle their own stuff.

They need to be able to have themselves contained, and they kind of expect that from a partner as well.

So if a partner is expressing needs, is expressing a lot of desire to spend time with you, hang out with you, be around you, that can feel like it's too much. It's stifling and avoidant, and they can often and push the partner away.

So the way that they tend to manage that is one way or another, they try to maintain some kind of distance in the relationship, whether it's physical, psychological, emotional. So physical might be. I'm only gonna introduce you to some of my friends, but not all of them. Right. I'm going to keep things separate from you.

You're not going to come to any of my work events because you're not going to know how that is, or I don't want to move in with you, or there's going to be things about me that I'm not going to tell you.

So being in a relationship with an avoidant, it can often feel like there's parts of them that you don't know that you don't have access to and that you're always trying to sort of get close to them to create a strong relationship. But somehow, some way, they're always maintaining some level of distance.

And these individuals, often in dating situations, they never quite feel anybody's good enough. They're always looking for the perfect person who they feel like when they find that perfect person, then they'll let it all out.

Then they can let themselves really be attached.

But the problem often is is that they're not finding that perfect person because they'll find aspects to every person that they date that doesn't quite line up, which then allows them to justify maintaining distance.

Oh my goodness. So there is just so much in there. It seems like in in both anxious and avoidant, they struggling from different perspective.

And even though there is that willingness to build healthy, happy relationship, it's tricky because all those other emotions that are coming in the way.

So is it the idea that when we have as adults those attachments is that we need to start working to try to move towards secure attachments style is that means generally that the secure attachment styles are happier in the relationship. And why is that?

Yeah. So the more you can work towards secure attachment, the the easier your relationship dynamics are going to be.

What I want to make clear, it's not that like there's anything necessarily broken about the insecure attached individuals. Right. It just so happens that the parents that they had did not create a consistent secure relationship with them.

So they're always left feeling something was off and they're worried that that is the way that people are.

So the reason that secure attachments tend to have more stable and happier relationship is that they don't have intense needs like the anxious or the avoidant. The anxious person doesn't worry that they're not good enough and they're terrified of being abandoned.

So the second let's say they've organized dinner and their partner is late to come back home for like two hours for dinner, an anxious person might get incredibly worried and say, oh, they don't want to spend time with me. They rather be at work with that colleague they were telling me about. Then maybe they like that colleague better.

Maybe there's better things than me to do for then spend time with me. And so they end up getting overwhelmed emotionally and then they act from that space.

Whereas like a secure person, it's not that they're not annoyed, you're still, you know, late two hours, but they're not worried that you're going to leave me, that you don't care about me anymore, that you don't like me. And so they're not having these intense reactions.

So when these two partners come home, the secure person is going to interact very differently with the partner than the anxious person. Right.

And so we end up when we're insecurely attached, creating challenges and issues there because we're having strong emotional reactions or for an avoidant person, if your partner has an intimate moment and really like opens up to you and talks about some challenges and is wanting you to open up as well in a secure relationship that just now generates this closeness, right now we've elevated our relationship to a certain level of closeness.

We were all both able to sit there, be vulnerable with one another, air out our fears and insecurities, and now there's a sense of closeness and there's a sense of we're going to look after one another, we're going to be responsive and caring towards one another. Whereas for an avoidant, it's like, I'm not going to let you know about my vulnerabilities. Right. You can hurt me, you can use that against me.

I don't like other people knowing about my vulnerabilities. I also don't like depending on other people for support and help. So that relationship with an avoidant is going to struggle to get close.

And so that's why it's like the way that an avoidant or an anxious or a disorganized person show up in a relationship creates conflict or creates distance or creates a sense of stifling. And therefore there's more problems to deal with. Whereas a secure person is, they don't have major emotional needs to deal with.

And so they're more steady. And because they're more steady when problems come up, it's easier to deal with them because they're not getting so emotionally charged.

They have an easier time sitting with their part and talking through the problems. They're not as likely to get defensive because their fears or insecurities aren't being triggered as much.

And so they're much able to like deal with an issue, talk through it, find a resolution.

Whereas an avoidant or an anxious person might get overwhelmed and might pull back or might react really badly and then it creates a challenging situation or amplifies the problem.

Yes, I really can see that.

And again, kind of from experience as well, I can see how that can play out in relationship and how important it is to move towards that secure attachment. So if we, of course it's not that, okay, this is my attachment, maybe anxious, maybe avoidant, that's it. I'm doomed for the rest of my life.

I will be kind of repeating those specific patterns. What's wonderful about being self aware, adult is that we can make some changes. So if, if we want to start moving towards that secure attachment.

Yeah. Where could we start? What can we start doing so that we can start moving towards secure Attachment and therefore happier relationships.

So first and foremost, find out your attachment style, because obviously then what you need to do is going to differ for each attachment style. So once you find out your attachment style, what you want to learn about is, let's say I'm anxious.

I learn, okay, as an anxious individual, what are the typical ways an anxious person feels, thinks, and acts?

And then I can lay that out, and then I can be aware of those things, and slowly I can then work to try to change those thinking processes, reaction processes. Also, when my typical emotional stuff comes up where my partner's doing something and I suddenly go, oh, my God.

Oh, my God, they're going to leave me, I can challenge that or I can, like, soothe those emotional states. So you're trying to decipher your thinking and your feeling and your behaving style based on your attachment style, and then slowly work to shift it.

Now, the challenge is often if we are a certain attachment style, if we're in an insecure attachment style, that's what's been normalized to you. So we can't often catch it. So you're gonna have to do quite a lot of research.

So one of the things, for instance, I do with my clients is if they have an insecure attachment styles, one thing I find useful is, like, text messages.

So if they're having an interaction with someone and they go, oh, they said this, and then they react in that way, I'll actually have them take out their phone, read out the text messages, and I'll say, okay, how did you hear that text message? And based on their attachment style, there's a certain filter, right?

The other person's like, oh, you know, I'm sorry that I'm having to cancel out on you on the second time, but this has come up. We're going to have to reschedule it. An anxious person might read that up. They're not interested in me, clearly.

They're, you know, and then they react strongly.

Well, if you don't want to see me anymore, that's fine, you know, And I'm like, wait a minute, this sounds very different to me than it sounds to you. And so I give them insight onto how it sounds to me. And then based on that, how we can reconstruct a response that still allows for their fears.

So something along the line of, hey, this has happened the second time.

I'm wondering if you might not feel a romantic connection, in which case that's okay, but if it is genuine that you are rescheduling because you have Other stuff going on. That's wonderful. How about you let me know when you're free, you know, in a couple weeks and then we can take it from there.

So it's not about getting rid of or pretending where we don't have these fears, but it's about putting it in ways that the other person can come back and respond constructively.

Not just like determining an outcome in our heads and then acting on that outcome and then which is guaranteeing that then the other person is going to respond according to that and then it's over.

So if you are insecure attachment style, figure out what the insecure attachment style, how it thinks, how it feels, how it behaves and soften the edges.

And what about since we already started into the anxious one, few great tips there. What about the avoidant attachments? Any practical tips there?

So when avoidant is dating or in a relationship, little things become really big things. I don't like the way this person communicates, I don't like the way this person dresses, I don't like the way that this person eats.

So little things start to add up, add up, add up and it starts to put them off. So one thing that I do with an avoidant is like get them to focus on what is valuable in a relationship.

So character based stuff, things that demonstrate the kind of person someone is rather than superficial characteristics that they're extrapolating big things on. So that's one of the ways. And then also how they can start to open up little by little so that the other person can also step into that relationship.

Because what an avoidant will tend to do is kind of hang back and expect a lot of showing up from the other person.

But sometimes the other person is responding to you and you're kind of withdrawness and then you're not seeing that, that you are putting out a certain energy but only like focused on the other person.

Well, if they were really a warm person and I'm like, yeah, but look at your text messages or look at way that you are kind of being wishy washy, you're not giving the impression that you're actually interested, right?

So it's about really being aware for an avoidant of how they're showing up and are they creating warmth and openness for the other person to step in and then also the things that they're criticizing or picking on, are those really significant in terms of a long term relationship or are they just reasons ways to disengage from that? But an avoidant is definitely going to get A panic once things start to escalate or progress.

So it's just about watching that panic and that drive to run away. There's going to be an underlying drive constantly for an avoidant to, like, pull away.

So also keeping track of all the lovely things this person does for you. And because when that criticism kicks in, all you can see is the negativity in a person and you kind of need, like, a reminder.

So like having a journal that.

Where you write lovely things about your partner, having something to refer back to so that you don't forget that they are not all of the negative criticisms that you've constructed in your head.

So quite lots of very practical aspects from how that may feel to very practical. Yes. Appreciating that partner and remembering that when we have those fears and doubts in that avoidant attachment. Thank you. Okay.

On the Happiness Challenge podcast, I often ask my guests to give me and listeners a small dare, a small action that we can take on board in a first instance. So is there anything that you would suggest as a kind of introductory step towards the attachment styles?

Yeah, absolutely. So, again, firstly, find out your attachment style. A good way to do that and read about the attachment styles is the book called Just Attached.

It's all over out there. I think it breaks down the different attachment styles really well. So grab that book, read it, and then find out where you are.

And then just take one thing from your attachment style, just one thing.

And then the next time you're on a date or with your romantic partner, just try to focus on that one thing and doing differently than what you normally do.

Okay. Love that. Very practical.

I'm going to definitely accept the challenge, especially that I have a definitely anxious attachment and my patron is avoidant attachment. So this is very interesting. I'm going to weave him into this as well.

And the final question that I have, really, because this is a podcast about happiness, is Katherine, what makes you happy?

It took me quite a while to figure this out, but the closeness in relationships, closeness and closeness, where I actually fully show up at the level the other person is showing up because I have a tendency towards avoidance. So I keep my stuff closed off, which is one of the reasons I'm a therapist.

Everybody can come and open up to me and have all kinds of, like, pour their heart out, but I don't have to reciprocate at the same level. So it's taken a long time for me to learn to, like, open up to other people at the same level.

I love that. So this idea of closeness and you know what, it's actually really nice to know that you're on the journey yourself as well.

You mentioned in the beginning that the secure attachment is apparently the most popular statistically. Where are those people? I would love to know. I would love to know and learn from them. Katherine, thank you so much.

It was been absolutely pleasure to be learning from you. If the listeners would like to find out more about your work where they can find you, just email me or.

Go to my website and reach out through that.

I do lots of talks throughout online in person particularly around the UK and or again you can just email me directly and then we can take it from there.

Thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you everyone for listening. I see you at the next episode.

To keep in touch, please subscribe to my newsletter via LinkedIn. The Happiness Challenge but in meantime, most importantly, as always, I dare you to be happy. Thank you so much.