the four attachment styles of love & attachment quiz (sage sessions #5)

Have you ever wondered, why do I keep choosing the same kinds of partners? Why did I make that choice in that marriage? What happened to my relationships in where I thought I understood myself and I thought I was choosing a good partner and yet I didn't? Even last night, my 17-year-old daughter who was experiencing heartbreak really for the first time in so many ways, and it's so devastating to watch how these traumas of first loves really can wound and change our lives. But we were just talking about how all these videos and talks about red flags and all of the things, and yet you don't really often see them. And my thing is, once you start to see them, often around, I think, two to four months, you're already forming attachments. And so much of what we're attached to is who we think we're going to get in this relationship. The manifestation, the projection, the hope of the healing wound choosing, and yet the wound is choosing. And it's often choosing the person who reignites and lifts up that scab and creates new wounds. Not always. And the good news is that with intention and awareness and work, I do believe we can be way more mindful of who we choose. But I thought we'd on the styles of love. What is the core of understanding why we choose and who we choose in life? A lot of it comes down to the research on attachment styles. Initially discovered this idea of attachment theory by John Bowlby, and later really fully even more mapped out in terms of adult attachment through the work of Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main and all of those amazing human beings who really did a lot of work on attachment. So I thought we'd talk about attachment theory really quickly. I'm going to just summarize it for you. Talk about the four styles also quickly. And then I will be doing as I'm laying the groundwork here for these videos, deep diving into each topic, topics around autism and attachment and specific attachment styles and trauma, big T, little T, all of those things. So I'm many of you, I know, you know, just bear with me. I know these last few videos, you're probably like, yeah, yeah, I know a lot of that. But what else? And so we're going to get to the what else soon, as I said, I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, and these are my passion and topics, my passionate topics. And so I wanted to share them with you. Okay, now let's get into the questions for a quick assessment. I will link down below in the comment section, further tests, you can take further scales, they should all be generally free. We're I will explain how to score at the end, I will, like I said, also link this down below in the notes section. But I want you to get the vibe here for sort of like, what these behaviors look like. And then we'll talk about the different patterns. And I will go into much further depth in further videos. All right. So let's get into it. The first statement is, and by the way, to score this, you're going to want to give it anywhere from a one, strongly disagree, to a five, strongly agree. Okay, so quick reminder, a number one, one point would be strongly disagree, two points disagree, three points neutral, four points agree, five points strongly agree. Okay, so one strongly disagree to five strongly agree. Here we go. Number one, I find it difficult to depend upon others. Number two, I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me. Number three, I'm comfortable being close to others. Number four, I rarely worry about being abandoned. Number five, I feel uncomfortable when relationships get too close. Number six, I need frequent reassurance that I am loved. Number seven, it's easy for me to be affectionate with my partner. Number eight, I'm nervous when partners get too close to me. Number nine, I often worry that my partner will leave me. Number 10, I find it easy to trust others. Number 11, I prefer not to show my true feelings to my partner. Number 12, I feel comfortable sharing my private thoughts with my partner. Number 13, I'm afraid that I will lose my partner's love. Number 14, I don't often worry about my relationships. And number 15, I get uncomfortable when a romantic partner wants to be very close. So quickly, here's how you're going to score. You're going to add up the total number of points for these specific questions, and then that will kind of give you an idea of what style that you are. Remember that the disorganized style is going to really more likely come in at you having higher and more closely related. If you have avoidant and anxious attachment scores that are relatively close and higher, you're more likely to fall under the disorganized category. But like I said, please consider further testing and research if you're not sure. Don't forget that with different partners, it can bring out different parts of us. But at the heart, attachment theory at the very core, which we're discussing in this video, is about the earliest years of life, the very first primary caretaker, in terms of how that responsiveness shapes what your love style looks like, what you believe love looks like, and what you're worthy of, and all of those things, how you deal with vulnerability, autonomy, neediness, fear of abandonment, insecurity, and all of that. So for questions 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 14, you're going to add up your score, and that's going to put you under the umbrella of secure. For questions 2, 6, 9, and 13, add your scores. There's Coco. That's anxious attachment. For number, for avoidant attachment, questions 1, 5, 8, 11, and 15, you want to add up. And like I said, if you find that two of those are higher, you might be anxious and lean towards secure too. We'll get into all of that in further videos. But right now, just remember that that fourth style would probably look like you having higher and similar scores on both anxious and avoidant. So in the next section of this video, we're going to talk just briefly about what these different things mean. But remember, the idea is that this becomes inside your unconscious internal map about what you think and believe love looks like, both giving and receiving love. So I'll see you in the next part. So where does all this come from? It comes from attachment theory, as I said, first developed by John Bowlby and then expanded by Mary Ainsworth. There are essentially eight steps in the research project called the strange situation. This is really about babies and mothers, because at this time in the research, it was mothers who were the primary caregivers. And though they still are, remember, anyone can be a primary caregiver. But they looked at what happened between infants 12 to 18 months as they went into a research room that was unknown to them, filled with toys. At some point, a stranger comes in. At some point, mom leaves the baby with the stranger. Mom comes back. Stranger leaves. They looked at all of these steps to see how did the babies deal with and respond this experience of being in a new environment? Did they explore? Were they clingy? Were they just like emotionless in some way? What happened for them? And what happened when they were left alone with a stranger? And especially when mom returned, what were their behaviors? So we came up with four basic attachment styles. The fourth one was really a cannot classify group that was not part of the initial research. So a lot of the textbooks and pop psych books on psychology unfortunately leave out disorganized attachment. I talk a lot about it. I will always be talking about it, both in hopefully things I'm writing about that one day you'll read and videos I make. It's really important to me to talk about. But the bottom line is that these four styles, secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized, really kind of lay the template and the internal map for what we believe love looks like, what our relationships look like. This is why we often think we're choosing a new experience, but often replaying the map that was deeply wired inside of us. Now, if you've bought my courses or you see what I post, I post a lot. I always include the mothering styles because back then it was the research. What kind of mothering or caregiving styles tend to create these types of attachment? And then how does it manifest? What does it look like for you? So quick reminder, people who have more secure attachment are going to be more inclined to be someone who trusts relationships, can communicate, believes they deserve love, also knows when they're not receiving what's worthy of love, what love really looks like for them. They have a generally healthy sense and ability to engage in relationships. Not perfectly, and they might lean towards these other styles, but they're kind of grounded in that. Even when it hurts them, for example, to end a relationship, they believe that they are worthy of deserving of more in that regard. They have a foundation there. The next one is the anxious group. This is a group who tends to be obviously, and I'm just going to share this here, they're much more worrying about the relationship. This is really rooted in parents who were sometimes there, sometimes not there, inconsistent, inconsistently consistent, consistently inconsistent, I think it's called. They often had mood and mind and feelings that it spilled too much into the child's world, so the child becomes often hypervigilant to the parent's state of mind in varying degrees. And this plays out in the relationship. Are you going to be there for me? Do you love me? What does that mean? A lot of insecurity at the core, and that's what the heart of this is about love and relationships, and often difficulty expressing themselves, not happy when the relationship isn't working, and really a sense of like, I'm only good when you're good. I need you to be good. I talk a lot about that in hypervigilance. The next group is the more avoidant group, and these are people that tended to really be forced to be less emotionless around anger or sadness. In other words, their parents reinforced when they were playing quietly and happy and autonomous, but they learned to kind of be self-soothers and pseudo-independent. They learned to take care of their needs very early on, and in fact, don't really trust others to do so. Their first inclination is, what do I need? How am I doing? They're not so externally focused like the more anxious group. What are you doing? What do you need? They're often triggered by vulnerability. They have walls they often don't recognize and will often extricate themselves once things get real, and then the disorganized group kind of has the combination. They can be anxious and insecure. Are you going to leave me? You're going to abandon me? You're going to reject me, but also have walls up and not really realize it, or like, I'll only let you in, but not too much, and this style is defined by really fear at the heart, where the source of safety, the parent, is also the source of fear, the same parent, and so there's no real, if you really have that narcissistic, immature, borderline, untreated parents, no matter how great they are, if you never know when they're going to flip, you don't essentially have a safe relationship in terms of attachment, and so the same thing is true for those anxious styles, that spilling over for anxious and disorganized is this hyper-vigilant piece that often looks outwardly and sort of what I call outsources our safety. As I said, I'm only good if you're good, and then that fear of being consumed that really comes up in avoidant also comes up in the avoidant part of disorganized, and so this is really the heart of it. These different parenting styles can affect who we love, and how we love, and what we believe love looks like, and what we're worthy of, and so in the next few videos, we're going to dive deeply into more specifically what happens within these attachment styles. I'm also going to talk about autism and attachment because I think it's really important. I think autistic people often get labeled as avoidant, and oftentimes it may be there, but the core might be about something so much bigger than attachment, and so we'll talk more about that too, and that will often relate to ADHD people because we see this massive overlap between ADHD and autism in general. So that's it for today's video. Thank you so much for being here. Please stay safe and well, and I will see you tomorrow. Take care. Have a good day.