Attachment Theory: I should have talked about this sooner!

Why do smart, self-aware people still fall apart in love? In this episode of The Voyage Cast, Eddie Eccker unpacks the science and soul behind attachment theory — the hidden blueprint shaping how we connect, disconnect, and panic in relationships.

You’ll learn:

• The four attachment styles and how they show up in real life
• How anxious and avoidant partners trigger each other’s fears
• What the nervous system has to do with your love life
• Practical paths for healing and building secure connection
• Journal prompts and reflective tools to begin changing old relational patterns

If you’ve ever wondered why you shut down, lash out, or cling too tightly — this conversation is for you. This isn’t therapy, but it’s help beyond the office.

Transcript

Ed (00:00)
Now, honestly, I don't know why I haven't done an episode on this topic before. It's probably one of the most foundational concepts in all human connection and within the field of psychology as well. And today that's what I want to get into. I want to get into this essential, but commonly I think misunderstood, foundation of how we love, but also why we panic when connection with those we love or care about a lot becomes really difficult.

And today we're going talk about attachment theory. So welcome back to the voyage cast. am Eddie as always your host, and I am here to bring you help beyond the office. And to do that, let's take a look at this. Okay. You can be the smartest person in the world. You can be spiritual, you can be self-aware, and you can still be utterly lost and confused with love. You can even know your childhood wounds.

You can memorize all five love languages and still find yourself picking fights at bedtime or at the dinner table. Well, why do we do that? Because part of your brain that manages love isn't the part that reads self-help books. It's the part that's wired for survival. So it's, it's autonomic. And attachment theory shows us that love isn't just

some kind of emotional ⁓ decision. It's a biologically driven need for connection, just like air and water. Well, when that connection feels threatened, our nervous system lights up like a Christmas tree or a house on fire. We fight, we freeze, or we flee. Not because we're broken, but because we're afraid.

So what is this theory? Where did it come from? And why does it matter so much for how we relate today? To understand that, we do need to go and do a little bit of a history lesson. It'll be brief, I promise. And we're going to talk about the science of attachment theory. We're going to talk about how love becomes safety. But to do that, we're going talk about John Bowlby for a second. He is the father of attachment theory. And he understood what most

modern psychologists, especially in his day, completely missed. He understood that love is not just some kind of sentimental thing. It's actually biological. So we can make arguments that love is even more than biological. And I think there's good arguments to be made in that sense, but we're going to focus on just what his focus was, which was the biological. And Bowlby was a British psychoanalyst. He observed

that children experience intense distress when separated from their primary caregivers, even when other physical needs were met. Food, water, stuff like that. Now he theorized that human beings have an innate attachment system, a neurobiological mechanism designed to keep us close to those who ensure our survival. Now, according to Bowlby, proximity to a trusted figure provided

a secure base from which we can go and explore the world and have a safe haven ⁓ to which we can return to when times are hard or stressful or scary or dangerous. Now, Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby's collaborator and I'd say probably understudy at a certain point, expanded this theory through her strange, quote, strange situation study. And you can look that up. It's really interesting. ⁓ And she defined three primary attachment styles, which is what she observed.

a secure attachment style, an anxious attachment style, and an avoidant attachment style. Now later researchers added a fourth, which is disorganized. ⁓ Dr. Sue Johnson in her book, Hold Me Tight, showed us that adults still seek the same emotional refuge, not because we're immature, not because of any of that nonsense, but because we're human. And I tell people all the time that we are just like

children in some real sense. We need the same things. Don't be deceived that your age has changed something. It hasn't. And if you're wondering, does any of this actually predict how well relationships work out for us? Well, the answer is yes, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about some of the research because there is actual findings on attachment and relationship success. And over and over studies show

that people with secure attachment styles tend to report higher relational satisfaction, greater emotional responsiveness, and stronger levels of commitment. In other words, they're more likely to stay safe, feel safe, and do the work that's needed to make love last. But this doesn't mean ⁓ secure folks are perfect. Don't misunderstand.

It simply means that they can regulate emotions, they can handle conflict without escalating everything, and they can trust their partner's support, which sets the tone for lasting connection. Now in contrast to that, insecure styles, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized are generally linked with lower satisfaction, more relational volatility, and certainly more challenges with trust.

Anxiously attached individuals may ruminate, for example, over fears of abandonment and even test their partner's Avoidance may pull away from intimacy altogether and minimize any kind of emotional distress. Disorganized partners often feel or create cycles between each other of fear and longing. So they cycle back and forth between fear and longing, kind of a push-pull.

they create chaos even when they want connection, which is really sad. And it's not on purpose, but it's something that happens. One study even found that insecure attachments explained up to 42 % of the variance in relationship trust. That's a staggering amount, to be honest with you. Trust, again, isn't just a feeling. It's tied directly to how we've learned to kind of expect others to show up or not show up.

But please understand there is hope, okay? Your attachment style is not your destiny. It doesn't determine all outcomes. Why? Well, first off, you're listening to this, which means you're learning and that can change things. And researchers have shown that secure attachments can grow over time in safe, consistent relationships. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're learning this right now, this is going to give you a chance, right?

And even those with insecure histories can heal if they're willing to do the work. And I tell people that all the time, like people come in after an affair, they're on the edge of a divorce or whatever, and I can present all the things that'll make it work. I can present all the truths about what works in a marriage and identify their patterns and their systems. But if you're not willing to do the work, nothing's going to help you. So you can't blame anybody.

At a certain point, it doesn't matter why we are the way we are. What matters is are we going to do the work to make it better? Now, let's move into a little bit of an interesting kind of factoid here. There is kind of a neurobiology behind attachment too. ⁓ Love can actually rewire the nervous system. You see oxytocin and dopamine, these are all kind of our natural opioids. They're released in the presence of secure connection.

Now these chemicals tell the part of our brain, the part that's riddled with fear and anxiety and mistrust, that you're safe now. So when you're practicing these things to create a secure attachment, your brain literally is getting rewired to understand and relearn that you can be safe, which increases your security and your attachment.

Stephen Porges, his Pauli-Vegel theory explains how our nervous system constantly scans for cues of connection or threat. Now, when we feel safe, we engage. When we sense danger, we fight, flee, or freeze, obviously. Daniel Goleman's amygdala hijack gives us a name to the way we lose ourselves in conflict, right? We get totally hijacked. It's not an irrational

⁓ thoughtful thing that we choose to get hijacked. It's automatic and it's protective. But theory and neurobiology don't live in a vacuum, do they? They show up in real life. They show up in our living room, in our bedrooms, text threads. They show up everywhere. So how do these styles, the question might be, so how do these styles actually show up in real relationships?

Well, let's take a closer look at what happens when different attachment styles collide. I'm going to give you some of these examples of how these attachments interact, but please keep in mind these pairings aren't your destiny. They're just examples to help you map and better understand some of the patterns ⁓ that would otherwise feel like chaos and maybe like you're in dire straits or something like that. All right. So for the first pairing is anxious and avoidant.

You're going to see patterns of pursue and withdraw. One will cling and the other will shut down. Both will feel abandoned. The combo of avoidant and avoidant, well, you're going to see a calm exterior. You're not going to see arguments or ruffled feathers, but there will be miles of distance in between those two people. Now you can get an anxious and an anxious, well, you're going to have a lot of energy, a lot of intensity, high passion and emotion.

High conflict. Now, a disorganized person and any type of attachment, you're gonna have fear, pretty chronic fear of closeness and abandonment. And so then you're gonna see a constant push-pull in those relationships. Now this may look like a certain kind of personality disorder, I'm not diagnosing anybody, but there is good ⁓ evidence to support that.

certain personality disorders might be predicated on certain types of attachment disorders or dysfunctions. And then with the pairing of secure plus any attachment. Now this is more really about the secure person, but this is what you could expect in some sense. You're going to see an anchoring presence that brings emotional regulation. Now the one thing I will kind of say to this is that most people are going to

connect or be attracted to one another, unfortunately with complementary styles of attachment. You're rarely going to see a long-term relationship where somebody is very secure and somebody is, you know, very disorganized, let's say. ⁓ The secure person rarely will tolerate that for too long, unless there's progress. I mean, if there's real growth and real progress, then you can work that out. But on the onset,

You might see a little bit more avoidance from a secure person if the options they have are, ⁓ you know, basically a dysfunctional way of relating. So let me give you a couple of examples, very brief examples. I don't want explain them, but I want to give you a couple of brief examples to help highlight how some of this stuff might play out in real time as like the pairings go. Okay. And these are just people, random names. Okay. Jamie, you never listen. Hugh I just need space. What is...

Jamie really getting at what she's really saying when she says, don't you ever listen is I feel alone in this. I need to know that you care enough to engage. When Hugh says, I just need space. He's saying, I'm overwhelmed and I'm trying not to make it worse. So I need a break. So you're to see a withdrawal, but what they actually hear from the other person is quite the opposite. Jamie's going to hear from Hugh. You don't care enough to listen.

Hugh might hear from Jamie, you're failing again. You're never enough. Well, what's the result? The result of this kind of dynamic is Jamie might get louder. Hugh shuts down. Neither feel seen. ⁓ You might hear it talked about as like a pursuer, a distancer kind of example. Now that does happen in pretty much every relationship to some degree, but we're talking, you know, in terms of attachment and how these pairings might work out. Now underneath it all, all of this is just fear.

Right? Jamie fears abandonment. Hugh fears inadequacy. Both long for connection. They all long for the same thing, but their strategies to pursue and withdraw keep them locked into this negative interactional cycle or this negative loop of mutual misunderstanding. Now this is attachment in action. So what do we actually do though, now that we know this or have this knowledge? How do we begin to change the patterns?

that have shaped our relationships for years since the beginning, since our parents, right? Because they gave us a lot of this. Well, to get a practical sense of this, we need to look at some growth paths, okay, for each style. And these are going to be really brief. So there's probably a lot more you can study, books out there you can get, ⁓ but just going give you some brief ideas, right? So if you're anxiously attached, what would be some practical ways of growing and developing into more security? You practice staying

with your feelings before you reach out to anybody. You learn to self soothe before you frantically get to somebody else to soothe you. Okay, this is something we're supposed to learn as children and sometimes we don't. And the truth is again, through our duration of our life, we're always trying to vie for secure attachments. And some of us just have different dispositions. So again, try not to take this too personally if you relate. When I say people are acting like children, it's just...

It's just normal. It's just human. Okay. We all need the same thing throughout our life. But when, when you look at a child, it's so much more obvious, right? And when we look at adults, we have different expectations. I'm trying to push for here is that we should expect the same things from adults that we do with children most of time. So going into the next one, avoidant. Let yourself stay a few minutes longer in discomfort than running away. Okay.

So running away is your method of self-soothing if you're avoidant. But you've got to force yourself to be vulnerable a little bit longer. That's your edge. That's your skill that you have to learn is to tolerate more intensity vulnerability. Anxiety, you have to learn to self-soothe before you seek out that support. Avoidant, you learn to stay for as long as you can. And you just keep up in that as time goes on, like going to the gym working out.

Now the disorganized person, you're going to be focusing a little differently. You're going to be focusing more on trauma healing. Okay. You're going to be building consistency with people in small doses. You're going to want a lot, but you can't have it right now. You got to work on your lane, your narrow path in life, focus on trauma healing, which is okay. It's not a death nail in the coffin or anything like that. You're just focusing on trauma healing. You're to build consistency with people without running away or dominating.

And you're trying to mitigate that push-pull, right? If you're pushing them away or you're trying to pull them in, you're trying to moderate the intensity of that. And over time, you can, you know, you can start moving the needle to health. Now the secure person, Your job is you're offering presence. You don't fix anything though. You don't fix people. You offer boundaries to protect your ability to remain secure and present. So that protects your strength, right?

And as we've been going through this, you may have named some of your attachments. Okay. You may have seen which one of these you are. ⁓ and you may have even noticed how it shows up in your relationships. know I've given brief examples, but it would just take too long to give all of the examples. I'm sure you can identify your own examples in your own life. Now, this would be a good time. If you are identifying your attachment style, this is a good time to move on to these kind of next steps. Again, they're going to be brief.

But it's kind of a good call to ownership or a good call to action for you. Now, I want you to identify your conflict instincts. You can start by asking things like, what's my first move when I feel threatened? Do I shut down? Do I explode? Do I chase them? Do I run away and disappear like a ghost? And if you know about John Gottman's work, this would also be a good time to identify maybe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They all kind of interplay. It's just different language in some real sense.

Now this isn't again, please understand this isn't about judging you. It's just simply about recognizing how your nervous system has learned to survive disconnection. Okay. Now next let's take maybe a moment to learn to name your need beneath the protest. So what I mean by that is this instead of saying you never listen, try asking yourself, what am I really getting at? What am I really needing right now?

Do need reassurance? Do need comfort? Do I need respect? Most protests, most kind of that reactionary responses are just kind of disguised bids for connection, for security, for safety, right? Now you can ask yourself, and this might be helpful, what would help me feel safe right now? this question helps to interrupt the spiral keeping you calm, right? It invites you back to a present moment.

And it doesn't mean the conflict goes away. It simply means that you can handle it. It doesn't mean your spouse fully concedes to whatever your needs are. It simply helps to soften the edges and create opportunity to create some kind of margin for repair to begin. And it makes the possibility of real relationship available to you. So all of this can be practical homework.

Right. And I know you're going to roll your eyes at this, but journaling can actually be a really good activity. All these prompts that I just said, all these things I just said just now, journal about them. Ask yourself these questions. Ask yourself these questions about your partner. And here's a few more prompts. When I feel disconnected, I tend to fill in the blank. When I'm afraid, what do I really need? Or is this about my partner? What do they really need if they're afraid? If you see that fear in them, what's going on? Become a good detective with your partner.

Try to understand what's really happening. Be their expert. Ask yourself, when do I feel the most alone? Or when do they feel the most alone? And is it with me that they feel alone? they're with me and they feel alone, that's a problem. Right? That's either my problem, that's their problem, it's both problems. I don't know. But we need to start investigating.

There is a lot you could do to help yourself, but journaling is just a good start. It helps you learn to be present. It helps you get your thoughts in your head, your feelings in your head, helps you put all that on paper so you can really look at it and wrestle with it. Now, it's not the end all be all, okay, but it's a great way to get you started. Now, that's all I have for you today, and I do appreciate you spending your time with me and...

Choosing the voyage cast. There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of mental health stuff out there, but if you like this, you know, share it with somebody, Because it might help them. And if you're resonating with some of this stuff, give yourself grace, man. Give yourself the perspective that we don't choose the attachment styles we have, but we can choose what to do about them. So treat yourself respectfully and learn more about it. Start creating a map of love and your relationship through journaling, through reading.

through interacting, maybe go to counseling. If you're local, check out Voyages Counseling. We've got some great therapists here that can help out. ⁓ But remember too, these maps can be redrawn. You're not bound to your attachment style. We can learn. Our neuroanatomy can change. Our reaction response patterns can change. Our sense of security in this world can change. You can learn how to show up to this hard and

truly holy work of being known, which is what attachment is all about. All right. Well, that's all I got for you. Thank you so much again for joining me. Subscribe, like all the things, share it with your friends and family. And until next time, we'll see you then.