Category: Attachment

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Attunement

  • Attunement is the silent “glue” of relationships.
  • When someone is attuned to us, they can hear our words, read our body language, and combine that with their knowledge of our historical preferences and needs to be present and plugged in with us in any given moment.
  • When someone is attuned to us we feel like we’re on the same wavelength, like they can read us well, and they just “get” us. 
  • A highly attuned relationship often creates emotional safety and openness; we feel seen by the  person tuning into us. When we’re attuned to another, our responses often feel intuitive – we’re moved by the moment to respond to meet its needs.
  • Attunement can sound a bit like “mind reading” to folks who aren’t familiar with it, but at it’s core, attunement is about paying attention and connecting history, words, behaviors, and non-verbal signals (like tone of voice, posture, and gestures) into a cohesive sense of what’s happening for a person at a discreet moment in time.
  • A lack of attunement can be challenging to discuss in concrete terms to the lesser-attuned party; it may feel like someone is insensitive or clueless in ways that are not easy to describe. Regardless, attunement is hugely impactful on the closeness of the relationship. A lack of attunement can leave us feeling unseen, dismissed, or unimportant.
  • Some of us struggle with being highly attuned to others, to the point where signals from our self are drowned out – or vice versa – our own internal signals overwhelm our ability to tune in to others.
  • Others of us struggle with being attuned to all these different domains simultaneously (i.e. we’re skilled at paying attention to words, but not behavior; or we’re great with words but terrible with non-verbals; or we’re heavily influenced by the past, but less so by the present etc). 
  • Those of us that aren’t used to plugging into these different domains (the words, non-verbals, behavior, and contextual information from the past) may feel overwhelmed at first. It’s a lot to pay attention to. In time (and with practice), I promise it becomes more accessible and intuitive.
  • Relationships (those with ourselves and others), go best when our attunement can be straddled between others and ourselves, and we can work to pay attention to all domains of relational communication (words, behavior, and non-verbals). We can plug in and notice what’s happening for us, and do the same with the those around us.

Attunement – we don’t often talk about it, but we all feel it. It’s those people in our lives that “get” us and know when to step in (and when to take a back seat). They recognize the right moment for a joke, and the wrong one. It’s the opposite of being a “bull in a china shop”, instead its more like a spontaneous harmony between two people.

Daniel Siegel, in “The Mindful Therapist” writes: “Attunement is how we focus our attention on others and take their essence into our own inner world…the ways we take in the internal worlds of other people and allow them to shape who we are in that moment…attunement involves the perception of signals from others that reveal their internal world: noticing not just their words, but also their nonverbal patterns of energy and information…eye contact, facial expression, and tone of voice, posture, gesture, and the timing and intensity of response.” (P. 34).

A lack of attunement in a relationship makes it difficult for closeness, safety, and open communication to occur. This is because being open requires the courage to be vulnerable, and we’re less likely to do that when we’re feeling – on an instinctual level – that someone doesn’t get us or how we operate.

If you’re someone who has a hard time maintaining closeness in relationships ask yourself (and try to be kind, but honest with yourself) how attuned you are to others, and how much you genuinely pay attention to the domains I’ve discussed today.

A key ingredient to being attuned to others starts with attunement to yourself. As Don Catherall writes in his book, Emotional Safety: “Anyone who is emotionally blocked is going to have problems tuning in the emotions of others. A rule of thumb is that people who are emotionally blocked will have the most difficulty tuning in to other people who are experiencing those specific emotions the blocked individual cannot access in himself” (P. 202). We can’t plug into others sending off signals of an emotion (like anger) when we don’t allow ourselves to tolerate experiencing that emotion (in this case anger) ourselves.

Attunement relates to mindfulness, relationships, and emotional regulation. Links to more posts about all of those below.

Comments:

  1. I try and stay away from labels too much here, but when I write “Some of us struggle with being highly attuned to others, to the point where signals from our self are drowned out” we could think of this as a version of co-dependence, a label that I know many folks find useful, and that there are numerous resources (books / podcasts) on. Similarly, those of us that struggle with non-verbals and attunement may identify as being on the autism spectrum. Though, to be clear, struggling with non-verbals does not mean you’re autistic, and heavily plugging into others (and struggling to plug into yourself) does not mean you’re co-dependent.
  2. Don Catherall, who wrote emotional safety (which I quote in this post) was my couples therapy professor at the University of Chicago and is a retired couples therapist in Chicago. He is cream of the crop excellent, as is his book. Though it was a text book, it’s incredibly accessible to therapists (and non-therapists) alike. If you’re looking to strengthen your romantic relationship this is a great book to read as a couple, and I’ve encouraged clients of mine to read it (with their partners or on their own) and have gotten feedback from non-therapists that it is truly accessible and useful. Full Citation: Catherall, D. R. (2007). Emotional Safety: viewing coupes through the lens of affect. New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  3. Be aware, individuals with trauma histories may be harder to attune to (this is true of their relationships with themselves, others, and even their therapists). Trauma effects how our emotions are expressed in our bodies. For more on trauma see my posts that cover an introduction to trauma and relational trauma.
  4. Attunement increases the security of an attachment. Learn more about “attachment” (as a technical term) in my post. 
  5. This idea of straddling between attunement to ourselves and attunement to others relates to a concept from Dialectical Behavior Therapy about the linkage between ourselves, our goals, and our consideration of others. The DBT skill is around keeping a sense of balance between these three connecting considerations, and taking care of ourselves (and our relationships) by maintaining an investment in all three of these considerations.
  6. Attunement requires a degree of mindfulness – we have to be able to be present enough to hear, see, and read what’s happening.
  7. Don writes about how our inability to access an emotion interferes with our ability to detect it in others. For more on this see my post on emotional blocking.
  8. Full citation to Dan Siegel’s Book (The Mindful Therapist) which I quote in the post: Siegel, D. J. (2010). The mindful therapist: a clinician’s guide to mindsight and neural integration. New York, W.W. Norton & Co. This book is reader friendly to non-clinicians too, though he does have a non-clinician version of the book called mindsight.
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Secure Attachment

  • Many of us look for “chemistry” in romantic relationships. Often times that “chemistry” is actually the activation of our attachment circuits.
  • Attachment patterns are initially formed in infancy and become a template for which we base intimate relationships on moving forward in our lives.
  • When we think about attachment patterns, we are thinking about how we connect to others, how secure we feel in that connection, how able we are to trust, rely on others / ourselves, and how comfortable we feel with exploration away from (and distance in) our closest relationships.
  • We form that “blueprint” attachment to the people we are most dependent on in infancy and in the earliest years of our lives. For most of us, that is our parents.
  • So yes, even though you don’t remember it, those early attachment experiences shaped you, and continue to effect you in relationships moving forward.
  • If, in those early relationships we consistently felt security (i.e. comforted, taken seriously, and attended to while we were in duress) AND accepted in our needs for distance, exploratory play, and independence we are likely to develop what’s called a “secure base” in our attachment relationships.
  • That secure base feels something like, “I know I can count on them to be there if I need them, but I also know the quality of the relationship won’t change if I want to do my own thing, have my own space, and go at my own speed”.
  • Only about 50% of the population connects to others with that secure base. The remaining 50% struggle with some combination of these dynamics in relationships.
  • Our attachment patterns hugely impact who we are drawn to, what our experience of dating is like, how our relationships go, what types of conflicts we are likely to have, and how comfortable we feel with commitment and distance in relationships.
  • Knowing and understanding our attachment patterns can make us more efficient and self-aware daters and partners. This can help us find a good match and take care of ourselves and our partnerships, even if we’re with someone who has a different attachment type.

Our attachment patterns hugely inform who and how we date, what we expect of ourselves and others in intimate relationships, and who ignites a “spark” in us. I’m always a bit hesitant of the whirlwind romance built exclusively on a spark, not because I don’t believe in love, but because I do believe in the power of our attachment circuits.

Our earliest relationships become a roadmap of sorts where we learn how to maintain a sense of connection to others. When we are infants we are in a state of complete dependency on our caregivers, and even though we have no conscious memory of that time, we are highly aware, perceptive, and paying close attention to what works to get us what we need from our caregivers and what doesn’t.

We take the information collected at that time and use it to generalize to other relationships as a blueprint for how relationships work, and how we should work in relationships for them to be successful. Did you often need to really cry and scream to get your parents to drop what they were doing to help you? You probably internalized that you need to be LOUD with your feelings for people to pay attention to you. Did you seek closeness to a caregiver who often struggled with physical affection? Well, perhaps you learned relationships go better when everyone takes space.

While we aren’t going to remember these experiences from infancy, we can look at how we attach, relate, connect, and trust in relational settings as adults to come to understand which roadmaps feel closest to ours. There are four primary attachment types (or roadmaps): Secure, Anxious, Dismissive, and Unresolved.

As unique as we all are as individuals, there are predictable patterns of relating we all fall into and the more we know and understand our patterns the more we can 1) challenge and change patterns that don’t work for us 2) Look for romantic partners who compliment our attachment style 3) Have constructive conversations with our partners about our attachment similarities and differences to strengthen our relationships.

Lots more to come on attachment. For now, consider how securely you attach in different types of relationships. Resources below to help on that journey.

Comments:

  1. Coming back to “the spark” I mention throughout the post. That “spark” is most likely to be felt in relationships where there is at least one party who is not operating from a secure base. There will be more on that in a future post, but I want to be clear that a “spark” isn’t “bad” it’s just often confused with “love at first sight” or “true love”, and in my experience it usually has a lot more to do with attachment patterns. Also, to be clear, if there is a spark in your relationship that doesn’t mean it’s a problem, it just may mean you and your partner will feel intense chemistry in some ways, and perhaps intense disconnects in others. That’s ok, and can all be worked through with two willing and committed parties. This will all make more sense once we get further into attachment types.
  2. A little more on attachment types: these are general patterns, but they are not hard patterns, meaning we all have a tendency to fit into one of the four categories, but we can slide around depending on the relationship, how we are doing, and the context in our lives. We can also attach securely in some types of relationship, but not in others (friends vs romantic relationships, men vs women, etc). As promised, more to come!
  3. If you’re a parent reading this your first thought might be, “oh lord I didn’t feel like picking my kid up this morning and now I’ve scared them forever”. Don’t be so hard on yourself – attachment patterns are formed over many experiences and are much more about the big picture of the relationship than about anomalies. No parent meets their child’s needs all the time, and quite frankly no parent needs to. Part of feeling secure in a relationship is having the confidence that a relationship can endure even with differences between the involved parties. That missed hug this morning can be a opportunity to strengthen the security of a relationship when paired with something like: “Daddy / Momma loves you, but I’m not going to pick you up right now. We can snuggle later.”
  4. A strong / secure connection doesn’t always mean “giving in” or never disappointing the other party, but it does often mean validating the other party’s experience. For more on how to validate AND set limits see this post on validation. If you’re a parent and you need help with this, you are not alone! This is not always intuitive, especially if it wasn’t your experience in childhood. For more guidance on incorporating healthy boundaries with validation check out Big Little Feelings, they have a paid course and free content through their instagram account (and as a friendly reminder I do not get any kick backs/ payment for referrals I make to resources, I just tell you about them because I think they are helpful).
  5. This post has more details on how our attachment history impacts our dating world.
  6. The best book I’ve found for clinicians on attachment based work is David Wallin’s attachment in psychotherapy. Here are some useful excerpts about how secure attachment affects development and relationships: “Secure babies appear to have equal access to their impulses to explore when they feel safe and to see solace in connection when they do not” (page 19). “Children with a history of secure attachment show substantially greater self-esteem, emotional health and ego resilience, positive affect, initiative, social competence, and concentration”. (page 23) “If our early relationships were secure, the result may well be a capacity to respond – that is to think, sense feel, and act – with openness and flexibility” (Page 65). Full Citation: Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
  7. The best book for non-clinicians I have found on attachment theory is calling “Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find – and keep – love”. I have some gripes about this book that I would tell anyone before recommending they read it. 1) I think there is a bit of critical tone towards the dismissive stance in the book, and a bit of a favorable tone towards the anxious stance. The fact is each attachment style has its upsides and downsides and dismissive isn’t “worse” than anxious (or vice versa). They are just different. 2) they do not cover the unresolved attachment type, which I think is a disappointing miss. 3) There is not enough of an emphasis on the fluid nature of attachment types; a person who is usually one attachment type is not ALWAYS that way in all relationships, even if they are that way most of the time. 4) It mentions the ability to move towards secure attachment, but I don’t think enough time is spent on it. 5) There have also been critiques on it being heteronormative and too simplistic which I think are both fair. So, in short (maybe not so short now), It’s a great introduction, the best I’ve found, I’ve recommended it many times – but don’t take it as the whole story.
  8. If you’re not up for reading a whole book, this article is a great start – though I don’t love the description of the attachment styles themselves or what forms them.

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