Category: Lifestyle

The four primary attachment styles are broad categories: secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized. These styles are often split further by nuance and complexity with the same general consensus: everyone should be striving for secure attachment. 

So when you recognize yourself within one of the insecure attachment types, how do you begin to work against something that seems so innately programmed within you? In our blog today we’ll get into it, with life advice for any attachment style. 

Are you ready to learn more about how attachment impacts your life, and get the tips you need to thrive here and now? 

What does your attachment style dictate?

Our attachment style finds its root in our primary caregiver relationships when we are young. When we see attachment articles, advice and ideas for adulthood, it seems to always want to talk about your past but what about the present? What you really need to know is: how long will your past follow you, and what does it mean for you right now?

Your attachment style relates to how you connect to and (of course) attach to the world. Securely attached people may see positive impacts of their attachment played out at work, home and through personal growth. For people with more traditionally complex attachment like anxious or avoidant, you may feel defeated about those facets of your life. The truth is your attachment style impacts everything, from who you love to how you work.

Relationships are more than just romantic ones

While your attachment style might make you more likely to thrive or choose toxic partners, that’s not the end of attachment’s impact. There is so much more to the way you attach to your world than romantic love. 

Love is, of course, critically important! But your attachment style also informs the way you work, the way you hold on to friendships and how you interact with new ideas and information.

Moving toward security: Growth tips for any attachment style

There are loads of blogs, articles and TikTok videos dishing on attachment these days but have you ever tried to find tips beyond understanding your own attachment style? 

At work 

In the office, your attachment style might impact how you engage with colleagues and management. You may respond a particular way to criticism or prefer to have more professional conversations because emotional connections in this space make you uncomfortable. Discussions about job security and verbal recognition of a job well done may feel more necessary for you than they do for your coworker. These things can be directly related to your attachment style.

An ideal team will be made up of a variety of attachment styles so if you’re looking for a way to make the most of the good and grow within your attachment style, we’ve got you! Try these tips to find your optimum office performance.

1. Consider the relationships you have with your co-workers. For the ones that feel best, take note of what about those interactions makes you feel empowered and seek to emulate those experiences in other office interactions. 
2. Track your productivity! You can learn a lot about your relationship with task completion through time-tracking your tasks. Some attachment styles may be prone to procrastination but time and task tracking can help empower your reward system before you get behind.
3. Do you prefer to work alone or in groups? Aligning your workload with the type of project you feel most empowered in can be a huge boost in confidence no matter your attachment style. 

In your friendships 

Do you find yourself wishing you could recapture the depth and seeming simplicity of friendship in childhood? While adult friendships often require different boundaries, there are some key tools you can use to recapture the compatibility of those friendships. It’s not just our own preferences that matter in friendships though. You’ll need to call on your inner observer to take note of the attachment needs of your loved ones in order to grow your friendships in a secure way. 

Since attachment and friendship are both things that begin developing in childhood, try to tap into your curiosity and consider your attachment style and preferences when thinking about these three tips for strengthening bonds. 

1. Ask your friends if they know their attachment style! While this tip might seem obvious, talking openly about our self-awareness and emotional depth can be a difficult thing to do. It’s vulnerable to ask but can lead to wonderful revelations. 
2. During conflict, do a self-check of your impulses. What kind of responses are typical of your attachment style? Consider what you need for comfort in times of conflict and respond inwardly to that need before you do outwardly. Friendships will benefit from this brief reflection ahead of action. 
3. Lean into your awareness of connection. If you are anxiously attached, you may be more likely to question someone’s commitment to your friendship or their honesty. That might make you feel a little awkward, but lean into that connection and seek spaces where you can trust yourself or grow within the experiences you have naturally. 

You do not need to change who you are to be effectively and healthily engaged in attachment in any relationship in your life. Right here and now, you can positively benefit from growth tips that will help you find fulfillment and gratitude in your attachment style across many aspects of your life. 

If you’re experiencing substance use difficulties and looking for support with attachment and beyond, call us today. (760) 350-3131

The Remarkable Power of Habituation

The power of the human brain to form a habit is remarkable. Research tells us that if you do anything every day for three weeks, on the twenty-second day you will wake up expecting and perhaps even wanting to do the activity again, no matter how much you may have resented and resisted along the way. 

Repetition anchors behavior so deeply within us that the behavior starts to take place almost on its own. Activities that were once new to us and required conscious thought become fluid, effortless actions driven by the power of deep neuronal grooves.

Every time we take a certain action, we scratch a little deeper into the same groove, deepening and deepening. Like paths cut through a forest, these neuronal pathways become ever more familiar and easy to follow without thinking about it. 

Here’s how to change habits and embrace a healthier lifestyle.

To Make a Change, Make A Habit

Because of the power of habituation, the easiest way to anchor a positive change into your lifestyle is to make it a habit. To make a new, healthy behavior a habit, you just have to do it over and over again, consistently, until it becomes second nature. 

Making a personal daily ritual out of a positive behavior can help it become even more anchored into the body. That’s why those who meditate, have a creative writing practice, or are long distance runners, for example, often have a routine that they stick to, rain or shine. 

We can admire such a person’s discipline, but in fact, that is the easiest way to get past the stage of having power struggles with oneself. Building a routine engages our inborn habit-formation tendencies to work in our favor. 

You know you’ve successfully formed a strong habit when the body comes to expect the behavior to take place and may prepare for the behavior on its own without you needing to think about it. The body will wake up at the right time without an alarm clock, wanting to do yoga, ready for green juice. 

Addiction is a Bad Habit

Whatever habits we have now, we formed them in the same way. We formed our bad habits one day at a time by repeating negative behavior over and over again. 

Even addiction is just a really, really strong habit, one that’s extra hard to break because of the way that mind-altering chemicals hijack our brain chemistry to cement a behavior with more than the usual adhesive force. 

But even addictions aren’t possible unless we continue to do a behavior over and over again.  And no addiction can survive if we can just find a way to stop doing the behavior. 

Switch Out the Reward

The addict within, or the side of you that is concerned with avoidance of pain as well as going after pleasure, will not easily give up its go-to survival strategies without a believable and effective replacement plan. If you give up substances, how will you numb your overwhelming feelings when you get triggered into shame, fear, guilt, anger, or unworthiness? It’s a sincere question.   

If there’s no strategy for replacing the reward we have been getting from a bad habit, we often fail. Therefore we will do best when we negotiate a realistic plan with ourselves, with goals that are truly achievable and an arsenal of support to help us do in a better way what the bad habit has done for us until now. 

When looking to replace a habit, identify what the bad habit does for you, then find another way to experience that effect that isn’t destructive to you. 

To kick you off, a little assignment: see if you can write down 100 ways to create pleasant sensations that don’t involve anything overly self-destructive. 1. Take a nap. 2. Go for a brisk, 20-minute walk. 3…?

Don’t Let Addiction In, No Matter What It Says

No matter what the addict within says to you, remember addiction requires YOU to take the destructive action again and again for it to live inside you. If you stop the destructive action, the addiction will have to leave you, sooner or later. It may circle around you for a long time, hoping you’ll let it back in, but as long as you remember that your body and soul is yours, and it’s your choice whether or not to let addiction in, you should have what you need to live life in peace, addiction-free. You are allowed to say no to addiction.  

If you or an important woman in your life is ready to say no to addiction, reach out to us today to learn more about how to change habits through our treatment programs. Call (866) 950-0648 to learn more.