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Adults with the anxious–preoccupied attachment style often find themselves in long-lasting, but unhappy, relationships. [70] [71] Anxious–preoccupied attachment styles often involve anxiety about being abandoned and doubts about one's worth in a relationship. These kinds of feelings and thoughts may lead people to stay in unhappy relationships.
Furthermore, fearful-avoidant adults also have a less pleasant outlook on life compared to anxious-preoccupied and dismissive avoidant groups. [120] Like dismissive-avoidant adults, fearful-avoidant adults tend to seek less intimacy, suppressing their feelings.
Anxious-preoccupied people with anxious-preoccupied attachment tend to be hypervigilant to signs of danger and worry or catastrophize about symptoms. In health care appointments, their narrative is full of intense negative emotion but is relatively sparse in the specific detail desired by health care providers.
The anxious-preoccupied attachment style has been associated with a heightened vigilance towards emotionally significant social cues, as evidenced by increased activation in the amygdala during social appraisal tasks. [9] This may contribute to the tendency to be overly concerned about the availability and responsiveness of attachment figures.
In adulthood, they hold a positive model of self and others, therefore, feeling comfortable with intimacy and autonomy. On the contrary, adults who develop a fearful-avoidant internal working model (negative self, negative others) construct defense mechanisms in order to protect themselves from being rejected by others.
For example, if the sight of a snake in a movie scene triggers someone to have a full-blown panic attack, or if someone goes to great lengths to avoid a snake-themed ride at an amusement park, or ...
Avoidant attachment, for example, can be disclosed by a child refusing to acknowledge the attachment issue presented in the story stem (through claiming that the event did not take place). A child may also avoid addressing attachment by focusing solely on minor details, such as how the protagonist is dressed.
Much like the attachment styles identified in infants, there were four attachment styles identified for adults. These styles are secure, anxious -preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. [32] These attachment theories can influence adults differently in their romantic lives.