The anxious attachment style is most associated with clingy behavior in relationships, although people with a fearful-avoidant attachment can also display some of these anxious tendencies.
Avoidant, anxious, and disorganized are considered insecure attachment styles. If a child can consistently rely on their parents to fulfill their needs growing up, they're likely to develop a secure attachment style.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment Style
Anxious-avoidants are not only afraid of intimacy and commitment, but they distrust and lash out emotionally at anyone who tries to get close to them. Anxious-avoidants often spend much of their time alone and miserable, or in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.
People with anxious attachment are usually needy. They are anxious and have low self-esteem. They want to be close with others but are afraid that people don't want to be with them. As a child, your parents probably were inconsistent.
The secure attachment style (also known as the autonomous attachment style) is the most emotionally well-adjusted of all four. Those who display this attachment style possess a positive model of self and of others, and are generally quite low in both anxiety and avoidance.
Bowlby identified four types of attachment styles: secure, anxious-ambivalent, disorganised and avoidant.
The anxiously attached person craves more connection and closeness and feels triggered by the avoidant person pulling away. Meanwhile the avoidant person feels triggered by the anxious person's desire for closeness because they themselves value their independence and freedom and fear being consumed.
Anxious (also known as preoccupied) Avoidant (also known as dismissive) Disorganized (also known as fearful-avoidant)
Anxiously attached people tend to be overly preoccupied with their partners and whether they love them back, while avoidants equate intimacy with a loss of independence and deploy distancing strategies.
People with an ambivalent attachment style (also referred to as “anxious-preoccupied,” “ambivalent-anxious,” or simply “anxious attachment”) tend to be overly needy. As the labels suggest, people with this attachment style are often anxious and uncertain, lacking in self-esteem.
Fearful-avoidant attachments have both an avoidant attachment style and an anxious attachment style. Those with fearful-avoidant attachments want love from others. They may even crave that affection. But, at the same time, they are reluctant to have close or intimate relationships.
An anxious avoidant relationship occurs when one partner has an anxious attachment style and the other has an avoidant style. Such attachment styles develop in individuals who do not consistently have their needs met during childhood.
Attachment Relationships
Ambivalent attachment (characterized by inconsistent and unpredictable interactions) has been compared to avoidant attachment (characterized by unavailability and unresponsiveness) and disorganized attachment (characterized by confusing and erratic behavior).
Avoidant attachment is an attachment style a child develops when their parent or main caretaker doesn't show care or responsiveness past providing essentials like food and shelter. The child disregards their own struggles and needs in order to maintain peace and keep their caregiver close by.
If you think you're always letting people down and emotionally closed off you'll keep attracting that type of dynamic. And that's why an anxious attachment and avoidant attachment are so perfect for each other. The relationship allows them to continue thinking those things about themselves.
Avoidant individuals are less aware of the needs of their partner, while anxious individuals are hyper-aware of any perceived threat to their relationship. Interestingly enough, the attraction between these two intensely opposite individuals is often quite mutual.
Fearful adults are highly anxious and avoidant at the same time. They have a strong desire for closeness, yet they avoid intimacy due to their negative expectations and fear of rejection1. They have negative views of themselves and others. Fearful attachment style is usually linked to childhood trauma.
There are two types of avoidant attachment styles: dismissive-avoidant and fearful or anxious-avoidant, explains Seaside Counseling Center owner and therapist Rachel (Bauder) Cohen, MSW, LCSW.
What Causes Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style? Fearful-avoidant attachment is often caused by childhood in which at least one parent or caregiver exhibits frightening behavior. This frightening behavior can range from overt abuse to more subtle signs of anxiety or uncertainty, but the result is the same.
Avoidant attachment develops when an infant or young child has a parent or caregiver who is consistently emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to their needs. Infants with an avoidant attachment style may also have faced repeated discouragement from crying or expressing outward emotion.
Each partner is willing to express, listen, and validate each other's fears or concerns. Trauma bonding happens when we get lost in the “we” because we are too scared to just be “me” - an anxious attachment - or when we get lost in the “me” because we are too scared the “we” might consume us - an avoidant attachment.
For example, someone might feel ambivalent about their favorite film being remade. Sure, they're excited about the prospect of it actually being good, but what if it's terrible? Thus, this person feels ambivalent towards the remake. If they were to feel apathetic, they wouldn't care about the film at all.
"The difference between disorganized attachment and avoidant attachment is that the latter style evades intimacy and dismisses it," says licensed clinical psychologist Ayanna Abrams, Psy. D. "They don't reach for others and don't receive when people reach in toward them."