Single caregivers can raise securely attached children just as effectively as two parents.
According to Dr. Pascal Vrticka, Associate Professor at the University of Essex, children can form secure attachments with either a mother or a father, and one secure bond can help buffer against the effects of insecure ones.
In our interview, Dr. Vrticka shares what research tells us about building secure connections, including in diverse family structures. Read the full interview through the link in our bio.
If you’ve ever found yourself suddenly repulsed by your partner’s seemingly inoffensive actions, you might have experienced the ick first-hand. One study estimated that 75% of women and 57% of men have caught “the ick”.
The ick hasn’t been defined by psychologists, although a few studies have used working definitions like “a sudden and visceral aversion to a romantic partner, often triggered by behaviors or characteristics that superficially signal incompatibility or low mate quality”.
An ick isn’t necessarily the same as a serious dealbreaker or a red flag for bad behavior, although they can be both.
How often do you find yourself becoming uncomfortable just as a relationship is starting to get serious? Do you tend to pull back, feel on edge, or end things when a connection gets too real? If this is familiar to you, you might be experiencing a fear of intimacy.
Intimacy has proven difficult to measure in the psychological world - it’s not just physical or sexual, but can also be emotional, intellectual, or even recreational. A fear of intimacy could be a fear of any kind of intimacy.
A fear of any kind of intimacy might often be an unconscious process, or an emotional reaction to these experiences even without a full understanding of the reason for it.
This is different from a preference for being alone. Rather than choosing to be alone, someone with intimacy avoidance might seek companionship, only to feel overwhelmed and create distance when they get it.
Why do you always end up in situationships, despite your best efforts to find something stable? How you respond to uncertainty could be a major puzzle piece.
A situationship happens when you feel like you’re in a relationship but there’s no shared future plans, clarity, or understanding of what to call it. You’re not their partner, but you’re not single either - and you’ve been dating for long enough that the connection is well established.
Situationships can turn into relationships, but only if both partners are ready to commit. A partner not being ready to commit does not mean you’re not good enough - some people just aren’t ready for committed relationships or they prefer low commitment, and there’s no being “good enough” to change that.
The Dark Triad is a set of 3 connected but distinct personality traits used in social psychology research to understand why people behave in anti-social ways.
They are only applied to non-clinical populations. This means that if someone has a personality disorder, the Dark Triad lens doesn’t help us to understand them better.
Dark Triad traits are not diagnoses.
What are the Dark Triad traits? ->
Machiavellian behavior is underscored by emotional detachment and a negative world view. Examples of Machiavellian traits include:
1. Strategizing to achieve goals based on power
2. A lack of trust in others
3. Emotional detachment from relationships and outcomes
4. A belief that everyone thinks the same way, but most people are too weak or unintelligent to strategize
5. Using relationships for personal gain instead of emotional connection
People high in Machiavellianism are able to consider another person’s perspective, but they’re not likely to worry about it unless it impacts their ability to achieve their goal. They also don’t tend to have difficulties with impulse control, instead relying on staying cool, calculated, and in control in emotionally charged situations.
All of us score somewhere on the scale of Machiavellianism; personality traits exist on a continuum, and we might express them more or less in certain contexts. For example, in environments where we have to be socially competitive, we might express higher Machiavellianism than we would in everyday life.
Understanding histrionic patterns through the lens of attachment theory helps us to understand how our early experiences can influence the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors behind histrionism. Even though they can stem from learned survival strategies and real emotions, this doesn't mean that histrionic behaviors that cause distress or relational harm should go unaddressed.
Histrionic patterns can change with motivation, intent, effort, and time. Qualified mental health practitioners can help anyone affected by histrionic traits or Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD), including those close to somebody with histrionic traits.
A note on HPD: this is a highly debated diagnosis which has developed from the idea of hysteria, an outdated medical term which was used to blame a vast range of women’s health problems on childlessness. Although we now know this is inaccurate, the diagnosis of HPD can still be sexist and stigmatized.
The bird theory might have become a social media trend, but its roots in Gottman’s work and bids for connection are well established. However, the way your partner responds based on a one-off shouldn’t be taken as final - consider the whole picture before jumping to conclusions. If your relationship generally feels healthy and you usually feel validated by your partner, then you shouldn’t worry about how they respond to the bird test.
To help you explore your overall relationship health, consider these 3 prompts or questions to ask yourself.
We talk a lot about our romantic attachments and our early attachment experiences, but our attachment styles can play very important roles in our friendships too. Insecurely attached friendships can be difficult to navigate, with all the same pitfalls as insecure romantic attachments, but building secure friendships is possible.
For more information about friendship attachments, check out our full length article at and make sure you’re following us for part 2: how each of the 4 attachment styles shows up in friendships.
Psychologists define emotional unavailability as when “the inability to recognize, categorize, and be conscious of one’s feelings frequently prevents expression and the growth of a strong emotional bond”. Note that the problem starts with blockages to a person being able to understand their own feelings, which goes on to impact their ability to connect with other people.
Emotional unavailability can range from a mild sense of emotional guardedness to a complete emotional shutdown. Emotional unavailability isn’t a diagnosable disorder, so there are no well-defined “cut-off points” to establish whether someone is or isn’t considered emotionally available.
People who are emotionally unavailable do experience emotions, and sometimes intense ones, but they find it difficult to name, tolerate, and express them.
#EmotionalUnavailability #RelationshipPsychology #EmotionalIntelligence #SelfAwareness #AttachmentProject
Did you know that there’s a correlation between insecure attachment styles and personality disorders?
This doesn’t mean that your insecure attachment style means you have a personality disorder, but if your attachment experiences are extreme and in the way of daily life, it could be worth exploring personality disorders with a mental health professional.
#PersonalityDisorders #AnxiousAttachment #AvoidantAttachment #FearfulAvoidantAttachment #AttachmentProject
