Secure, anxious or avoidant: discover your way of loving

O social isolation it completely affected our way of relating to people. THE quarantine caused countless love relationships to collapse while others intensified. And some singles experienced a real “needy”, highlighting the importance, for many people, of finding a partner for life, also including the friendships and family relationships. The lack of contact made us rethink our way of relating.

The new edition of book Maneiras de amar (Sextante), published by physician Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel Heller, who are both American, addresses this issue. Through studies, the authors show how adults have attachment patterns similar to those existing between parents and children.

Amir Levine says that creating the book was a “challenging and intense” process. “The subject fascinated me and I knew I had stumbled onto something really important. I couldn’t believe that attachment styles were never used in clinical work by psychologists and therapists, nor were they used by normal people in their lives. I found it so useful in my own life that I felt I should tell everyone about it”, explains the author in an exclusive interview with CLAUDIA.

The book takes a deep look at human relationships and how people can use attachment styles in everyday life. “It gives readers a new framework for understanding relationships and, as a result, also immediate, practical advice on how to make relationships work better in their lives,” states the author.

The theory presented in the book states that “forming bonds of attachment is a basic need, just like food and water”. Relationships are essential and, for the author, we do not always understand the meaning of this. “We really have to understand that it’s a basic need and we can’t live without it,” says Amir.

Relations, however, occur in different ways. In your friendship cycle, for example, you can see that each person has a different way of showing affection. And it’s normal, everyone has a way of relating and there are different ways to get attached.

To understand it better, the authors categorize attachment styles into secure, anxious and avoidant🇧🇷 According to Amir, these styles change the way you show affection in your relationships.

“Basically, people safe they are comfortable with intimacy and are generally affectionate and loving. You anxious they crave intimacy, tend to worry about relationships, and tend to have doubts about their partners’ ability to love them back. You avoidants understand intimacy as a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness”, explains the doctor.

Check out how each type of attachment behaves in practice, according to the work:

Safe: “If you consistently show affection from closeness, without being afraid that your partner doesn’t love you or needing distance after you’ve shown affection – that’s a safer way.”

Anxious: “If you show affection as a way to test your partner’s love, this could be a form of activation strategy that someone with an anxious attachment style would do.”

avoidant: “If you show affection, but then ignore the other person’s text because you were already close and now it seems too much, and you need some space – that’s something a person with an avoidant attachment style would do.”

To help you understand what your attachment style is, the writers have developed a test. Do it below and find out the result!