Attachment Styles + Core Values + and Learning to Choose Yourself
Over this Labor Day weekend, I went on my very first solo camping trip. I was excited, nervous and a bit scared. More so, I was worried I didn’t have enough supplies to stay warm. I had plenty of Gruvi (N/A drinks) with me and loads of protein, cereal and milk. Yes, I couldn’t travel without my Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It has been a craving for the past month. I don’t know why.
As I embarked on this journey, all I kept thinking was that I was finally doing this. I had wanted to do this, go backpacking and go to Bali. Two of which I was supposed to do with, let’s call him, Situationship. It used to be something else but for the sake of this, we will call him this. It will all make sense as we get into it.
I found a cool spot by the Arkansas River, set up and then was like, “Now what?” I was so tired, and I had a lot to untangle. I brought my journal, my journal I was writing my memoir in, trauma workbooks and reading material. I needed to re-read, “Attached” by Amir Levine, M.D., and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. I once started reading it when my guy friend gave it to me back in 2019. I wasn’t in the best headspace back then. (Trigger Warning) It was a year after losing my grandmother, my cousin to an overdose and friend to suicide. I was in party mode; with a heightened/triggered nervous system and he wasn’t really around. So this only added to the chaos.
Now it all makes a little more sense. This isn’t an excuse for him or myself. I am bringing awareness to situations and formations of relationships, the emotional danger and trauma you can bring into any type of relationship (Romantic or Platonic). Especially, when there are past traumas that haven’t been worked through, it adds to the trauma.
As I sat in my makeshift living room (my tent), I began reading. I am a sucker for writing in my books, I like to dissect them, ask more questions, find loop holes and mishaps. And boy did I. And I also found a lot of truths.
The book, Attached., states that there are three different types of attachment styles. Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant. I didn't have to do the quiz to know where I landed and where the Situationship landed. But I did the quizzes anyway. But before I give it away, I want to get into what happened back then on more than one occasion.
After I lost my grandmother, it was really hard on me, she was like a mother to me. She helped raise me until I went off to group homes and foster care, then next month “L” died by suicide, and a month after that, they found my cousin. When I got the news of my cousin (the now 3rd death), we had just gotten back from our Memorial Day camping trip with my friends and co-workers and his friends and co-workers. There was an incident with one of his close friends having a seizure, falling and hitting his head. When his friend fell, the Situationship didn’t yell for me, he yelled for his female roommate (no he and I weren’t living together still, after 4 years). Of course it caused issues. I was hurt with him, and felt like there was something going on between them. Not only did that happen, he started to withhold intercourse with me for months
So, when all of this happened, how do you think I was feeling emotionally but more importantly, physically. Deep within. I was anxious, scared, confused, lonely, unheard and I didn’t understand what was happening. I began to grasp. That is what I call it. It is when everything feels like it is spinning out of control and I am “grasping to gain control”.
That is where the attachment styles come into play.
As I started to read about the different styles and how they view intimacy and togetherness, and how each style deals with conflict when it comes to communication and sex, I knew I was about to get some answers and pick a part not only myself and the Situationship, I was about to pick apart these theories, this book and I did just that. We dove right in with “dependancy” which then led to the "Anxious" Attachment style. I started to feel validated for how I was coming across in my relationship to the Situationship.
I came across as needy, like I was too much, like I was the one being crazy for speaking up on my needs and expectations in the relationship. I can say in the past, I may have been dependent on my past partners but being with the Situationship, I was made to become hyper independent. To the point where I was afraid to ask for help, seek intimacy, afraid to speak up out of fear of not being heard, understood, respected and loved. I mean, for heaven Pete, he only said “I love you” directly to me twice in our relationship. The other two times were, “I have love for you.”
Anytime I needed him or wanted to do things with him, there were excuses, or he just wanted to stay home. I thought he was hiding me and he was. I never ever met his father who lives right here in the same city and for the past three years no one has known that we were still talking let alone dating. (Who calls it dating after 10+ years?). Anytime I would ask him to go on trips, staycations, camping, anything big, he wouldn’t go. There was a time I bought us tickets to go see Anderson Paak, he ended up picking a fight with me, broke up with me, went to the same exact concert with his friends and then reached back out to me. And boom, I took him back. This is what avoidants do, right?
Well yes, among many other things. I was sad reading the “Attachment”. I knew there wasn’t any hope for us, at least right now, if ever. You see, I have anxious/secure attachment. What does this mean? This means that if I am asking for support, affection to feel secure and I don’t receive it, I react, shut down, or say things I don’t mean to get his attention.
It came down to this for me as I wrote in my journal over the weekend. I don’t expect people to give me things but I DO expect loyalty, love, respect and who doesn’t the occasional, “I love you!” Who doesn’t like and appreciate cards, flowers, and small gifts every once in a while. It makes you feel cared for. Appreciated. Through all of this, I now understand why I would say or react. I needed him. I wanted to feel loved, heard, appreciated, valued. I never felt valued.
For me it goes something like this:
There is Me —--> Core Values —-->
My core values are Vulnerability, Communication, Honesty,Respect, and Loyalty. When these aren’t met or their subcategories aren’t met, I lash out, walk away, react or shut down because in turn I feel unappreciated, not valued, not heard, not respected or honored and most importantly, not loved. Then there is a cross section for me (this where there are missing parts to attachment styles, in my opinion).
Cross Section:
Me (You) —---> Core Values —--> Love Languages
Vulnerability, Communication, Honesty,Respect, and Loyalty + Quality Time, Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch
And then there is the Fork in the Road:
Fork in the Road:
Me (You) —---> Core Values + Love Languages + Attachment Style
Vulnerability, Communication, Honesty,Respect, and Loyalty + Quality Time, Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch + Anxious and Secure
When needs are met, after being communicated and heard, and actually understood or there is compromise: I fall into the secure category. When these or a part of these doesn’t happen, I begin grasping. Grasping for love, to be heard, etc.
Now mix this with someone who is avoidant.
Attachment Style Definitions
Here are the definitions of the attachment styles according to Simply Psychology and The Attached. By Amir Levin, M.D. and Rachel S.F. Heller M.A. before we dig in some more.
Anxious Attachment Style: is a strong desire for closeness, fear of abandonment and (key point) a heightened emotional response in relationships. (Seeking constant reassurance)
Secure Attachment Style: is when individuals feel safe, supported, and connected enabling them to express emotions freely, seek comfort from their partner and confidently explore knowing they have a reliable base (support) to come back to.
Avoidant Attachment Style: is where individuals have a pattern of steering clear of emotional closeness and tend to minimize the importance of intimacy, often to protect themselves. Individuals are generally skeptical or have a negative view of others to maintain a positive view of themselves.
Take someone who is avoidant. They don’t like to get close, deal with emotions out of not wanting intimacy or intimacy making them feel uncomfortable.
So every time the Situationship would leave me sitting in the bedroom while he played video games with his best friend, after asking me to come over and spend time with him, it left me feeling disrespected, and showed me where his loyalty was. This happened all of the time, without him really realizing how it affected me/us. It had less to do with loyalty and more to do with the affection, my love and care I showed him, which made him uncomfortable at times. He wanted me close but at arms length. (As written in, Attached, chapter 6 - “Keeping Love at Arm’s Length: The Avoidant Attachment Style”)
As I read in the book, again, and have done a lot of research on these attachment styles to better understand myself, who I was and who I was becoming, I realized that despite me seeing him as distant, “a robot”, selfish, like he didn’t care, love me or respect me, I still loved him, with all of his flaws. He was my best friend. My past situationship. I call him this because through the 11 years of being in each other's lives, he would break up with me every 3 months or so. YES, throughout our entire relationship. We never lived together, there weren’t the “I love you’s” from his side, there were no plans for a future, because every time we would get close(r), he would end it.
As you listen to The Vulnerability Project Podcast, read past blog posts (some are my personal journal entries) or read my memoir when it is released, you will read more intimate details into my life and life with him, its effects it had on me and still does to this day. Some call it situationship or relationship trauma. But that is for another blog post.
And yes, I chose to stay. And I would choose that again today and will probably feel that way for years to come. Because I was loyal to him, he was my best friend, I saw him as a human being with flaws like all of us have. We don’t know what we don’t know about ourselves until we do the healing, until our eyes are opened. I mean look at me, I am still learning more about myself everyday. There is another book that I read in the past called “Single On Purpose. Find Yourself First” by John Kim. He goes into who important it is to be “Single on Purpose”, meaning that we should be independent of ourselves while also dating or in a committed relationship, to find a grounded sense of self, regardless if your status. Being dependent on someone isn’t necessarily bad but/and…
Do you know how hard it is for me to open up and call attention to things that hurt me and openly communicate it with people in a healthy manner? Fucking hard as all heck. It has taken me many years of trauma therapy to get here. But I am here doing the hard shit because I care and love myself. I want more in life. I want to be of support to the community and I can’t do that and or have a relationship with someone new, without doing the hard shit. We all have some kind of thing in our past and we are not broken. We are just finding ourselves.
Journal Prompts
Attachment Styles:
When do I feel most secure in my relationships? What creates that sense of safety?
When do I notice myself “grasping” for love, attention, or security? What does that feel like in my body?
How did my caregivers or upbringing teach me to handle emotions like sadness, anger, or fear?
In what ways have past relationships mirrored my attachment style back to me?
What is one compassionate step I can take to re-parent the anxious or avoidant parts of myself?
Core Values:
Which 3–5 values are non-negotiable for me in any relationship (romantic, friendship, professional)?
How do I know when a value of mine is being honored?
How do I react when a value is not being respected?
Which of my values do I sometimes ignore to “keep the peace” or avoid conflict?
What does it feel like in my body when I am living in alignment with my values?
Choosing Yourself:
Where in my life am I still waiting for someone else to choose me?
What does “choosing myself” look like in action today?
How have I stayed loyal to others at the expense of being loyal to myself?
Write a letter to yourself from your future secure, healed self. What does she thank you for?
If I trusted that I was already worthy of love, how would I show up differently in my relationships?
If you’d like to explore more around attachment, values, and choosing yourself, here are a few of my favorite resources:
Sources & Further Reading:
Books & Guides
Amir Levine, M.D. & Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. — Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love
Gary Chapman — The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
Brené Brown — The Gifts of Imperfection (on vulnerability, courage, and authenticity)
Glennon Doyle — Untamed (on choosing yourself unapologetically)
Cheryl Strayed — Tiny Beautiful Things (on self-worth, healing, and heartbreak)
Articles & Online Resources
Simply Psychology: Anxious Attachment Style
Simply Psychology: Secure Attachment Style
Simply Psychology: Avoidant Attachment Style
The Gottman Institute: Core Values in Relationships
For Reflection
Journaling, mindfulness, and re-parenting practices for emotional regulation.
Breathwork, sound healing, and somatic tools for nervous system balance.
