Adult Attachment Anxiety

Everyone has an attachment style, a part of your personality that determines how you behave in interpersonal relationships. Insecure attachment styles include attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. An avoidant attachment style is characterized by reluctance to trust and rely on others and fear of intimacy. An anxiety attachment style involves reoccupation with the other, a need for reassurance and fear of abandonment. When attachment styles interfere with daily function, the condition is considered an attachment disorder. Adults with attachment anxiety are more often depressed and perceive and react to other people's behavior more quickly, but less accurately, than more self-reliant adults.

Depression

Individuals with attachment anxiety are more likely to become depressed than more self-reliant people, reports a research team in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of Counseling Psychology. The researchers looked at the attachment styles of 425 students between 18 and 36 years old at a large Midwestern state university. They found that participants with high levels of attachment anxiety had excessive needs for reassurance. Not getting the needed level of reassurance led to symptoms of depression. Read the rest of this article >>