Which Attachment Style Struggles With Grief Most?

There have been screeds written over the past decade or so about how attachment styles impact relationships. Online articles, self-help books, dodgy online quizzes, and countless research projects.

We know plenty about how attachment styles play out in our relationships with the living – but research has shown that our attachment styles also affect our relationships with the dead, and in turn how we grieve their loss.

There are those who’d argue that without life there’s no such thing as a relationship – and of course, in a physical sense they’re right. You can never again spend time with, touch, talk to or experience the unique, living presence of a loved one who has passed away.

But what I’d argue in return is that your internal relationship to them – your sense of what you were to one another – remains. Your attachment endures beyond death.

So it makes sense that our attachment styles appear to have a noticeable impact on how we process – or fail to process – the loss of a loved one.

A (very) brief crash course in attachment

For anyone who’s not familiar with attachment styles, let’s take a step back. In the 1970s, researcher Mary Ainsworth carried out groundbreaking research on mother-infant relationships, building on previous findings by John Bowlby. She observed what happened to babies when their mothers left the room, and also watched how they interacted with strangers – both with and without the mother present. The children displayed three distinctive responses to separation, which Ainsworth termed ‘attachment styles’: secure, anxious-ambivalent, and avoidant.

Securely attached children were visibly distressed when their mother left the room and appeared positive and happy when she returned. They were comfortable interacting with strangers only when their mother was present and appeared to use their mother as a ‘secure base’ from which to explore their environment. As long as she was present, they could relax and play, becoming familiar with their new surroundings.

Anxious-ambivalently attached children, on the other hand, displayed more intense distress when their mothers left. In addition, they appeared angry when she returned. Some babies resisted contact or pushed their mothers away, while others clung to them with visible desperation. They were very anxious around strangers, whether their mother was present or not, and they cried more and explored less than both the securely and avoidantly attached babies.

Avoidantly attached children showed no visible signs of distress when their mothers left the room, and little interest in her when she returned. They seemed just as happy with the strangers. However, later research showed that these babies’ heart rates and physiological signs of stress were extremely heightened in their mothers’ absence, despite their untroubled outer appearance.

From these findings, Ainsworth hypothesized that:

1. The securely attached children were likely to have been parented with consistency and reliable responses. They were relaxed as they knew their needs would be met.
2. The anxious-ambivalently attached children were likely to have been parented by caregivers who were inconsistent in responding to their needs.
3. The avoidantly attached children were likely to have been parented by caregivers who were unavailable or rejecting of their needs.

Further research on attachment styles has indicated that adults show differences in attachment as well, which can play out in romantic pairings.

For example, let’s say your partner goes out with drinks with friends:

• If you have a secure attachment style you’ll probably wish them well, then spend an evening enjoying your own activities. You’ll probably think about them but in a calm ‘I-hope-they’re-having-fun’ kind of way.
• If you have an anxious-ambivalent attachment style, you may worry about your partner’s faithfulness or safety, even if you know you’re being irrational. You may struggle not to send messages to them through the night, and perhaps become angry or hurt if you don’t get a response.
• If you have an avoidant attachment style, you’ll thoroughly relish your freedom and be unlikely to give your partner a second thought (unless it’s to hope they stay out as long as possible!).

Which attachment style struggles with grief the most?

As you might expect from this example, people with an anxious-ambivalent attachment style in childhood have the greatest tendency to struggle long-term following bereavement.

Why?

Because what attachment is really about is building what Bowlby called a 'lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.' A bond that ensures across time and space, that exists within oneself as well as outside oneself.

Attachment Essential Reads

Swinging With Attachment Styles

Disorganized Attachment: The Childhood Environment

There is a famous poem by the priest Henry Scott-Holland, 'Death is Nothing at All', that represents this idea beautifully. It begins:

“Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.”

If we are able to hold that sentiment inside, we may still be utterly bereft and heartbroken, but we will have less of a sense of utter disconnection and frightening absence. We miss our loved one dearly, but we can also tap into what it felt to be with them. The things they might say to us. The reliable, warm sense of their presence.

We carry them with us.

And carrying a lost loved one is a lot easier to do if we have a secure attachment style because this speaks directly to our capacity to form and hold an internal representation of people. If we tend towards avoidant attachment, we’re dismissive of needing others at all – which holds its own set of painful struggles, but tends to buffer us somewhat against their immediate absence. But if we’re more on the anxious-ambivalent end of the scale, we’re lacking something that takes the sharp edge off of grief.

That doesn’t mean we can’t create it through therapeutic work though. If you know you’ve got an anxious-ambivalent attachment style, you can actively work towards creating a sense of your lost loved one inside yourself. Imagine what they might say to you if they were sitting right beside you. Allow yourself to remember the things you loved best about them and the unique things that made them who they were. Really call to mind their presence. It will hurt, of course, but the only way through grief is to feel those feelings. You won’t drown in them, even though it may feel like wave after wave hits you and you’re afraid of being overwhelmed.

Allow what you have lost to live on in you, and it will help you survive.