Hello, BPD family. I just wanted to share some information about a book my T recommended that I read in order to work on healing my attachment issues. The title is
Attached: the New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help you Find -- and Keep -- Love. There are quizzes for you to learn your own attachment style, as well as questionnaires to help you figure out your partner's (or former partner's) attachment style. The styles are secure, anxious (me), avoidant, and anxious-avoidant (more rare, but what I think my ex's style is).
I'm only a few chapters in, but it's really interesting. It talks about how when a person with the anxious style gets involved with a person with the avoidant style, the avoidant person tends to make the anxious person feel insecure in the relationship, which "activates" their attachment, causing them extreme anxiety, causing them to worry excessively about the relationship, get a little (or a lot) obsessed with the other person, and overall increases the intensity of their feelings. When the avoidant person gives love and affection, the anxious person is then overjoyed. Over time, this pattern causes such intense highs and lows that the anxious person equates it with passion and love. The book explains it much better than I am, but hopefully you get the gist.
I recognized myself in some of this. My ex, and maybe many other people with BPD, is anxious-avoidant, to use the terminology of the book. This pull-push away behavior activates a lot of us anxious types in an unhealthy manner. Thus we (I) need to work on healing our attachment issues and also need to learn to recognize the different types of attachment styles in people we may consider getting involved with in the future. Obviously, the ideal is to be a person with a secure attachment style and find someone else who is also secure in order to have a healthy relationship.
This book speaks to me so far, and I'm finding it helpful. It may not appeal to everyone. Some may find it overly simplistic in its descriptions, but I'm gaining insight into myself and my own issues. Obviously, just reading one book isn't the magic answer to healing everyone's heartbreak and pain here, but I thought I'd share just in case anyone else might find it helpful to them.
