Journey of Coping with
Attachment Anxiety

Keywords: Mental Wellbeing, Love Experience, Attachment Anxiety, Attachment Patterns

Team menber: Bingxin Su, Joya Su, Aditya Patil, Qiannan Liu, Wu Yue

My role in this projcet: project management, review literature, interview expert, validate data, conceptualise and develop strategy, finalise design artefact

Time Frame: 2+1 weeks, 2020

Challenge

Research Methodology and Strategy: Group Auto-ethnography, Interactive Introspection

"I don't know how to strike a balance between myself and love relationship..."

"I cannot express my strong emotions. And I don't know how to deal with these emotions in a timely manner. It's weird, because outside of a love relationship, I'm not like that..."

"I always prioritise my partner and lose myself..."

"Forever wondering if I'm being loved...doubting it, and asking for love in every moment.."

How might we help people cope with their anxiety?

Research Insights and Findings

Research Methodology and Strategy: Group Auto-ethnography, Interactive Introspection, Expert Interview, Literature Review

Insight:

People we aim to help are preoccupied and fearful individuals. The ideal situation or imapct is approaching secure attachment pattern.

Findings:

Secure individuals have an internalized sense of self-worth and are comfortable with intimacy in close relationships.

Preoccupied individuals anxiously seek to gain acceptance and validation from others, seeming to persist in the belief that they could attain safety, or security, if they could only get others to respond properly toward them.

Fearful individuals, like the preoccupied, are highly dependent on others' acceptance and affirmation; however, because of their negative expectations, they avoid intimacy to avert the pain of loss or rejection.

Reference

Bartholomew, K. and Shaver, P.R., 1998. Methods of assessing adult attachment. Attachment theory and close relationships, 1998, pp.25-45.

Attachment anxiety is changeable in adulthood.

Reference

Ruvolo, A. P., Fabin, L. A., & Ruvolo, C. M. (2001). Relationshipexperiences and change in attachment characteristics of young adults: The role of relationship breakups and conflict avoidance. Personal Relationships, 8(3),265-281.

Insight:

Reflective writing can pacify high attachment anxiety but it needs guidance.

Findings:

Seeking to understand and interpret your past experiences can cure your attachment anxiety. There are many ways to understand the past, such as creating a coherent narrative of your past experiences, which will help you understand why your childhood experiences are still having an impact today. This process can be done under the help of a psychotherapist, or you can sort through it by writing. Only when you understand the root of your shame, low self-esteem, and insecurities will you be able to recover from them.

--Expert from conselling department, GSA