How Your Attachment Style Can Impact Your Health
We all know that relationships can impact our stress levels —
Anyone who has gone through a messy divorce or breakup will tell you that relational difficulties can be incredibly stressful, and when we’re in a relationship and things are good, we benefit from the co-regulation that happens with a partner, when both people are able to calm each other.
I recently joined Melissa McLane and Courtney Jonson on the 21-Day Metabolic Reboot program, to talk about the impact of relationships, attachment style, and trauma on our health and well-being.
For a long time, I’ve noticed that the securely attached people I know seem to have fewer health problems, and I've wondered if there was a link. Well, it turns out there have been longitudinal studies that tracked people from infancy into adulthood that showed that the particular attachment style we form with our parents when we're babies has a huge impact on our adult relationships and even on our physical health. For example, one study showed that people who had an insecure attachment as babies had more inflammation as adults.
In this longitudinal study (1), 163 people were followed from birth for 32 years. Here’s what researchers discovered about attachment and their health:
Babies were assessed for attachment style using the Ainsworth Strange Situation procedure.
By age 32, people who had an insecure attachment style in childhood were more likely to have an inflammation-based illness, and babies who were continuously insecure had all kinds of physical problems as adults.
Other studies have shown a correlation between attachment style and cortisol production (cortisol is a stress hormone), with resulting impact on the immune system. One study showed a link between psychosocial stress such as public speaking and greater cortisol reactivity in anxiously attached people. (2 3 4)
The good news is that just as we can learn ways to calm our stress levels and reduce anxiety, we can also learn ways to shift our attachment so that we feel safer and more secure in dating and relationships. Clients tell me after a session they feel calmer and more relaxed, and problems that were making them anxious — such as waiting to hear back from someone they were dating — don’t seem as pressing anymore. When we feel relaxed and safe about getting our love and connection needs met, our bodies can relax as well.
1 Puig, J., Englund, M., Simpson, J., & Collins, W. (2013, April). Predicting adult physical illness from infant attachment: A prospective longitudinal study
2 Jaremka, L. M., Glaser, R., Loving, T. J., Malarkey, W. B., Stowell, J. R., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2013). Attachment anxiety is linked to alterations in cortisol production and cellular immunity. Psychological Science, 24(3), 272–279. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612452571
3 Smyth, N., Thorn, L., Oskis, A., Hucklebridge, F., Evans, P., & Clow, A. (2015). Anxious attachment style predicts an enhanced cortisol response to group Psychosocial Stress. Stress, 18(2), 143–148. https://doi.org/10.3109/10253890.2015.1021676
4 Pietromonaco PR, Beck LA. Adult attachment and physical health. Curr Opin Psychol. 2019 Feb;25:115-120. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.04.004. Epub 2018 Apr 16. PMID: 29734091; PMCID: PMC6191372.