Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Style: Understanding Its Causes And Impact On Relationship Dynamics

Breaking Down Anxious Ambivalent Attachment

Afshara
3 min readMar 3, 2024
Photo by Timur Weber from Pexels

Anxious ambivalent attachment is linked to mental health issues like depression and low self-esteem and can be demonstrated by mistrust towards a close relationship partner.

Most notably, this attachment type is related to early life events in which the caregiver or parent was not always emotionally available or responsive to the offspring.

What Are The Reasons For Anxious Ambivalent Attachment

The anxious ambivalent attachment is typically triggered by initial encounters with parents or other caregivers. For example, when someone’s parents or caregivers are consistently unavailable and not always responsive to the child, it can cause this attachment style. Eventually, all of these can lead to feelings of confusion, distrust and anxiety.

For this reason, people who were raised like this might end up desiring and avoiding intimacy at the same time. Additionally, some other characteristics related to early childhood relationships can be linked to this attachment style. For example,

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Afshara

Ph.D. (Management)| Educator | Content Writer | Writing about things that intrigue my curious mind | https://beacons.ai/afshara17