Why We Crave Closeness — and Run From It

Maya Shankar (0:02)

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Amir Levine (1:05)

When people think about attachment, they think, oh, how do I feel about another person, my quality of their relationship with another person? But it's actually, it's much more basic and at the same time deeper than that, because it's how do I feel safe in the world?

Maya Shankar (1:22)

Neuroscientist Amir Levine studies attachment styles, how comfortable we feel with emotional intimacy, and how sensitive we are to disruptions in our relationships.

For decades, scientists have believed that this wiring is fixed and largely determined by our early childhood experiences. But research by Amir and others in the field has upended this view.

Amir Levine (1:46)

There's so much room for change throughout our lifetime because our social brain is really malleable and we can really shift and change our attachment style, even in adulthood.

Maya Shankar (2:01)

On today's episode, The Science of Attachment. I'm Maya Shankar, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change.

I first came across Amir's work a few years ago, when I was doing research for my book. I was interviewing a woman named Tara, who after a traumatic childhood, developed an insecure attachment style. But over time, she was somehow able to build many relationships that were deeply secure. I wanted to understand how this transformation was possible, and ended up finding some answers in Amir's research. His latest book, Secure, teaches us how we can shift our attachment orientation, no matter our starting point.

Amir Levine (3:03)

So in attachment style, it's like a world view. We have a preconceived notion of how people are going to relate to us and how safe the world is, safe from the point of view of relationships. It's measured on two dimensions, on the avoidant dimension and on the anxiety dimension. So people who are anxious have this idea that relationships are very fragile. There's a danger around the corner that every little thing can break the relationship, that people will not want to be close to you as much as you want to be close to them.

People who are avoidant, they want to be in a relationship, but they don't really feel comfortable with too much closeness. So they're like, I'm better off on my own, you are responsible for your own actions and feelings, and I'm to mine. It's all about being self-sufficient and self-reliant.

Maya Shankar (3:52)

Can you tell me, Amir, what the hallmarks of a secure attachment look like? What does it feel like to be securely attached?

Amir Levine (4:01)

So I think the best way for me to describe the secure attachment is if I go back to where these attachment styles were discovered by Mary Answorth, who's also an attachment researcher. And what she did was bring mothers and their toddlers to a room full of toys, and they were watched through a one-way mirror. And it's amazing to watch it because the child enters the room and he sees all these toys and gets so excited, immediately starts to play with different things. But then they ask the mom to leave the room, and immediately they drop everything they have. They crawl or run or whatever, they start banging, crying. The research assistant is there, they try to interest them with the toy. They're not interested, they'll throw it in your face. They just want their mom back. And then they ask the mom to come back to the room. And it's in that moment, the reunion, that Mary Answorth discovered these three attachment styles, the anxious, the avoidant and the secure.

And it's amazing to see the secure, the minute the mother picks them up, they come down right away. They start to point at the toys and it's like magic. It's incredible to see. But the anxious, not so much. The mom holds them, they just continue to cry. They don't get that easily interested with other toys. And the avoidance, sometimes they don't even cry.