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This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire. You on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance with personalized coaching from me, incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms. Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting and intersectional feminism. I am your host, summer innanen, a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence, and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 309 and I’m talking about how attachment styles relate to body image. I’ll share briefly about what the attachment styles are, and then we’ll get into how they relate to our body image, self compassion, body grief, and what we can do with this information. You can find the links mentioned at Summer in an end com, forward, slash 309, I want to give a shout out to coolness. 3567 who left this review? Thank you so much. I have learned so much already, and you are helping me to start my journey to get rid of being in a restrictive mindset and love my body, no matter the weight. I have been feeling really hopeless lately, but your podcasts make me feel like there is hope. Thank you so much for that review. I’m so glad that it makes you feel more hopeful, and I want to give a special shout out to winter for being a renegade sponsor of the podcast. You can do that by supporting the show via kofi. You can go to my Kofi account at K O dash, fi.com forward slash summer innanen, and you can make a monthly contribution to the podcast for as little as $5 a month. You can help keep the podcast on the air for another season as well. You’ll get access to my mini course conquering negative body talk. There’s different levels too, and one of the levels you get a shout out on the show, which is what winter did? So shout out to winter my opposite. Do you have dark hair? Do you like winter time? Or were you born in the summer? I was born in the winter. We should have a conversation about these things. Do you get asked all the time, is winter your favorite season?

Okay, enough about that. Anyways, you can find the link to Kofi in the show notes. You can also find it in the episode description. You can find it in my link in bio on Instagram. And if you are unable to financially support the show, you can also support the show by leaving a review and subscribing. Don’t forget to grab the free resources I have. You can get the 10 day body confidence makeover. And if you’re a professional who works with people who may also have body image struggles, I have a free body image coaching roadmap that was co created with my partner, Danny Adams, and you can find all that free stuff at the body imagecoach.com I wanted to get into attachment styles and body image today.

So one of the things that I’m really keen on doing, especially this year, is really taking things deeper and looking at where some of the roots of our body image struggles have come from. So as I start to expand my scope of practice, I’m really interested in let’s make sense of why we feel the way we do about our bodies, or why it might be more challenging for us to accept our bodies. And obviously I’m always looking at this through an anti oppression lens, and looking at how our culture informs our beliefs. And I think it’s also important to look at other various aspects of where our body image comes from. And you know, often those things interact include with our our culture, to form the beliefs that we have about our bodies. And one of those things is attachment styles. And so some of you might be familiar with attachment styles. You might be even more familiar than me with attachment styles. So I don’t want to say I’m an expert on Attachment styles. That’s not an area where I feel I have any expertise. I have kind of a basic level of knowledge. And so this episode is not about the different attachment styles. I’m going to briefly cover them, but I think if you’re if you’re interested in in learning more, there’s so many resources out there. So there’s tons of podcasts. Mel Robbins has a a pretty good one. I think there was another one. Maybe it was the podcast How Stuff Works, which gives a pretty good overview of of where attachment theory came from. And so, you know, just Google it. I’m not going to put too much in the show notes, because there’s just too many things, but so just Google find someone’s style that you like and read more about it if you want to learn more. But I’m going to it briefly, but I really want to talk more about how this relates to our body image. So let’s just talk about the different attachment styles.

So attachment theory came from a British psychologist named John Bowlby in the mid 20th century, and he explored how early relationships with caregivers shape our ability to form relationships and bonds throughout life. And his research, along with one of his colleagues, Mary Ainsworth, they did this experiment called the strange situation experiment, and this was done in the 1970s and that helped to categorize the different attachment styles into four main types. And so I’m going to review the four main types of attachment styles and just give you kind of an overview of some of the characteristics. But like I said, if you want to get deep on that, like there’s quizzes, you can there’s, there’s lots of quizzes. If you just Google attachment style quiz, you can take a quiz to figure out your attachment style. There’s lots of different ones out there. So you can take multiple quizzes and see what you come up with. But essentially, what they went to figure out was how early attachment interactions with caregivers, and in particular, they really looked at the mother and infant, and they really looked at like the ages of zero to three years, saying that those interactions with the mother, and I’m going to talk about why, maybe that’s a little bit problematic, would then guide relationships throughout The lifespan. So based on the way that you were raised in those early years and the interactions that you had with your mother, primer, let’s call it primary caregiver, because I don’t want to feed into the patriarchal nature of this experiment, but those those interactions would then shape, you know, how you show up with other relationships in your life, whether that be intimate relationships or friendships, and that shapes kind of like this working model that you have as an adult about intimate relationships. And I’m going to go into some caveats in a bit, because I don’t want you thinking that this just defines exactly who you are. But I’m going to review the four attachment styles first, so the first one is securely attached, and this represents about 50, 60% of the population, and a securely attached orientation means that you have more favorable perceptions of yourself and others because you had a more responsive and dependable caregiver so your needs were met. There was a level of intimacy, there was trust. You knew that you know if you were crying, then you would be soothed by your caregiver, and therefore, you tend to have a stronger sense of maybe self and self esteem as well. You might have a greater idea of your needs and how to honor those needs. You might have greater empathy and compassion for yourself and others. The other attachment styles sit under the umbrella of insecure attachment. And so what that means is that the caregiver was more inconsistent, less responsive or rejecting in some circumstances, or consistently rejecting. And so therefore those are broken into three different attachment styles. So then there’s the ambivalent attachment, which is also called anxious, preoccupied for the purpose of this podcast, I’m just going to call it anxious attachment. It means that you might be more sensitive to rejection, you might have a harder time regulating emotions. You might really crave connection, but at the same time have this real fear of losing it so often, there’s this fear of abandonment might show up more in terms of like people pleasing behaviors, and then simultaneously being really insecure if your partner or other person you’re in a relationship with is absent, and that, again, can show up across other types of relationships, not just partner relationships.

The other type is the avoidant attachment, and this is where you might be more emotionally distant and avoid closeness, because you learned that vulnerability results in behavior from your attachment figures that make your emotional experience worse, so therefore you kind of like are better at shutting down your emotions, not sharing those with a partner or another person, having a harder time even just accessing those emotions. And having a harder time expressing your needs, and maybe just feeling like I can just do this all myself. I don’t need another person. And then the last type is disorganized attachment, and that’s when someone really experienced traumatic or inconsistent caregiving. And so you might have a variety of different behaviors. So hard time regulating emotions, being vigilant, for danger, having a hard time expressing needs, and so these attachment styles are believed to influence how individuals approach relationships. And I want to just say a few caveats, a few also critiques of attachment theory. So first of all, I think it’s really important that we don’t put ourselves into boxes. So I think it can, you know, we can maybe overly self identify with some of these things, when the reality is that our attachment is malleable, so we can, it can change, and it can change based on experiences that you had in your life.

So an individual could move from being more insecurely attached, so being like more anxiously attached to being more secure, and vice versa, depending on experiences, I really relate to that, because I think there was a time in my life where I was much more insecurely attached, and I feel like that’s really shifted. I feel like I set more dominantly towards the secure attachment now, and so that’s the other piece of this. Is it’s it’s a spectrum. I have aspects of all of these things, but I’m definitely more dominant secure, and that’s important for you to know for yourself too, is that you’re not just in one box. You might have different pieces, and that’s okay, and it can change. It might also be different, depending on the relationship. So you might show up a little bit differently with certain people or in certain situations and and that’s something I also notice in myself. One of the critiques of attachment theory is that it was more politically conservative because it was really under this like social norm that the mother is responsible for the infant, and that it was then almost used to, like police caregiving. And I think that that if you’re a caregiver, like if you’re a parent now, especially if you’re if you’re a mother, I think that, you know, some of that mom guilt that we feel about our our child, some of the decisions we made around our child, maybe that was like to go back to work, or the daycare we put our child, and we often are the ones carrying that and and that this, this research and the study, you know, reinforce that. And so I think that’s important to know and knowing that, like this theory was developed in in a colonized culture, and therefore, you know, might be different across cultures, and the way that people care, give, can differ across cultures.

And so these are just things to keep in mind. Like, the point is we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. I think this is just one factor amongst others that can help us understand ourselves better and help us understand like, why we show up the way we do, and why we interact with the world in the way that we in the way that we do. And I’ll talk a little bit more about how culture plays into that in a bit that said. So those are some of the caveats to keep in mind that said, I think that there’s some strong links between body image struggles and insecure attachments. Actually, I don’t think there’s quite a bit of research on that, and so that’s what I wanted to share with you today, because I think that it can be another piece of the puzzle that can help us understand why we may struggle more with our body image, or why we stray may struggle more with being pulled back into eating disorder behaviors or dieting behaviors, or why it might be harder for you to accept your body. And I think that that it’s always really helpful to understand why we do the things we do, because it can be a gateway to knowing that it makes sense. Instead of thinking like, what’s wrong with me, or comparing ourselves to someone else and thinking like, Gosh, why am I still struggling with this stuff? Like, why do I keep going back to my eating disorder? Why am I why can’t I accept my body? These other people can do it, and this might help you make sense of that and think, Okay, actually it makes more sense because of my attachment style and because of all these other things that we you might learn about yourself if we were to work together, and it can help us be more compassionate as well.

So let’s talk about what the research says about attachment and body image. I think this is interesting, right? Because I think often when attachment theory comes up, it’s really used to look at our relationships and how we interact with others in relation with them. And body image seems like more of like an individual thing, but our body image is heavily influenced by how the world person. Us and our interpersonal relationships. For example, if you lived on a deserted island where no one was going to see you, I feel like it would make it a lot easier for you to accept your body. But because so much of our self worth and our body image is tied to interactions with others and the outside world, attachment and body image. It makes sense that those two things would be related to each other. So what the studies looked at is they looked at attachment anxiety, so your fear of rejection, your fear of abandonment, as well as attachment avoidance. So avoiding intimacy, dependence on others, more emotional avoidance. And what they found is that attachment anxiety is related to having greater emotional reactivity and a greater propensity towards validation seeking, whereas attachment avoidance is related to more social withdrawal and emotional distancing, and you can see how maybe those two things might show up in body image, right? So if you’re have a greater sensitivity towards emotions or a greater propensity towards validation seeking, it makes sense that you would then want to change your body in order to gain validation, because that’s what our culture has taught us. Similarly, if you’re more of attachment avoidant, then you might be it might be easier for you to to kind of like avoid your emotions and just withdraw socially. And that could also be related to behaviors that are maybe like disordered eating and whatnot, and we’ll talk about that. And so what the studies found is that across the board, across multiple studies, being anxiously attached was positively related to body dissatisfaction, body objectification, and therefore people had less body appreciation, less body esteem. And so the bottom line is, these studies have consistently demonstrated that there’s a significant association between attachment anxiety and body image concerns. So if you lean more towards attachment anxiety, then it might be harder for you to accept your body doesn’t mean it’s not possible. It just might mean there might be some other things that you need to explore, be really intentional with in order to get to that place of acceptance. Attachment. Anxiety gives us a really strong motivation to gain others’ approval and to avoid their rejection. And so as a culture, we’ve been conditioned to gain approval through our looks and so this, this makes sense, at least it makes sense to me. I hope it makes sense to you.

They also found that both insecure attachments are associated, or all insecure attachments, I should say, are associated with disordered eating. And as it relates to eating disorders, specifically, attachment anxiety was associated with greater eating disorder symptoms and poorer treatment outcomes. And then the last piece of research that relates to this, that I wanted to share is just around self compassion. And what they found is that attachment anxiety and avoidance are linked to lower self compassion, but even lower for attachment anxiety, self compassion is a key piece of building body acceptance. It’s a key piece of building up that that sort of counter response to our negative thoughts. And so what we can take away from this is that it might be more difficult if you have a more insecure attachment style, and it might come easier to you if you’re more securely attached. On top of all of this, I think we have to layer our identity and our proximity toward to privilege and oppression and looking at okay based on my identity, I also have, you know, this culture that makes it harder for me to live My life because I experience weight discrimination, racial discrimination, etc, etc. And so, you know, that’s obviously going to be always an overarching umbrella when we look at why we have the experiences that we have in our body, and why we feel the way we do in our body, and then the last thing that this can influence is the body grief process.

So we talked about body grief in episode 307, and one of the things I mentioned was that the way we grieve can be influenced by our attachment style. While there’s no research looking specifically at the experience of body grief and attachment, I think it’s interesting to note that our attachment style may influence grief, and therefore maybe it’s going to influence that body grief process, and what they found as it relates to this is that people who are more secure in their attachment tend to have a more balanced approach to grief. They have better emotional regulation skills, whereas people who are anxiously attached. Attached will tend to focus more on those feelings, and they might become preoccupied with those grief feelings, and it might make that it harder for them to move forward and look at more like, Okay, how do I move forward from this? Whereas people who are more avoidant attached, people who display more avoidant attachment patterns, I should say, will tend to focus more on the moving forward and maybe not feel those emotions. It doesn’t mean any of those are wrong. It just means like, if you feel like you find it really, really hard to let go of this idea of being thinner, maybe there’s something there that’s related to attachment style as well. So why I feel like all of this is important is that understanding these roots can be very helpful, right? Because one if we know this, we can say to ourselves, like, gosh, it really makes sense why I feel like I need to change my body to have other people like me, or to feel like I’m valuable, and therefore maybe you can get more specialized support or have a greater understanding and compassion for why this might be harder for you, instead of thinking I should be further along. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I get over this? And so what we can do, if we want to work on our attachment and work on our body image simultaneously, I think it’s, you know, kind of the same stuff that I really do when I’m working with people, anyways, but it might just take some additional practice and time and being really intentional, noticing fears, noticing negative thoughts, working on self compassion, knowing yourself, building up self worth, looking at emotional regulation and just emotional exploration, allowing yourself to feel emotions, allowing yourself not to get too caught up in emotions, bringing in community with others that you feel secure with, so that you can feel more trusting and really just creating that sense of safety in yourself.

And so I hope you found this helpful. I found it really interesting to look into So I enjoyed this. I hope you did too. I hope you took something away from this. And if this is something that you want to explore, obviously you can find a therapist who’s more attachment oriented, or if you want to explore this from like a body image perspective, I am working with a small number of clients privately where we are taking things deeper, and I’m doing this under supervision from a licensed therapist, and so yeah, and so we can explore this as well.

So you can find the links mentioned at summer innanen.com forward slash 309, thank you so much for listening today. Rock on.

Hi, I’m Summer Innanen, and I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer innanen, and if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts, search, eat the rules and subscribe, rate and review this show. I would be so grateful until next time rock on.