Coaching with Attachment Style In Mind

For the last several years, I’ve taught numerous classes on Attachment Theory and Attachment Styles.  Each time I teach it, something new lands for me. That happened a couple of weeks ago. 

Question: As coaches, why should we care about something as psychological-sounding and childhood-related as Attachment Theory?

Answer: Because it explains our clients’ greatest challenges and deepest yearnings and how each is rooted in what they didn’t receive in that first, primary relationship. 

Becoming and Belonging

(Note:  You probably know this and I’m hoping to frame it in a way that might be new).

The Attachment in Attachment Theory is the relationship we develop with our primary parent as babies and toddlers. This first relationship primes what we later come to need and expect from relationships as adults, shapes our tendencies to turn toward or away under stress and impacts the degree to which we feel comfortable experiencing and advocating for ourself as an adult.   Our Attachment Style is formed based in large part on how fully our fundamental attachment needs were met by our primary parent.

We humans have fundamental needs both “to become” and “to belong”.  Our need “to become” relates to our innate desire to fully accept, embrace and connect with all the parts of ourself and express ourself freely and creatively.  Our need “to belong” relates to our inherent longing to be accepted and embraced by and connected with others.  

Our primary parent supports our “becoming” by providing a secure base from which to explore our world and discover ourself.  When the parent is consistently available and attentive, sufficiently calm and regulated, and fully accepting,  allowing and appreciative of our appropriate exploration, we grow more confident in separating and individuating from the parent and are encouraged to become a fuller expression of ourself.

Our primary parent supports our “belonging” by providing a safe haven to return to when we have been exploring and become overwhelmed, exhausted or scared.  When our parent is physically available to meet and greet our return and is emotionally available to attune with us and help us make sense of and organize our feelings, we learn to trust that others will be there for us in times of need, that we aren’t alone, and that it’s desirable and safe to belong.

Enmeshment and Distance

When our needs for “becoming” weren’t met as children, we’ll tend not to fully trust ourself as adults.  We will tend to feel (largely unconsciously) that we need other people for us to be OK.  During times of stress, we’ll tend to take more responsibility than is ours,  fault ourself instead of others, and discount and devalue our own needs all in order to stay in relationship.   The result is often a sense of overwhelm from taking on more than is ours, a rigid sense of obligation and a certainty that it can’t be any other way.   We’ll tend to suppress our own needs, maintain porous boundaries, become enmeshed with others and unknowingly enable others to stay in relationship.

When our needs for “belonging” weren’t met as children, we’ll tend not to fully trust others as adults.  We tend to feel (largely unconsciously) that we need to maintain a safe distance from others. During times of stress, we’ll tend to want other people to change for us to be OK.  We’ll tend to place our focus outside of ourself and onto others.  And in doing so, we’ll tend to be unable to see how we are contributing to our own challenges, to judge others and to have limited access to ourself.  As a result, we may tend to feel “done unto” or at the mercy of others or influences outside ourself.  We’ll tend to see the “problem” as being outside of ourself.

Coaching with Attachment Styles in Mind

OK, so what does all this have to do with coaching and our clients?  Well, it’s this:

In my 20 years of experience coaching, I’ve found that there are two common core issues that emerge for my clients: 1)  Issues around self-experience and self-expression - fears about expressing needs and self advocating, desires to develop new aspects of self, new abilities and capacities. 2) Issues around relationships - conflicts with coworkers, issues with bosses or subordinates, worries about setting boundaries, desires for better connection and/or more intimacy, concerns of loneliness, disconnection.

Of course, we coaches are trained to help clients with all these kinds of issues. And when we understand the origin of these issues, we can coach in a more attuned way.

Issues around self experience and expression relate to wounds of “becoming”.  And we can support our clients in their “becoming” by giving them what they didn’t get: consistent, stable attention, the safety and permission to explore and clear, healthy boundaries.  We can support them by truly seeing them, delighting in what we see, accepting, embracing and connecting with all parts of them and providing them with opportunities to experiment with and try out new possible selves.  

When our clients feel safe enough to explore a new way of being or expressing themselves and to welcome, accept  and explore parts of themselves that were in the shadow, they can begin to heal the wound of becoming. They can experience the safety they need to bring forth dormant, suppressed, repressed and shadow parts of themselves.

Issues around relationships relate to “belonging”.  And we can support our clients in their “belonging” by giving them what they didn’t get: physical and emotional attention, emotional attunement, and self regulation.   We can support them by paying attention to them, accepting and tolerating their distress and remaining calm, reliably “being there” for them physically, energetically and emotionally, and connecting with them and supporting them in connecting with themselves (and their emotions in particular).

When we help our clients connect with themselves (and their emotions in particular), we give them fore access to themselves.  And when our clients have more access to themselves, they are able to invest more of their “self” in their relationships.  

You might be thinking, what’s the big deal?!  I always do those things.  

We human coaches will tend to coach with the same blindspots as our parents.  Meaning, what our parents were blind to in us, we will tend to be blind to in our clients.  (What’s more, we tend not to know we are blind.)  So, if our parents didn’t fully meet our “becoming” needs, we’ll tend to not meet those needs in our clients and the same with our “belonging” needs.  And we won’t see it.

So, it is incumbent upon us coaches to understand ourself, see our client’s dominant attachment patterns and overcome our inherent blindspots so that we can give our clients what they didn’t get.  And in doing so, supporting them to full expressions of themselves, individually and in relationship with others.