ATTACHMENT STYLES & THE FAITH OF MKs

 

[This article also exists in audio form. You can listen to it on The Pondering Purple Podcast.
And don’t forget to pick up your copy of my new book, Pieces of Purple—The Greatness, Grit, and Grace of Growing Up MK.]

 

[IMPORTANT NOTE: Attachment Theory is a broad and complex area of study with numerous interpretations and applications. By no means is this a comprehensive thesis on the subject! This is a narrow exploration of how parenting in ministry contexts and the attachment styles it produces might impact an MK’s view of self and God. The points I end with are not prescriptive, but merely suggestions for a place to start one’s healing process if that is what the reader desires.]

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This one has been a long time brewing. You’ve probably heard about Attachment Theory and, like me, may have wondered what it’s all about. I began my own exploration of the concept a few months back—not in small part because it seemed to have become something of a cultural buzzword. I decided to dig deeper mainly out of curiosity, but the more I learned, the more I pondered the implications of Attachment Theory specifically for MKs—and why it feels so relevant to my own experience.

The lightbulb moment finally struck a couple weeks ago, when I was 33,000 feet in the air between Kenya and home.

This is the equation that caught my attention as I bumped over turbulence while crossing the Atlantic:

Our relationship with our parents shapes our Attachment Style, but our Attachment Style in turn shapes our relationship with God. And when the parents who were so influential in our attachment development work for God, that adds yet another dimension to the work being done in this field.

The notion certainly isn’t original to me—entire books have been written on various aspects of Attachment Theory. But for me, applying it specifically to the MK experience shed a clarifying light on the relational dynamics of my very early years and how they impacted both my future relationships and my faith. Perhaps the same will be true for you.

In the ministry world, the fact that our parents serve God will be intrinsically linked with any exploration of Attachment Styles.

To the MK mind, if God inspires our parents’ work, values, priorities, and passions, it’s easy to assume that he inspires their parenting too. And the security or insecurity it builds into our psyches might just as easily be attributed to God himself.

I’ll note at the outset that this is a complicated topic with layers of fact, perspective, and nuance involved! So please consider this merely a conversation starter. I’ll try to break down some of the key concepts into bite-sized pieces and would love for you to continue your own research as you seek to apply these theories to your understanding of yourself as an TCK or to the children you’re raising as TCKs.

John Bowlby, an English psychologist, was the first to develop a theory around the influence of early childhood connections on the way we navigate relationships later in life. Raised by a mostly-absentee mother, then sent to boarding school at age seven because of World War II, he was naturally intrigued by how he might have been impacted by those factors, and the framework he built around his research eventually became known as Attachment Theory.

The foundational principle that undergirds Bowlby’s work is that infants are biologically inclined to seek connection with caregivers for survival and emotional security—and the patterns they experience as infants and toddlers can establish the way individuals perceive and relate to others, as well as to themselves, later in life.

Though Bowlby’s work focused on relational influences during the infant and toddler years, further research seems to indicate that one’s Attachment Style continues to implant itself in our subconscious through early developmental years, even up until the ages of six or seven. And crises that happen after that—like abuse, abandonment, or isolation—can also add their stamp to how we experience relationships.

Bowlby’s exploration of Attachment Theory yielded the first three Attachment Styles. He wrote about them in the 1950s and 1960s. The fourth was added to the list by Drs. Mary Main and Judith Solomon in 1990.

It’s important to remember that Attachment Styles represent a framework, not a guaranteed outcome.

Unusual personality traits, unique circumstances, or strong relationships outside the core family could divert a child’s Attachment Style from what would otherwise be predictable. The research into this topic identifies reliable trends, not universal truths.

With that caveat stated, let’s take a look at each of the four Attachment Styles.

1. Secure Attachment

This Attachment Style is characterized by confidence, optimism, and vulnerability in relationships.

This kind of security is fostered by parents who are consistently present, loving, supportive, and reliable—particularly during those critical early childhood years when a sense of value, importance to others, and safety in relationship gets imprinted on our spirits.

A TCK with this form of attachment will feel comfortable with both closeness and independence. She’ll trust others and feel worthy of love. She’ll have the capacity to form healthy and lasting relationships.

The core question this Attachment Style asks is: Why wouldn’t I believe that someone can love me?

2. Anxious Attachment (Preoccupied Attachment)

Anxious Attachment is characterized by uncertainty about our worthiness.

This is often related to parents who were not consistent in the attention and care they showed their children—sometimes available and involved, and sometimes distracted or absent. The child with this Attachment Style yearns for connection, but gets stuck in a pattern of trying to earn it somehow—because he learned early in life to question his value and lovability, and his ability to maintain the attention and commitment of others.

A TCK with an Anxious Attachment style will still reach for closeness, but fear rejection and abandonment. He might appear more needy than others. Be overly sensitive and insecure in relationships. It can show up in contradictory ways too: in inordinate clinginess or in a self-sabotaging impulse to end relationships before the other person has the chance to reject him.

The core question of this Attachment Style is: Is there anything about me than can ever earn consistent love?

3. Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive)

Avoidant Attachment is characterized by low (or no) expectations. It is a mirror of the absence of caregiving that person experienced as a child from relationally unengaged, dismissive, or seemingly uncaring parents.

Though we all by nature have a deep-seated longing for true connection woven into our DNA, the avoidant person will convince herself that she really doesn’t want or need any form of vulnerable relationship. She’ll tell herself that it probably won’t be returned anyway. And that it’ll hurt a lot less to live without hoping for more.

A TCK with Avoidant Attachment will prefer relational independence to connection and closeness. She might come across as ultra-self-sufficient, aloof, and disinclined to emotional intimacy.

The core question this Attachment Style asks is: Why would I ever think that someone could care for me?

4. Disorganized Attachment (Fearful/Avoidant)

Disorganized Attachment is characterized by relational inconsistency. It shows up as volatility in relationships—like a desire for closeness paired with fear of vulnerability. Or in contradictory behaviors—like drawing someone close only to push them away. Where Anxious Attachment desires connection and tries to earn it, Disorganized Attachment has a pattern of opening the door to attachment then slamming it.

A TCK with Disorganized Attachment craves connection as desperately as he fears it. He’s confused by his early relationship with caregivers, set off-kilter by their unpredictability, instability, and chaos. Sometimes there was love. Sometimes there was contempt. Sometimes he felt nurtured and sometimes it seemed those entrusted with caring for him didn’t even know he was there.

When parents are neglectful or dizzyingly mercurial, the adult whose understanding of relationships was formed in that uncertainty will apply the same pattern to future relationships.

The core question this Attachment Style asks is: Why should I risk trusting or depending on anyone?

 

Those are the bare-bones basics of the four Attachment Styles developed by Bowlby, Main, and Solomon. Just on a human level, they provide a fascinating way to look at how we’ve been formed to enter and abide in relationships—and what we may unwittingly be passing on to future generations.

As I’ve sat with this research for the past few months, I’ve wondered how Attachment Styles might also impact our faith. The Bible, after all, uses the term “Father” to describe God, and faith is primarily framed around relationship with him.

Looking back at my own life, I can see how the defense mechanisms I learned in my early years were directly reflected in my approach to God—how they complicated and undermined it. I’ve seen the same challenges in the MKs I work with.

But I want to affirm that an Attachment Style is not inflexible—whether it be in our human relationships or in our faith.

There is room for growth. For hope and for healing. For reimagined connection with others and with God—God the Father who can disarm the self-defenses we might have learned in our ministry-saturated childhoods.

God the Father. It’s a comforting image for so many believers, conjuring care, provision, and presence. Those who have experienced human parents who loved them well will easily project those same traits onto the spiritual being also referred to as Father.

But for people who spent their early years with caregivers whose love they perceived as less than fervent, committed, or dependable, our understanding of the word “Father” could trigger the same unhealthy Attachment Styles we learned in hard childhoods. And we’ll assign to him traits that will validate our fear or hesitancy around a dependent relationship.

Those of us with insecure Attachment Styles may even narrow our reading of Scripture to just those stories and descriptions that legitimize our misgivings, not out of conscious self-deception, but as a knee-jerk form of subconscious self-protection—reminding ourselves that he may not be safe. Our expectations of who God is can indeed be shaped by our early human relationships.

If we grew up with Secure Attachment—remember that the question of this style is, “Why wouldn’t I believe that someone can love me?”—we’ll be able to go to God the Father with confidence, knowing that he sees and loves us, that he wants our flourishing, that he is patient and kind and faithful. That’s what we’ve learned from growing up with our own parents.

And the Bible will validate that perception. We’ll dwell on the passages where Jesus shows his goodness. Where he is present and comforting. Where he heals and provides. We’ll look back on our lives and see his “Fatherness” in the blessings we’ve experienced—and our sureness about his father-heart will allow us to place responsibility or blame for the harm we may have endured along the way on forces and factors other than him. We know that fathers love their children and can be trusted.

The faith statement for this style is: Since my own busy, missionary parents found a way to make me a priority, I know the Father they serve will too.

If we grew up with Anxious Attachment—the question here was, Is there anything about me than can earn consistent love?—we might question whether we’re truly lovable to God. There were times when our parents treated us like precious gifts to be cherished and nurtured, and times when we couldn’t seem to hold their attention. So we might expect the same from God, wondering if he loves us in a devoted way or if there’s something we need to do to earn relationship with him and care.

And in our minds, the Bible seems to validate this view of God. There are verses in which God’s love shines right off the pages—where we see him moved by the need, fear, and death of others. But there are also the passages where he rages against humanity. When people beg for him to see and hear them, but he doesn’t seem to. We might bypass the “in his own image” message of Genesis that paints us as good and beloved and see ourselves instead in the passages where we’re called fallen and unworthy

The faith statement for this style is: I don’t think there’s any way that I can earn God the Father’s love—but I’ll give it a try.

If we grew up with Avoidant Attachment—the question for this style was, Why should I ever think that someone could care for me?—viewing God as the Father might paint a picture of someone who doesn’t even know we exist. We don’t think relationship is possible because we don’t think we matter enough for him to take time away from saving the world to pay attention to our needs and concerns—let alone abide with us in everyday ways. “Father,” in our Style vocabulary, means uninterested and unreachable.

We resonate with David’s statement that, “God doesn’t care! He has closed his eyes and will never see me!” (Psalm 10) Our prayers have gone unanswered. We’ve witnessed tragedies in which he didn’t intervene. We’ve lived through trauma inflicted by people claiming to act in his name. And we’ve never sensed his compassionate eyes on us.

The faith statement for this style is: my own missionary parents didn’t show any desire for connection with me as they served God the Father, so I can’t expect anything different from him.

And if we grew up with Disorganized Attachment—he question here was, Why should I risk trusting or depending on anyone?—the notion of relationship with God feels dangerous. We honestly don’t know whether he is kind or cruel. Yes, we’ve seen him do great things for places and people. But we’ve also seen him angry and vengeful.

And we can find evidence of that in the Bible as well. The God who created the universe and said it was good, then destroyed it with a flood. The God who loved Mary and Martha, but let them suffer at the death of their brother. The God who said, “Let the children come unto me,” yet allowed Herod to kill thousands of babies.

The mercurial parents we knew seem reflected in what we’ve learned about God the Father, and our faith will mirror that. We may love and need him one day, but fear and distrust him another. Or both at the same time. That makes it impossible to really commit.

The faith statement for this style is: I never knew what version of my parents I was going to get, so I’m going to go ahead and trust the Father as long as he seems trustworthy, but I’m going to bail the moment he’s not…until I need him again.

Here’s the good news: Attachments Styles can shift. There’s some debate about whether they can be “reprogramed” vs “managed,” but there is clear evidence that we are not condemned to a life controlled by early relational self-defense mechanisms. It may not easy and it likely won’t be quick, but it can happen.

I should know.

For most of my life, I was stuck in a powerful form of Avoidant Attachment, both in my personal relationships and in my faith. Looking back, I can see the cost of that kind of self-protection in so many ways. But I can also see how people who followed Jesus and loved me well began to soften my rigid stances. How an honest acknowledgment of parental shortcomings gave me the freedom to reach much less grief-bound conclusions. How therapy and worship and incremental changes drew me small-step by small-step into a healthier and “realer” vision of who I am, of who God is, and of what can be both released and learned from former relationships.

Although healing is a process that plays out until our last breath, I can attest that the person I am today is so much more secure in my relationships and so much more dependent in my faith.

The path to wholeness and more secure attachment will be different for each of us. On a human-to-human relationship level, finding freedom and rewriting our patterns might involve a collection of approaches:

• Pursuing personal self-compassion and growth
• Finding help through therapy or support groups or both
• Intentionally entering friendships with trusted people who understand our tendencies and whose healthy attachment styles won’t force us into repeating known patterns
• Exploring and internalizing the unconditional love of God as expressed in his Word and demonstrated in his Son

But healing is possible on a spiritual level too. There are a number of approaches that may be helpful if this is what you’d like to explore for yourself. The following are suggestions of possible first steps on a much longer journey that you’ll want to tailor to your situation and needs:

1. Examining how the Attachment Style developed through our parental relationships might be coloring our view of and engagement with God
2. Processing our relational influences and behaviors through honest conversations with trusted friends who might see in us what we don’t
3. Seeking help from appropriate forms of counseling, in order to move toward spiritual renewal and freedom from past scars
4. Praying for God to reveal his true self to us through what he shows us in his Word and in his Son’s life, in whatever “language” our soul hears best: Scripture, music, nature, conversation, art, science, or narrative
5. Learning more about his heart for us as we look back and find him already woven into our story
6. Gradually—as our capacity grows—investing more of our trust in him, finding him worthy, and then investing some more

Our Attachment Styles are symptoms—self-defense mechanisms—not immutable traits. They can soften. They can bend. They can be redeemed into something honest and good.

This is the truth I want MKs to live in. And if you’re that MK, this might be the moment when you can take the first small step in that “deprograming” process!

Parents of still-growing TCKs, I hope you haven’t read these words as an indictment or as judgment.

We can only change what we know.

If this is new information for you, I encourage you to dig deeper into this topic, to examine your practices, and to check in with your children about what they’ve learned from your parenting and how it might have colored their perception of God. Growth is a continuum and it’s never too late to start.

My prayer is that we’ll all, whatever our status or stage of life, be attuned to our own needs, aware of any unhealthy self-defenses we harbor, and mindful that the way we care for others, especially children, might inform their understanding of God. His love is not dependent on our worthiness or determined by a capricious willingness to engage. It is steady. Sturdy. Without conditions and undimmable.

 

Want to learn more? Here are some suggestions for a place to start:

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠What It Is and Why It Matters⁠, podcast by Adam Young
• ⁠The Impact of Attachment⁠, by Susan Hart
• ⁠Attachment Theory⁠, by Thais Gibson (interactive book)
• ⁠Secure: How to Have a Secure Attachment to God⁠, by Kenza Haddock

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