Somatic therapy helps people understand their attachment styles and strategies. Adult attachment dynamics can be confusing. This article from Compass Healing Project will try to simplify the confounding nature of intimacy and boundaries. Attachment dynamics influence how someone might communicate and also how they navigate boundaries.
The nervous systems of insecure attachment styles get activated by relational triggers. When someone feels vulnerable, different strategies emerge between the styles. Pursing, distancing, freezing, or fawning are typical threat responses. Understanding attachment dynamics can support healthier boundaries and emotional connections. Somatic therapy has specific techniques for working with different attachment dynamics.
The Role of Boundaries in Relationships
In human relationships, boundaries and attachment styles shape how individuals relate. Boundaries are our personal limits. They function to guard and maintain our emotional and physical well-being. Our boundaries may include what is acceptable behavior from others. We can have boundaries with someone if their behavior isn't acceptable to us. Boundaries help someone stay connected to themselves while in a relationship with others.
Attachment styles, rooted in early childhood experiences, influence how we relate to others. The attachment strategies we learn in childhood show up in adulthood. Understanding boundaries and attachment strategies is essential to healthy relationships and personal growth.
Understanding Boundaries
Personal boundaries serve to protect our emotional space and physical space. Boundaries can support your sense of safety, security, and depth of connection.
Physical boundaries involve personal space and touch.
Emotional boundaries have to do with emotions, the emotions of others, and vulnerability.
Relational boundaries are boundaries you and/or your relationship establish to support security.
Sexual boundaries that are "no's" protect and help us enter experiences and help us say "yes."
Setting healthy boundaries is crucial for creating respect, trust, and security. In healthy relationships, we are creating boundaries that are mutually beneficial. Without clear boundaries, individuals may feel overwhelmed, anxious, and disrespected. Unclear boundaries lead to feeling taken for granted, resentful, and conflict. Boundary crossings and violations are a sacred injury that warrants direct repair. Read more about rupture and repair here (link to relationship breaches blog).
Attachment Styles Explained
Attachment theory says that early experiences with caregivers inform future intimacy behaviors. Caregiver's attunement and intimacy create the beginning patterns of relating to others. These behaviors and feelings carry over to our adult relationships. The four main attachment styles are secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized (simplified categories). View these styles are strategies and different relationships may support different styles.
How These Styles Develop:
Secure Attachment: Secure Attachment happens when caregivers are consistent, responsive, and supportive. This type of caregiver allows individuals to form healthy, trusting relationships. They are consistently responsive. When ruptures of safety and emotional attunement happen they prioritize repair.
Anxious Attachment: If caregiver quality connection is inconsistent there may be a wariness about contact. Inconsistent caregiving leads to a preoccupation with proximity or lack thereof. The inconsistently responsive caregiver creates a fear of abandonment. The sense of security is never wholly imprinted. Sometimes they are present and responsive and sometimes they are not. Trust building with this type can take longer than secure types.
Avoidant Attachment: Avoidant Attachment develops when the caregiver is emotionally distant. This caregiver might have been present but not emotionally attuned. Caregiver's focus might be superficial. The focus may have been on a child's functioning and achievement, or their own stress. The parents needed their children to be independent and functional. Alas, Avoidant individuals feel most safe protecting their autonomy and independence. An adult with this style will show up at the onset ticking all the boxes. As the relationship continues they may avoid depth and responsibility. The greater the connection of committed intimate relationships the more likely pull away.
Disorganized Attachment: Disorganized Attachment results from traumatic experiences or neglect without enough caregiver support. The chaotic nature of these early relationships leads to no clear strategy. Disorganized folx can feel quite distressed and confused in relationships and emotional connections. Parents are mentally unstable and may have had substance abuse issues. They tend to be neglectful, abusive, and scary to their children.
Understanding these attachment styles can provide insight into how individuals behave in relationships. One behavior that is often confounding is BOUNDARIES.
Boundaries and Attachment Styles
Attachment styles influence how individuals perceive and set boundaries.
Secure individuals establish and respect healthy boundaries. These adults can adapt to occasions and feel secure saying "no" and "yes". They are comfortable co-creating intimacy, interdependence, and independence. Secure adults experience minimal attachment threat. These individuals trust their abilities to work through challenges.
Anxiously attached individuals often have porous boundaries. This style tends to struggle with boundaries. Setting them and experiencing them with others might evoke fear, anxiety, or worry. Individuals with anxious attachment have a desperation to maintain closeness. This closeness is to limit anxiety but may overstep others' boundaries. All to protect against abandonment and rejection. They tend to need consistent verbal reassurance due to the early childhood lack of consistent external feedback.
Avoidantly attached individuals often have rigid boundaries. Despite wanting a connection, they view emotional intimacy as a threat. Often dismissing their need for connection and the needs of others as if they weren't important. They have a low tolerance for emotional vulnerability and interdependence. They were given a lot of responsibility. All the while, not being given the skills for intimacy and closeness with self and others. They may withdraw when they feel their autonomy is being threatened. As autonomy and independence are most safe for them. They may get close-ish, and then start to pull away. When needs, wants, desires, and commitment feel more serious, they will protect themselves.
Disorganized individuals may find themselves in chaotic relationship dynamics. They struggle with boundary-setting across the board. This style has had a lack of relational safety more than any other type. Feeling unsafe, these adults may cycle through strong emotions. Their connection to others is disorienting, and they may have distress often. They may not know what is appropriate in friendship, intimacy, and work settings. Their experiences can create confusion around intimacy and distance, resulting in erratic behavior. Sometimes allowing closeness and other times pushing away others to protect themselves.
A common pattern we see is when an anxiously attached adult invades the privacy of another in an attempt to get closeness. Then the avoidant partner might pull away. The anxiously attached would then feel more threat and pursue. The avoidantly attached would then feel threat and withdraw farther away. Creating a pursue-withdraw dynamic that erodes safety, security, and trust.
If you wish to learn more, here are some incredible books to support your understanding.
Strategies for Improving Boundaries Based on Attachment Styles
Somatic therapy helps someone understand and reflect on their attachment dynamics. It also helps repair attachment on a body-mind level. These imprints are on the brain and nervous system. This means, that by using somatic practices and awareness, your relationships can change. Attachment strategies protect us as children but erode emotional safety in adult relationships.
Each attachment style can cultivate nervous system resilience and emotional security:
Anxious attachment individuals have to learn to self-soothe. They have to practice soothing themselves daily. Soothing the nervous system due to a fear of abandonment and rejection. They must learn to hear the fear in the nervous system and apply care, attention, and reassurance. Practicing clear communication can help mitigate boundary issues. Engaging in open dialogues about needs and fears can foster a sense of security. In security, there can be a greater sense of mutual understanding and connection.
Somatic techniques like self-contact, grounding, orienting, and nervous system regulation support healing. Earning a secure attachment with self encourages a new attachment dynamic to emerge. Finally, renegotiating past traumas and increasing nervous system resilience can repair this imprint.
Avoidant attachment individuals can benefit from gradually exposing themselves to vulnerability and intimacy. Relaxing rigid boundaries around independence can open up the opportunity for real connection. The goal is to experience what it is like to be vulnerable. and not get criticism, annoyance, or dismissiveness. Starting with small acts of openness can build trust. They have to learn to become more comfortable with emotional closeness.
Building the connection between mind and body supports emotion tolerance. Emotion tolerance supports nervous system resilience. Sensing the body's senses with a container for pain and pleasure resilience develops. We can learn to feel safe and trust that we can care and be connected with ourselves without overwhelm. Working with a trained somatic therapist challenges the compartmentalization and distancing strategies.
Disorganized attachment individuals must learn to feel safe with others and feel their needs as worthy of care. They benefit from regular routines with consistent friends and family. Working with a trauma therapist can help individuals process. Renegotiating past traumas and relationship skill development can shift this attachment style. Learning to self-soothe and get the nervous system more regulated can help this attachment style.
True Connection
Our relationships can support growth and intimacy when we can learn our boundaries. Boundary setting and boundary perception exploration provide insight into negative cycles of relating. Recognizing intimacy fears provides insight into the pain we hold from early attachments. If we can move towards our pain with compassion, we can recognize the needs we still long to be met. By knowing your needs, you can clearly share with those you trust. We can also practice ways of caring for our own needs. Practicing self-regulation, calming, and soothing intimacy and vulnerability can greatly enhance relationship satisfaction. Self-reflection and open communication foster security.
Nervous system awareness, nervous system healing, and somatic coping skills help increase safety. Through increasing safety and reducing threats, people experience healthier interactions with others. Nurturing resilience takes time, practice, and consistency. Healing from early relational wounds can lead to more fulfilling and respectful relationships. It is our responsibility to know ourselves. No one else can do this work for us. Daily self-reflection and open communication foster security and understanding. The more we can understand our behaviors the more we can lean into what we all long for, which is to love and be loved.
Heal and Thrive With Somatic Therapy in San Diego, CA
If you struggle with setting boundaries, navigating relationships, or feeling secure in your connections, somatic therapy in San Diego, CA can help. Addressing attachment dynamics and nervous system patterns with the help of a skilled somatic therapist at Compass Healing Project offers a path to greater emotional balance and healthier relationships. Explore how this approach can support you in creating the connections you truly deserve. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
Reach Out and Fill out our New Client Inquiry Form to get started.
Schedule a discovery call with one of our skilled somatic therapists to discuss your needs and goals with Somatic Therapy.
Begin creating healthier relationships with the help of somatic therapy!
Other Counseling Services at Compass Healing Project
At Compass Healing Project, we take a holistic approach to therapy, using a range of modalities to support various mental health needs. In addition to helping you create healthier relationships with somatic therapy, we also offer EMDR, Clinical Sexology, hypnotherapy, ketamine-assisted therapy, and embodiment practices—each tailored to help with anxiety, depression, PTSD, grief, sexuality concerns, and relationship issues. To learn more about our services, visit our blog or connect with our compassionate therapists in Colorado and California, who specialize in trauma resolution, emotional healing, and integrative therapy to support your journey to well-being.
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