How Attachment Impacts Our Body Image Issues: A Deep Dive into Attachment Styles & Body Image [Podcast Transcript]

Title: How Attachment Impacts Our Body Image Issues: A Deep Dive into Attachment Styles & Body Image

Podcast Date: December 3, 2024

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Description

Do you know your attachment style? In this episode, author and body image coach, Heather Creekmore delves into the intricate connections between attachment theory and body image issues. Relationship security, particularly with primary caregivers during the first year of birth influences our levels of anxiety about weight and dysfunctional behaviors such as restrictive eating even as adults. Heather explains how insecure attachment styles—avoidant, anxious, and disorganized—develop from insecure interactions with mom and contribute to body dissatisfaction or a "problematic" view of one's body. 

Secure attachment, on the other hand, fostering emotional regulation and coping strategies in infants, can lead to a healthier view of one's self and one's body. But, it's important to note that even those raised without secure attachment can find a new secure attachment in God--the perfect parent. 

If you've ever wondered what your childhood, past, or early years may have to do with your current body image struggles, this episode will enlighten, educate, and surprise you!

Here's the podcast Heather references in today's episode: The Place We Find Ourselves Podcast: https://adamyoungcounseling.com/podcast/

Here's the study she references -- the PubMed Study on attachment style and body image issues: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10206641/

Ready to dig into why you're stuck in body image issues? Join us for the 40-Day Journey that begins on January 7th. Sign up or learn more at: https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

[00:00:02]:

Life audio. Hey, Fran. Heather Creekmore here. I'm glad you're listening today. Today is that long awaited episode on attachment. We started before the holiday talking about the role our moms have potentially, likely played in our body image issues. And today, we're gonna talk about just some basic attachment theory. I am not a psychologist.

[00:00:27]:

I am not a licensed counselor. So this is gonna be in layman's terms. Okay? But I do feel like it's important for us to have just kind of a general grasp of this concept of attachment, because the research out there is very clear that certain attachment styles end up with body image issues. And so, if you've struggled with this your whole life, and you're like, I just don't get it. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why, why, why, why. And maybe if you've been blaming your body for it. If I didn't have this body, if I didn't have this body, if I didn't have this body, what if it all goes back to your 1st year of life and the way you attached or failed to attach to your primary caregiver? Yikes.

[00:01:20]:

Does it feel like there's a whole lot you can do about that? But seeing, naming it is the first step to finding healing from what may be an underlying issue for you and your body image issues. So that's why today's episode is so important. Hey. It is almost a new year. I am so excited to offer the 40 day journey starting January 7th. Sign up, grab one of those spots. You can sign up at improve body image.com. Also, I'm gonna be doing a free webinar on January 2nd to help you kick start your new year with 5 things you can do to feel better in your body in 2025.

[00:02:01]:

It's completely free. It's gonna be a live webinar with me. I'll do it twice, once the afternoon, once the evening. So go sign up for that too at improve body image.com. I hope to get to meet you on that webinar. Now let's get to today's show. Welcome to Compare To Who, the podcast to help you make peace with your body so you can savor God's rest and feel his love. If you're tired of fighting body image the world's way, compare to who is the show for you.

[00:02:31]:

You've likely heard lots of talk about loving your body, but my goal is different. Striving to fall in love with stretch marks and cellulite is a little silly to me. Instead, I want to encourage you and remind you with the truth of scripture that you are seen, you are known, and you are loved no matter what your size or shape. Here, the pressure is off. If you're looking for real talk, biblical encouragement, and regular reminders that God loves you and you're not alone, you've come to the right place. I hope you enjoy today's show, and, hey, tell a friend about it. Well, hey, friend. I'm so glad you're listening today, and I hope you are too after we dig in to this concept of attachment.

[00:03:13]:

Yikes, Ville. I have been doing counseling related work for myself and researching and studying this for the work I do with clients and books. And for some reason, attachment theory just kind of I don't know. It went in one ear and out the other. It didn't really stick. But I need to give credit where credit is due. My friend, Chrissy Kirkman, over at Finding Balance, the old school food freedom podcast, Chrissy just casually said it was either in conversation or in a meeting. She said something about how attachment theory changed her view of body image issues.

[00:03:54]:

And I was like, well, that's kinda interesting. Maybe I should look into that. So I bought a book, but the book I bought wasn't that great. And I just kinda let it alone. Like, maybe that's something I don't really need to dig into. And then and then then God started to do some work in some things he's doing through my husband's life, and we're researching some things in our children's lives. And I stumbled right back into attachment. And then Tara on my team led me to a podcast that I'm gonna recommend to you.

[00:04:29]:

But, oh, friend, like, you gotta be ready. You really gotta be ready to dig in. But the podcast is by Adam Jung. He's a counselor, and it's called The Place We Find Ourselves. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And, hopefully, maybe next year, I'll be able to get Adam to come on the show and really lay this out in a much more eloquent way than I'm gonna do today because he's an expert on this. But as I started listening to the show, I realized, wow, like, it just seems like there could be a great big connection between how well you attach as an infant and body image issues later on. And then I was like, I wonder if there's any studies out there.

[00:05:13]:

Oh, and sure enough, friends, there is. There is a study out there that is just downright eerie in terms of the way it connects attachment issues to body image issues. So that's where we're going today. I'm gonna go through the 4 main attachment styles, and I'm gonna tell you about a little bit of the research, and then I'm hopefully gonna leave you with some hope. Because if you were, like, anxious, avoidant, disorganized attachment, you know, and you have body image issues, it might feel like, well, why bother? Like, I'm destined to this. Like, like, this is the what my parents my mom set up for me. And I don't want you to walk away with that feeling. There is great hope.

[00:05:57]:

You know, a couple episodes ago, I told you we needed to name it, not really so we cannot blame our moms for this, but name it so we can see it, so we can heal from it. Right? Feel it to heal it. Today, I want you to think about it like this. I want you to see it so that you can seek. And by seek, I mean, seek healing, but most so I'll seek Jesus. Because I think the scripture is beautiful in the way it talks about adoption. I did a whole episode, probably more than a year ago on this concept of adoption from Ephesians. But if we really believe this concept of adoption, if we can understand that we are adopted by Christ, that we are his heirs, his daughters, that he has us, that he's chosen us.

[00:06:50]:

Right? There is something about that concept that should be healing to our family of origin issues. It's like, yes. Even if mom left you an orphan, even if dad left you an orphan, or even if your family was so dysfunctional that even though you still have parents, you feel like an orphan because emotionally perhaps you are an orphan. I want you to understand that you've been adopted. You now have a perfect parent. And he sees you, and he knows you, and he can attune to you, and that will make you more attuned to him. Oh, friends. It's good stuff.

[00:07:33]:

So let's let's dig in first with the 4 main attachment styles. So the best attachment style, if we're rating them, is a secure attachment. This is where you and mom mom attuned to you well during your 1st year of life, and you felt secure. You knew that mom would always be there to meet your needs. If you were crying, mom would come and take care of you. And I Adam Jung says it like this, secure attachment or attunement, I guess you might say, is that the caregiver, a primary caregiver, knows when you want to be held and when you want to be put down. Because being securely attached to your caregiver is not about the caregiver feeling like they're pouring into you all the time and doing everything to meet your needs. And, you know, it's not about them being the parent of the year.

[00:08:31]:

It's about them attuning to you and understanding where you're at emotionally or what your needs are and being available emotionally, not just physically, emotionally to help you, in that. And that's what creates a secure attachment. And the good news from Adam Jung, I mean, if you're a parent like me and you're hearing this, you're like, oh my word. There's no hope for my kids. I didn't do that. Oh, I was a mess that 1st year. As a mom, I was a mess when my kids are being born. And, you know, all of those things from the bottom too.

[00:09:07]:

But hear me. He says that doing this about 50% of the time is enough to create a secure attachment. So that gave me some hope. But, again, like I said a couple weeks ago, I don't want you to think about your parenting if you're a mom. I don't want you to primarily think about your parenting as we go through these. I want you to think about how you were parented, how you were cared for or not cared for. Okay. So secure attachment, obviously, that's the ideal.

[00:09:34]:

But since we all have body image issues here, there's a good shot then maybe our main attachment style was one of the other 3 or or so here they are. The first one is avoidant attachment. So avoidant attachment is the caregiver that just wasn't available. They weren't emotionally available. Maybe they weren't physically available, but they were just consistently unavailable or unresponsive to your needs. So maybe they didn't meet your needs, basic needs, like, you know, you're hungry or you didn't feel safe or you never received affection. They were never able to empathize with you. They discouraged you from expressing emotions like sadness or anger.

[00:10:22]:

Maybe you had a parent that was depressed or antisocial, or maybe your parent just had an avoidant attachment style as well. So the avoidant attachment style can lead us to avoid intimacy. It can lead us to crave independence. And Adam Jung explains this, like, when you're raised with an avoidant style, like, you learn that the only place that you are going to get your needs met is by yourself, like, from yourself. You've gotta do it yourself. And so a lot of times, if you have the avoidant attachment style, you've learned only to attune to yourself. And so you regulate yourself better than you regulate with other people. And by regulate, I mean your emotional regulation.

[00:11:08]:

So a healthy person well, we were all designed, let me put it this way, to be in relationship. And Adam Jung talks about how, you know, God being the trinity is the model of that. Right? They God is a we. He's the he's God. He's Jesus. He's the holy spirit. And we were never designed to be alone either. We were designed emotionally to attune to each other and to relate to each other.

[00:11:35]:

And in that way, we would help regulate each other emotionally. You feel safe, you feel secure, you feel loved, you feel accepted, you feel seen, you feel known. You have all of these needs met when you're in a relationship with someone who loves you and cares for you and attunes to you. But if you're raised with an avoidant attachment style excuse me. If you were raised by someone who had an avoidant attachment style, or if you were raised and your needs weren't met and you've developed an avoidant attachment style, then there's a good chance that you're more comfortable as an I than you are as a we. Even if you are married or in a relationship, maybe you find yourself, like, happy when your husband goes out of town. Because it's just easier for you to regulate your emotions, maybe even recharge your batteries when you are by yourself. So understand some of those things that perhaps you've even written off as personality might just be a result of your attachment style.

[00:12:42]:

So that's avoidant attachment. The next one is anxious attachment. An anxious attachment is different than avoidant. Because an anxious attachment, you are never sure if the caregiver is available. So avoidant, the caregiver just wasn't available. It just wasn't an option for you. Right? They just were checked out. They weren't attuned to you ever.

[00:13:04]:

But in anxious, it's a little different because, sometimes, they could be attuned to you. Sometimes, your caregiver was there and you did feel secure, and then sometimes they weren't there and you felt insecure. So think about this as the baby who's in the crib crying and, you know, maybe really wailing. And sometimes, mom comes in and comforts and takes care of whatever the need is, food, new diaper, whatever. And then sometimes, they can just be left there to wail, and mom just walks right by. So that kind of attachment produces an anxious attachment style. And someone with an anxious attachment style is is gonna be someone that maybe you've even heard referred to as clingy. They fear abandonment.

[00:13:51]:

They're always afraid they're gonna be rejected. They can tend to prioritize the needs of others above their own needs because, again, they're afraid that the person will leave them if they're not, you know, all in helping them even, I'm gonna say the word, like, codependent with them. They feel intense emotional discomfort when they're alone. They're afraid of being alone, desperately afraid of being alone. And they seek constant reassurance, validation from their partner, and maybe even seem a little emotionally guarded, like, there's a wall up and they kinda just don't want you to see anything behind that wall. That's an anxious attachment style. Then the last attachment style is called disorganized attachment. And, again, disorganized, anxious, avoidant, these are all the insecure attachments that are kind of on the other, like, side of the chart, if you will.

[00:14:51]:

Secure attachment on one side, and these are the insecure, the 3 insecure types of attachment. Some people call disorganized attachment a fearful avoidant attachment. And that's probably a better name for it, for in our layman's terms. Because what happened in this was that sometimes, the caregiver, primarily the mom for most of us, was there and attuned and there for your needs and understanding and relating to you, and you felt secure when she was there. And then, sometimes, she wasn't there. And it wasn't just that she wasn't there, it's those other times when she wasn't attuned to you that you actually may have felt afraid of her. You were scared. And maybe it was because your mom was bipolar, or had some other mental health or mood disorder, but the disorganized attachment style, is is characterized by by kind of both of those things.

[00:15:52]:

It's it's disorganized. It's like, okay. Is mom trustworthy and love loves me, or is mom a scary monster that I should be afraid of? You can see how confusing that is for a child, and it's kind of confusing, I think, for an adult as well. Right? But, but that's the last one, the disorganized attachment style. And so a lot of times, if you experienced abuse, neglect, or any kind of trauma as a child, you may have a disorganized attachment style. A lot of people with a disorganized attachment style never learned how to self soothe their emotions, which can make the world around them feel very frightening and unsafe. You could feel depressed if you have a disorganized attachment style. Again, you might have that fear of abandonment, you have difficulty regulating emotions, difficulty in relationships, maybe you have some social anxiety, or you avoid social situations altogether.

[00:16:49]:

You may even be aggressive sometimes or hostile towards those you're in relationship with, and maybe even inconsistent. Maybe you're just replaying what happened to you, that same inconsistency in your close relationships where sometimes you're hot and sometimes you're cold and sometimes you're hostile and sometimes you're helpless. And it's it's a difficult, confusing, disorganized, way of relating to others that comes from having that disorganized attachment style. A lot of times, those with disorganized attachment style, will pursue a relationship, like a dating relationship or, any kind of, like, a loving relationship. They wanna be close to people, but then they can detach or lash out at the partner who gives them love just because it just feels so risky and so uncertain. So what does this have to do with your body image issues? Well, there's a study, Moni and Matanova 2021 study, where the authors found that disorganized people compared to organized people, so either the safe, securely attached, or the insecurely attached, disorganized people of the 3 attachment styles that are not secure, experience more anxiety about their body and are more likely to, get this, their body. So what I take that to mean is that they see their body as a project or a problem that has to be solved, thus, problematizing their body in a consultative and therapeutic context. And this this review on PubMed is actually so poorly written.

[00:18:44]:

It's very frustrating for me. But, what they're saying here is that they've got dissatisfaction with their appearance they're trying to solve. Maybe they have, symptomatology of an eating disorder, or they've done things to try to modify their body like cosmetic surgery. So get this. This is another type of study that they did or another finding from that study. People who invest more psychologically in their appearance are anxious about gaining weight, and are sensitive to the presence of various physical symptoms, were more likely to have had caregivers in their history who cannot provide them with this experience of sufficient attachment. So let me try to say that in English too. So the study found that the more invested someone was in trying to keep up a certain appearance, the more anxious they were about gaining weight, the more sensitive they were to physical symptoms, which I'm not really sure what that means, but I think I can extrapolate.

[00:19:46]:

It means that they're always, like, oh, that hurts. Can I fix that? Oh, what do you think is wrong with me? Like this, I've got this thing. Can I fix this thing? And I don't know for me, which I think this is true of me. For me, it's, oh, I noticed this thing. If I fix this thing, maybe it'll fix everything. And my body will magically look the way I want it to. That's kinda where I take it. But but people who have those three traits or one of those three traits were more likely to have had caregivers who didn't provide them with sufficient security.

[00:20:19]:

Relationship security implies lower levels of anxiety about weight, less dysfunctional behaviors such as restricting, eating, and dieting. Okay. So friend, have you ever known someone and you were, like, I wonder why she just doesn't worry about her body like I do. I wonder why she isn't obsessed with dieting like I am. I wonder why she's never, you know, gone down this body image spiral like I have. If you've ever met someone like that and wondered what the difference was, it's not the size of her body or the way she exercises or the way she eats. It's probably just the way she was attached to her mother. Can you believe that? I mean, that is just amazing to me.

[00:21:09]:

Right? But it does help make so much sense. So for those of us who were not securely attached, it makes a lot of sense as to, maybe, where some of these thoughts and behaviors came from. So here's another thing from that same study. Those who problematize their bodies at the level of appearance, weight, investment in a healthy lifestyle, suspicion of presence of physical symptoms, have not experienced a relationship with a primary caregiver, which could provide sufficient relief of physical and mental sensations and allow them to process the affect, their emotions, their emotional world inside, and, thus, to desomatize it. Okay. That's quite a sentence there. But, perhaps, you've heard more about, like, somatic healing and reconnecting with your body and, like, the mind body connection. Right? And how sometimes your emotions well, it's the body keeps the score.

[00:22:13]:

It's a fantastic book, but it's it's that concept. Right? Is your body keeping the score for what's happened to you your entire life? And the research says, yeah, probably is. And so what that very clunkily written sentence is trying to say is that when you, as a baby, didn't have a caregiver who was attuned to your needs and could help you process your emotional and physical needs, that caregiver would have been playing a role where they kind of helped you get it out. Right? Feel it to heal it, and it would have gotten out of your body. You would have it. But, instead, if you didn't have that kind of caregiver, you might still be hanging on to that stuff now, overly aware of your body size, appearance, overly invested in your healthy lifestyle, very suspicious of the presence of any physical symptom, looking for relief from physical and mental sensations. Oh, friend. This is big stuff.

[00:23:32]:

So one more study actually confirmed that. It was a study from 2019, and it aimed to determine the roles of emotional patterns, attachment styles, and personality traits in body dysmorphic disorders. And they looked at 273 individuals who were prone to facial cosmetic surgery, which I would assume means that they were looking into getting cosmetic surgery. And the results of this study showed that there were four things that kind of all went together for these people who were, had body dysmorphic disorder and were looking into plastic surgery to cosmetic surgery. K. Here's the four things, conscientiousness, avoidant attachments, a simplistic view of emotions, so not having, really being in touch with your emotions, not having good emotional health, and control. And that these four things predicted body dysmorphia for women. So let me kinda spell this out in in the relationship to attachment.

[00:24:45]:

Right? So the avoidant attachment style or attachment avoidance, which could come really from any of the styles, right, from anxious or disorganized, was part of this formula. The other word they use is conscientiousness. I wonder if a better word there might be empathetic. If you're an empath, if you're someone who, you know, is reading other people, who cares what other people think, who's genuinely empathetic to those around them. Not having good emotional health, simplistic view of emotions, and then being a controller. Aye aye aye. How many of your hands are up? That led to BDD, to body dysmorphic disorder. Okay.

[00:25:27]:

Last one I'll leave you with today. Last sentence in this part of the study. It seems that lack of sensitivity, spontaneity, responsiveness, and pleasure in the attachment relationship leads to a stronger investment in the bodily self. What does that mean? I think it means that if you didn't have a caregiver who was sensitive to you, that you could that was spontaneous with your needs, was responsive, and that you enjoyed being with. Right? To safe pleasure, you enjoy, you had fun in that relationship. If you didn't have that kind of attachment relationship, you're putting more of an investment into yourself, who you are, your body. In other words, my friends, with body image issues like I have, because we didn't attach correctly to mom, we focus more on ourselves, keeping ourselves safe, making sure we're okay physically. We are the ones more likely to have the body dysmorphic disorder, the ones more likely to pursue ways to change our bodies, the ones more likely to pursue plastic surgery, facial cosmetic surgery in this study.

[00:26:54]:

We invest more in our bodily self because we didn't have these things. Oh, that's hard. So here's another paragraph from the study. Insecure attachment stimulates the development of a false bodily self. Children classified as anxious, ambivalent, or avoidant often have mothers who exhibit difficulty and resistance to making close physical contact. Infants securely attached to their mothers actively seek physical comfort from them after a brief but stressful separation, unlike infant avoidance. Furthermore, it also appears that the experience of fear associated with attachment, which underlies disorganization is related to the more tangible problematization of the body. Oh, friend, how many times does this issue come up? We're talking about body image issues.

[00:27:54]:

We're talking about fear. And I've talked to so many of you that are, like, struggling with the fear, and you're like, I don't know why the fear won't go away and why do I have this fear. What if it all goes back to attachment, that 1st year of life? I'm gonna put a link to this whole PubMed study in the show notes here because there's a lot of good stuff here. There's data on adolescents and how attachment is critical to helping adolescents cope and how unhealthy attachment patterns in childhood leads to behavioral disorders in adolescence. There's a study who looked at the relationship between adult attachment and eating disorder symptoms, especially weight loss efforts, overeating and subscales of physical dissatisfaction with the eating disorder list. And they found, it to be negative. And the study was of a 169 college women, and they found that the women who were insecurely attached had a greater drive for thinness, bulimia, body dissatisfaction, and other things that would show up on the, like, scale of eating disorders. So, friend, that's all the stuff, all the data, all the research, all the things in a nutshell.

[00:29:10]:

And, like, you can tell this is a big issue, impossible to cover in 30 minutes. But I share with you for the following reasons. So reason 1, again, if you felt like there was something wrong with you, like, something terribly wrong with you, if you felt guilt or shame that something is wrong with you, that you have these issues and other people don't or you can't get over these issues or, like, friend, I just want you to hear loud and clear. It could just be related to the way you attached to mom or didn't attach to mom, and there was nothing you could do about that. Right? So that's thing 1. And then 2, right, you don't have to stay there. Right? Once you name it, once you see it, then you can seek. And so my encouragement to you right now is if you are hearing this and you're like, oh, goodness gracious, that was me.

[00:30:08]:

I know my mom had postpartum depression really bad. I know my mom left for a part of my 1st year of life. I know my mom had a really hard time as a new mother. Maybe I'm, like, the 6th of, you know, 6 kids, and my mom already had her hands full and she just didn't have a lot of time for me or, like, whatever your story is. Give yourself grace and compassion to enter into that story and recognize that that story plays a role in who you are today and what you believe today. But that doesn't mean you have to continue to believe it. That doesn't mean you have to keep walking down that road. It just means that your story sets you up to feel some of these things and believe some of these things.

[00:30:59]:

But there is a path to you becoming healed and whole. And I would encourage you, friend, if this is your first time to think about this stuff, find a good Christian counselor, someone that someone else recommends because not all counselors are created equal. Find a good Christian counselor. You can go to the Adam Young counseling page. He has a couple, suggestions there. There's not very many, but couple counselors recommended that understand the power of story and can help you dig into that. If you wanna do it more from a coaching perspective, my team is happy to just talk to you about these things. We're not licensed counselors or psychologists.

[00:31:38]:

Right? So depending on what level of needs you have, we may not be able to meet it. But we are here for you if you just want someone to talk to about all this to help you process. Because ultimately, friend, like, there's nothing we can do. We can't go back and change the past. Right? But once we see it, we can seek God for healing for the future. And that's what I want for you. I want you to realize that your body image issues are not about your body. And sometimes we've even made these body image issues into idols, and we've created a sin problem in our life because of where we came from, because of how we attached, because our parents did not have the ability to securely attached to us in the way we needed them to.

[00:32:28]:

Oh, friend. There's so much here. I hope I've given you some food for thought. I know it's a busy holiday season. Maybe it's just kind of mean for me to throw all this stuff at you. As we start a busy December, friend, you come back to in January if you want to, but don't ignore it. Join us on the 40 day journey, and we're gonna help you look at all these body image issues in a different way. So you can sign up for that improve body image.com.

[00:32:55]:

Look for the 40 day journey link. We've got a 100 spots. We would love to have the chance to get to know you, work with you, engage in your story, and help you find body image freedom. Well, I hope all of this attachment talk has helped you in some way today to stop comparing and start living. Thanks for listening. The Compare Do Show is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to life audio.com.