Transforming Attachment Styles and Overcoming Self-Verification Biases for Healthier Relationships

People who grapple with insecurity issues or anxiety disorder face significant challenges on their way towards growing resilience, self-awareness, and confidence. Their internal dialog is likely to cloud their self-perception with doubt and self-criticism, negatively impacting their competency, skill acquisition, and their ability to connect with others. On the flipside, individuals who value and respect themselves create an identity that is calm and composed, approaching life with optimism, clarity and poised confidence. Some will jealously say things like, “He just acts like everything will always work out for him,” or “She acts like the world will just open up for her.” While we need to see the world through a realistic lens, rather than imagining the worst outcomes, envisioning ourselves behaving and communicating in accomplished ways will enliven our faculties to successfully achieve the outcomes we desire.

How to View Yourself Through a Positive and Productive Lens

Adjusting your mindset will allow you to begin recognizing the detrimental nature of your biases. Acknowledging your unfounded beliefs invites a new perspective where you will become conscious of unnecessary fears of rejection and self-criticism. Although it can be challenging, these negative beliefs and biases can be gradually replaced by positive and constructive thoughts. As you transform the thinking in this way, you will notice significant improvement in your relationships and your overall experiences in life. Initially, this shift may seem awkward or inauthentic, as it contradicts long-held fears and perceptions, potentially unsettling your sense of self and how you perform socially. However, as you remain consistent, this new way of thinking will allow you to view yourself and your relationships through a fresh lens, leading to significant personal growth and improved interactions with others.

Do You Truly Know Yourself?

The perception of ourselves greatly affects how we perceive our worthiness of love, dividing us into categories of being either “worthy and lovable” or “unworthy and unlovable” through a sequence known as self-verification. Self-verification involves a process where individuals seek to confirm their concept of self through others. This process involves three methods: selective attention, selective interpretation and selective memory; all contribute to reinforcing our existing beliefs about how worthy we are of love and acceptance.

Selective attention directs our focus to highlight feedback that confirms our existing beliefs about how worthy or unworthy we are of love, while selective interpretation distorts our understanding of this information to align with our preexisting self-perceptions. As a result, we tend to accept such feedback without critical evaluation. Selective memory ensures that we remember only those comments, events or situations that reinforce our beliefs about our self-concept. Consequently, individuals who experience attachment related anxiety often highlight feedback that reinforces their feelings of unworthiness by remembering negative feedback from their partners while disregarding positive affirmations or support. This perpetuates a cycle of self-doubt and feelings of unworthiness.

An Introspection Exercise to Know Yourself

Take a moment to observe yourself when engaging in self-verification. It is important to understand your attachment style and the level of attachment related anxiety you experience in order to objectively evaluate your perception of your own worthiness. To dig deeper into your self-perception, consider asking yourself certain questions that will help you recognize whether you view yourself as worthy or unworthy of love. A few questions that might help to start this exercise are:

• How do you feel after a conflict?
• What is your availability to provide emotional support?
• How do your feelings impact each other?
• How does each of you react to each other’s emotions?

This introspection plays an essential role in breaking the cycle of insecurity and doubt. You may find it beneficial to conduct this exercise with a partner or a trusted individual who can create a safe space for exploring your self-concept. Engaging in open communication with your exercise partner can provide valuable insights by leveraging their understanding of you and enhancing your journey of self-discovery.

The transition from a disparaging self-concept begins by reflecting on your earliest memories of feeling undeserving of love, understanding the situations that led to these feelings, and examining how you reacted to them. Next, begin analyzing recent experiences, questioning your assumptions about how others perceive you, and evaluating your responses to what you perceive as negative feedback. Moreover, this exercise will encourage you to acknowledge moments when others appreciated you and will challenge you to overcome the tendency to only remember things within a negative light.

The final part of this introspective journey involves questioning how you interpret the actions of others and assess how you associate these actions through the lens of a negative self-concept. Through this assessment, you will be prompted to examine patterns and attitudes that have worn deep grooves in your subconscious mind like jealousy, fear of rejection and low self-esteem. By critically assessing our reliance on self-verification, we begin to uncover and address behaviors that contribute to feelings of unworthiness. This enables you to adopt a healthier sense of self-worth and begin performing better in your relationships. Just how you would use self-verification to manipulate self-perception, confirmation bias can be used to manipulate your perception of others.

Understanding How We Perceive Others

Confirmation bias is a subconscious mechanism that influences how we perceive our partner’s emotional availability as well as our interactions with friends and colleagues. Those who believe they won’t receive support in times of need often view their partners as emotionally distant, which can lead to feelings of isolation and abandonment. This belief system pushes you towards adopting a mindset centered around self-reliance and independence.

At first, when people have positive expectations in relationships, these expectations can slowly crumble due to biases when you begin projecting your insecurities and emotional sensitivities, created from previous experience or relationships, on to your partner. This leads to seeing harmless actions as signs of disloyalty and lack of concern. Even without concrete proof, individuals with Preoccupied or Fearful Attachment Styles may begin to believe that their partner no longer loves them or is loyal to them. These beliefs can arise from small triggers that escalate into conflicts. If you recognize any of these dynamics in your own relationships, it is a good idea to work with a therapist who will help you understand root causes.

Looking at Closed Loop Relationships

Let’s take a look at Eric and Anna’s relationship as an example of a “closed loop relationship.” In this dynamic, Eric mocks Anna’s passion for knitting, which causes her to give up the activity altogether to avoid being ridiculed. This pattern reinforces Eric’s behavior as a way to control Anna and diminish her involvement in her own interests. It shows how repetitive patterns in relationships can solidify harmful perceptions and behaviors between partners. Although this kind of dynamic may provide a false sense of security and predictability for Anna, it manipulates her into loosing pieces of herself while damaging her self-worth and happiness.

This particular pattern is quite common, especially among individuals who struggle with low self-esteem and anxiety disorders. They often find themselves attracted to partners who don’t provide the support they need, reinforcing their feelings of unworthiness. Whatever you think about most of the time is what you bring into your life. If you are constantly thinking about what you don’t want, that is exactly what you will attract into your life. When you begin focusing on what you do want in your life, that is what you will naturally move towards.

Unfortunately, people with low self-esteem and anxiety disorders tend to stay in harmful relationships instead of seeking healthier connections. Breaking free from such toxic cycles usually involves therapy and self-reflection. As individuals go through this transformation, they may notice improvements in some relationships but also realize that the toxic ones come to an end. This creates space for new and nurturing connections that align with their newfound sense of who they are.

The Pursuit Withdrawal Pattern

The Pursuit Withdrawal Pattern is a common yet toxic dynamic that often occurs between partners. One being avoidant while the other anxiously attached. It’s characterized by a cycle where one partner seeks closeness and affection while the other tends to withdraw or pull away.

The way things play out between an anxious partner and an avoidant partner can create a frustrating barrier to genuine connection. Take Mike and Tiffany, for example. They recently moved in together, but they’re experiencing strife because Mike constantly craves attention and affection, while Tiffany feels overwhelmed and pulls away. This becomes even more problematic when resentful Mike dismisses Tiffany’s requests for help with chores. It creates a cycle of dissatisfaction and misunderstanding.

This dynamic shows just how complex relational needs and responses can be. Mike’s anxious attachment style drives his need for reassurance, but Tiffany’s avoidance and withdrawal only make things worse. The clash between Tiffany’s preference for emotional distance and independence (typical of avoidant attachment) and Mike’s desire for closeness creates a cycle where both partners feel misunderstood and unsatisfied. These patterns highlight the challenges of balancing intimacy with autonomy in relationships, underscoring the importance of understanding attachment styles to build healthier connections.

What is the Dynamic in Your Relationship?

It’s important to pay attention to how you communicate within your relationship in order to understand the dynamics that lead to conflicts and disagreements. By closely observing your partner’s actions, words, thoughts and feelings, you can pinpoint behaviors that trigger negative interactions.

For example, let’s go back to Tiffany and Mike. When Tiffany puts work or friends before spending time with Mike on weekends, he starts feeling neglected and unloved. This leads to heated arguments where emotions run high and finding resolutions seems difficult. In response, Tiffany perceives Mike’s emotional reactions as excessive and creates more distance between them, perpetuating a cycle of hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

To gain insights into your own relationship conflicts, take a moment to reflect on recurring issues. Consider the emotions, thoughts and approaches to resolving conflicts from both your perspective and your partner’s perspective. Think about how these disputes tend to unfold—whether they result in withdrawal or escalate into intense arguments. If possible, engage in this reflective exercise together with your partner to reach a deeper understanding of each other’s emotional tendency. By empathetically considering each other’s viewpoints and feelings while openly discussing them, together, you can break negative cycles and cultivate a more harmonious dynamic in your relationship.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the behavior patterns you both exhibit and the effects these patterns have on your relationship can lead to resolving differences. This kind of reflective conversation is meant to help both partners recognize and address their differences in a constructive way. It builds upon the foundation of understanding attachment styles and the roles that confirmation bias and self-verification play in perpetuating harmful cycles. By critically examining past relationships and acknowledging the biases that can deceive us, you will be better prepared to apply practical solutions instead of just discussing abstract ideas.