Exercises — Chapter 15: Attachment — The Foundation of Human Connection
Part A: Understanding Attachment Theory
Exercise 1: The Core Concepts
A) Describe the two complementary functions that Bowlby attributed to the primary caregiver: safe haven and secure base. How are they different? How do they work together?
B) Explain why Harlow's wire-mother experiments were important for attachment theory. What assumption did they overturn, and what did they establish instead?
C) The chapter argues that internal working models are "self-perpetuating." What does this mean? Give a specific example of how a working model might recruit confirming evidence in an adult relationship.
Exercise 2: The Strange Situation Patterns
For each of the four infant attachment patterns, briefly describe: - The typical reunion behavior - What caregiving experience produces this pattern - The underlying "logic" — what the infant has learned that makes this pattern make sense
Do this in your own words, without looking at the chapter. Then check your answers against the text.
Part B: Your Own Attachment History
Note: These exercises invite honest reflection on early relational experience. If your history includes trauma or significant neglect, approach at a pace that feels manageable.
Exercise 3: The Caregiving Environment
A) Think about your primary caregiver(s) in early childhood (birth to age 5). Without idealization or blame, describe their pattern of availability and responsiveness: - Were they reliably available when you were distressed? - Did they respond consistently, or inconsistently? - Was there any caregiving that was frightening or overwhelming?
B) Based on this description, which attachment pattern — as it would have been assessed in the Strange Situation — do you think best approximates your early experience? What evidence supports your assessment?
C) The chapter emphasizes that attachment patterns are not destiny — they can be modified by subsequent experience. Identify one relationship after early childhood (an older relative, a teacher, a friend, a therapist, a partner) that provided a different kind of relational experience than your early caregiving. What did that relationship offer that was different?
Exercise 4: Your Internal Working Models
A) Complete the following sentences honestly, without too much deliberation (first responses are often most informative):
- "When I show someone I need help, I expect them to..."
- "When someone I care about seems distant or unavailable, my first thought is usually..."
- "In close relationships, what I find most difficult is..."
- "When I think about depending on someone, I feel..."
- "My deepest assumption about whether I am worthy of love is..."
B) Look at your responses. What internal working model do they reveal? What does your automatic expectation system predict about relationships?
C) Are these working models accurate for the relationships in your current life — or are they importing predictions from past experience into present circumstances that don't warrant them?
Part C: Adult Attachment Styles
Exercise 5: Self-Assessment
Using the two-dimension framework (attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance), rate yourself honestly on each dimension (1 = very low, 10 = very high):
Attachment anxiety (worry about rejection, abandonment, relationship adequacy): - How often do you worry about whether your partner/close friends might leave or lose interest? - How much does your relationship status affect your sense of self-worth? - How difficult is it for you to feel secure in a relationship when the other person hasn't been in contact recently?
Attachment avoidance (discomfort with closeness and dependency): - How uncomfortable are you when someone gets very close emotionally? - How strongly do you prefer to handle problems on your own rather than seeking support? - How much does depending on others feel threatening to your sense of self?
Based on your ratings, place yourself on the two-dimension grid: - Low anxiety, low avoidance = Secure - High anxiety, low avoidance = Anxious-Preoccupied - Low anxiety, high avoidance = Dismissing-Avoidant - High anxiety, high avoidance = Fearful-Avoidant
B) Does this self-assessment match how you experience your close relationships? What specific relational behaviors are most consistent with your assessed pattern?
C) Note that attachment patterns vary by context and relationship partner. Are you more secure in some relationships than others? What predicts the variation?
Exercise 6: The Anxious Pattern in Detail
Complete this exercise even if you do not identify as anxiously attached — the behaviors described here are common to most people in at least some contexts.
A) Identify a current or past relationship in which you notice (or noticed) anxious-preoccupied patterns: preoccupation when the other person is unavailable, amplified response to perceived withdrawal, difficulty self-soothing.
B) Trace the sequence: What is the triggering cue? What is the immediate internal experience? What behavior follows? What does the behavior accomplish or fail to accomplish?
C) What would a "pause" look like in this sequence — the moment between the cue and the behavioral response where something different could happen?
Exercise 7: The Avoidant Pattern in Detail
Complete this exercise even if avoidance is not your dominant pattern.
A) Identify a situation in which you have minimized your own need for support — told yourself you were fine when you were not, or sought solutions rather than comfort when comfort was what was actually needed.
B) What was the function of the minimization — what was it protecting you from? What did it cost?
C) Avoidant patterns learned in early caregiving often reflect adaptive logic: expressing need made things worse, so the system learned to suppress the expression. Is that adaptive logic still accurate in your current relationships? What evidence would it take to update the prediction?
Part D: Attachment in Your Relationships
Exercise 8: Partner Attachment Patterns
A) If you are or have been in a significant romantic relationship, what attachment style do you observe in your partner (or a significant former partner)? Based on behavior — not theory — what pattern do you see?
B) How do your attachment patterns interact? If both of you are anxious, what happens? If one is anxious and one is avoidant? What is the typical cycle that emerges?
C) The chapter describes the anxious-avoidant cycle: anxious partner's protest activates avoidant partner's withdrawal, which escalates protest, which increases withdrawal. If this cycle is familiar to you, describe what you observe in yourself at each point in the cycle.
Exercise 9: Non-Romantic Attachment
A) Identify the person in your current life who most functions as a secure base — someone in whose presence you feel genuinely at ease, from whom you feel able to explore and take risks, and to whom you naturally turn when distressed.
B) What qualities make this person function this way? How is their pattern of availability and responsiveness different from others in your life?
C) If you cannot identify a clear secure base in your current life, what would it mean — practically, specifically — to develop one? What kind of relationship would need to be built, and with whom?
Exercise 10: Attachment to Place and Group
The chapter describes attachment to places, groups, and institutions as extensions of the attachment system.
A) Identify one place that functions as an attachment anchor for you — a place that feels like safety, home base, or reliable ground. What makes it function that way?
B) Identify one group membership (family, community, team, faith community, friend group) that provides attachment-like functions — predictable availability, shared identity, safe haven. What would it mean to lose this group?
C) If you have experienced forced loss of a place or group (through moving, divorce, community dissolution), did it produce grief that felt qualitatively different from ordinary sadness? The chapter argues this grief is genuine attachment loss — does this framing match your experience?
Part E: Attachment and Change
Exercise 11: The Earned Security Path
A) Describe a relationship (therapeutic, romantic, familial, or friendship) that provided a corrective relational experience — that offered something different from your early working model's predictions about how relationships work.
B) What specifically was different about this relationship — what did the other person do consistently that contradicted your working model?
C) Did this relationship actually change how you approached other relationships? If so, how? If not, what was the obstacle to the working model updating?
Exercise 12: Mentalization Practice
Mentalization is the capacity to understand behavior in terms of mental states — to see that a partner's withdrawal is about their internal experience rather than a verdict on you.
A) Identify a recent situation in which someone's behavior toward you activated your attachment system (felt like withdrawal, rejection, or unavailability). Describe your automatic interpretation.
B) Now generate two alternative interpretations that locate the behavior in the other person's mental state rather than your relational worthiness: - "They might be feeling..." - "Their behavior might be about..."
C) Which interpretation is most likely accurate — and which interpretation activated your emotional response? What does the gap between them reveal about your working model?
Exercise 13: The Reflective Essay
Write a 300-400 word reflective piece on your own attachment history:
Include: - What you understand about your early caregiving environment (without blame or idealization) - The working model that environment produced - How that working model shows up in your current relationships - One specific relational pattern you would most like to change — and what you think it would take to change it
This is not a public document. Write it for your own reflective processing.
Part F: Synthesis
Exercise 14: Advice to a Friend
A close friend tells you: "I think I'm anxiously attached. Whenever my partner is busy or unavailable for even a few hours, I start to spiral. I know it's irrational, but I can't stop. What do I do?"
Write a response that: - Normalizes and contextualizes the pattern (without dismissing it) - Explains the underlying mechanism without jargon - Offers two or three specific, practical steps consistent with the chapter's framework
Exercise 15: Synthesis Essay
Write a 400-word essay:
"The chapter argues that early attachment experience shapes the template through which all subsequent relationships are experienced — and also that this template can be revised. Do you find this claim more reassuring or more daunting? What is the relationship between determinism and agency in how attachment theory understands the self?"
Discussion Questions
Discussion 1: The Strange Situation procedure is standardized and validated, but it was developed with Western samples and assesses behavior in a specific cultural context. Are there cultures in which avoidant behavior (for example) might reflect appropriate independence training rather than insecurity? How should cross-cultural research affect how we interpret attachment classifications?
Discussion 2: The chapter describes the therapeutic relationship as a corrective relational experience. Is this specific to therapy, or can good friendships, religious community, or other sustained relationships provide the same function? What is the unique contribution of the therapeutic context, if any?
Discussion 3: Earned security requires sustained reflective processing of early experience. Is this equally available to everyone — or are there economic, educational, and social barriers that make some people less able to pursue this process? What does this imply about attachment as a framework for understanding inequality?
Discussion 4: Anxious-avoidant partnerships are described as particularly difficult. But they are also extremely common — anxious individuals are often attracted to avoidant partners and vice versa. What draws these styles together? Is the attraction adaptive in any sense, or primarily a working-model confirmation cycle?