Abstract
Previous research suggests that insecurely attached individuals may, in some cases, have a higher risk of developing negative health symptoms than securely attached ones. We conducted two studies (Study 1, n = 191; Study 2, n = 216) aimed at broadening this finding. We analysed the relationships between two distinct dimensions of insecure attachment (anxious and avoidant) and several classes of negative physical and mental health symptoms. Additionally, we placed emotion regulation difficulties in the role of potential mediator of these relationships. Our results indicated that both anxious and avoidant attachment were positively related to health symptoms on the level of bivariate correlations. However, when both of them were controlled within one mediation model, it was only attachment anxiety, and not attachment avoidance, that proved to be a significant, positive predictor of most health symptom classes: vegetative, agoraphobic, social phobia symptoms and global symptom severity index (which reflects a broad range of negative health symptoms). These relationships were indeed mediated by emotion regulation difficulties. Our results support the notion that (1) different dimensions of insecure attachment can have differential consequences for physical and mental health, and (2) emotion regulation can be one of the mechanisms that explain the links between attachment and health.
Highlights
It seems that strong social support and an ability to form healthy and stable relationships can have far reaching benefits for quality of life, psychological and physical health and wellbeing (e.g., Cohen and Janicki-Deverts 2009; Holt-Lunstad et al 2010; Uchino 2006)
Our results showed that anxious attachment predicted a higher severity of depressive, vegetative, agoraphobic, and social phobia symptoms
Anxious attachment positively predicted the global severity index score. These relationships were mediated by general emotion regulation difficulties, which provides confirmation of the hypothesis about the role of emotion regulation for explaining the relations between insecure attachment patterns and negative health symptoms
Summary
It seems that strong social support and an ability to form healthy and stable relationships can have far reaching benefits for quality of life, psychological and physical health and wellbeing (e.g., Cohen and Janicki-Deverts 2009; Holt-Lunstad et al 2010; Uchino 2006). Forming and sustaining social ties that are safe and satisfying seem to be a basic human desire. Deprivation of this need, especially in early childhood, can influence the way people function in relationships in their adult life, and can contribute to creating adult insecure attachment patterns (e.g., Bartholomew 1993; Bowlby 1982; Fraley and Shaver 2000). On the basis of several decades of research, researchers have created various classifications of insecure attachment One such classification that is most visible in the literature is the division into anxious (or anxious-ambivalent) and avoidant attachment (Brennan et al 1998). Both of these behavioral tendencies are referred to as Binsecure^ attachment, they predict a fairly distinct pattern of behaviors both in the domain of close relationships, and beyond this domain (Harms 2011; Li and Chan 2012; Mickelson et al 1997)
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