The Trust Issue That's Keeping You Stuck in Your Career or Business: Attachment Theory and Healing

We all know lack of trust is a huge hurdle in our relationships. But did you know it can have equally detrimental consequences for your career or business? 

If you have trust issues, this article will help explain how attachment theory and lack of trust might be keeping your business or career stuck! 

Are you able to trust the people you work with quickly? Do you believe a co-worker when she tells you she's got it? Do you trust her to do a good job, or are you micromanaging everything and everyone around you? 

Your lack of trust in business might be because you're anxious and don't want to be hurt (again). What has probably been a great, life-saving defense mechanism at some point in your (early) life could be keeping you stuck in a career you don't like or unable to move forward with your business. It might even stop others from entering into business relationships with you.

On the surface, it doesn't seem like trust issues have anything to do with our careers or businesses, but when we dig a little deeper, it's easy to see how this can affect success and why it deserves attention and might even require healing.

Trust issues are often linked to anxious attachment, one of four types of attachment styles. People who have developed an anxious attachment often have a hard time feeling secure in relationships. They lack trust in almost everything, which usually leaves them feeling anxious, scared, or worried.

What is attachment theory?

Psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby was the first to talk about attachment and formalize its theory in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bowlby theorized that attachment is an inbuilt survival instinct that ensures infants seek proximity to their mothers or primary caregivers. If they cannot do so, infants might fall into a state of "distress," determined by a lack of comfort and satisfaction when confronted with anything other than what they need.

Attachment theory, therefore, examines how the caregiver-child bond develops and its impact on significant development. In Bowlby's words: "Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another person across time and space."

According to Bowlby, there are four attachment styles: secure, anxious-ambivalent, disorganized, and avoidant. 

Secure Attachment Style

Securely attached children feel safe and comfortable with their primary caregivers. They explore the world around them but return to a secure base when needed. Securely attached people tend to have healthier relationships in adulthood because they feel more confident in their interactions with others and don't experience fear of abandonment.

In their career or as business owners, securely attached adults are more likely to rely on others for help and support because they have a more vital trust. They are also less anxious about their lack of control in work-related situations. Securely attached individuals will have an easier time sticking to a job or business idea, trusting co-workers or business partners and making decisions based on opportunity rather than fear. Especially compared to the avoidant and disorganized attachment types, who often have a more challenging time making decisions, and suffer lasting ambivalent feelings about the choices they eventually make.

Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment Style

Anxious-ambivalent children are more clingy, needy, and lack self-confidence. They get anxious when away from their caregivers and distrust them, leading them to explore their environment with fear rather than excitement. 

They constantly seek approval from their caregivers and continuously observe their surroundings out of fear of being abandoned or in danger. This can translate into less ease and more perfectionistic tendencies at work in adulthood because they're constantly dwelling on what could go wrong. The strategic decisions they make can reflect their focus on fear, in which case the results might be missed business opportunities or promotions they want but don't take.   

Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant children lack the attachment bond with their caregivers and show very little interest in exploring or trying new things. They seem uninterested, detached, and lack empathy for others. When they explore the world, it's usually to get away from adults rather than meet them; when faced with a challenge that requires help, they avoid seeking support.

They often struggle with expressing their feelings and find it hard to understand emotions - especially their own. As a result, avoidant adults tend to lack trust in people, reflected in their career or business as difficulty to delegate, trying to do it all themselves, failing to ask for support when needed, and often struggling to work with team members or business partners.

Disorganized Attachment Style

Disorganized attachment is a combination of avoidant and anxious attachment caused by various reasons, such as a lack of bonding with the caregivers or frequent changes in caregivers.

Children with a disorganized attachment style often display intense anger and rage, a difficulty to control their emotions that will affect their relationships later on in life. As adults, they avoid trusting others and have little to no self-confidence when facing challenges. This often leads to accepting less than what they are worth at work, doing other people's jobs, accepting without a fight not to be recognized for their accomplishments. In business, it leaves them prey to their customers and service providers and aiming for smaller goals than they could achieve.

Do you lack secure attachment?

Those with an anxious or ambivalent attachment style (well, hello there!) have had this lack of trust ingrained in us since our developmental years. A lack of secure attachments with caretakers during those times affects how your brain develops and responds to interpersonal relationships later in life. The problem is, we're often unaware of how this influences the way we interact with others as adults, let alone the impact it has on our business or at work.

If you're not sure of your attachment style, click here for an assessment that may help.

Lack of trust in your career or business can express itself in various ways, such as:

• You're exhausted because you feel you need to do all the things, and the help you're getting is (according to your perfectionistic standards) never up to par.

• You're micromanaging everyone's tasks (including your colleagues, business partners, and service providers) because you're not confident they can do the job.

• You never ask for help or accept it because whenever someone offers, it makes you suspicious. You wonder what the ulterior motives are, so you say no, even when you need it most.

• You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop because you're anxious things won't work out. Everything might look good now, but you don't believe it will stay that way.

• You have a hard time making decisions, especially about a career change or new business venture. One day you're ecstatic about the idea; the next, not so much.

To heal your lack of trust, you need to work on healing your attachment wounds. I suggest starting with finding a therapist or coach who knows about attachment theory so they can help guide you through this process. 

You may also want to read or research this critical topic to understand it better. Here are a few resources to get started with:

• Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find - and keep - love by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A.

• The Psych Up Podcast.

• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

• The work of Diane Poole Heller, who devoted her life to helping people find secure attachment.

Is your attachment style keeping you stuck at work or in business?

Anxiously (and ambivalently) attached people are generally preoccupied with thoughts about relationships - whether personal or professional ones. They can be cautious to the point of being fearful and may withdraw from a relationship if they have an uneasy feeling that it's going downhill.

This, of course, is bad for business. A successful career or business requires networking and successfully reaching out and connecting with others.

If you lack trust in your business or work relationships, try the following:

• Make sure you're not micromanaging everything and everyone around you. Be a supportive team player instead of always telling others what to do or how they should be doing it. You don't want them feeling like their work is never good enough because this might further complicate your collaboration.

• Trust others by giving them more responsibility and let go of the reins a little bit. Your lack of trust will show if you don't delegate some tasks out, so try trusting someone with something small at first and see how they do before handing over more significant projects or responsibilities.

• Have a candid conversation with your team, business partner, or service providers and tell them that your attachment style has held you back from trusting them. You don't need to give them the reasons why, but it helps to develop solutions together.

• Keep working on developing a more secure attachment. You might never get where someone who naturally trusts others is, but you can get pretty close. It all starts with understanding your style and being willing to work at it.

As people who lack trust in others (or maybe lack it when it comes to the next business or career step to take!), we can't let it hold us back anymore. We have to start healing our lack of trust and release the painful memories from our past and change some thinking patterns. I know because I've been there. And the transformation I've gone through has been magnificent. 

If lack of trust has been an issue for you, I hope this article helped you see there's a way out of it. It's going to take some time and work, but it is possible.

You can do this. 

Do you have attachment wounds?

If so, I'm here to help. You need to work on healing your lack of trust before you can move forward in your career or with your business. The first step is to find someone who understands attachment therapy and getting the guidance you need. Let me know if I can be that person for you!

It's time to start feeling safe again in relationships and stop being afraid of getting hurt all the time. Let me show you how we can do this together! We'll work on healing what's keeping you stuck so you can reach the next level in your work!

Schedule your free session!

On the importance of a holistic approach to health

Traditional medicine – and to a larger extent traditional science, too – come from a very masculine place of measuring and testing, where the body – the medical subject – is regarded as something that can exist in perfect health, whatever the state of existence of the subject inhabiting it. What I mean by this is that traditional medicine looks at people and their health in a very narrow way, with regards for the physical aspects only, and without taking into consideration the mental, emotional, or spiritual state of a person.

From this approach, curing someone or maintaining a healthy body is purely a matter of applying scientific knowledge to the physical body. But, I hear you say, what about all the research that shows how body and mind are undeniably connected, how our emotions influence our physical state, how our mindset can have a positive or negative impact on curing disease, and so on?

Indeed, what about all that? What about Dr. Lissa Rankin’s “bold” statement that caring for your body is actually the least important part of your health?

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Dr. Rankin last year in Portland, and I have to say that, ever since, my understanding of health and wellbeing has really expanded. I’ve come to understand that health is a global concept, with an infinite number of parts working together or against one another. Trying to stay healthy by looking after your physical body only is just addressing a part of the story, and will never allow you to be truly healthy.

According to Dr. Rankin (and many others in her field of holistic medicine and health), besides a well-functioning body, to be healthy, among other things, we need a positive and resilient mindset, more positive than negative emotions, and a sense of purpose and belonging to something which is greater than ourselves. Without this – and more – our physical bodies can suffer, and sustainable and profound health is much harder, if not impossible, to attain.

Now, I’m not a doctor, and of course I’m not making any medical claims with this post, but as a human being concerned about her health and that of others, I believe that there is more to health than just the body. That’s why, in this post, I want to address what are commonly known as five distinct, yet intertwined, aspects of holistic health: the mental, emotional, physical, environmental, and spiritual elements.

So, let’s take a slightly closer look at these five aspects, and see how they can influence our wellbeing.

1. Mental wellbeing

The way you think about things, the way you look at life and at yourself, at your achievements, and at your potential, is not only essential for your growth and happiness, but it also influences your health, in every aspect, all the way down to your physical body. And that is what your mental wellbeing is all about. To become more resilient, you can work on having a positive – and growth – mindset, as we’ve explored in The Boho Loft.

1. Emotional wellbeing

Your emotional wellbeing is everything that has to do with you feeling good about yourself and your life. Feeling good about themselves and their lives enables people to be part of society in a meaningful way, and to deal with all that they have to do in their everyday lives. Things that can influence your emotional wellbeing include: self-esteem and self-confidence, your relationships, your work/life balance, and even your financial security.

1. Physical wellbeing

Traditionally, talking about health would be more or less all talk about the body. In this case, however, following the bold statement from Dr. Rankin above, we’ve decided to take a holistic approach to health, and to see our physical wellbeing as one of the five main aspects of our health, and not the primary one.

When we talk about physical wellbeing, the first thing that comes to mind is, of course, taking good care of your body. This is what many of us know most about, simply because this is what we traditionally have been taught by our doctors and the medical profession, in general. More and more, however, the importance of nutrition – what we put into our bodies every day – is being recognized as an essential part of not only physical, but also mental and even emotional, wellbeing.

Then there is movement, and rest. The sleep revolution, started by Arianna Huffington, who made it her mission to get the world more sleep, even claims that if you want to succeed in your life and your career or business, guess what? You need more sleep! What a beautiful example of how health is being redefined.

1. Environmental wellbeing

An aspect of health that is very often undervalued is the environment that we live and work in. This environment should be peaceful, the air should be clean, and the surroundings should exist in accordance with Nature and should invite you to want to be a part of it, and to want to live there and work there.

There are two aspects to every environment we find ourselves in: an internal aspect and an external aspect. What I mean by this is that you have the spaces you live in and then you have the external environments which those spaces are built on. What you want is to have a healthy indoor environment, and a healthy outdoor one, too. If one of these two (or both) is not positive and healthy, this can be harmful to your health.

And ‘healthy’ here again must be looked at holistically, so it doesn’t mean just the air you breath, or what your walls are made of (although that’s important, too). But more important than these elements are things such as: whether your home or work environment is inviting, and safe, or whether it has enough light or is quiet enough, and etc.…

1. Spiritual wellbeing

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll surely mention it again. When you feel you’re part of something greater than yourself, you’re happier, and you feel good and grounded. Thanks to these feelings and that connection, you know you have a purpose in life, and each morning you wake up with a reason, and hopefully also with awareness of your own uniqueness as part of the bigger mystery.

Feeling spiritually connected like this is important to being healthy, and there are many ways to gain a greater spiritual awareness and connection to the divine mystery: meditation, mindfulness, stillness, creativity, and so much more. But what my spiritual mentors have really taught me in recent years” is that a spiritual practice requires discipline. You need to do the work in order to reap the benefits.

This is only an overview of the different aspects that matter for us to be healthy. In The Boho Loft, we go into much greater detail about each aspect, with an audio lecture, additional resources, reading material, and so on. As part of that, there are downloadable worksheets to help you learn more about yourself, and your health, too.

And here’s a link for you to a bonus download from the resources section of the membership site: natural remedies to lift you up – whatever mood you’re in!

Make sure to comment and let me know how you approach your health, and what you think is the most important part of being and staying healthy.