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How you deal with burnout – and even how susceptible you are to it – is, in large part, encoded in you at an early developmental stage. Coping mechanisms and ways of handling stress are set firmly in childhood. But that doesn’t mean they’re set in stone.
This week, Dr Claire Plumbly returns to discuss attachment styles and how they affect our relationships and work.
By understanding the attachment styles we developed as children, we can start to make changes that help us build healthier relationships and work habits.
First, we need to identify our dominant attachment style. This involves reflecting on our early relationships and current interactions. It’s useful to become aware of the different attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganised. We can then use this knowledge to manage our stress levels in a more self-compassionate way.
When we’re unhappy or stressed at work, we can find ourselves continuously seeking validation, unable to set boundaries, and ultimately facing burnout.
But by taking a moment to uncover and reflect on our attachment style (with professional help if needed), we can deal with stress more easily, and finally begin to beat burnout.
Show links
More episodes of You Are Not a Frog:
- Are Your Tiny Traumas Building Up to Burnout? – Episode 182, with Dr Claire Plumbly
- Surprising Ways to Avoid Burnout – Episode 188, with Nick Petrie
- The Biggest Mistakes People Make When They are Heading for Burnout – Episode 222
Download the episode’s podsheet. You can use it for reflection and to submit for your appraisal as part of your CPD.
About the guests
Claire is a clinical psychologist and Director of Good Therapy Ltd, a psychological therapy centre based online and in Taunton, Somerset. Her private practice specialises in trauma-related issues and Claire herself has a specialism in sexual assault, early life traumas, and of course burnout.
Her highly-anticipated debut book Burnout: How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You, is out in the UK this summer. It will show you how to harness the power of your nervous system, despite the persistent demands of modern life.
Follow Dr Claire Plumbly
Reasons to listen
- To understand how attachment styles developed in childhood can affect your work relationships and stress management
- To learn practical strategies to identify and possibly change your dominant attachment style for better mental health
- To discover the impact of attachment theory on burnout and how to create healthier coping mechanisms
Episode highlights
A primer on attachment theory
How attachment styles affect us
Secure attachment style
Anxious attachment style
Insecure avoidant attachment style
Disorganised fearful attachment style
When attachment styles clash
Managing people with differing attachment styles
The role childhood plays
People pleasing
Exploring your own attachment style
Claire’s top tips
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Rachel: When’s the last time you went walking and unconsciously took a shortcut? You see this all the time paths created by lots and lots of pairs of feet, picking the same quicker route between two points. Now our brains do exactly the same thing. As kids we learn how to form relationships and how to respond to certain situations like fear or stress and we start creating little pathways to help us cope when our close relationships may also be causing us fear and anxiety. [00:00:30] Over time, these pathways and patterns of behavior become more and more…
