Amir Levine has been quietly working towards a second book for 16 years. When Attached, which he co-wrote with Rachel Heller, was published in 2010, it brought the categories for how we behave in relationships \u2013 AKA attachment styles \u2013 into the public consciousness. According to attachment theory, you could be anxious (often resulting in social hypervigilance), avoidant (independent, suppressing difficult emotions), fearful-avoidant (craving closeness, but often retreating in fear) or secure. Knowing which you were and where significant others sat on this spectrum provided helpful insights for self-awareness and relationship harmony.<\/p>\n
Since then, Levine has received countless emails from readers around the world either seeking his advice or telling him how the book changed their life. \u201cI got an email from a woman from Iran,\u201d he recalls. \u201cShe said that she realised she was with someone very avoidant. She was able to cut off from him and she found someone else who was secure.\u201d Also, because she felt better equipped \u201cto communicate her needs with this new partner, she reached an orgasm for the first time\u201d. From all of these stories, as well as research into the neuroscience of attachment and neuroplasticity and working with therapy clients, Levine has now compiled the tools needed to help anyone become more secure.<\/p>\n
For a busy therapist and associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, I posit that these unsolicited emails must have been a whole new line in unpaid extra work over the years, but he doesn\u2019t see it like that. \u201cThis is my longevity hack,\u201d he says from his base in Miami. As his new book, Secure, states, these kinds of positive connections with others all help rewire our brains to become more secure \u2013 and if you can live in secure mode, you are more likely to live longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cCreate what I call a secure village and facilitate secure bonds,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen they did a meta analysis<\/a> with 300,000 people, they saw that this actually cuts mortality by 50%.\u201d Different studies followed participants for periods varying from months to 58 years. \u201cThat\u2019s crazy. No amount of supplements and peptides even gets close to that.\u201d It makes sense \u2013 whenever you see centenarians interviewed, they seem to live in a tight-knit community.<\/p>\n Positive connections with others help to rewire our brains. Photograph: Posed by models; FG Trade Latin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Secure people tend to be healthier, writes Levine. If they do get ill, they experience fewer symptoms and get less stressed about it. \u201cWhen we feel safe, the whole stress response goes down, which goes with inflammation and all that stuff. It\u2019s just so basic,\u201d he says. In 1997, a study in which people were infected with a common cold virus<\/a> found that participants who were more connected \u201cwere less likely to develop symptoms\u201d. Similarly, secure types seem to be less susceptible to consumerism, better at resisting online adverts and less negatively affected by social media. Studies have also found that the more connected people are, the greater their cognitive functioning<\/a> and brain volume<\/a> in old age. They are even more effective and resilient when searching for jobs.<\/p>\n Levine has oodles of examples of how attachment style can affect one\u2019s work, such as Luke, 32, who gets a well-earned promotion and finds himself managing a team for the first time. Because Luke is avoidant \u2013 which means he struggles with closeness and thrives on independence \u2013 he takes on all the complicated tasks himself and doesn\u2019t delegate effectively. Despite him putting in extra hours, the team\u2019s output falls and deadlines get missed.<\/p>\n Then there is Levine\u2019s example of a worker with anxious attachment, who spends a whole week recovering from flu in emotional turmoil because when they emailed their boss to say they were ill, all they got in response was a curt \u201cOK\u201d. Someone with a secure mindset might have thought: great, they\u2019ve replied even though they are really busy, I\u2019ll get on with getting better.<\/p>\n Levine is confident that anyone can rewire their brain, luxuriate in secure mode and reap rewards far beyond better romantic and familial relationships. But he is keen to point out that character traits of anxious attachers or avoidants can also be superpowers.<\/p>\n Anxious people are extremely sensitive to what others are feeling and are the first to spot danger and raise the alarm. Just as these people have evolved to be community lookouts, so others have evolved to need time alone. Levine writes: \u201c[Avoidants] often function well under pressure at work, are capable of making tough decisions on their own and executing them with precision.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Some cats really love closeness.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by models; OR Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n There are many portals to secure mode. Because Levine has been working with people on what he calls \u201csecure priming therapy\u201d for many years, his book answers every if and but that can arise. A vast array of nuances have emerged within attachment theory over the years. First, it is not set in stone that we are stuck with a certain attachment style our whole lives because of the way we were parented. Second, we can be in different attachment styles with different people. You can identify this by filling out Levine\u2019s online attachment questionnaire<\/a> for different relationships \u2013 you can even choose your pet. In fact, pets have attachment styles themselves, as evidenced by my clingy cat. \u201cPeople think: oh, cats are really aloof,\u201d says Levine. \u201cSome cats really love closeness.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to be rendered insecure at any age. \u201cI have a little bit of a sad story,\u201d he says. A woman he knew who was single for many years \u2013 \u201cso independent and cool\u201d \u2013 suddenly, in her 80s, met someone, who moved in with her. \u201cIt sounds like such an amazing story, and initially it was, but this person was very easily hurt and jealous.\u201d Whenever something upset him, he\u2019d ignore her for weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really did a number on her,\u201d says Levine. \u201cShe died from heart disease. I personally think that it exacerbated her heart condition, because think about it: it\u2019s up and down, up and down, and our body responds to it. But, at any age, you can all of a sudden be catapulted like this into very painful, difficult, insecure situations.\u201d Scenarios such as this are partly why he wrote the book: \u201cTo provide the tools not to get there, because it\u2019s a dear price that people can pay.\u201d<\/p>\n There is also a questionnaire on Levine\u2019s site to identify your general attachment style. This flurry of rational self-probing gives you \u201cyour attachment topography\u201d, he says. Becoming better aware that attachment styles are less fixed and are often in response to others\u2019 behaviour is liberating and validating in itself, while there is the added value of mapping whom you feel most secure with. \u201cYou can use that as a vehicle for change, to increase your interactions with them,\u201d he says. Taking simple, consistent steps over time to embrace secure relationships and deprioritise insecure ones can help us rewire ourselves.<\/p>\n Secure people tend to be healthier, says Levine. Photograph: Posed by models; Ippei Naoi\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cOur brain is so socially savvy,\u201d says Levine. \u201cOur biggest asset, by far, is our ability to collaborate, because we\u2019re very weak animals, yet we rose to the top of the food chain. We made it to the moon all because of our ability to collaborate.\u201d Social species have evolved with an innate sense of safety in numbers and our brains constantly scan the environment for others. Humans have an extra prong to this \u201ccrowdsourcing neurocircuitry\u201d, writes Levine. \u201cNot only do humans have the capacity to sense the number of individuals around them and translate that to a greater feeling of safety, but they can simultaneously assess their level of safety based on the quality of those relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n He also says that our brains can use only a finite dose of energy at any one time. If we\u2019re feeling unsafe, anxiously scanning for elusive allies, ruminating over why someone didn\u2019t call, we\u2019re monopolising energy that could otherwise be channelled into creativity, ideas, making fun plans, investing in good relationships. In other words, feeling insecure is exhausting. If you\u2019re avoidant, energy is spent suppressing parts of the brain that react to relationship interactions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we get excluded and we get ignored, it elicits painful distress and self-scrutiny in our mind,\u201d Levine says. \u201cSo when someone doesn\u2019t reply to our call or someone ignores us, we\u2019re left wondering: what does it mean? What did I do wrong? Are they not thinking about me any more? Am I less important to them?\u201d If we\u2019re snubbed, our brain reacts as if we\u2019ve been punched in the face, he says. The same areas of the brain light up as they do during physical pain. Paracetamol dulls this snub response, just as it does physically induced pain.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be surprised to overhear people carping on about Carrp in the coming months. This is Levine\u2019s acronym for his five pillars of a secure, connected life: consistent, available, responsive, reliable, predictable. (He has already overheard colleagues using it as a verb.) By being Carrp to others, and setting up your life to maximise your exposure to Carrpness, he says, you can step into the land of secure attachment.<\/p>\n Take Eric, who was seemingly never good enough for his undermining father. His loving and supportive mother wasn\u2019t able to challenge this behaviour and simply encouraged Eric to avoid antagonising his father. Eventually, this social, sporty and academically successful teen started to retreat from his friends and his favourite sports.<\/p>\n By chance, a university friend told Eric he had to try his amazing therapist. It turned out that this woman\u2019s modus operandi was totally Carrp. She encouraged him to call any time anything was amiss. When he told her about his retreat from sport due to his dad\u2019s mocking, she suggested they jog together for their next session. Over time, as their relationship deepened, writes Levine, \u201che was able to silence the harsh voice he\u2019d adopted from his father when speaking to himself, and he felt more content.\u201d His brain rewired to secure mode.<\/p>\n We can be in different attachment styles with different people. Photograph: Posed by models; Maria Korneeva\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Mercifully, Levine has only one more acronym: Simis, or seemingly insignificant minor interactions. When we greeted each other at the start of our conversation, Levine commented on the sun streaming through my window. Cue my typically British rundown of the sunny-but-cold weather, in contrast to last week when we were hotter than Ibiza! Classic Simi material. \u201cWhen I was in London, people always liked to talk about the weather,\u201d Levine says. \u201cI now have a new appreciation for it. It\u2019s actually really important, because it\u2019s a joint experience that we both can relate to, and it\u2019s important to us \u2013 it\u2019s a way to connect.\u201d<\/p>\n Neuroscientists have demonstrated<\/a> that these small, everyday interactions, even with passersby<\/a> on the street, can either strengthen \u201cexisting neurocircuitry or overwrite it to create new pathways. Positive Simis can provide us with the opportunity to heal past adversity as new experiences overwrite the old,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n One of the most liberating concepts Levine introduces is that \u2013 shock horror \u2013 our attachment style isn\u2019t necessarily handed to us by our problematic parents. Even if it was, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s indelibly branded on to our soul. In fact, such narratives can be a psychological trap. \u201cWe can\u2019t be fixed by something that happened to us at the age of three; that doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d he says. He points out that causality is complex and near impossible to pick out between life experiences, genetics, in-vitro influences. \u201cParental experiences can even epigenetically change the sperm and change the offspring,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re so far beyond nature versus nurture. It\u2019s so wild and nuanced and complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Levine with his dog, Charlie. Photograph: Shira H. Weiss<\/p>\n He also wants to break the anxious cycle of parents overworrying that their behaviour has inflicted anxious attachment upon their child \u2013 it\u2019s often chicken and egg. \u201cThink about how much more challenging it is to raise a child that has this heightened sensitivity. It\u2019s just harder.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides, he says, causal inferences are not necessary for change; in fact, they can be \u201ca form of internal gaslighting: because this has happened to me, that\u2019s why I\u2019m reacting\u201d. This can detract from acknowledging that what\u2019s happening to you is not good and needs to be tackled \u2013 it can diminish what you\u2019re reacting to and what you\u2019re legitimately feeling.<\/p>\n He is slightly nervous about how the book will be received. It\u2019s not that he is saying there isn\u2019t a place for trauma therapy, or that other more conventional methods are wrong, per se, he says. It\u2019s more that this is what works for him and his clients and what his research in neuroscience and his therapy practice have landed on as effective. \u201cI don\u2019t know how people are going to respond to it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m a little bit scared of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Secure by Amir Levine was published on 14 April (Cornerstone Press, \u00a322). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply. Levine will appear at the How To Academy<\/a> at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 1 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amir Levine has been quietly working towards a second book for 16 years. 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