Shadowing Practice: which attachment style do you have? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Today I want to talk about attachment
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but not just attachment styles whether they're good or bad
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but more about what could cause them
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and what could lead us to have one attachment versus the other and how that can play out in our life.
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And if you want more information specifically about attachment I have a video that I've done that I'll link in the description.
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Even the term attachment didn't exist until the late 1960s when John Bowlby created what is called attachment theory.
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Now he theorize that the way we attach to our early childhood caregivers, like our mom, our dad,
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grandmother, stuff like that, will then determine how we attach and form emotional bonds throughout the rest of our lives.
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Now, the main issue that I have with John Bowlby is
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that he believed a lot of attachment stuff was kind of black and white, like either you had one style of attachment or you didn't, you couldn't like have your hands in both buckets.
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And we've learned through more current research
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that with the right therapeutic support we can heal
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and change our attachment style
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and learn to engage with the world around us from a secure attachment viewpoint
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so kind of cool now the four main styles of attachment
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are number one secure now people with this kind of attachment
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have trust in their long -term relationships they show empathy for other people
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and they seek out connection with others
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and also most importantly they have little to no trouble expressing their emotions wants
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or needs sounds nice right number two is insecure ambivalent
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or what a lot of people call anxious attachment
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and people with this kind of attachment struggle with letting people get too emotionally close to them
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or they can fawn or people please as a way to soothe our inner worry
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that we aren't enough and we can struggle with perfectionism and even be clingy at times.
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The third style is insecure avoidant.
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Now, people with this type of attachment are highly independent in order to protect themselves from hurt or potential abandonment.
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And this can mean that we don't allow for deep connections or close relationships.
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We can struggle to ask for help.
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We can take a long time to trust new people
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and keep most of our relationships at a distance and very surface level.
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The fourth style is disorganized.
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And people with this attachment style can switch between anxious and avoidant attachment styles.
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We can be inconsistent, meaning we can be clingy one moment and then dismissive and rejecting the next,
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which obviously can make it really difficult for healthy and deep relationships.
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when we're working to determine what attachment style we have it's
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actually easier to see than it is to kind of prescribe
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or try to divvy it up
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so much research around attachment works with what we can see is present in the room
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when there is a secure attachment and any deviation from
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that secure attachment will show us kind of
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which direction is it more anxious or avoidant
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or is it more disorganized i hope that makes sense
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but i'll tell you the four things that we see
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when there's a secure attachment and how the deviations from
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that could lead us into another attachment style okay i hope
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you're following now the first is what they call proximity maintenance
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and this is the desire to be near the people
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that we are attached to this means that
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if i'm a baby let's say i'm like a little toddler
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and my mom comes in the room i'm going to want
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to run directly to her i'm going to want to be close to her right
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and even as an adult if sean is around
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and we're let's say at an event periodically through the night
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i'm gonna work my way towards him check in see how
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he's doing i want to be close to him i'm attached to him the second
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that we look at is called safe haven
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and what this really means is that we return to the attachment figure meaning like
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that mom or dad
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or i was talking about how i'm attached to sean right we return to
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that attachment figure for comfort and safety when we face a fear or a threat.
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So if something's happening where I feel threatened, maybe I go into fight flight, right?
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As quickly as I can or as quickly as I'm able, I'm going to go towards the person that I'm attached to, in my case at this age, it's Sean, right?
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I'm going to turn to him for comfort.
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I'm going to turn to him to help soothe my system.
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And if someone's doing that, that means they have a secure attachment.
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The third is known as secure base.
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Now this is when the attachment figure acts as a base of security from which the child can explore the surrounding environment,
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meaning that they're almost like a safe foundation, right?
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I can go out, I can explore and learn, and then I can come back to my secure base.
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Then I feel soothed, I feel okay, they're still there, I go back out.
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And so it's kind of like this bouncing back and forth from our secure base out into the environment.
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And if any of you have been following me for any amount of time, I've talked about how important attachment is for that very reason.
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because children who don't form secure attachments don't feel safe to explore the world on their own because when they come back, they don't know what they're going to get, right?
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Maybe their caregiver isn't there.
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Maybe they're not emotionally available.
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Maybe sometimes when they come back, they get in trouble, right?
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And so all of that can play into us feeling safe and secure enough to go explore, to learn about our world and to return.
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And the fourth and final thing that we see within a secure attachment is known as separation distress.
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And this is the anxiety that occurs in the absence of an attachment figure,
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which I remember when my mom first dropped me off at daycare, I cried horribly.
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And then I was able to soothe.
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I was okay.
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But that distress, me being separated from my primary caregiver, my attachment figure, oh, it caused me so much distress.
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But But again, I was able to calm, I was able to move on, but that distress at the beginning shows that I did have attachment to that person.
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I would prefer them to be around, but in their absence, I can self -soothe.
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I do have the tools.
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I believe that she will come back.
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Then we'll dig into that a little bit more, but just know that separation distress and how long it lasts or how intense it is, is something that we look at when we are trying to identify our attachment style.
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Along with those four things that we can observe
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when we watch a child engage with their caregiver it's also
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important to look at how caregivers interact with their children
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and a lot of you know psychologists and other mental health professionals believe
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that that is also a key pillar of attachment
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and what could contribute to our attachment style and one of those pillars
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or one of those things they believe is important to watch
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is emotion regulation now caregivers who model healthy emotional regulation
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and engage with their children in a healthy way is thought to be one of those things
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that helps us form a healthy attachment.
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And this could mean that when we're upset, we felt free to be upset.
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And our caregiver offered us, you know, soothing support and comfort.
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On the flip side, if we grew up in a home where emotions were off limits, or maybe when we were upset, we were yelled at or told to go to our room, then as we get older,
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we can struggle to accept our emotions and prefer to ignore them completely.
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Another thing we want to look at is what's known as attunement.
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Now, attunement is our caregiver's ability to be aware of and respond to our needs.
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For example, if we are crying and our mom realizes that we're hungry, then she's going to feed us and take care of that need.
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Knowing our needs will be attended to is key in developing a healthy emotional attachment to our parents.
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And this can be difficult
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if we don't communicate affection in the same way as our parents
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or or needing something from them that they aren't able to give us
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and this could come into play if one of us has asd
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or autism spectrum disorder or
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if our parents are struggling with their own attachment issues from childhood it can get kind of complicated
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and cause us to have
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maybe a different type of attachment like insecure avoidant
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or disorganized another thing we want to look at is comfort
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and soothing meaning how did our parents respond when we were in pain or upset that they try to dismiss our pain.
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Maybe they were unintentionally invalidating to us or, you know, they're afraid of our negative emotions, feeling like they're too much, or maybe they even just ignore them altogether.
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This can really go either way, but if our parents don't allow for what, you know, maybe they think are quote -unquote negative emotions,
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maybe they tell us to go to our room if we're expressing any of those emotions or stop making so much noise, being so sensitive, et cetera,
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this can you know cause us to struggle with attachment
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that doesn't really allow for a secure attachment to form
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and this can also occur in like the opposite version meaning
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helicopter parents we can feel like we don't have the space we need to process our emotions
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if someone's constantly looking over us telling us what to do
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or to look out don't do that that could be dangerous right
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and we can feel smothered by their protection or their hyper vigilance and
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that honestly in the future without getting into it too much
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can even lead to us having those behaviors of like hyper vigilance
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and not trusting our gut when it comes to things
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and not feeling safe again to go out into the environment
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and come back all of that's really important
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so you can see it can kind of go either way
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almost done we also want to look at their response to
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our failures as well as our successes it's important for our
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caregivers to give us a place to come back to when we've failed and take the time to celebrate when we succeed.
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Like they should let us know that we can practice more
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and get it next time or that they're proud of us and how well we did.
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It's important that we don't feel like our parents' love is conditional.
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And I mean, even just that sentence, you can see how that would affect our attachment and why that's so important.
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oh well hello are you overly attached baby girl i know
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i'm almost done almost done let's not claw up my okay
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and the final thing we want to look at is enjoyment
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and valuing of us meaning did we get positive attention from our parents were we seen did we feel seen
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or did we feel like they enjoyed spending time with us
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and valued that time this can be really hard
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when parents work away from home a lot we can struggle to attach healthfully to
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that parent because we don't really feel like they ever see us
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or enjoy spending time with us because frankly we don't really see them
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and we don't really spend that much time and
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when we're younger this can be the one -on -one time we get with a parent that's really important especially
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if we have multiple children in a family children still need
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to feel like they are personally independently important it could also be getting goofy with your mom
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or dad i remember my dad was always the goofy one
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and he would like wrestle on the floor with us
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and tickle fights and stuff like that until i couldn't take it anymore
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and you need to have that kind of play with your parents as well it's not all seriousness obviously
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and so overall the time
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that we spend where we feel like our parents are really enjoying being around us
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and they give us their undivided attention consistently is another important
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component in the development of our attachment style as you can see there's
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so much that goes into our attachment styles
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and why it can shift over time and different experiences can affect it
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and so hopefully this helped you better understand your own
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but what was one surprising thing you learned in this video
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or maybe something that you know about attachment
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that was helpful for you in your healing process please share those in the comments down below thank you
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so much for watching, and I will see you next time.
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And a lot of the...
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Hmm?
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It's not a script, so I'm not...
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No, I did.
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She cried, or...
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Maybe they...
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Unintentionally.
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It's also important to...
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 175 sentences and 2239 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:01. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| attachment noun | /əˈtæt͡ʃmənt/ | The act or process of (physically or figuratively) attaching. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| attach verb | /əˈtæt͡ʃ/ | To fasten, to join to (literally and figuratively). |
| distress noun | /dɪˈstɹɛs/ | Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature. |
| comfort noun | /ˈkʌm.fət/ | Contentment, ease. |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| anxious adjective | /ˈæŋkʃəs/ | Nervous and worried. |
| insecure adjective | /ɪnsəˈkjʊɹ/ | Not secure. |
| ignore verb | /ɪɡˈnɔː/ | To deliberately not listen or pay attention to. |
| occur verb | /əˈkɜː/ | To happen or take place. |
| regulation noun | /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of regulating or the condition of being regulated. |
| absence noun | /ˈæb.s(ə)n̩s/ | A state of being away or withdrawn from a place or from companionship |
| separation noun | /ˌsɛp.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of disuniting two or more things, or the condition of being separated. |
| heal verb | /ˈhiːl/ | To make better from a disease, wound, etc.; to revive or cure. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| bounce back verb | To recover from a negative situation without seemingly any damage. |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
| look out verb | To be vigilant and aware often as an imperative to alert a person to danger. |
| look over verb | To check quickly; to make a brief or cursory visual inspection of. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · is disorganized · are attached |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've done · we've learned · I've talked |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 57 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, therapeutic /ˌθɛɹ.əˈpjuː.tɪk/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, separation /ˌsɛp.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, separation /ˌsɛp.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like attachment, emotion, attach.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.