7 TPC Digest Loneliness is endemic across the life span. This is important for college counselors given the transitional challenges and developmental issues that predispose the typical college-age student to experience loneliness. The issue of loneliness is further compounded by the social isolation and remote learning due to COVID-19 that impacted traditional social interaction and relationship building for students. Life is about connections and relationships. These are informed by our early experiences with caregivers. Through these early interactions, we develop attachment patterns; some develop secure attachments and others develop insecure attachments. These attachment patterns set the blueprint for how we interact and build and maintain relationships in later life. Individuals with secure attachment styles have prosocial skills and social competency to initiate, build, and maintain close relationships, while those with insecure attachment styles struggle in relationships, predisposing them to experience loneliness. Insecure attachment falls into two groups—anxious attachment or avoidant attachment. Those with anxious attachment tend to be fearful of rejection and of being abandoned, and as a result, they are not trusting of others. Those with an avoidant attachment style have a fear of intimacy and being dependent and view themselves in a negative light. Both sets of individuals are said to possess low social self-efficacy. They display maladaptive interpersonal behaviors resulting in dissatisfaction with relationships, which leads to increased feelings of loneliness. This research explored the relationship between social self-efficacy, loneliness, and the two insecure attachment styles. We examined the extent to which anxiety attachment and avoidant attachment predicted social self-efficacy. We also examined the extent to which social self-efficacy mediated the relationship between loneliness and anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Data was collected over the last 2 months of the fall 2020 semester. This spanned two learning periods, as the college pivoted to online learning after students went home for the Thanksgiving break due to the uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases. A total of 863 college students voluntarily participated in this study. We explored the relationships between anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and loneliness. Additionally, we examined the extent to which social self-efficacy bolstered the anxious and avoidant attachment styles and reduced feelings of loneliness. The study found that individuals with high avoidant attachment or anxious attachment experienced greater degrees of loneliness. We also found that high social self-efficacy explained decreased loneliness in those with both anxious and avoidant attachment. Mediation analysis revealed that loneliness was mediated by social self-efficacy, with high social self-efficacy explaining decreased loneliness in those with avoidant attachment. This was not always the same for those with anxious attachment. Implications for counseling include the need for counselors to broach the subject of loneliness with their college clients and assess for low social self-efficacy, which could contribute to interpersonal difficulties the clients experience. Given the mediation results, counselors can help clients build their social self-efficacy and prosocial skills to enhance their interpersonal confidence. Individual and group counseling interventions can be ways to model how to deal with interpersonal difficulties and teach new skills while promoting clients’ strength and resiliency. Claudette Brown-Smythe, PhD, NCC, ACS, LMHC, CRC, is an assistant professor at SUNY Brockport. Shirin Sultana, PhD, MSS, MSSW, is an assistant professor at SUNY Brockport. Correspondence may be addressed to Claudette Brown-Smythe, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14420, cbrownsm@brockport.edu. Claudette Brown-Smythe, Shirin Sultana Examining Social Self-Efficacy as a Mediator for Insecure Attachment and Loneliness
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