top of page
Writer's pictureCrystal King

Attachment: Getting to the Root of Connection Struggles

By Crystal King


A lot of us come to therapy wanting to feel a deeper connection to our significant other. We start off thinking the issue is poor communication, selfishness in the relationship, workaholic tendencies, severe addictions, rage, affairs, and more. While these are certainly giant craters driving disconnection and creating profound loneliness, they are often surface symptoms of a serious biological matter: attachment. What if the root of many of these connection struggles is a pattern that was wired into the brain from childhood? An attachment pattern. 



When we come to counseling with histories of anger, isolation, addictions, obsessions, and other forms of extreme or excessive behaviors, we are often confused because a part us feels deep love for our partner, and we cannot figure out why we keep hurting them. Inversely, another part of us may craft a narrative that our rage or addictions must be our partner’s fault, and we want the therapist to set our partner straight, so that we don’t have to behave in these harmful ways. However, a look underneath the surface of these disruptive and life-altering behaviors reveals something far more credible. Something that allows us to see that pain in early childhood (conscious or unconscious) has a lot more to do with our behaviors than we realize.

 

THE BIOLOGY OF ATTACHMENT



Through various studies, we have learned a great deal about attachment, and our biological need to connect to others. Psychologists and researchers such as John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Edward Tronick and many others have done multiple studies that illustrate humanity’s wired-in, biological need for connection. It is right up there with our need for food, water, shelter. Further research and neuroscience from Dan Siegel has revealed that we need to feel seen, soothed, and safe to create a secure attachment with another person. Secure attachment in childhood fosters a regulated nervous system. It allows us to buffer the storms of life with maximum resilience, lower anxiety, and helps us maintain higher levels of wellness. Without secure attachment as a child, our sense of worth and value can become compromised. Naturally, there is a cost that comes when we don’t have a high sense of value and trust in ourselves or in those we are bonded to. In lieu of secure attachments, our wired-in attachment systems must find alternatives that will regulate our nervous systems (addictions, overworking, over-eating, over-pleasing, acting out sexually, obsessions, chaos, rigidity, and many other compensatory behaviors.) This is a weighty price to pay.


In lieu of water, we may get thirsty and drink coke, but over time, we all know what lots of coke and little water does to the body.  Neuroscience has shown that secure attachments are the nutrients that our bodies, minds, and hearts need to flourish and grow. A nutrient dense diet is to the body what attachment bonds are to human wellness and thriving. Without secure attachment bonds, psychopathology, (also referred to as “the expression of the soul’s suffering”-- Dr. Hollis) abounds.




THE NUTRIENTS OF ATTACHMENT BONDS

So, what are the nutrients of secure attachment? What makes us feel seen, soothed, and safe? Trauma therapist Adam Young talks about the BIG SIX trademarks of attachment:


Attunement: A parent who is able to tune into their child’s feelings and see when they are having an intense emotion shows attunement. If a parent is so distracted by their own needs and stressors, it will be difficult to attune to their child. Being able to see an emotion within a child, positive or negative, and respond with an understanding and acceptance of that emotion shows attunement. For children and adults, this creates a sense of feeling felt, feeling seen.


Responsiveness: In times of distress (anger, sadness, fear, pain), a parent who is able to respond to the distressing emotions of their children (without becoming overly anxious themselves) shows responsiveness. Through a lens of maturity and understanding, they can see the emotion in their child as data and take the information the emotion is giving them and respond with empathy, kindness, care, comfort. This creates safety within the child’s psyche and eases psychological suffering.


Engagement: This is seen in the desire a parent has to know their child deeply. Engaging on a heart level means a parent is taking a non-judgmental, curious stance toward their child’s inner world. They learn what makes their child light up and flourish and what makes them feel discouraged and defeated. They delight to know their child, making the child feel seen and wanted and valued. Engagement offers evidence to the child that they have inherent worth, value, and are deeply cherished.



Ability to Regulate Affect: All of us have bodily sensations in moments of stress or joy. The ability to regulate our affect comes from our parents being able to see us in these moments, soothing and calming us when our bodies are in an amped up and highly distressed state (hyper-arousal) as well as reviving us when we are in a frozen and shut down state (hypo-arousal). Children need support to know how to calm their anxiety as well as bring their numbed out states back to life again. Parents offer a safe way to regulate extreme emotions.


Strong Enough to Handle Negative Emotions: The emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and other painful emotions must be given a safe space to be felt so they do not have to go underground and turn into something larger. When a parent can make this space, a child feels, seen, safe, and soothed in the midst of distress. If these emotions are too much for parents to bear, they can communicate (overtly or covertly) that the emotions themselves are bad. When the natural human emotion we feel is communicated as bad, we do not feel safe with our own emotions and we start to believe we must be bad for having natural human emotion. This creates tremendous dissonance and the need to split ourselves from certain emotions. Splitting off from emotion rather than processing it creates a giant cavern we will have to dig out of later.



Willingness to Repair: No parent will be able to do the above all the time. This is unrealistic in a life where we are often busy, stressed, tired, etc. However, when there is a rupture, a child who consistently experiences repair, will still have a secure attachment. If the parent can recognize and take action when they have missed a key moment or caused harm, they can bring the relationship back to a place of security, comfort, and connection. The repair pattern after rupture has been shown to create resilience in children, enabling them to better navigate the ups and downs that are natural to all relationships.


Unfortunately, many well-intended parents were unable to offer the above framework of secure attachment for their children. When these six nutrients are missing, our biological systems will naturally respond in a way that makes sense for our environment. The lack of secure attachment as a child creates adaptive behaviors in us. Thankfully, these adaptive behaviors allow us to maintain as much balance as possible in an environment designed to throw our nervous system off balance. These adaptive behaviors make it so we can carry on in a dysfunctional system.

Attachment styles or patterns are not a disorder, but rather a completely logical manner of responding to a repeated set of experiences which lack the nutrients we need: being seen, soothed, and safe. What do these attachment styles look like?

 

DISRUPTED ATTACHMENT PATTERNS

When we are ready to have the type of connection that heals and brings nourishment to our psyches, we may recognize that our adaptive behaviors, which were helpful for our old environment, are now maladaptive in an environment where we are attempting to bond to a significant other. The behaviors that were optimal for surviving a dysfunctional system, are not optimal for thriving in connection. So we must rewire our brains and learn how to lean on others in healthy ways. The first step is awareness of our disrupted attachment pattern. Once aware, we can take steps to move toward earned secure attachment. The chart below illustrates what researchers have studied in children and adults to be the primary four attachment patterns. The secure attachment is the one that creates a secure connection and the other three are the result of disrupted connection. Also, a child may have one type of attachment with one caregiver and an entirely different type of attachment with another caregiver. As with most things, the patterns below fall on a continuum.

 

SECURE: Low Anxiety/Low Avoidance

 

Perception of Self: High Trust/High Value

Perception of Others: High Trust/ High Value

ANXIOUS :High Anxiety/Low Avoidance

 

Perception of Self: Low Trust/ Low Value

Perception of Others: High Trust/High Value

AVOIDANT: Low Anxiety/High Avoidance

 

Perception of Self: High Trust/ High Value

Perception of Others: Low Trust/Low Value 

DISORGANIZED: High Anxiety/High Avoidance

 

Perception of Self: Low Trust/ Low Value

Perception of Others: Low Trust/Low Value

 

Secure Attachment:

(Describes a pattern of recognizing emotional needs of self and others / feeling the safety and security to reach out and communicate these needs.)

The individuals with patterns in the quadrant indicating secure attachment show lower anxiety and lower avoidance in regard to meeting needs of themselves and their partners in relationships. They also have a high trust and reliance/dependence on self as well as on others to meet their needs. They have learned from childhood that they were of extreme value and their needs mattered. They have the ability to receive the benefits of connection in times of distress, and they use this connection to calm and regulate their nervous system. They have high resilience, expansion of self, and can notice and value others’ needs as well as their own.

 


Anxious Attachment:

(Describes a pattern of upregulating, amplifying needs, and fastidiously monitoring the connection: fear is disconnection)

The individuals with patterns in the quadrant indicating anxious attachment show outwardly higher anxiety and lower avoidance in regard to meeting needs of themselves and their partners in relationships. They also have a lower trust and reliance/dependence on self than on others to meet their needs. They have learned from childhood that sometimes their needs were met with attunement, and other times, there was distance or chaos. Because inconsistent and unstable patterns were common, it left them feeling insecure and uncertain much of the time. They may have formed beliefs that they are not as worthy as others, being with someone who devalues them might feel less frightening than being alone, they may feel the need to rescue others, and analyze any hint or sign of disconnection when in close relationships. They are often seeking reassurance from their partner at any sign of distance. They strive to address their partner’s needs and sacrifice their own needs to their detriment. When the attachment bond feels threatened, they are amped up to high levels of anxiety and can feel an intense need to go to extreme measures to make their partner notice them, see them, and respond to them.


To adapt to an environment where feeling secure was highly inconsistent and uncertain, these individuals became ultra-watchful and attentive to any sign of a possible rupture in connection. At times, they had to suffer the cost of disregarding their own needs and feeling unseen to keep from feeling rejected, abandoned or left alone. They experienced the cost of staying on a ship in turbulent waters, feeling unstable and insecure in relationships, hypervigilantly tuning into others at every moment to make sure the connection would not leave. This was a logical and helpful strategy to employ in a home where closeness was uncertain at times and the emotional nutrients needed for strong connections were inconsistent for whatever reason.



Avoidant Attachment:

(Describes a pattern of downregulating, minimizing needs, and disconnecting from others to regulate, protect self, and avoid their desire for closeness: fear is closeness)

The individuals with patterns in the quadrant indicating avoidant attachment show outwardly lower anxiety and higher avoidance in regard to meeting needs of themselves and their partners in relationships. They also have a higher trust and reliance/dependence on self than on others to meet their needs. This means that people who have avoidant attachment have learned that their distress was not often met with attunement. They had to figure out how to regulate their own turmoil, fear, and distress as a little child. The message they received was that their needs were not going to be met, so they had to figure out ways to take those needs underground or minimize them. It was too painful to bring their longings or fears to a caregiver who could not meet those emotional needs. Closeness became something to fear rather than a source of strength and shelter. Emotional distance felt safer because if they did not risk asking for help, they could not be dismissed or rejected. Rejection of needs is so intolerable to the psyche that the child unconsciously finds a way to keep themselves from reaching out. They cover up outward signs of need, and maintain self-reliance—convincing themselves they do not have emotional needs. This allows them to cover up the evidence that no one is there for them. Some beliefs they may hold are that they must be in control of their emotions at all times, others must be kept at an arm’s length, they only feel as good as their last achievement, and when stressed, they prefer to go it alone and isolate.


To adapt to an environment where emotional needs were not seen and soothed, these children had to avoid closeness and emotional connection. The cost of attempting closeness and being dismissed became too great. Instead they chose the cost of turning to themselves and walling off into a castle within where no one can hurt them. This was a logical and helpful strategy to employ in a home where closeness was disregarded and the emotional nutrients needed for strong connections were dismissed and unavailable for whatever reason.

 

Disorganized Attachment:

(Describes a pattern of both upregulating needs at times due to fearing disconnection and downregulating needs other times due to fearing closeness: fear is both disconnection and closeness)


The individuals with patterns in the quadrant indicating disorganized attachment show outwardly higher anxiety and higher avoidance in regard to meeting needs of themselves and their partners in relationships. They also have a higher trust and reliance/dependence on self than on others to meet their needs. This means that people who have disorganized attachment have learned that their distress was not only neglected, but their distress was actually caused by and exaggerated by their caregiver. Instead of seeing connection as a possible source of safety, it became the source of extreme danger and high threat. Patterns of abuse were the norm in their home. Some beliefs they may hold are that they deserve to suffer, are worthless, are unable to control their emotions, and feel like life is always chaotic. They may send messages to their partner that they desperately need them one moment and desperately fear or hate them the next. They are in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze and rarely feel regulated. They long for closeness and are simultaneously dysregulated by it. This is the natural outcome of abuse, neglect, and disregard of human value.

To adapt to an environment where emotional needs were not seen and soothed, and the source of safety, actually causes danger, harm, and threat, these children had to learn to be hypervigilant at any sign of disconnection as well as avoid closeness and emotional connection. The cost of receiving danger and harm from the only source they had to go to for safety left them fragmented and desperate for safe connection. At times they walled up in their castle- minimizing their needs to the outside world, and making sure the guards were at their posts. Other times, they reacted strongly to any subtle sign of disconnection-- even the smallest ripple in the water could be seen and reacted to as a tsunami headed their way. This was a logical and helpful strategy to employ in a home where the caregiver they were wired to bond to for safety and security ended up being the source of harm and danger instead.



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TRAUMATIZED

The trauma that happens to us is not our fault. It is going to wire our brains in ways we do not realize and cause adaptive behaviors that later become destructive. But as we grow up and start seeing these behaviors manifest in harmful ways, as adults, it is now our responsibility to acknowledge the impact our childhood trauma had, own the harmful behaviors we acquired, and do the deep work of rewiring our brain for connection. Without an intentional commitment to put our patterns under the scrutiny of intense investigation, change is unlikely. While trauma may be a logical reason for our patterns, it is not an excuse to hurt people. It is not our fault. It IS however our responsibility.


Through a compassionate interrogation and relentless observation of our patterns, we can challenge how we show up for our relationships and create new pathways of stability, security, connection, and expansion for ourselves and those we love.

 

 

5 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page