Young child with long blonde hair stretches arms up happilyWe’ve all seen it: the child in the supermarket line willing to tell you all about himself despite not knowing you at all, or the little girl who plops herself in a new teacher’s lap on day one of school. Harmless? Maybe, but this type of overly friendly behavior toward strangers often stems from an unstable attachment history and can lead to trouble.

Indiscriminate affection is usually seen in children ages 5 and under and is described as an inconsistency in identifying and establishing attachments—for our purposes, secure adults who are safe and familiar and who will feed, clean, and love the child. Such children see adults as equal-opportunity caregivers regardless of whether they are well known or a total stranger. This type of behavior is most commonly seen in children adopted from orphanages or after foster care placements where physical or emotional neglect may have existed in the earliest and most formative year or two of life. It has also been found in children who have had a stable home life in terms of location, but an unstable one with regard to psychological and emotional neglect. The common thread among these children is that care was never consistent.

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The theory behind these overly social behaviors is they serve as a way for children to get their needs met by anyone in the area, whether it be mom, foster mom, Mrs. Smith the preschool teacher, Joe the ice cream man, or the nice person in the grocery line. This can mean a child may be willing to go off with a stranger who promises candy or games. You may notice a child does not understand personal space or boundaries between them and other children or adults. It could manifest as hyperactivity in school or asking to go live with the teacher.

Children who developed in a healthy and stable home environment are more likely have a secure attachment to one or two primary caregivers and can rely on consistent and thorough care. These children develop a healthy hesitancy and skepticism toward strangers and a sense of connection with their primary caregivers that allows them to better understand personal boundaries and safety. These are the children who, on the first day of school, may look up to mom or dad for encouragement or hide behind a leg or two at first. After a brief pep talk, the securely attached child is off and having a wonderful time.

Does Your Child Have a Problem?

So, what does this mean for your child, and what can be done about overly friendly behavior?

If you find your child is very friendly, that does not necessarily mean they would fall into the category of indiscriminate affection; you may just have a social butterfly. It also does not mean you made a mistake or neglected your child during infancy.

First, don’t panic. If you find your child is very friendly, that does not necessarily mean they would fall into the category of indiscriminate affection; you may just have a social butterfly. It also does not mean you made a mistake or neglected your child during infancy. However, if you notice your child (adopted or natural) wandering off too far with lesser-known adults or asking for hugs from strangers, it may be time to seek the support of a therapist specializing in attachment of young children. This person can help you reestablish a connection with your child and build a sense of healthy boundaries and safety for your little one. The therapist will help you as a parent to manage certain situations in ways that will cultivate a secure attachment with your child and help your social butterfly understand safer ways to make friends, who to ask for help, when to approach strangers, and where not to spread their colorful wings.

There are also things you can do at home to help develop healthy boundaries for your child. My favorite is the hula hoop—this simple ring placed on the floor or held around the waist creates a visual indicator of personal space. Explaining to the child that everyone has a bubble about the size of the hoop that is their special private space can help a child understand when they are too close to someone or when someone is too close to them!

Reference:

Lyons-Ruth, K., Bureau, J.F., Riley, C.D., & Atlas-Corbett, A.F. (2009). Socially indiscriminate attachment behavior in the strange situation: Convergent and discriminant validity in relation to caregiving risk, later behavior problems, and attachment insecurity. Development and Psychopathology, 21(2), 355–372.

A couple looking at each other lovingly in white blankets in bed touches palms. smiling at each otherEditor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. See Part 1: Opposing Attachment Styles.

The conflict is both a fight for and a protection against intimacy.

If we can hold others only as much as we have held ourselves, then we will tend to connect with others who have a comparable capacity for internal discomfort—those at a similar distance from secure attachment. Clinging and avoiding represent methods of maintaining a comfortable distance from intimacy. While we may hate a partner’s method, we also depend on it. We are drawn to it.

The Never-Ending Conflict

The abandoned side says: “If they would just stay and assure me, I would be calm in a minute.”

The oppressed side says: “If they would just calm down and stop attacking, I would be able to stay present with them.”

As conflict approaches, we switch states.

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Dependence and conflict are the primary ingredients required for attachment reenactment. After a certain level of intimacy is reached in the relationship—once we begin relying emotionally on a partner—the relationship begins to take on a new shape. This new shape looks very much like our relationship with one or more primary attachment figures. The anxious side feels an urgent, physically activating preparation for abandonment in the moment, and the avoidant side feels oppressed, trapped, unable to move, unable to choose their own life—both yearning and resigned.

Extremes polarize. If either side relaxes, comes closer to the middle, the other does as well. Either person has an opportunity to end this dance. And in the middle of biological survival reactions, that awareness disappears. Without access to present-moment resources, living in child states, we react not to our partners but to our parents, to the embodied memories of our caregivers.

The Self-Perpetuating Loop

Sometimes it feels like a role in which we’re trapped. Each character plays out a set of cued reactions so rehearsed and precise they may as well have been written in a script.

The avoidant side is well-aware of self but less practiced at communicating internal events (thoughts, sensations, emotions) to other. The anxious side is better at communicating but less aware of internal events, less able to meet them and talk about them objectively without becoming caught up in the physical activation of the emotions.

Conflicts in this relational pattern tend be more drawn out and feel less productive. One side becomes the pursuer, amplifying to draw positive attention, the other the distancer, disengaging to avoid negative attention—together playing out an endlessly retraumatizing dance.

In therapy, the gift is this: coming to a place where either the breakup or continuation feels healthy for both, where each side believes at a physical level they are okay, that the story makes sense, that closure has been found and each person knows how to move forward in gentle compassion for both self and other.

The avoidant side demands less fight, says they cannot remain present in conflict, uses abandonment as a tool, a weapon (“the silent treatment”)—the only thing their partner can hear. The anxious side says they feel like they’re walking on eggshells, unable to expect their partner to remain present with emotional expressions (anger, volume). Each side feels unseen, invalidated, unacceptable (often perceived as a confirmation of the same feelings experienced in childhood).

Fighting styles stay true to attachment styles and survival strategies.

Those on the anxious side tend to amplify, land fully in emotion, demand support, and may be more likely to fight physically, even “small” physical contacts like pinching or blocking a path of escape. Over time, these “small” assaults can escalate.

Those on the avoidant side may be more likely to diminish, freeze, land as far as possible from the emotion, even dissociate. They may remain rigid, stoic, and resentful, wishing their partner might “get it” and end the attack, release the freeze. (“Can’t they see I’m trapped and helpless?”) They tend to fight in ways that are less visible—ways which often feel manipulative, invalidating, and “crazy”-making to the more-direct anxious side. They may placate, deflect, and even gaslight their partners in order to find freedom and self, to regulate their bodies once again as they get away from seemingly endless and fruitless conflict.

Grieving the Fantasy of the Perfect Union

Both sides in this dance carry fantasy and fear, wanting their partner to meet them in a selfless way—to meet their emotions with perfect attunement and empathy and to help them calm their body.

The wished-for scenario is available only in the domain of one-sided attachment (i.e., parent-child relationship). While a version of it can happen in therapy, it is not romantic, nor committed long-term outside of the therapy room. Healthy romantic relationship requires internal connection and acceptance so partners are no longer expected or wished to act as parents—to fulfill a long-unmet need.

Romantic relationships present an inherently bidirectional dependence. In an adult romantic relationship, each side shares control, and each is responsible for their own growth, for communicating their needs, for making choices about the relationship, for finding purpose and support outside of the relationship as well as within it. If either partner stops growing on their own, the relationship stagnates. If either side becomes overly dependent on the other, resentment may build and the relationship may become burdened and tumultuous.

Healing Approaches

In relationship, some of the healing can take place in the way we meet our partners:

Individually, much of the healing comes down to awareness and ownership, learning to be and stay with each internal emotion, to meet it with a gentle compassion, with the same warm eyes you would use to meet a child or a loved pet. In those moments where you look back through the generations of your family and see these relational/emotional patterns playing out, stay with that. Feel it in your body. Honor the real and present experience of a racer who has been passed a generational baton and has nowhere to run.

Break Up or Continue On?

This relationship can work, if both sides:

And, in the end, rather than staying in the relationship out of fear; because a partner completes a missing skill set; by default to maintain status quo and conserve energy; because the intimacy in approaching the moment of breaking up is too high; or because the pain of rejecting your partner (sometimes pain in you that you project onto them) feels unbearable (sometimes forcing dissociation at the thought of breakup), understand this relationship does not have to work. By the time each partner has processed childhood pains and come to see this dance for what it is, the end of this pattern may really feel okay. In fact, if either person has changed, they may lose that intoxicating draw to this pattern. It will just no longer feel attractive, “passionate,” or necessary.

Once we grieve what was missing—once we stop fighting against the reality of it and the seemingly unbearable emotion of it—we are no longer attracted to the same cycle. Some people find the attachment trauma was in fact the only thing they had in common, that they needed to come together to heal each other, that they feel at peace with the idea of parting ways and sending love. Some view it as a lesson they needed to learn or a new version of self that they had to “hurt into.”

From a natural-growth perspective, the parts of us that seek out this pattern do so for a reason. If we have been unable to “be with” our pain—if we have inherited or developed “adult” identities that abandon or attack the parts of self that hurt—then the continual reenactment of relational patterns forces us back into opportunities to meet the pain, to meet the child in us, to finally witness it with different eyes, and to understand what that difference really means. It’s as if the child in us is saying, “This! Right here! This feeling right here—the emotions, the sensations in your body, the instinct to panic or disappear: THIS IS WHAT I FELT! For years! This was real. This happened. Nobody noticed. See me. Be with me. Meet me the way I’ve wanted to be met.”

In therapy, the gift is this: coming to a place where either the breakup or continuation feels healthy for both, where each side believes at a physical level they are okay, that the story makes sense, that closure has been found and each person knows how to move forward in gentle compassion for both self and other. If you’re not sure how to get there, contact a licensed therapist for guidance.

References:

  1. Caldwell, J. G., & Shaver, P. R. (2014). Promoting attachment-related mindfulness and compassion: A wait-list-controlled study of women who were mistreated during childhood. Mindfulness, 6(3), 624-636. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0298-y
  2. Dekel, S., & Farber, B.A. (2012). Models of Intimacy of Securely and Avoidantly Attached Young Adults. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 200(2): 156 doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182439702
  3. Simpson, et al. (2009). Attachment working models twist memories of relationship events. Psychological Science; doi:10.1177/0956797609357175
  4. Tatkin, S. (2009). Addiction to “alone time”: avoidant attachment, narcissism, and a one‐person psychology within a two‐person psychological system. The Therapist, 57(January‐February). Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Addiction-to-Alone-Time.pdf
  5. Tatkin, S. (2009). The plight of the avoidantly attached partner in couples therapy. New Therapist 62, 10-16. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I-want-you-in-the-house.pdf
  6. Tatkin, S. (2011). Allergic to hope: Angry resistant attachment and a one-person psychology within a two-person psychological system. Psychotherapy in Australia, 18(1), 66-73. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Allergic-to-Hope_Tatkin.pdf

Young couple in conflict face off on fuchsia sofa. Room is done in bright colors. Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series. See Part 2: A Built-In Path to Healing.

Few of us might consider pain a gift.

To be clear: Relational trauma/abuse is not earned, not to be pursued, and is not being repainted here in a woo-woo, positive light. Pain becomes a gift in retrospect, in the intentional building of a story over time that allows us a sense of redemption from an old story of blame or grief. In the present, pain alerts us to problems and can potentially orient us toward solutions. Repeated pain—the exact same sensation felt over and over—can become a revelation, and in this way can bring a sense of control, a chance to step away from an excruciating pattern.

Do a Google search for “toxic relationship” or “anxious-avoidant trap” and this is what comes up: one particular relational pattern that couples therapists see so often it can feel cliché—a pattern deceptively invisible when you’re in the midst of it. Beneath the standard problems—finances, mess in the home, use of time, how to discipline the kids—lies this incredibly common pattern.

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A good portion of us are living in worlds our partners cannot see—worlds driven by either abandonment or oppression. We are either fighting to move toward others—asking them to relieve the feeling of abandonment and regulate our bodies—or we are struggling to balance self and other, unsure how to unite without losing self, aware that when alone we can feel both lonely and physically regulated. The most avoidant among us, while perhaps giving up on the possibility (or dissociating from it most of the time), still desire connection outside of self.

When these two opposing extremes meet, it can feel electrifying. The child in one sees the other and says at some unconscious level, “There is a consistent person. Now I will be cared for. Now I can relax.” The child in the other says, “There is another child, like me, someone who will not control me. Now I will be safe.”

Over time, though, once a certain level of intimacy and dependence has been attained, the one wanting to feel cared for begins to feel abandoned, and the one wanting to avoid oppression realizes they have re-created their childhood. They have found yet another person who cannot meet their needs, another person who is not really attuned and is instead distracted by their own panic, continuing the belief of the oppressed: “I am alone. I have to be self-sufficient. I cannot count on my partner.” So, they’ll pull away and say with resentment, “Take care of yourself. I have to.” And the dance begins.

The following profiles of “opposing” attachment styles represent extremes. Life is rarely as cut-and-dried or black-and-white as any article. We all carry different traumas in different biological vessels, and we internalize the worldviews of multiple attachment figures (including parents or caregivers; family, friends, or relatives; partners; and therapists) throughout life.

The Abandoned: Mobilized and Fighting to Reconnect

Those who perceive themselves as abandoned may be more likely to ruminate on relationship issues above all else. They may be more likely to reach out, to draw (or demand) attention, even to create drama in order to elicit a wished-for response from others—a response that, when given, has nowhere to land. They may seek assurance while at the same time appearing unable to hear the reassurance given.

Self-abandoned in moments of intense emotion, many are unable to fully take in present-moment interactions. This sets up a kind of short-circuit that, especially in moments of panic-driven attack, perpetuates a loop of conflict and helplessness for all parties involved.

Outside of conflict, those landing on the anxious side bring needed energy into the relationship. They are generally better at talking (or at least more willing), and they use that role to bring more social movement into any relationship, in many ways keeping their partner from getting stuck in isolation (though their avoidant partner may fight them on this). They are also quite willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the relationship. They may hold any blame for relationship problems—blame and judgment their avoidant partner deflects because it feels too threatening to hold. The oppressed partner deflects while the abandoned partner willingly catches.

In the abandoned-oppressed relationship, the anxious (abandoned) role serves as the inhale: energy up, excitement and play, confrontation.

Those on the anxious side often see themselves as pursuing love “the way love is supposed to be”: never abandoning one another, sharing everything, never alone.

The Oppressed: Immobilized and Waiting for Safety (Alone), Permission (Relationship)

If one were to install a hidden camera in the home of an oppressed-abandoned couple, they might see a dramatic difference in behavior when the oppressed partner is alone. Many people do not realize the lengths to which someone on the avoidant (oppressed) side of attachment will go to maintain invisibility. They may just close the curtains more often, walk softer, use a quieter voice, smile to elicit safety, or remain blank-faced to avoid engagement. They may simply communicate less or keep more aspects of life secret. Many will make dinner after a partner or roommate goes to bed. To avoid arguments and “legitimize” their lack of response or conversation, some may not pay phone bills. Some may exaggerate their work schedule rather than simply asking for alone time. They may apply for lesser jobs that avoid the spotlight or become “driven” in work, living in constant effort to prove themselves and avoid judgment. They may say “I love you” when in reality they are dissociated from any emotion, because they are quite familiar with dissociation as a way of life, and for them it is easier to placate others than to face conflict and “waste time.”

When things get too close and comfortable, the anxious side stops chasing, questions, or may sabotage. At least there is control in when the “inevitable” abandonment happens. Conversely, when things get too distant, the avoidant has been known to switch tactics, even take over the pursuer role. A tolerable level of intimacy/distance is maintained between the strategies of both extremes.

To be fair, sometimes the initial rush of unseen movement is simply getting the to-do list done as quickly as possible (in the absence of an audience) in order to return to a more subdued state and possible self-regulation.

Time is often precious on this end of attachment—partially because the person lives a half-life, hibernating in the presence of others. If the abandoned side fears abandonment, the oppressed side accepts it as truth, believes they are alone, without enough support or resources to survive, and resentful of those asking to share their already insufficient resources. From the outside perspective, self-sufficiency is chosen. As the avoidant, there is no perceived choice. It is a natural reaction to a world in which need was not allowed or may have been outright punished.

There is an often marked conservation of resources on this side of attachment—a planned and monitored rationing of time, space, finances, etc. This is self-sufficient, unsupported life, and its accompanying sense of scarcity and fatalism—a frozen mix of giving up and hanging on, not taking chances, not committing to anything long-term, even hoarding what little is held. At the outer extremes, those on the avoidant side are generally well-practiced at self-denial and rationing, often resentful of a partner who seems more frivolous—a partner who lives a bit more carefree, as if there is support out there in the world, as if there is not constant judgment and anger reflected in the world.

Most often raised in a home where emotions were not reflected, those on the oppressed side remain attuned to lack of attunement from others—sometimes subconsciously wishing their partner would notice when something is wrong so it need not be spoken. Asking for help feels too vulnerable, even if the wish for help feels intense and lifelong. Behind all the blaming, deflecting, and lack of disclosure lies an intense fear of oppression and rejection—a belief communication with a partner is like giving that partner a weapon. Asking someone on the avoidant side how they are feeling can easily be perceived as entrapment.

Those who lean on avoidant strategies are generally good listeners—sometimes willingly, sometimes with resentment—accustomed to putting aside their own needs to present for others. They tend to be naturally respectful of space and boundaries, and partners often lean on them for grounding. They can be quite attuned to their partner’s needs, fulfilling them without the partner asking or noticing—modeling for their partner the kind of attunement they would like, and then blaming their partner for not noticing.

When not in conflict, the oppressed (avoidant) role serves as the exhale for the relationship: energy down, calming, resignation/acceptance (“let it rest”), renew, repair, recover, conserve (which includes ongoing calculations of available time and energy and explains the draw to the energy possessed by those more anxious).

Those on the avoidant side see themselves as pursuing relationship in a realistic way, believing everyone is alone, safe dependence does not exist, and everyone should take care of their own needs and emotions to avoid burdening others.

The Dynamics of the Dance

The dance is a draining, familiar one for all involved.

The oppressed side sees in an anxious other the exact energy it suppresses in self: the helpless, anxious child. While initially drawn to that energy with a sense of kinship, avoidant strategies automatically attempt to suppress/oppress that energy in the anxious partner as well.

Initially drawn to the security and seemingly consistent attention of their avoidant partner, the anxious side eventually realizes they are losing the intense love they felt in the beginning when their partner was so easily enamored. This triggers more panic, more fight for attention. To the avoidant side, already on guard for signs of oppression, the aggression in that panic feels like control. Disdain builds toward the abandoned, increasing the anxious panic and the avoidant withdrawal.

If either side felt safe in intimacy, this dance would not last. When things get too close and comfortable, the anxious side stops chasing, questions, or may sabotage. At least there is control in when the “inevitable” abandonment happens. Conversely, when things get too distant, the avoidant has been known to switch tactics, even take over the pursuer role. A tolerable level of intimacy/distance is maintained between the strategies of both extremes.

References:

  1. Caldwell, J. G., & Shaver, P. R. (2014). Promoting attachment-related mindfulness and compassion: A wait-list-controlled study of women who were mistreated during childhood. Mindfulness, 6(3), 624-636. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0298-y
  2. Dekel, S., & Farber, B.A. (2012). Models of Intimacy of Securely and Avoidantly Attached Young Adults. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 200(2): 156 doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182439702
  3. Simpson, et al. (2009). Attachment working models twist memories of relationship events. Psychological Science; doi:10.1177/0956797609357175
  4. Tatkin, S. (2009). Addiction to “alone time”: avoidant attachment, narcissism, and a one‐person psychology within a two‐person psychological system. The Therapist, 57(January‐February). Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Addiction-to-Alone-Time.pdf
  5. Tatkin, S. (2009). The plight of the avoidantly attached partner in couples therapy. New Therapist 62, 10-16. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I-want-you-in-the-house.pdf
  6. Tatkin, S. (2011). Allergic to hope: Angry resistant attachment and a one-person psychology within a two-person psychological system. Psychotherapy in Australia, 18(1), 66-73. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Allergic-to-Hope_Tatkin.pdf

One blurred figure stands against wall of water on a glass window provides an interesting view of the world outside.The experience of trauma often shapes our beliefs of self, other, and world. In turn, those beliefs shape our relationships, pervade our families, spread to our communities, and stretch across societies. Our attachment styles and strategies, which can be categorized by individual beliefs about dependency and support in the wake of interpersonal trauma, often correspond to early relational traumas.

Attachment styles are most often associated with parenting or romantic relationships. They shape the ways we lie and/or cheat. They might define our sexual fantasies and influence our decision to pursue sex as a shared or solo practice. They help mold our political and religious views, boundaries in friendships, assessment of dangerous situations, physical health, epigenetics, over- or under-utilization of health and human services, and interactions with employers or any other authority figure or system.

They may further impact a wide range of interactions between self and other:

Trauma-molded beliefs may predict our ability to thrive or fail when life presents obstacles. In our culture, we can see these extreme echoes and reflections of trauma. They are in the vernacular, the language that defines and divides geographic regions: “Buck up. Emotion is weak. We don’t ask for directions.” These are all avoidant, counter-dependent messages, often assigned and attributed to males in our culture. These are also vestiges of the “rugged individualism” that shaped our country.

The constructed rules that dictate social interactions originated at some point from individual attachment styles that developed in direct response to relational trauma. These internal rules, formed during individual traumas, eventually externalize and spread outward, permeating cultures and influencing conflicts on a grander scale. Rules and beliefs related to anxious attachment—“Your partner is responsible for your emotions, is supposed to take care of you. Individual needs do not matter. It’s more important to belong, to share everything—”can also spread. There is no escaping trauma in this world, and trauma can interrupt even the most robust and healthy generational patterns.

With anxious attachment, there may be a tendency to blame the parents. While it’s true we do form attachment beliefs based on our relationships with our caregivers, in the greater scheme, the trauma-broken innocence was also true for them, for their parents, and for their parents’ parents.

There is no escaping trauma in this world, and trauma can interrupt even the most robust and healthy generational patterns. In the wake of trauma, we are forced to relearn ways of connecting with self and other. And the relearning can span generations—generations that are likely, in the meantime, to be interrupted again by other traumas.

Basic Trauma/Attachment Reactions

Our trauma reactions are hardwired into these vessels we inhabit. The theory of a “defense cascade,” supported by Porges’ polyvagal theory, suggests our trauma responses occur in a specific sequence: we move from our “social nervous system” to “fight or flight” and then to “freeze.”

The work of Peter Levine, developer of Somatic Experiencing®, supports another idea: longer-held, character-shaping postures that are often the response to ongoing or repeated trauma also occur in sequence. To escape from these postures, then, it may be necessary to traverse the sequence in reverse: from freeze, through fight or flight, and then back to social connection.

What follows is a framework of attachment styles that serves as both a defense “cascade” and a progression through beliefs of dependence or abandonment. Note that, while this is presented as a “simplified” model, humans are not simple. We each come with hardwired temperaments and a variety of motivation systems—though our survival and attachment systems often overrides these—and we internalize multiple caregivers. Few of us remain consistently in one attachment style across a range of situations.

Stage 1: Secure Attachment, Internalized Connection

In this stage, the trauma response is one of connection: “I am supported; I can depend on self and other.” The mind and body function in harmony, and desires are easy to identify and express. Individuals may be more discerning in their relationships and better able to move on when a relationship is not working. Posture is more likely to be relaxed and expressive or nonreactive, and a person may be able to bond more easily. The internalized connection may be more attuned: the internal parent is connected, curious, and welcoming, while the internal child is soothed and regulated.

Stage 2: Anxious Attachment, Internalized Abandonment

When threat is imminent, our bodies mobilize into action. We may become loud, often drawing attention intentionally. This anxious stage represents the duality of a screaming child being abandoned and an internalized parent who may be overwhelmed or fleeing from that child. As this relationship is projected onto the world, the feelings of abandonment may feel insatiable. Finding no internal support, the child reaches out to other people in desperation, sometimes chasing and clinging.

The trauma response here is one of fight. Flight is a non-option because it leads away from other, from life. A person who is in this stage may resort to expressive or reactive strategies in order to elicit a response, with an attitude of dependence: “I need you. You’re supposed to take care of me.” A person may experience chaotic or limited boundaries, easily merging with others and losing their sense of self. The body may overwhelm the mind, making it hard to separate the wants of the self from the wants of another.

Relationships may be characterized by hypo-discernment: A person may remain with a partner they no longer care for in order to avoid being alone. In abandoning or being unable to access the internal self, a person may become unable to connect to others in the present moment. Individuals in this stage may create “drama” to amplify their needs and test or sabotage friendships. In a relationship, they may feel abandoned easily and tend to seek romantic or sexual support outside the relationship when they perceive their partner as unavailable.

For healing to take place, a person typically must learn to be with self enough to feel the presence of other.

Stage 3: Avoidant Attachment, Internalized Oppression

We fall into freeze when the energy of fight or flight is spent and neither sequence has completed. Freeze also remains the default when both fight and flight are non-options, as is the case for many children. At an internal level, avoidant attachment develops in reaction to anxious attachment that evoked punishment. As this is a step beyond (or a layer atop) stage 2, the challenge lies first in gradually learning to trust other, then in dealing with the intense feelings of abandonment that lie hidden and compartmentalized beneath this secondary defense.

Individuals in this stage may be more likely to hide in order to minimize attention and potential judgment, and they may be less active in the pursuit of their goals. Counter-dependence means they often avoid asking for help, may avoid doctors when sick, and feel resentment when others act in dependent ways. In the long term, there may be a sense of being stuck—limited facial expression, decreased connection to body and emotion, immobility, lack of energy, risk aversion, and a preference to be alone and away from judgment. There is a knowing, in this state, that to be with others means to lose self, to give up agency or will. People in this stage may think, “If I seek support, I will be attacked. I should get small. Remain quiet. Avoid becoming a target. There is only self.”

In relationships, this freeze state often plays out in hesitation, fear, lack of engagement, minimal expression, low motivation, limited enthusiasm, and greater attunement to anger and controlling actions in others. Those using avoidant strategies tend to look for ways to get out of a relationship before commitment enters the picture. This is the partner who lives with one foot out the door, resists talking about the future, and struggles with dependence in both self and other. Active and impenetrable boundaries preserve self from threat of other, limiting intimacy and threatening relationships.

Relationships may be characterized by hyper-discernment: Individuals may spend years or decades choosing the “perfect” partner, and they may be more likely to leave a friend/partner/lover they truly love after spending years struggling with the relationship, realizing afterward they were simply dissociated from their fear of being alone.

People may be more likely to seek alone time, even lying about demands on them in order to justify the need for space. They are more likely to use unintentional gaslighting as a means of deflecting attention/punishment. While less likely to verbalize their needs, they may tend to blame others for not meeting those needs. Avoidant strategies can, without being directly antagonistic, assert dominance in passive-aggressive ways, such as withdrawal as punishment. Even breakups might be handled in indirect and often ineffective ways—investing months or years trying to get one’s partner to initiate a breakup, for example. With a goal of protecting freedom and agency, individuals may disengage and even dissociate to maintain self as separate from other.

With awareness and attention, meeting self can feel like coming home, and we can begin to elicit and receive from the world what we have needed all along.The avoidant stage represents a reaction to a reaction. The duality of the first stage is still present, but the internalized parent (or protector) has become oppressive instead of abandoning. “We cannot show this neediness to the world. It is weak. It brings social and physical threat.” Tools used in this stage include dissociation and compartmentalization, as individuals attempt to simply maintain baseline survival functions. Strategies in this stage attempt to separate from dependence and present as self-sufficient. Individuals may be unable to identify or verbalize physical sensations in the present.

Completing the Circuit

Presence occurs only in the completed circuit between self and other. This is more than a connection between two parties. Each side must be connected within in order to feel connected without, and vice versa. For the anxious side, this step means moving more toward self and mind. For the avoidant side, it means reaching toward other and landing in body. In attachment terms, if we cannot bear remaining present with the full experience of self and other simultaneously, connection may elude us, and trauma will persist.

We can look out into the world and see the undercurrent of attachment in every facet of existence—every choice, every reaction, every interaction. We rarely see the person before us. When we look into our partner’s eyes, we see the people behind us that laid the groundwork, the ones that defined our beliefs about the possibility of connection.
We meet ourselves in the same ways our caregivers met us, and in doing so, we continue to feel the same pain.
The outside world reflects our internal world. Through our own perceptions and projections, then, the world meets us the way we meet ourselves.

As we learn to meet ourselves with empathy and compassion, our experience of life can change. It may become a little softer, a little more manageable. With awareness and attention, meeting self can feel like coming home, and we can begin to elicit and receive from the world what we have needed all along.

References:

  1. Diamond, D., Blatt, S. J., & Lichtenberg, J. D. (2007). Attachment & Sexuality. New York, NY: Analytic Press.
  2. Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
  3. Noricks, J. S. (2011). Parts Psychology: A New Model of Therapy for the Treatment of Psychological Problems through Healing the Normal Multiple Personalities Within Us: Case Studies in the Psychotherapy of Mental Disorders. Los Angeles, CA: New University Press.
  4. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
  5. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
  6. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Viking.

Rear view of a person in white coat, hair in ponytail, sitting on green bench on beach looking out toward the waterPeople pleasing is a way to reduce anxiety and eliminate stress. Some please to assure good feelings that come with positive responses like being approved of, admired, praised, or respected. Others please because of strong needs to avoid bad feelings that occur when, for example, others criticize, complain, or become angry. But there are some people who are not typical people pleasers. Instead, they live with intense anxiety that if they don’t behave in ways that elicit strong approval and avoid disapproval from others, the consequences will destroy their sense of well-being and safety. These are what I will refer to, for the purposes of this article, as terrified people pleasers.

Relationships and Terrified People Pleasers

Terrified people pleasers view the world as an impending source of danger. They tend to see relationships much like earthquakes and hurricanes: at any time, often with little warning, attachment to others can wreak great destruction in their lives. Vigilance and compliance become guidelines for safety.

Samantha walked into my office, and before I could ask, “What brings you here?” I found myself in the presence of an avalanche of feelings from someone who seemed to be a very angry, upset, frightened woman.

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“This is it. I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “All my friends are never available and selfish. I’m 63 years old, and I’m going to die alone. I’ve been seeing Marty on and off for 10 years, and he’s like everyone else: self-involved, stubborn, unloving or loving depending on his mood. I tell you, it’s enough! I’m so good to everyone, and they get what they want. I’m afraid to do things and be on my own, and I have to rely on people who always have time for each other but not for me. I’m tired of being angry and depressed and giving everyone what they want. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to enjoy anything. No one likes me, and I hate everyone.”

It would take many months for me to understand the narrative of Samantha’s life. In our early sessions, Samantha described her anger and unhappiness with her friends who didn’t appreciate how she was always there for them and never reciprocated. She described taking them to dinner, helping them move into apartments, visiting when they were sick: “I did all the things a good friend does. Do you think I really wanted to be so helpful and attentive? No, I didn’t. But I felt that I had to be the perfect friend or they would all drop me. I sort of feel dropped anyway. No one ever offers to help me with anything.”

Samantha repeats this pattern of behavior with Marty: “I always work hard to figure out what he wants, and I work very hard to provide it even when I want to say ‘no.’ Then I resent him, but I’m scared he’ll leave me if I ask for anything. So for the last 10 years, our relationship has been crazy in and out. We date, we’re lovers, we’re friends, we stop seeing each other for a while, and then it starts all over again. Mostly, I freak out if either one of us gets angry. I always worry he’s going to be critical or distant, and I‘m never sure if I want him to stay or leave, but I get panic attacks if I think he wants to leave.”

When we explored this experience that felt so one-sided, it became apparent Samantha never asked friends for help or indicated any wish to be celebrated: “I don’t know, I guess it never feels okay to ask for anything. I’m afraid they’ll say no, and I’ll feel hurt and angry. I think I really have the feeling that they don’t want to please me like I don’t really want to please them. But I have no choice. I have to do it or I’ll be hurt and alone.”

Family Origins and Terrified People Pleasing

As her story unfolded, I could visualize the frightened little girl who had been designated by her father to be responsible for her mother. Although never medically diagnosed, I believe Samantha’s mother was probably bipolar. She describes a mother of unpredictable extremes: the mother who danced around the kitchen was funny, silly, all hugs, and the mother who stayed in bed, was silent or angry, and made several suicide attempts. Her father, a rarely present man who worked too much, praised Samantha for taking good care of her mother and would tell her, “You’re my good girl doing your job for us to make sure mommy is okay.”

Her father and her brother, older by three years, were emotionally detached from Samantha and her mother. Samantha recalled, “I was 12. It was the second time my mother tried to kill herself. I found her in bed with an empty bottle of pills, hardly breathing. I called 911 and my father. I don’t know where my brother was. My father told me to go in the ambulance with my mother and stay with her. He told me what a good girl I was. I don’t remember if he came to the hospital. He must have come to take me home. I just remember feeling so alone. I also felt so good that I made my father happy. There wasn’t much I could do to get that feeling.”

Much like the experience with her parents, her compliance resulted only in the transient feeling of being loved. From day to day and perhaps minute to minute, Samantha could not depend on her parents for reliable and consistent loving feelings. How could she trust anyone to love her or want to be with her?

I learned that Samantha craved the feeling of being the good girl and feeling that her mother and father loved her: “There wasn’t much I could do that would make me feel my father loved me. It looked like he loved my brother, who he did things with and joked with. He didn’t talk with me much except when he would ask about mom and how she was doing. I could get wonderful, loving feelings from my mother. I knew just what to do. I’d come home early to be with her after school. I never brought friends home. I thought she’d be mad that I wasn’t totally there for her, but I also didn’t want them to see how she was. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t put it into words. What was so scary for me was I’d never know which mother I would encounter on any day. She could be funny and hug and love me, or depressed and silent and absent. I’d feel so abandoned and then helpless to figure out how to make her happy and get her back so she could love me.”

One day, Samantha came to her session looking agitated. She told me: “I need to tell you about something. This is the memory I can’t get out of my head. It’s excruciating.” She burst into sobs: “I was terrified every day that she would kill herself. She did. In my senior year, I was talking about going to the local college, and I felt she was upset with me. I don’t know if that’s true, but I was afraid I was abandoning her. I thought maybe she and my father would be mad that I might not still be able to watch over her. In February of my senior year, I came home on a cold, snowy day. She wasn’t in the kitchen, and I felt that scary feeling I always got when she was in the bedroom when I got home. I went upstairs to her room and I knew as soon as I opened the door. I can’t say any more.”

Samantha learned very early that her behavior could lead to terrifying consequences: In order to feel safe, it was required that she make her parents happy. The dread of making them unhappy created panic and terror. Her detached father gave her the feelings of being valued, loved, and connected only if she played her ascribed role of caring for her mother’s emotional life and keeping her alive. Her mother’s erratic and unpredictable emotional life made it difficult for Samantha to feel she had any ability to know, predictably, how to please her mother.

Samantha had no space to develop an identity other than “the daughter who pleases her parents.” Separation and individuation were not an option, as it was too dangerous to think about her own wishes, needs, and desires.

Ambivalent Anxious Attachment

Samantha’s inability to make satisfying attachments to the people in her life mirrored her early attachments in her family. Perhaps the best categorization of Samantha’s attachment style is “ambivalent anxious attachment.” In this kind of attachment, the connection is characterized by mistrust and worry, but the need for the attachment is nevertheless intense. This pattern of attachment repeats itself in Samantha’s friendships and in her relationship with Marty. Even when wanting to say “no” to their wishes, desires, and perspectives, she always agreed. Much like the experience with her parents, her compliance resulted only in the transient feeling of being loved. From day to day and perhaps minute to minute, Samantha could not depend on her parents for reliable and consistent loving feelings. How could she trust anyone to love her or want to be with her?

Samantha has begun to understand how she repeats her early attachment style. She is learning to use thinking to override the terror and panic which emerge when she starts to feel that Marty is angry with her or a best friend doesn’t return texts or invite her to social events. This awareness is helping to diminish the degree of anxiety that occurs when she feels she’s being abandoned. She also is starting to see that her anger is evoked when she is suspicious about what people think of her and want from her.

Samantha is struggling. But she is committed to working at making changes in her patterns of attachment. As she alters her expectations and reactions to the people in her life, I expect they will respond to her in new ways. She has become increasingly able, in the moment, to consider that her assessments of her relationships based on historical responses are likely to need revision. As we continue to work, I believe she will continue to strengthen the power of her thinking so she can override acting on her feelings. Significantly, Samantha is developing a positive sense of self which can consider that she is making progress. She is.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

Father and adolescent child lie on bed, heads on their arms, having a conversationMaddy: “I hate myself. I’m just like my mother. She always bossed my father around and was so controlling with me and my brother. Now I do the same things with my husband and kids. I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from always telling them the right way to do everything. I’m her all over again.”

Frank: “I feel like a terrible person, no different than my father: so rational and unempathic. Ugh! I hated that about him; how can I be just like him? I don’t like myself when I’m that way, especially with my wife. I know it’s hurtful, but I don’t seem to be able to change.”

Ellen: “I can’t believe I’m doing to my son exactly what my mother did to me. She made me crazy with her anxiety, and now I’m doing that to him. He just graduated, and I insisted he go to a close-by college. I was so worried. I know that was selfish and not best for him. My mother’s worry always limited me. Why didn’t I stop myself from doing the same to him?”

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Maddy, Frank, and Ellen are bewildered when they find themselves repeating relationships with their parents that had a negative impact on them. Consciously, these behaviors feel unwanted and dysfunctional. They don’t wish to inflict the hurt and pain they experienced in their childhoods on their significant others. They recognize the repetition and seem puzzled and unable to understand why they feel helpless to stop.

Ambivalence About Giving up Repetitive ‘Bad’ Behaviors

Each of these individuals consciously expresses self-hate when they recognize they are hurting loved ones in the same way a significant other hurt them in childhood. They identify that their own hurtful behaviors make them feel like bad people, out of control and/or hopelessly mean. Yet they also express ambivalence about changing these behaviors. When we explore and try to make sense of their resistances to change, each person, in their own way, embraces the behaviors of the parent who offended.

Maddy: “I don’t want to be this way, but honestly, it’s hard to imagine giving up control. I really believe I do many things much better than my husband and kids. In the end, I think it’s to their advantage to do it my way.”

Frank: “I know I’m an awful person because it’s so hard for me to appreciate my wife’s feelings. But she’s so irrational. Really—does it make sense that she’s so beside herself when her friend gets annoyed with her? It drives me crazy. I know I should be more caring and understanding, but I really think she needs to get more control of herself.”

Ellen: “I know it’s selfish and wrong that I’m such a worrier and my son has become a worrier. But I’m relieved he’s extra careful and cautious in his life. He said he wanted to go away to college. But I know him, and in my heart I believe he was relieved when I said he had to go to a local school. I think he feels taken care of when I worry.”

These three individuals reflect about their actions in similar ways. Rationalizing, they believe their behaviors are acceptable. At the same time, they attack themselves for repeating with people they love in the present what was hurtful to them in the past. The contradictory notions about the effect of their behaviors make change difficult to embrace.

Even though they rationalize and describe positive outcomes from repeating the behaviors of their parents, they experience bad feelings about themselves when they hurt and create conflict with loved ones. More than experiencing themselves as hurting people they love, the idea that “I’m just like my parent” is anathema. The idea of being “just like my parents” is not simply the feeling of “similar to.” Rather, it feels like “I am my parent.” This unwanted and intolerable experience of self can interfere with feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem and can play a role in the development of anxiety and depression.

With the unending pushes and pulls (between rationalizing and self-attack) to both enact and avoid repeating these old family patterns, stuck-ness in the repetitions and conflicts is solidified.

The Role of the Unconscious

These folks are not aware of any unconscious dynamics that may be keeping them anchored to their untenable positions. But if change is to occur, an understanding of the role of the unconscious in resisting change and perpetuating early parent-child relationships is essential. The aim is to uncover the unconscious meanings of holding onto the status quo and how repeating these behaviors serves each person (even when, consciously, that doesn’t make sense to them).

I will focus on my work with Frank to describe how we explored and became familiar with his unconscious and how that helped him with his conflicts and the repetitions of his early father-son relationship.

When Frank walked into my office, I sensed a man in conflict. He was assertive and self-assured but also vulnerable and defensive. He came into therapy concerned he wasn’t cut out for marriage but wanted to work on making the marriage work.

“I love my son,” he told me. “I suppose I love my wife, too, but I don’t know about me and marriage. If only for my son, I want to make it work. It’s hard to think of her needs. I get contemptuous when she doesn’t do or see things my way. I can be mean. I hate that it makes me feel just like my father. I could never do anything right—right meant doing it his way. He was a bully. I don’t do that with my son. But I bully my wife and I can be condescending with my colleagues at work. I feel horrible when I behave like my father. He made me feel like I was nothing, and now I keep doing it to others.”

If change is to occur, an understanding of the role of the unconscious in resisting change and perpetuating early parent-child relationships is essential. The aim is to uncover the unconscious meanings of holding onto the status quo and how repeating these behaviors serves each person (even when, consciously, that doesn’t make sense to them).

Frank and I spent many sessions talking about his relationship with his father. He was close to his mother, who was also bullied and couldn’t protect him from the onslaught of demeaning and destructive behaviors he encountered. Frank had some ideas about how, because of his father, he became tough and resilient:

“I probably was about 6 and I remember telling myself I would never let him get to me. I’d never cry or give him the satisfaction that he hurt me. I never asked for anything. I left home when I graduated high school and moved to another state. I stayed in touch with my mother, who would always talk about my father. I guess I stayed curious about him. I hated him, but I never stopped wishing he would be nice to me or give me the feeling he cared. On one rare visit, I told him I was doing really well and was getting a CPA, but he didn’t say much. [Sigh.] I wish I could have made an impression on him. He died right after I got my CPA. I hate to admit it, but I never stopped wanting him to be my dad. It’s too late now.”

Frank and I became aware of how conflicted his relationship with his father was. He hated him but appreciated how his behavior drove him to seek recognition by becoming strong, independent, and ambitious. Fundamentally, Frank’s strongest feelings resided in his abiding wish for his father to “be my dad.”

When I asked Frank what “being my dad” meant to him, he was thoughtful, then tearful: “I wish he was a dad like I am. My son knows I love him. I listen to him, praise him, show him affection. I play with him. He knows how important he is to me. I never had any of that.”

The more we talked about Frank and his father, the more in touch Frank became with his longing for a father—a dad. We puzzled over what made it difficult for Frank to let go of the hated father in him. Frank began to wonder: “You and I talk about my unconscious. Maybe my unconscious believes if I hold onto my hated father long enough, I’ll get the dad I so badly want. With my son, I’m not my father, I’m a dad. Now maybe I have to let go of the father in my unconscious and be the ‘dad’ with the people I care about in the world. I sort of get that I’m struggling with this, but I don’t know how to pull it off. Maybe if I could be more of a loving dad with the people in my life, I could let go of the bad dad inside me. Then I might feel better about myself and feel recognized and appreciated in the world. How do I get there?”

Frank was well on his way to getting there when he had the profound recognition of his holding onto his father as a way of trying to experience the dad he had longed for since early childhood. It is not unusual for repetitions of hurtful early parent-child relationships to be repeated in adulthood with the unconscious wish to transform a negative or hated significant other into the idealized parent that the adult continues to long for. The holding onto the destructive parent, by taking on the parental behaviors and repeating them as one’s own, feeds the unconscious wish for having the parent under one’s control, but it doesn’t provide the wished-for, idealized parent.

When one can recognize, as Frank did, that the perpetuation of the hurtful parent doesn’t and will not provide what was missed, it is easier to let go of the repetitions and embrace a more positive role model in one’s own behavior. As a result, more positive self-feelings emerge and facilitate more loving relationships.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

Young child sits on a bench looking down, arms crossed over chestSome people say they do not want to come out of therapy blaming their parents for everything. After all, their parents did the best they could at the time, especially with what they were given—so leave them out of it.

A therapist once told me that if you end therapy still angry at your parents, then you haven’t gone far enough.

Some people come to therapy with a lot of apparent, upfront anger toward mom and/or dad. Others are wary of saying anything negative about the people who raised them. Rarely does either of these versions of parents represent a full understanding of who they were or who they have become.

Seeing Your Parents as If You Are Still a Child

A major task in treatment is to understand who your parents were to you through how you saw them as a child. I know, you’re not still a child, but often we didn’t get to express those full-throttle feelings when we were kids. Luckily, we get to do so now—and it can be extraordinarily helpful to us as adults.

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As a child, perhaps you didn’t fully understand that a parent didn’t attend any of your baseball games because they had to work overtime in order to provide for you; you just experienced hurt and anger that they weren’t there. Your parent had a valid reason not to be there, but that doesn’t mean your feeling wasn’t also valid. As an adult (who may be missing your own child’s games because you have to work), there may be guilt on top of the anger and hurt you felt. Perhaps you’re ashamed you were ever upset. Seeing the situation through an adult lens, you think: “They were doing something for me, so how dare I be angry?”

Therapy says to let yourself be angry. Feel the anger. Feel it deeply. This way, you don’t squelch it and have it come out somewhere else, perhaps in passive-aggressive remarks to your own children; over-emphasizing every game, play, and recital your kids have; or avoiding conversations with your parents for fear you’ll “lose it” with them. Consequently, you don’t wind up judging yourself for having those reactions.

Attachment Style Without Logic

You also had an understanding of your parents pre-verbal memory. Did they come when you cried? Maybe they did most of the time, maybe they weren’t very quick about it, or maybe they never left you. You were an infant, so you didn’t know they were also taking care of a sibling, going to the bathroom, heating up your bottle, or just needing a rest. Attachment theory shows us that these early experiences, apart from the logical reasons behind them, matter a lot for us now.

Therapy says to let yourself be angry. Feel the anger. Feel it deeply.

I want to reiterate that the object is not to blame your parents. It’s not to be mad and stay mad.

We do damage to ourselves when we refuse to fully express and feel our feelings. That’s not a license to punch someone, break things, or intentionally hurt someone’s feelings. Therapy is tailor-made for the space to express your deepest self. It’s a safe space to face fears of abandonment, retaliation, or ungratefulness, any of which (and more) your therapist should be trained to be on the lookout for and provide an alternative to.

You may have felt any number of difficult feelings toward even the most loving, present, and available parent. Those feelings, your feelings, are valuable. And they’re not going to just go away.

So if it’s hate you felt, express it. So you can love even more deeply.

Standing child looks out of window, hands on glass“It’s like a mother: when the baby is crying,
she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms.
Your pain, your anxiety is your baby.
You have to take care of it.
You have to go back to yourself,
to recognize the suffering in you.
Embrace the suffering, and you get a relief.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s some part in all of us that yearns to belong. This is our safety, our security. It means we can relax, that others are there to hold us, cherish us, praise us, and keep guard when we cannot. It means we matter.

When we’ve experienced a single relational disconnection, we generally recover. When it becomes a pattern—when someone who is “supposed to be there” for us finds ways to disengage or disappear on a daily basis—recovery feels intangible and unattainable. We make decisions about the self, saying, “I’m not wanted. I must be flawed.”

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Anxious Attachment Says: ‘You’re Not Giving Me Enough’

Those landing on the anxious side of attachment are often aware they are seeking others as a way to regulate their overwhelm. They may feel “clingy.” When living in this mode, many feel easily rejected or abandoned, becoming angry when partners fail to live up to perceived expectations. On guard, attuned to signs of others leaving, they easily fall into internal panic, exhibiting protest behaviors in often futile attempts to elicit caring responses. They may guilt or blame partners into submission, choosing to argue (and continue arguing) because it feels better than no connection at all, because preoccupation allows no other choice.

Many in this mode give up their own desires in attempts to win their partner’s approval, placing survival needs over authenticity. The “real” identity of their partner is often less relevant than the fact the partner presents as available just often enough for the preoccupied one to maintain an illusion of love. This can leave their partners feeling like disposable place-keepers, while for the anxious one, self-justification creates a paradoxical argument: “I would not put this much effort into someone who was not ‘the one.’ ”

Some have referred to this as “fantasy bonding”—in love with the idea of the person, often ignoring uncomfortable parts.

Many anxiously attached individuals recognize—in calmer moments, after the fact—they’ve been so involved with their own discomfort and dysregulation that they failed to catch unspoken emotional cues from partners that might have led to feelings of mutual connection and intimacy.

Anxious Relationship with the Self

Sometimes the panic itself becomes the enemy, and the anxious person develops strategies to hide or contain it, saying, “If others see this panic, they will leave me.” This message itself perpetuates internal conflict—self against self—amplifying pain as internal parts polarize.

While many, trapped in anxiety, function excessively in the presence of others (which can be perceived by others as demanding), when alone they may find tasks difficult to complete. Sometimes, in the absence of constant reassurance, they find their motivation dissolved. They may recognize an absence of perceived selfhood when not in the presence of another.

As familiar as the relational desperation becomes, they may find that when real intimacy is offered, they do not know how to be with it. It may fall flat. They may tell themselves they are just bored. They might distract themselves from it or sabotage it. It invokes too much shame, bringing to awareness parts of the self that they do not know how to meet.

Origins of Anxious Attachment

Many theories describe the creation of anxious attachment, citing both nature and nurture. One of the foremost frames the caregiver as someone overwhelmed by their child’s emotion. It might be a parent who appreciates or loves the baby while also feeling out of sync, helpless, as if there is no way to calm the baby. This is an unfortunate misattunement or inaccurate empathy. The baby, of course, gets more attention when crying, thus training it to use tantrums as a primary way to elicit attention and meet its security needs.

Another theory, one that could work in conjunction with the above: the caregiver who carries abandonment wounds actively (even subconsciously) creates dependence in their child, ensuring the child will need them and remain with them. The child of this parenting strategy is thus trained to remain a child, to take a dependent role in intimate relationships in order to get needs met.

Anxious Attachment in Conflict

Those on the anxious side of attachment fight in and for relationship, feeling incapable of calming until another person meets their needs for assurance. This often leads to long-term deterioration of the relationship as their partners learn to distance, placate, and resent rather than pursue seemingly endless conflict. This withdrawal by partners may perpetuate negative beliefs: “They are trying to leave me. I am not lovable. I have to make my emotion bigger to get a response.”

Open Letter from the Avoidant to the Anxiously Attached

I see your panic. I hear it in your breathing, your sighs, your many signs and gestures—the ones meant to elicit attention from me. I resent you in this mood because it means I lose a partner and gain a child. I become the parent. I become your “fix.” In your panic, my existence is no longer mine. I’m no longer free, whole, separate from you. With nobody in you to meet me, I am trapped and alone.

Your dependence becomes a weight for me to carry. It’s like a child in you with nowhere to go. Sometimes it feels like an insatiable bully, entitled, demanding I care for it. But it has no sense of time, and I could meet it for hours, resenting you each minute. And nothing changes.

I want to be loved, not needed.

Part of me also yearns to be taken care of.

Therapy for the Anxious: Bonding with the Self

In moments of interpersonal conflict, many of us switch to younger states. We disconnect from present-day resources, reacting not to partners but to parents. Even with adult partners, we return to perceptions, expectations, and strategies learned at an early age. We become the child in the empty room, feeling ourselves empty until it fills once again. Or we become the child playing in our room, safe, away from the needs or threats of others throughout the house, hoping no one comes to the door.

Invariably, in order to heal and decrease dependence on others, those on the anxious end of the spectrum will find themselves exploring ways to build an internal support structure—some part of the self that remains strong, dependable, unthreatened by intense emotion. This might be framed as “self-validation” or as an “internal parent.”

In the beginning, though, they naturally seek others—friends, partners, and therapists—to provide this support, validation, and witnessing. “This isn’t the way life is supposed to be,” they may say. “We are supposed to be able to depend on others.”

Some may recognize a resentment of the therapy work, even a shame in it. They may view self-sufficiency or self-soothing as a secondary strategy, only used when one fails to belong in the world. They may feel conflict internally and with their therapist, feeling blamed while also feeling victimized in relationship: “I’m the one who feels so devastated when people leave me. Yet you’re saying I play a part in that.”

Another Way to Frame Anxious Attachment

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

It’s hard to take ownership of the child inside, noticing that it reaches out to make demands of others—a natural next step when it finds no internal caregiver available.

There’s a message often internalized in childhood: the unspoken message from a parent saying, “I can’t handle this child! Let someone else take care of it.” It’s a message repeated internally when emotion is high, when the old state is triggered. Many in therapy eventually realize they actually hate the child in them. They hand this emotional part of the self out to others, saying to friends, families, and partners: “I can’t handle this child in me! It’s too much! You take care of it.”

It’s important to begin separating parts in this way, to speak of each in third person, to gradually hear the dialogue already occurring between them. This is differentiation, and it is a necessary component of self-soothing. We cannot witness a part when we are that part. It requires some distance. Effective witnessing requires the development of an internal “other.”

Developing internal parts is something most of us have already done many times throughout life. We’ve developed internal guards and gatekeepers—judges, parents. These are the parts that judge and contain us today.

We can also develop an internal witness—one that does not judge, is not threatened by any emotion, does not attack, pull away, pity, analyze, or try to fix. One that meets us with empathy and compassion to witness our pains and joys in the ways we always wished an other would.

An intentionally developed part is just as valid as the parts that developed automatically in life. The compassion and affirmation we can give ourselves is just as real and valid as the internal abuse we already trust. It’s all internal dialogue between parts of the self. In therapy, we are just making that dialogue more conscious and intentional.

Certain therapeutic approaches, such as Hakomi and Internal Family Systems, work precisely to create an internal environment of acceptance and unity, facilitating integration through differentiation of parts.

Some Final Points and Considerations

References:

  1. Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love. New York: Oxford University Press.
  2. Kinnison, J. (2014). Type: Anxious-Preoccupied. Retrieved from https://jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/type-anxious-preoccupied
  3. Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find- and keep -love. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

GoodTherapy | Mothers and Adult Daughters: The Pushes and Pulls of ContactWhen Mommy’s little girl grows up and goes off into the world to have her own life, struggles with issues of separation and difference may occur. Eye rolls, hugs, tugs-of-war, and tears are familiar to those who have witnessed or participated in mother-daughter relationships. Frequently, in this new phase of their relationship, mother and daughter are unprepared to deal with their differing needs for the amount, form, and content of contact. Moreover, the impact of physical separation between mother and daughter is affected by the degree to which each needs to feel connected, or to not feel rejected or disconnected.

When adult children desire to individuate and develop autonomy, they may struggle to trust their choices and may fear being unable to withstand mom’s influence. Often, to avoid feelings of criticism or incompetence, the daughter will pull away. (These may be the daughter’s feelings and may not reflect the reality that mom feels critical or entitled to continue her earlier, authoritative role.)

From early childhood, mothers and daughters tend to identify with each other. As the daughter moves into adulthood, both may have difficulty with the daughter’s developing an identity that differs from a past shared view of being alike. For some mothers, this can be experienced as a rejection of the mother’s character, worldview, values, opinions, etc. Daughters may have a similar experience. Although we typically think of the daughter needing to pull away from mom to individuate, some daughters who are ambivalent about developing a separate life and sense of self may find they are being pushed by a worried mom to do so. These mothers may try to influence what they see as necessary individuation by reducing the amount and nature of contact with their daughters.

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When Daughter Wants More Contact

Maggie began therapy at the age of 26 when her mother told her she didn’t think it was good for them to speak every day. She said Maggie should talk to someone to help her feel more confident and self-assured. Maggie sounded irritated when she told me she didn’t really want to be in therapy:

“I don’t see why I need a therapist. My mother has always been the one in my life who’s made me feel good about myself. She reassures me. I know my biggest issue is I wish I had a boyfriend. I know mom thinks I’m smart and cute and there is no reason for me not to find a man. I’m not so optimistic. There’s something about me that I can’t seem to find a relationship that works. It’s true; I don’t feel so good about myself. But if Mom hasn’t succeeded in helping me, I don’t know what you can do.”

I asked Maggie why she thought her mother wanted her in therapy. Maggie began to cry and barely managed to speak:

“This has never happened before. I guess I’m upset with Mom. How can she do this to me? I tell Mom everything. I rely on her for everything. She’s always there for me. Lately, she’s been pulling back. I feel so rejected. I don’t know what’s going on. She tells me I need to learn to rely on myself and trust myself. How can I do that if she rejects me? Doesn’t she know I need her input? I feel so abandoned. How can therapy help me? I just need my mother back.”

When you are the same or one, the relationship is symbiotic, with no space between the two. When you are two separate, distinct people, there is a space within which each can attach to the other. That may be the best contact of all.

Maggie and her mother had rarely experienced conflict:

“I always felt we were on the same page about things. She had great ideas and I was happy to do what she suggested. I took up piano, which we both love, and went to her alma mater when I decided on a college. I enjoy making her happy. I always feel safe that she knows what’s right for me. Now she seems to be telling me that what’s right is to be more on my own, have my own ideas. I do have ideas. They just happen to be the same as her ideas. How would I know what other ideas to have?”

Maggie decided to work with me and see if I could help her sort out her feelings about being more separate from her mother. She is beginning to realize she felt good as long as she was living the life her mother valued. She hadn’t recognized that she was so used to looking to her mother for guidelines for living, she paid little or no attention to her own wishes and desires. In fact, when we started working together, Maggie had no concept of her own unique needs, separate from what her mother believed would be good for her. The notion of differences between them was not part of her thinking or feeling.

Maggie has begun to think about how her reliance on her mother has limited her by preventing her from developing herself through her relationship to the world. She is considering that her mother may believe she had interfered with Maggie’s ability to individuate and was pushing Maggie away not to reject her, but so she could develop her sense of self. The challenge for Maggie is to move beyond her mother’s wish for her to individuate, and choose to grow her own desires and develop the capacity to feel self-confident and derive self-esteem from a variety of experiences.

When Mother Wants More Contact

Susan was beside herself. Her 34-year-old daughter, Isabel, who lived in another state, just had her first baby and wanted Susan and her husband to wait a month before visiting their new grandson. Susan had been seeing me for three years when she came into her session overwhelmed with feelings:

“I can’t believe this. You know how I’ve been so excited about going to visit Isabel and the baby and helping out. I assumed she would need me as soon as the baby arrived. I know she can bristle when I give her my opinions or suggestions about things. But I figured she doesn’t know anything about babies, so this was going to be different. Finally, she would let me be a mother.”

I asked Susan why she thought Isabel wanted her to wait. Susan let out a huge sigh and responded:

“I guess I should have anticipated this. Since she left home for college, she’s been keeping me at a distance. When I worried about her in college, she would take forever to respond to my contacts. I remember explaining that it’s a mother’s job to be concerned and she told me it made her feel like I don’t think she can take care of herself and I need to stop. She was partly right. I still don’t think she knows how to be a mother to a newborn and should welcome my input. But I fooled myself about this. I suppose I need to feel like I’m valued as a mother, and I do get worried that she is too independent and will get herself into trouble.”

I reminded Susan that she has been talking with me for some time about how distressed she is about Isabel. When she first came to see me, she was overwhelmed with anxiety that Isabel was about to make a mistake and marry Jake. She was hurt and angry that she had been given no clue that the relationship had progressed to the point of engagement. I recalled that early in our work she had told me she didn’t know why Isabel kept her out of the loop on everything, and I reminded her that we have been looking at that question in our work. Then I asked, “What have you come to understand about this?”

Susan shook her head sadly. “I know, I know. Isabel has to live her own life. Jake turned out to be great. I have to remember that my anxiety about Isabel’s life is about my own needs to feel like a good mother. When she was younger, I felt we were two peas in a pod and I always knew exactly what was right for her. That made me feel like a good mom. Now, she has such a different life from mine that I don’t always know who she is or how to be her mom.”

I recognized how painful this was for Susan, who wanted to feel like a good mother and desirable grandmother. I thought it important to remind her that lately she has been doing a good job thinking about what Isabel wants and being less intrusive. I told her I knew it was difficult to wait for Isabel to ask her on rare occasions for advice. I also hypothesized that perhaps becoming a grandmother triggered her feelings of wanting to be a good mother/grandmother and she was reverting to old patterns of wanting to be involved on her terms, not Isabel’s.

Hopefully, Susan will have an opportunity when she visits Isabel to practice what is so difficult to do: not attempt to influence Isabel’s thoughts and feelings. She knows the more she can admire and recognize Isabel’s differences, the more likely Isabel will learn to see her as uncritical and not controlling. Susan is working on this.

When mom and her little girl spend their early years thinking of each other as the same, the daughter’s seeking to separate can become a painful process for both. If the daughter wants to remain the child and not venture into the grown-up world, the mother who sees this as problematic faces the dilemma of how to help launch her daughter without creating feelings of abandonment and rejection. When the mother finds separation painful, she has to learn how to give her daughter space so they can attach in a new way.

Mother and daughter ultimately have to understand that being separate and different, rather than the same and enmeshed, facilitates a stronger experience of attachment: When you are the same or one, the relationship is symbiotic, with no space between the two. When you are two separate, distinct people, there is a space within which each can attach to the other. That may be the best contact of all.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

hand heart shape love sunsetBeing in relationships is a natural and necessary part of life. Human beings are designed to form bonds with each other. In fact, a lack of healthy bonds with other people can cause a variety of symptoms, including depression, anxiety, addictive behaviors, and so on.

But if it’s so natural, why is it so difficult for many people to form healthy attachments? The relationship lessons that they have received in life may be at fault.

If you watch most small children, you will see that they are natural-born relationship seekers. On the playground, they will spot other children, rush up to them, stare them in the eyes, maybe even take their hands, and begin to play together. If they’re very small, they’ll just sit near each other, playing separately in the sand, separate but together.

It’s similar to dogs. Dogs are also social animals. When they see another dog, they want to engage. “Hello, you’re a dog. I’m a dog, too. Let’s get to know each other.” We can learn a lot from dogs.

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Infants seek out the eyes of everyone around them. Sometimes it feels like you’re being pulled in by powerful magnets, the intensity of their stare is so strong. “I see you. Do you see me?”

But then children grow up and stop being so unabashed about their desire to connect. Many adults still long for connection but have learned to hide their wanting.

Most of the knowledge that we’ve received about how to be in relationships comes from the ways in which our immediate families interacted. As children, we experienced how our families related to us—attentive, dismissive, or unpredictable. We observed how family members related to each other. We learned which emotions can be expressed and which are seemingly better off repressed. We learned strategies to get the love, attention, and connection we needed, or we learned to give up on getting those needs met.

Most of the knowledge that we’ve received about how to be in relationships comes from the ways in which our immediate families interacted.

If you want connection but avoid it; if there’s always a wedge between yourself and others because you’ve learned to hide your true feelings; if you repeat behaviors that result in people distancing themselves from you, it might just mean that you have more to learn. You may have had lousy teachers, a poor lesson plan, or come to the wrong conclusions about the meanings of the lessons.

Here is an example of a common misunderstanding:

Lesson: A person doesn’t love you.

Wrong answer No. 1: You are unworthy of his or her love.

Wrong answer No. 2: He or she is a bad person.

Possible correct answer No. 1: That person does not love you for reasons you may not be able to understand, and it may have nothing to do with you. It doesn’t mean he or she is a bad person.

Possible correct answer No. 2: You may have behaviors that cause others to distance themselves from you. It could be beneficial to learn about those behaviors so you can have more control over them. Those behaviors don’t mean you’re unworthy of love.

The lesson here is that it’s in our nature for people to love and be loved, but it can be a complicated one to learn. The first step is to forgive ourselves for our difficulties. The second step is to seek out new teachers and reexamine old conclusions. We may never be able to return to the open-eyed trust of our infancy, but we may be able to restore some of our natural ability to form relationships.

This is a gut-wrenching position you find yourself in. On the one hand, you’ve done some great work with this therapist and built a strong relationship with her; on the other hand, the work seems to have stalled because you are preoccupied with her potential departure. Should you stay or should you go?

It sounds like the therapeutic relationship is actually bringing out some of the relational issues you are working to address—fear of abandonment, distrust, and generally feeling unsafe. While it is deeply uncomfortable, and I in no way wish to minimize that, this can be a powerful way to work through these issues. The therapeutic relationship is different from any other relationship in large part because it is designed to serve the needs of one person—the person who sought therapy. You can raise the issues you are having in the relationship and deal with how they are affecting you, how they are connected to the past, how they are connected to other relationships in your life, and perhaps most importantly, how to heal from them. You do not need to be concerned with how your therapist is affected by this. If necessary, she can take care of herself through supervision and her own therapy. This relationship is 100% about you and your healing and growth.

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It seems like you are having a very difficult time engaging in this process because of the deep-seated fear you have of her taking another extended leave. Presumably, if she were to go on another maternity leave, there would be a period of time for the two of you to work on preparing for this. Maybe you could even have a joint session with your therapist and the therapist who would cover for her during the leave, so that you three could talk about where you are in treatment, how you could best be supported during the leave, and what could be worked on. While it would not be easy, this sort of process could really contribute to your healing.

Finally, while your therapist has acknowledged that she may not be the safest therapist for you due to potential maternity leaves, it seems important to acknowledge that there are no guarantees in therapy. There is no therapist on the planet who can promise, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he or she will be able to be there for you from the start of your work until you reach resolution. Illness, death, relocation, job change, and other issues can come up for anyone, including therapists, at any time. This is a frightening and painful truth about life, and this therapeutic relationship just might help you come to terms with that. I suspect that would be deeply liberating for you.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Wow. It sounds like you feel like you’ve really had the rug pulled out from under you. It’s certainly understandable; you’ve had daily contact for three years and it has suddenly ceased. The sense of loss you are feeling is likely compounded by how literally life-saving this communication was for you. The absence of it seems to have left you feeling very alone in dealing with a tremendous amount of anxiety. You indicated that your therapist believes that you are ready for this, so I’m wondering if the two of you have discussed the possibility of this uptick in anxiety and created a plan for handling it. If not, it might be helpful to spend some time talking about this in session. While it might very well be time to eliminate this particular source of support, it makes sense to have some strategies in place to fill this void.

The therapeutic relationship that forms between a client and a therapist is a very special and unique relationship. It is healing and powerful and not at all a fantasy. From what you have said, I feel confident that your therapist does care very much about you—daily emails for three years certainly provide supporting evidence. While you did not conjure up a fantastical relationship where none actually existed, you experienced a heightened version of this already unique relationship. The therapeutic relationship is different from any other kind of relationship, in part, because it is so one-sided. The relationship is designed for the sole purpose of helping the client. Because you were suicidal, you needed even more from your therapist than someone who was not suicidal, and you got more in the form of daily emails. Now that you have made so much progress and the suicidality has abated, your therapist has eliminated the additional support that was needed to get you to where you are today.

Finally, you mention this change in the relationship is tapping into some abandonment issues. While it certainly doesn’t feel like it now, this could be a wonderful opportunity. You see, your therapist has not abandoned you; she is still there for your weekly Monday sessions. She is still there to help you through this transition, and she is still there to help you process the issues of abandonment that this is bringing up for you. Because you have faced so much abandonment in the past, you might see it in the present where it doesn’t really exist. I wouldn’t be surprised if exploring this with your therapist and coming to terms with it is one of the final steps in healing from the abandonment in your past.

Sincerely,
Sarah

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