By Brynn Barry, LPC
Attachment trauma is a term used to describe emotional and psychological wounds that result from disrupted or unhealthy attachment experiences. These experiences can significantly affect an individual's ability to form and maintain healthy relationships throughout their life. Often, attachment trauma begins in childhood and play out in adult relationships.
What is Attachment Trauma?
Attachment trauma typically stems from adverse childhood experiences, such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, or inconsistent caregiving. More subtly, it can also be caused by emotionally unavailable or invalidating caregivers who fail to understand their children. These experiences can create deep-seated fears and insecurities, leading to difficulties in trusting others and forming secure attachments in adulthood.
Secure and Insecure Attachment
Secure Attachment:
When caregivers are consistently responsive, loving, and supportive, individuals feel confident and self-assured. They have a positive view of themselves and others, trust easily, and can establish healthy, balanced relationships. They are comfortable with intimacy and independence, can effectively manage conflicts, and generally feel secure in their relationships.
Insecure Attachment:
When caregivers are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, invalidating, neglectful, or abusive, this leads to feelings of instability and anxiety.
There are three main types of insecure attachment: anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. All insecure attachment stems from an underlying or overt fear of abandonment and/or intimacy.
Anxious Attachment:
Fear of Abandonment: Individuals often feel insecure and worry about their partner’s love and commitment. This may present itself as an intense fear of abandonment, leading to overly dependent behavior and preoccupation with their partner.
Emotional Dysregulation: They may be needy, seek constant reassurance, and experience high levels of anxiety in relationships, causing difficulty with managing emotions.
Low Self-esteem: This attachment style can lead to low self-esteem and a constant need for validation. Individuals might struggle with feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness. They may endure abuse or unhealthy relationship dynamics in adulthood because they feel they are not worthy of a healthy relationship, or that their dating prospects are limited.
Unhealthy Conflict: Due to their fears and insecurities, people with anxious attachment might have a hard time navigating conflicts in relationships. They might avoid conflicts altogether or react strongly to perceived threats to the relationship.
Protest Behaviors: Anxious individuals use protest behaviors to re-establish contact or connection with a loved one, especially in the context of attachment. This may include excessive contact, attention-seeking, emotional withdrawal as punishment, inducing jealousy, anger and criticism, and playing hard to get.
Avoidant Attachment:
Overly Independent: Individuals value independence and may feel uncomfortable with closeness and emotional intimacy. They might distance themselves emotionally from their partners, friends, or family members, and fear dependency or vulnerability. While independence can be a strength, excessive self-reliance in avoidant individuals can isolate them from supportive relationships and hinder personal growth.
Distrust: Trust issues are common in people with avoidant attachment. They might have difficulty relying on others or believing that others are trustworthy and reliable.
Emotionally Unavailable: Those with avoidant attachment often suppress their emotions and avoid expressing feelings. This can lead to a lack of emotional connection with others and difficulties in understanding or empathizing with others' emotions.
Distancing Tactics: Avoidant individuals engage in distancing tactics to avoid emotional intimacy, including physical and emotional withdrawal or disengagement, substance misuse, becoming overly independent, avoiding commitment, minimizing issues to avoid conflict, fixating on past relationships, focusing on criticisms of their partner or the relationship, defensiveness when issues are addressed, and limiting communication to superficial topics or taking days to respond.
Disorganized Attachment:
Anxious and Avoidant Attachment: Individuals experience a mix of anxious and avoidant tendencies, often resulting from trauma or abuse. This combination of insecure attachment styles causes an individual to feel conflicting feelings in a relationship, including a desire for closeness and a fear of it at alternating or simultaneous times.
Emotional Dysregulation: They may exhibit unpredictable and erratic behavior, fear intimacy, and have difficulties managing emotions and relationships. They experience intense and fluctuating feelings, making it difficult for even them to understand or express their emotions clearly.
Unstable Sense of Self: Individuals may have a distorted or unstable sense of self, leading to issues with self-esteem and identity. They might find it challenging to trust their own perceptions and judgments.
Inconsistent/Contradictory Behaviors: Disorganized attachment can result in inconsistent or contradictory behaviors. For example, they might seek comfort from someone they also fear or distrust, leading to confusion and instability in relationships.
Mental Health Issues: There is a higher risk of mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and borderline personality disorder (BPD) in individuals with disorganized attachment.
Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: To manage the distress associated with disorganized attachment, individuals might develop maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as substance abuse, self-harm, or other risky behaviors.
Healing from Attachment Trauma
Recovery from attachment trauma is a gradual and complex process that often requires professional support from a counselor. The therapists at Desert Oak Counseling specialize in treating trauma and can help you achieve a secure attachment style.
Desert Oak Counseling, LLC
602-726-9997
Some of the goals of counseling include:
Process the Trauma: Acknowledging and working through traumatic experiences helps release painful emotions that are inhibiting healthy beliefs about attachment. By working through the trauma, you can develop more trust and experience less fear in relationships. Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most effective therapies for trauma, which is offered at Desert Oak Counseling. Learn about EMDR here
Change Insecure Thoughts: A therapist can help you explore the unhealthy thoughts and beliefs you have about relationships, as well as how this connects to childhood and adulthood experiences. As you become more aware of the origin of your thoughts, it also becomes easier to challenge and redirect distortions and projections on current relationships.
Increase Self-Worth: Trauma often affects self-worth and identity. Working through traumatic experiences can help individuals rebuild their self-esteem and develop a more positive self-image, leading to healthier boundaries and relationships.
Building Trust: Developing secure and trusting relationships with supportive individuals can provide a foundation for healing. Building and maintaining healthy relationships can reinforce positive attachment patterns.
Mindfulness and Grounding Techniques: Mindfulness practices can help individuals stay present and manage overwhelming emotions, as well as increase awareness of internal processes. Feeling judgmental toward insecure thoughts and emotions impedes progress, and mindfulness decreases judgment and attachment to the way we “should” think and feel.
Decrease Reactivity: As you improve self-awareness, self-compassion and mindfulness of insecure thoughts and emotions, it becomes easier to observe and validate your responses before reacting to them automatically. Your insecure thoughts were adaptive in the past. Now it is safe to rewire your reactions in the present if they no longer serve you.
Education and Awareness: Understanding attachment trauma and its effects can empower individuals to seek the help they need and make informed decisions about their healing journey.
Conclusion
Attachment trauma is a significant and often misunderstood aspect of mental health. By recognizing the signs and seeking appropriate support, individuals can embark on a path of healing and recovery, ultimately building healthier and more fulfilling relationships. If you or someone you know is struggling with attachment trauma, remember that help is available, and healing is possible.
Desert Oak Counseling, LLC
602-726-9997
contact admin@desertoakcounseling.com to schedule