3 Adapted Attachment Strategies
Before we talk about adapted attachment, remember, if there are areas or situations where we don’t experience security in our relational field, that’s normal based on our history, and there are ways we can return to a secure state—always.
An invitation to pause,
slow down, and deliberately
bolster shared safety.
This will help.
Security is part of our human neural wiring. Our brains came with the built-in capacity for nourishing relationships.
Now a lot of us, at least half, arrived in the world in more disastrous conditions than the people who grew up in a securely attached relational field.
A secure environment wasn’t available. The disaster may have been our caregivers’ lack of capacity based on how they were raised (it wasn’t their fault), or it may have been social or economic (also not their fault).
Perhaps work took a caregiver from us too much, and we were alone . . . that’s really a soft way of saying neglected. Neglect is more toxic for a young, developing brain than physical abuse.
Perhaps a traumatic accident, a medical procedure, poverty, death, divorce, addiction, or civil unrest set the stage that forced our brains to adapt and mask access to our innate attachment security.
We can be deeply loved, and our pro-social brains will still respond to neglect, criticism, rejection, abuse, and inconsistent or frightening caregiving like it’s trauma.
Trauma is a loss of connection.
Humans can be deeply loved, and our pro-social brains will still respond to neglect, criticism, rejection, abuse, and inconsistent or frightening caregiving like it’s trauma. Trauma is a loss of connection.
And a brain without connection strengthens synaptic pathways that anticipate more of the same to try to thwart future pain.
If we go back a couple decades, we can find well-meaning doctors who popularized devastating child-rearing theories. And it’s not their fault. Nobody had access to maps of the nervous system and the brain. We didn’t even understand Polyvagal Theory until the late 90s. Forget about interpersonal neurobiology.
So it horrifies us now, but back then leaving a baby to cry herself to sleep alone as she learned to “self soothe” seemed like an amazing exchange. It seemed like a few nights of agony for the return of peace. And best of all, we thought the child wouldn’t remember it.
We didn’t understand dissociation. Or implicit memory.
We didn’t understand we were sacrificing the health of the brain’s attachment system, leaving it no alternative other than to strategically hyper-activate or deactivate key systems.
Anyone have a mother who read Spock or Ferber?
We didn’t understand an undeveloped parasympathetic nervous system couldn’t interpret being left while distressed as anything other than abandonment.
We didn’t understand implicit memory’s dictate that those early feelings would remain alive, ever-present, and forever susceptible to awakening when that grown child considered relying on another and experienced foreboding abandonment.
. . .
Based on observable responses from caregivers, we can watch children develop three primary forms of adapted attachment.
- One style adapts to distressing caregiving by hyper-activating the exploratory system and deactivating the attachment system, the Explorer.
- Another hyper-activates attachment and inhibits the exploratory system, the Rescuer.
- The third style vacillates unpredictably and sometimes synonymously between those two responses, the Artist.
Our original, secure blueprint still lives beneath these adaptations, and as Diane Poole Heller says, we can all move back across the bridge to secure attachment.
The process of returning to our natural, secure attachment can feel like magic because turning toward another is always ultimately about turning toward ourselves.
Get started by discovering your attachment style (aka: love archetype) with this free quiz.
When our intention is to create a loving conversation, our lives become about finding the courage to turn toward each other.
An invitation to pause,
slow down, and deliberately
bolster shared safety.
This will help.
Security is part of our human neural wiring. Our brains came with the built-in capacity for nourishing relationships.
Now a lot of us, at least half, arrived in the world in more disastrous conditions than the people who grew up in a securely attached relational field.
A secure environment wasn’t available. The disaster may have been our caregivers’ lack of capacity based on how they were raised (it wasn’t their fault), or it may have been social or economic (also not their fault).
Perhaps work took a caregiver from us too much, and we were alone . . . that’s really a soft way of saying neglected. Neglect is more toxic for a young, developing brain than physical abuse.
Perhaps a traumatic accident, a medical procedure, poverty, death, divorce, addiction, or civil unrest set the stage that forced our brains to adapt and mask access to our innate attachment security.
We can be deeply loved, and our pro-social brains will still respond to neglect, criticism, rejection, abuse, and inconsistent or frightening caregiving like it’s trauma.
Trauma is a loss of connection.
Humans can be deeply loved, and our pro-social brains will still respond to neglect, criticism, rejection, abuse, and inconsistent or frightening caregiving like it’s trauma. Trauma is a loss of connection.
And a brain without connection strengthens synaptic pathways that anticipate more of the same to try to thwart future pain.
If we go back a couple decades, we can find well-meaning doctors who popularized devastating child-rearing theories. And it’s not their fault. Nobody had access to maps of the nervous system and the brain. We didn’t even understand Polyvagal Theory until the late 90s. Forget about interpersonal neurobiology.
So it horrifies us now, but back then leaving a baby to cry herself to sleep alone as she learned to “self soothe” seemed like an amazing exchange. It seemed like a few nights of agony for the return of peace. And best of all, we thought the child wouldn’t remember it.
We didn’t understand dissociation. Or implicit memory.
We didn’t understand we were sacrificing the health of the brain’s attachment system, leaving it no alternative other than to strategically hyper-activate or deactivate key systems.
Anyone have a mother who read Spock or Ferber?
We didn’t understand an undeveloped parasympathetic nervous system couldn’t interpret being left while distressed as anything other than abandonment.
We didn’t understand implicit memory’s dictate that those early feelings would remain alive, ever-present, and forever susceptible to awakening when that grown child considered relying on another and experienced foreboding abandonment.
. . .
Based on observable responses from caregivers, we can watch children develop three primary forms of adapted attachment.
- One style adapts to distressing caregiving by hyper-activating the exploratory system and deactivating the attachment system, the Explorer.
- Another hyper-activates attachment and inhibits the exploratory system, the Rescuer.
- The third style vacillates unpredictably and sometimes synonymously between those two responses, the Artist.
Our original, secure blueprint still lives beneath these adaptations, and we can re-open the door to our secure attachment.
The process of returning to our natural, secure attachment can feel like magic because turning toward a safe other is always about turning toward ourselves.
When our intention is to create a loving conversation, our lives become about finding the courage to turn toward each other.
