Childhood Early Attachment Problems

[ms spock]

I know, @Russ! I am very, very lucky to have the people, here, on this forum!

 

[Weemie]

for me, attachment is more or less how one responds to affection and love, or how one seeks out affection and love. if you are abused in childhood, neglected, adopted, i think that can interrupt the general smooth process of bonding properly with your caregivers, and that can cause attachment problems.

the only form of attachment style that ever made sense to me and applied specifically to my life, is reactive. there are 2 types of reactive attachments, inhibited and disinhibited, but most people who are reactive tend to have traits of both.

when i was a kid i was very disinhibited, as i have gotten older i have become much more inhibited. disinhibited attachment is where you attempt to find affection from any available individual, or you are extremely affectionate with any available individual (most often adults or authority figures), and is very attention seeking. inhibited is where you do not seek comfort from adults or authority figures or mentors at all especially when you are distressed. both forms have very poor emotional regulation, from being hyper-emotive to completely unemotional.

most of this shows up in the dsm under reactive attachment disorder, but i think that many people who have complex trauma can have traits of this. in my experience, they do. i found learning about reactive attachment very helpful for me, just to conceptualize the way i react to affection and authority, and how i have reacted in the past. even though i was never diagnosed with anything and probably wouldn't be, since it excludes any other neurodevelopmental disorder.

 

[Kintsugi]

@lightraze That was very informative. I will be bringing that style up to my T. That really sounds like me!

 

[Flower Power]

Lack of attachment is definitely something that has come up for me. Letting go of the perpetual chase I was stuck in to get "seen and approved" by my narcissistic mother, I was finally left with the understanding that the problem was that there wasn't a relationship there in the first place. It was all based on this chase, and her withholding, or just her inability to give anything to her children emotionally. It left me feeling totally invisible to the world and more comfortable with isolation than running around playing out the familiar chase theme of trying to get someone to see me so that I would have value and would know that I existed. When the parental mirror is missing the child looks into a void and finds nothing, not even themselves, nor any one else. Relationships are tremendously difficult and hard. I do have one successful relationship with my husband but everything else is very surface. I crave more but I catch myself just fading away back to isolating or I am frightened too much to even get started if certain warning bells go off related to the person's personality traits. There is a definite huge void in my life being that my family members all are caught up in this "aggressive protection of self and eat the other person first type of relating" that has put all of us in separate rooms from each other with no real relationship between siblings. Mother had none with us and she made sure we had none with any one else. And relatives from her side of the family, "Are hers and not ours." It is extremely isolating and always has been never being able to depend on someone being there, you stop believing there could be and I just gave up. I settle for associations and have learned to entertain myself with arts and crafts, all activities that I can do alone with no outside input. "Often times I wonder what others see? Do they believe that I am awful and not someone they would even want to know? The older you get the more people are in their own worlds, with their own families. My world is very small. My husband and animals and no children. Lack of attachment and attachment issues suck.

 

[ms spock]

Lack of attachment is definitely something that has come up for me.

***nods***

Letting go of the perpetual chase I was stuck in to get "seen and approved" by my narcissistic mother,

I wish that I could do this. I am so stuck with projecting my parents on to people and reenacting the trauma in terms of trying to get their love, care, approval and so forth. I freeze and I fawn.

I was finally left with the understanding that the problem was that there wasn't a relationship there in the first place. It was all based on this chase, and her withholding, or just her inability to give anything to her children emotionally.

I really never ever got this. This is a really interesting insight for me. I am stuck in the perpetual chase.

It left me feeling totally invisible to the world and more comfortable with isolation than running around playing out the familiar chase theme of trying to get someone to see me so that I would have value and would know that I existed.

I am stuck in the perpetual chase to try to get people to see me so I will have value and know I exist. I am so stuck in this.

When the parental mirror is missing the child looks into a void and finds nothing, not even themselves, nor any one else.

I struggle with this. On top of all the trauma/abuse etc at home then I got psychologists that were just the same and preyed off me.:cry::cry::cry:

... with no real relationship between siblings. Mother had none with us and she made sure we had none with any one else.

My mother to a T.:cautious:

Lack of attachment and attachment issues suck.

They sure do.

 

[Chava]

I was finally left with the understanding that the problem was that there wasn't a relationship there in the first place. It was all based on this chase, and her withholding, or just her inability to give anything to her children emotionally. It left me feeling totally invisible to the world and more comfortable with isolation

I relate so much to all of this (and my mom was physically abusive, but I still wanted to be close sometimes but couldn't...she never knew me, and she was incredibly icy on her good days). I feel invisible a lot and don't have really any close connections or friendships. I'm lonely but also feel okay with not ever having a family of my own. It's like I barely have the desire or the language for creating close connections.

 

[RussH]

My attachment problems are with making friends. I don't ever know if they actually want me around, or if they really consider me a friend.
I want to have good friends, but just never seem to make the connection for some reason

 

[Flower Power]

It has been a struggle. At this point I know longer deal with my Mother or my two sisters. I do still help take care of my disabled father though. He apologized many years ago for the part he played in escalating the trauma with his blaming and condemning attitude when I was teen. I still have a lot of alone time which is okay. I had a major episode with a church group a few months back and it brought all this "searching for approval to a head" because I was confronted with they do not understand PTSD, they reject therapy as a whole because all you are supposed to need is Christ or you are just wrong for that too. After crashing and burning and then supporting myself in writing I finally had to draw a very necessary line in the sand as to who I was going to let determine whether I was ok or not. And that no one was going to make me wrong for seeking and receiving the help that I needed for the trauma I have endured in this life most other people would have said sionara a long time ago. So I through faith, I decided that only God has that right, and that what I had been doing so long was making everyone else my God irregardless of how ignorant, backwoods, prejudicial, right wing, and screwed up they might be, and letting them have the power over how I viewed me versus what "God" actually says in the Bible. I finally feel like I have some distance from that behavior now.. I always saw myself as the duck who runs around asking everyone if they are it's mother. That is what I was doing, instead of just accepting that I had no nurturers in my life, no "Mother or Father" to comfort me, and mirror my ok-ness. It was now totally my job to nurture, protect, love and have compassion on that little girl inside of me who never got it in real life.

 

[ms spock]

I so fear abandonment and so my poor attachment style means I freeze, fawn and try too hard with people. I give myself and my power away.

 

[Chava]

the only form of attachment style that ever made sense to me and applied specifically to my life, is reactive. there are 2 types of reactive attachments, inhibited and disinhibited

Attachment styles, in general, refer to "secure" or "insecure" (and insecure being avoidant, fearful, disorganized). Reactive attachment is a disorder diagnosed only in children. But I relate to this too (much more so inhibited). I've tried to find what this means for adults and it's not clear because the diagnosis is for kids, like personality disorder diagnosis are for adults. But somewhere I read about reactive attachment disinhibited sometimes becoming BPD, while inhibited becoming more like Avoidant, schizoid, or anti-social personality disorders (I have traits of both BPD and Avoidant PD, but never have been diagnosed with either). I definitely have an avoidant attachment style. I feel unlovable and don't know how to connect and sustain faith in my efforts or faith in relationships. They all fizzle out. When distressed, I absolutely retreat and isolate.

Some trauma experts, like Van der Kolk and Laurence Heller, see a possible diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder as encompassing the mixture of complex trauma and attachment symptoms seen in those who have come from abusive or otherwise traumatizing childhood situations. Like you say, there is often overlap. For the sake of diagnosis and treatment, I hope it gets a little more sorted out soon.

 

[Weemie]

Yeah, that is the rub, innit?

It's a disorder, a severe one, that's only diagnosed in children. Yet, there are threads that wind down and down and down... we really do not understand all there is to know about development in this day and age.

Someday, I'm confident we will master it all.

(For the sake of curiosity, I have fit every criteria of schizoid PD since I was 15.)

 

[Stickler]

I fear the people I love, because by loving them I hand them the power to destroy me.