To build on the notion of healing the inner-child, I want to write a little about attachment theory and the various challenges that this poses for individuals and for myself.

Simply put, attachment theory examines the pattern of relationship between a young child and his or her primary caregiver.  This theory has been developed and nuanced by several different scientists and psychologists — whether it is John Bowlby’s study of baby chimps who preferred to spend time with a fake mother covered in soft felt, rather than an alternate mother made of rough wire that held a bottle of milk for food — essentially nurturance and comfort over food.  Or more recently, and the study I want to expound on more here is Mary Ainsworth’s examination of attachment through the strange situation test.

In this study, a 1 year old infant and the primary caregiver (who had been observed several times over 6 months leading up to the study) were brought into a strange room (read: one that the child or caregiver had ever been in before… sometimes a stranger was even in the room to make the setting more unfamiliar).  The room was full of toys and items for the child to explore.  The caregiver was instructed to stand and be present, but not actively interact with the child.  After about 5 minutes, the mother was instructed to exit the room, thus leaving the child alone (or with a stranger!).  Then after 5 minutes, the mother re-entered the room.  During this entire interaction, the behaviors of this 1 year old child were observed.  The responses broke down into four main categories, which aligned with previously visible interaction patterns from the in-home observations.

Before launching into the categories, let me say just a little bit about memory and how interactional patterns from when we are only a couple years old may affect our behaviors even as adults.  The study of memory can be divided into implicit and explicit memory.  Explicit memories are what we often think of when we think of memories: autobiographical, concrete experiences at a specific time, place, etc.  For instance, I have an explicit memory of going cross-country skiing with several friends yesterday, and I can describe where I went, what it looked like, how the weather was.  I can similarly recall explicit memories from earlier in my childhood (sometimes with less detail) but still anchored in a concrete time and place.

Implicit memories, on the other hand, are more like templates that our brain encodes as shortcuts for interpreting the world and simplifying the conscious deductions that our brains need to make.  For example, when I see someone raise their hand in a classroom, I know what this signifies: they want to ask a question.  When I see someone raise their hand alongside a busy street full of traffic, I also know what this means: they are hailing a taxi (or maybe waving to someone across the street, but my brain will already interpret and translate this into a given meaning until proven otherwise). Different from explicit memories, I cannot locate this implicit memory in a specific time or place; I have no idea when I learned that raising your hand in class meant that you had a question.  But still, my brain leaps to this conclusion before I even have to consciously think about it.

This is the pathway by which our attachment style operates.  From a young age (this experiment was conducted with 1 year olds!), we internalize the interactional patterns between ourselves and our caregivers, which then lays the blueprint for what we expect and how we unconsciously act in our future relationships.  So how did the child react and how does this map out to future patterns?

The four categories are as follows:

Secure: children who fell into this category experienced consistently attuned attention at home.  What is that?  Essentially, the caregiver acts as a mirror for the child’s feelings, reflecting an making a face that conveys sadness when the child is sad, or registers intense emotion when the child is angry.

Importantly, this is not the same as making a “supportive” statement like “Don’t worry about it” and encouraging the child to not be sad, or becoming frustrated and angry when the child is angry.  These latter two examples are ways in which the caregiver actually imposes their own needs on the child (needing them to be happy or pushing against their anger by becoming angry — these types of behaviors are observed much more in children who fall into a different category – “insecure – ambivalent”).

Rather, for children who fall into the “secure” category, the scientists observed the caregiver reflecting and holding space for the sadness, making a sympathetic face and offering soft words like “ahhh, you’re sad”.  In this way, the child experiences a validation of their internal experience — this sadness is real, the anger is real.  They learn that “what is happening inside me is real” and by corollary, “I am real”.  And moreover, the people who care me can be relied upon to recognize and support me whatever I encounter.

So what did the “secure” child do in the Strange Situation test?  When first introduced to the room, the child quickly started exploring, rummaging through toys and checking out the room.  When, after a couple minutes, the caregiver left the room leaving the child alone, he or she became upset and cried.  When the caregiver returned, the child went to the caregiver, received the attuned attention acknowledging their fear or sadness, and were quickly soothed.  Once calm, they promptly returned to exploring the room.

Essentially, the child who believes that he or she is “real” and that “my caregiver can be relied upon as a secure base” is free to explore and is not greatly discombobulated by periods of uncertainty or fear.  The child is secure in his or her sense of worth and existence.

I know this may sound far-fetched, but it is hard to conceptualize what it must be like to be a 1-year old child before you have clearly defined notions of space and time.  At this point, everything you encounter is – to some extent – a reflection of you.  If your experience is that the world accurately mirrors the type of energy swirling inside of you, then the world would be a far less strange and scary place.  Life would have more continuity and predictability.  But let’s now see how this differs from another category.

Insecure-ambivalent: In this category, the scientists observed interactions between the mother and child that were frequently mis-attuned.  The mother would often try to offer attention — however the type of attention was more coercing the child to be a certain way than mirroring their emotions.  For example, when the child was feeling sad about failing on a test, the caregiver might say “don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal”.  Or, “stop crying, look at all the good things in your life”.

In these interactions, the message to the infant is that the emotions they feel are not important or real.  Essentially, he or she should feel differently.  Ultimately, this imparts an unconscious belief that “I am wrong” or “I am inadequate” — I am not the way I should be.

Moreover, because the child observes the mother offering attention – albeit misattuned attention – the child comes to the conclusion that the reason for this misattunement must be them.  Why else would I not be receiving the love that I desire?  I see my mother or father responding to me, so it must be something wrong with me that I feel this way.  Again, this follows from a more phenomenological (big word for: study of experience) look at an infant’s experience.  If there are less clear boundaries between self and other – in fact, if self and other are not distinguished at all — then when the world is consistently incongruent with my internal experience, it causes an existential wondering of my ability to know myself, or my sense that the world is safe and predictable.  Instead, he is uncertain about the predictability of his internal states and his external states.

Moreover, since everything is “me”, the reason that I have these feelings must be a fault of mine.  As such, the child is thrust into a supplicant position, constantly trying to make the world acknowledge his or her validity and worth.  He clings to the caregiver, trying to maximize the love he receives, trying to ensure that the world acknowledges his existence.

So what does this look like in terms of the Strange Situation test?

In this case, when the child and caregiver first enter the room, the child begins exploring but from the very beginning, is constantly checking back to see where the caregiver is — as if uncertain what to expect from the world.  When the mother leaves, the child is understandably upset, just like the secure child (being without a source of nurturance, even an inconsistent one, is scary).  However, when the caregiver returns, the child returns to the caregiver but is not easily soothed.  The child remains sad and scared far longer than the “securely attached” child.  Moreover, the insecure-ambivalent child does not want to leave the caregiver again.  For the remainder of the experiment, he or she stays close to the caregiver, not straying far to explore the room.

By way of summary for these findings from the “insecure-ambivalent” category, let’s look at the word “ambivalent”.  This is actually one of my favorite words because its’ meaning is far more nuanced than “not caring” which a lot of people assume it to be.  The word can break down into ambi-valence.  Ambi (as you may know from the word ambidextrous) means “both”; and valence (which you may have encounter in physics or chemistry) describes a force or attraction/repulsion.  So for something to have ambi-valence, it suggests an combination of opposing forces.

Let us now consider the child who is “insecure-ambivalent”. In this case, the child experiences the world as “ambi-valence”, simultaneously seeking love and connection, while also being repelled by the ways that the world does not mirror his or her internal experience.  In fact, the former attraction is strengthened by the latter incongruence — it is because the world is unpredictable and inconsistently affirming that the child feels drawn to seek validation.  In other words, the ingrained sense that “I am inadequate” leads one to constantly work to become adequate.  This  child is afraid and worried about losing sources of validation (clinging to the mother once she returns from her disappearance) and avoiding conflict and disagreement for fear of experiences that confirm the ingrained belief that “I am wrong”.  Or even more de-stabilizing, experiences that suggest that “I don’t matter” (essentially, a more concrete notion of the underlying, implicit fear that “I am not real” — the product of not being accurately mirrored at a young age). But this is not the only way that our natural system for seeking attachment and connection can go awry.

Insecure-Avoidant   In this category, caregivers were observed to be cold and distant, often unavailable or neglectful of the child.  It was not that the caregiver inaccurately mirrored the child’s emotions, or placed their own needs on the child, but rather, it was almost as if the child was not there.  This can occur through many different avenues. Sometimes a child might be raised in a single-parent household and there is little capacity for emotional warmth amidst the demands of providing for a family.  Sometimes, parents have experienced a lack of emotionality from their own parents and have internalized an aloof manner wherein closeness is avoided.  Regardless, the consistent theme is a sense of distance; a parent who rarely provides attention or validation — this parent doesn’t mirror the sadness or fear of a child who has failed a test (as in the case of secure attachment), nor do they tell the child that they should be happy for all the things they have (as in the case of insecure-ambivalence), rather this parent is likely to see the child sad and tell them to “figure it out” as they walk out of the room, or perhaps don’t even acknowledge that an emotion or need is being demonstrated, but rather continue going about there day as if nothing was happening.

In this vacuum of closeness and loving shows of emotion, the child internalizes the notion that “I am on my own in this world, I can count on myself and no one else”.  Because moments of emotion are met with a lack of response, the child moves towards a more independent position, wherein they pursue personal autonomy and avoid reliance on others.  The fact that the primary caregivers have often not met the needs of the child leads the child to avoid placing themselves in situations where they would be dependent on another.  Past experiences suggest that such dependence is likely met by disappointment or fear — suddenly finding one’s self alone in a difficult situation.

How does this look in terms of the strange situation test?

In this case, the child and mother enter the room together, and from the very beginning, the 1 year old begins exploring the room with no mind paid to the mother.  When the mother leaves the room, the child continues whatever he or she was doing, and when the mother returns, the child again acts as if nothing happened.  The child has disconnected from the natural attachment relationship, already separate at one year old.  It’s almost as if in Harlow’s monkey experiment, if the baby monkey only had a wire mother (and cloth was not an option), then the baby might scrounge around to find his own soft scraps and build a crib for himself.

Individuals with this attachment style – who’s implicit memory template for relationships suggests that “I am on own in the world” – often struggle to relinquish personal freedom.  After all, such an act would be foolish if your needs were not going to be met by the person to whom you relinquished personal freedom.  Often such people avoid commitment, instead continuing to keep options open.  There is a deep sense of conviction in one’s individuality — they are comfortable being different and balk at others’ suggestions or pressure to conform to a different way of being.

These traits obviously have many positive qualities when it comes to survival.  An insecure-avoidant individual will constantly be aware of their needs and ensure that they are taking the necessary steps to meet these needs.  These individuas are independent and capable of maintaining conviction in their choices even in the face of conflict.

However, the dark side of this style involves a fundamental distance from others.  Some people in this category describe the experience of “being with others” as somewhat dispassionate or dull.  Relationships are more an act of logic than a connection driven by feeling.  There is a tendency to react strongly to constrictions of freedom, often abruptly changing a situation to preserve personal autonomy.

Please note that this tendencies, while they may comprise the early template, do not preclude an individual from expanding beyond this way of being with another.  Though it does mean that continued awareness will need to be brought toward this desire to distance or flee, and the individual will likely need to reassure their “young self” that this situation is different than the past.

Finally, the category of Disorganized Attachment.

In interesting ways, this mirrors the “ambi-valence” of insecure avoidant attachment, but the origin of these contradictory responses is, to me, more tragic.

Disorganized attachment often results in the case of abuse — whether the child experiences direct abuse from caregivers, or is raised by someone working through their own abuse.  That said, experiencing an abusive environment is not a deterministic sentence of “Disorganized Attachment”.   A reader ought still to conclude their style based on their assessment of internal implicit memory templates.

Essentially, in this category, scientists observed patterns between the mother and child in which love was shown, but it was confused by the sporadic parental display of violence or dissociation.  In this case, the infant begins to recognize the caregiver as a source of danger.  Children are still drawn towards their caregiver — after all, attachment is hardwired into us (think again about the monkey seeking the cloth mother over the one that actually provided food for survival).

The experience of danger from a primary caregiver leads to a very fractured implicit template for relationships.  A child is often left with the internalized that “the world is a fundamentally dangerous or unpredictable place”.  Often this leads to difficulty in developing consistent relationships, and challenge crafted a coherent life narrative.  Individuals frequently dissociate or react very inconsistently themselves.

In the strange situation test, this manifesting in a startling response on behalf of the child.  The infant reacted similarly to others, exploring the room, but the main difference appeared upon the mother’s re-entry.  The infant, upon seeing the return of their attachment object, begins to crawl toward the mother, seeking love and connection, but then all of sudden freezes.  Inside the child, the amygdala – the smoke detector of the brain, charged with identifying threat and initiating survival mechanisms – has started screaming.  This person – toward whom the child was moving for love – has also been the source of danger.  Caught between these opposing forces of love and fear, the child freeze and then collapses, paralyzed by the opposing forces.

The work for someone in this category often involves learning how to regulate the nervous system, i.e. being able to ride through and calm down the waves of the amygdala when past fear is triggered.  Usually, there is also a need to process and integrate these past traumatic memories so they become more of a waypoint on the journey than a buried landmine ready to be triggered. Ultimately, an individual must be able to separate the past from the present — in my experience, this is achieved through both a cognitive and somatic healing process.

So, what do you think?  To offer practical steps, you might consider trying to identify your own attachment style based on your typical patterns of reaction in relationships and your nagging inner-voices.

Do you usually cut ties quickly in a relationship?  Or hang on, fearful of inciting conflict and hurt?  Do you have trouble feeling safe with others, often doubting whether a partner can really be trusted?

Try reading through these descriptions to identify your attachment style.  Or if you are really interested, you can find a mental health provide who conducts the Adult Attachment Inventory (AAI) — a protocol which can assess attachment style with a high degree of accuracy.

This is important information to know, because often adults who are assessed with the AAI and found to be of an insecure category, will pass on their attachment style to their children.  That is of course, unless they have done the work to “earn” secure attachment.  To earn this title, one must identify their style and do the work of overcoming those templates — and as you can see, it is different for every style.

Also, stay tuned for further articles unpacking the various challenges and growth areas of different attachment styles. I promise they won’t all be sooooo long!