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Attachment Strategies · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. We are going to be talking about some hard things this year, and we are just jumping right into it. But before we can talk about these hard pieces over the next few months, we really wanna make sure that we have some shared language with listeners to understand some of the concepts and things we'll be talking about. Those of you who are already in more advanced topics or who have been in therapy a while or who have already read all the things, you're gonna know some of this.
• 1:32
  That's okay. But we just wanna make sure the language is accessible and the concepts are accessible as possible as much as possible because they are hard. I don't mean intellectually difficult. I mean emotionally and relationally difficult. So at least for me, having the language and the cognitive background helps give a framework and something to hold on to when I'm having harder conversations about these topics.
• 2:06
  It is really, really challenging for me. I'm just speaking for myself. So the thing I wanna talk about today is attachment styles or what we now call attachment strategies. Because when we say it as a style, it sounds like it's a preference or the way we get dressed in the day, and that's not true. What it is is really the strategies we used as children to get the care that we needed from the caregiver who should be tending to us and providing attachment.
• 2:51
  So part of what is difficult about this is that we are not even necessarily talking about trauma specifically. We are talking about deprivation, which basically is the opposite of attachment. It is the good that is missing, right? So if trauma is the hard things that happen, deprivation is the good that's missing. I know that's oversimplifying things, but I just want us to all be on the same page as we go into these difficult conversations.
• 3:26
  So about half of the population, according to research, how they know this and whether that actually includes global research or all kinds of different populations, including marginalized populations, I can't tell. I'm still looking into that so that I can be more informed on that. But the research that I have at hand that I could find quickly and easily, which already indicates some level of privilege, I'm aware. But, generally, what they are saying is that between fifty and sixty five percent of people have a secure attachment style or strategy. This means that as children, people's caregivers were responsive to their signals and needs in a quick and sensitive and consistent way.
• 4:26
  So no delay in care, awareness of what the child is needing, and consistently responding to those needs. Because of this, the child becomes secure, explorative, and happy. So I want to point out that this is one of those places where our capacity for emotional expression and experience, our window of tolerance for emotions actually connects all the way back to attachment. That window of tolerance is actually indicative of the kind of attachment we have and the kind of parenting we experience. That is saying a lot.
• 5:19
  There's a whole conversation about this that we can't get into today, but I want to leave that information here just introduction. So I will be referencing that as we go, and you'll hear more about it later in the spring. With secure attachment, a person believes and trusts that their needs will be met. So remember, the left brain uses memory time experiences to predict safety and danger in now time and in the future. Your right brain cannot tell time and experiences all of it at once.
• 6:05
  Together, these different capacities of the left brain and right brain help us understand when we are safe and when we are in danger. Now that is also oversimplifying because really what we have is called neuroception, which is our body's capacity to respond to danger faster than we can think about it. This is why jump scares in a movie work because our body responds to danger faster than we can think. This is just a movie even when we already know it's a movie. Right?
• 6:50
  So all of that is how that is working together, and then it's the amygdala that signals off the danger alarm and everything cascades from there, which you can go back to Christine Forner's cascade of defense episodes or Dan Siegel's episode. We've talked about this lots at different times. Our different presentations we've done, you can listen to those things. But for now, we're going to focus on the attachment styles and strategies. About twenty percent of the population have avoidant attachment.
• 7:31
  This happens when the caregiver is distant or disengaged. So the child becomes not very explorative and emotionally distant because they already understand that their needs are not going to be met. So some of you have even emailed questions about this. How do you tell the difference between avoidant or anxious? Most of us with dissociation actually have both even if one is primary.
• 8:11
  That's what they call disorganized attachment, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But one of the distinctions here is with anxious attachment, they know they cannot rely on others to meet their needs. With avoidant attachment, they already know their needs are not going to be met, period. So it is a subtle and distinct difference. Anxious attachment is about ten to fifteen percent of the population, and it comes when the caregiver's responsiveness is inconsistent.
• 8:51
  So sometimes sensitive and responsive and sometimes neglectful. So that really becomes an intermittent reinforcement of care. Sometimes you'll get your needs met, sometimes you won't, but because it's not consistent, it's not reliable. With avoidant attachment, your needs aren't met at all, so you understand in kind of a learned helplessness way, your needs are just not going to be met. So avoidant attachment, distant, disengaged caregiver, emotionally distant child already understands their needs are not going to be met.
• 9:36
  Anxious attachment, inconsistent caregiver that is sometimes sensitive, sometimes neglectful, cannot rely on their needs being met. So that results in a child that is anxious, insecure, and sometimes angry. This makes sense because remember, anger is not a bad feeling. Anger informs us there has been an injustice, and being a child and not receiving care is the ultimate injustice. So having big feelings with anger, having littles who are angry, having different shirts that deal with anger is very common and entirely appropriate.
• 10:26
  It makes sense. We can get into that more later, but I'm just leaving that piece here for now. So then when we have been through both of these experiences, we may have disorganized attachment, which is only about ten percent of the population, most of us who dissociate. These caregivers are extreme, erratic. They may be frightened themselves or frightening.
• 11:04
  So we're talking about caregivers who are themselves afraid of the world. Maybe they are grieving. Maybe they are being abused. Maybe they are going through something where they themselves are afraid or unable to connect. They could also be frightening.
• 11:28
  So remember what we said about people with anger that's not tended to that can feel scary whether it's inside ourselves or someone else, or if there is if there is or if they are having fight responses because of current or past situations. So this is not necessarily about being disrespectful or blaming the caregiver. There can be all kinds of reasons that a caregiver is frightening, and we can have compassion on that. I know this is tricksy stuff because we often have different parts who are loyal to different parents. We wanna be respectful of all parts.
• 12:09
  You can be respectful of people. I know with religious trauma that comes into play a lot, being respectful of your elders, things like that. So I'm not trying to push that issue nor am I saying all parents are bad or that it's always the parent's fault. I am talking about caregiver who themselves are either frightened or frightening, resulting in erratic behavior or extreme behavior, or who are super passive or intrusive. So these sort of pendulum swings that could be trauma responses or situational or something going on with them with their own mental health or their own trauma story that is not tended to, if they have attachment wounds, which we will talk about in the next episode, then these pendulum swings can happen because there's untended stuff and it's raw.
• 13:09
  And when you step into an attachment wound, it hurts. So when there are these pendulum swings instead of consistent responsive care, then it leaves the child severely confused with no strategy at all to have their needs met because there's not a consistent response enough to be able to get their needs met. So this is why we're saying that disorganized attachment is maybe not the best name for it because it's not like you're disorganized like you can't get yourself together. It's really the caregiver who is disorganized. So it's not even it's kind of a gaslighting term in that way, really.
• 13:58
  What is happening with the child in the lived experience perspective is that the child is literally trying all the things. Whatever will work, I will try all of the things to receive care. So sometimes there's avoidance, sometimes there's anxious attachment. This is an effort at attunement. So if you go back to the still face video, those experiments where the baby's in the high chair and the mother is looking and turns around with the still face, the flat expression, and the baby tries different strategies to connect with the mom.
• 14:39
  When you cannot get a consistent strategy, you still need attunement to survive. So you attune by becoming misattuned with them. So it's almost like this unconsensual by default, we're going to agree in almost really a hypnotic trance logic kind of arrangement that we are going to be dismissive together or anxious together or avoidant together. So when I cannot get attunement from my caregiver in order to receive care, I will mirror what they are doing to me or not doing to me so that I can at least have attunement in process or experience. So if they are fighting and I mirror the fighting or if they are avoidant and I mirror the avoidance or they are anxious and I mirror the anxiousness.
• 15:44
  So none of like and remember, we are talking about children, so none of this is conscious. It is literally neurobiological responses to stay alive. So when the child has both anxious and avoidant attachment, that is called disorganized attachment. And that child will become depressed, angry, passive, or even nonresponsive. The shutdown happens here.
• 16:19
  Now here's why. Today, we are talking about attachment strategies, then we're going to talk about attachment wounds later this week, and then starting next week, we are going to talk about a very specific kind of disorganized attachment that relates to trauma and deprivation where the only way to experience attunement is to be as invisible as possible even unto identifying with our own existence ceasing. So by that, I mean, if I am an unwanted child, I will agree that I am unwanted. If I am an unloved child, I will agree that I am unlovable. Like, we internalize that rejection or whatever is going on with our parent, whether that is trauma or grief or anything else, we internalize that and then identify with it because it is the only way to get attunement from a caregiver.
• 17:44
  So if my caregiver cannot actually care for me, then I will get very good at not needing anything. If my caregiver does not want to see me, then I will get very good at being invisible. If my caregiver does not even want me to exist, I will get very good at not existing. And that ultimately looks like things like suicidality, ghost parts, parts that identify with death. That does not mean the person actually wants to not be alive.
• 18:31
  It means that to not be alive is the only way to receive care from the caregiver. Those are hard pieces. They're big pieces, and we're gonna spend a whole month talking about it. So that starts next week, and I just need you to know it's coming. Please pace yourself.
• 18:54
  Skip the episodes if you're not ready. That's okay. And it won't apply to everyone. That's also okay. And, also, it does apply to some of us, and so it's really important to talk about, but it's absolutely an advanced topic.
• 19:13
  For now, going back to attachment strategies. What this looks like in adulthood are people who have a whole continuum from low avoidance to high avoidance and a whole continuum of anxiety from low to high anxiety. If we make an intersection of this like a grid, like an x and y axis, then what we get are people with low avoidance and low anxiety that looks like secure attachment. People with low avoidance but high anxiety, that looks like anxious attachment. People with low anxiety and high avoidance, that is what avoidant strategy is.
• 20:14
  People with both high anxiety and high avoidance are the folks who use disorganized attachment strategy. Does that make sense? I know this is oversimplifying things, and we will be talking over the next month, year, seriously, about what we can do about it. But for now, for starting, I wanted to make sure we have some shared language about some of the terminology, some of the strategies, and some of the concepts that we're going to be digging into very, very deeply in coming weeks and months. I also thank you for your respect and patience as we deal with deeply traumatic material and really move into a new phase of processing things even for the podcast.
• 21:18
  For context, we started recording these episodes in the middle of summer of twenty twenty four. It's when we sort of stumbled into it in therapy and in training, and it has changed everything. So when we make the jokes about buckle up, put on your seat belt, We're not kidding. This is intense stuff. Please be gentle with you.
• 21:50
  Pace things as you need and care for yourself during and after these episodes, especially this year like never before. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com.
• 22:28
  We'll see you there.