Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Fearful-Avoidant Attachment, The One You Get When Your Childhood Was Traumatic

Transcript

Fearful-Avoidant Attachment, The One You Get When Your Childhood Was Traumatic · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the doctor.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today, I'm going to be talking about fearful
• 0:10
  avoidant attachment, which is called disorganized attachment
• 0:13
  and kids and obviously you should have listened to my
• 0:18
  attachment Styles podcast by now so you can go back refer to that
• 0:22
  one. I did not include this
• 0:23
  attachment style because it's not as common as the other ones.
• 0:27
  It is mostly in abused kids and I will talk about how it
• 0:31
  manifests and what you could do about it right after Tell you to
• 0:35
  subscribe because next one, will be a subscriber.
• 0:38
  Only episode, I was going to make this one, a subscriber only
• 0:41
  episode, but I felt like this information should be for
• 0:45
  everybody because some people really are misclassifying
• 0:49
  themselves and that's why their therapy isn't really working.
• 0:53
  Not, every therapist can is aware of attachment Styles, and
• 0:58
  you also may be presenting real differently in therapy.
• 1:01
  Do you know compared to how you really are Etc.
• 1:04
  So if you're Somebody who likes to learn about themselves and
• 1:07
  your relationships are very difficult, and you struggle with
• 1:10
  self-esteem issues, then you need to listen to this one.
• 1:13
  My last subscriber only episode was about stay-at-home moms.
• 1:17
  And when doing when staying at home, with kids makes you feel
• 1:19
  more depressed. And the next one will be
• 1:22
  whatever I decide to talk about tomorrow.
• 1:25
  So please do subscribe and join my Facebook group to, which is
• 1:30
  where I get a lot of these topics from you could get more
• 1:32
  interaction with me and with other people that are Similar to
• 1:35
  yourself in that they like me. Alright.
• 1:39
  So fearful avoidant attachment when you do the strange
• 1:41
  situation that I talked about in the other podcast on attachment
• 1:47
  Styles which is subscribers. So you would have to subscribe
• 1:50
  to get that one. These kids act very strange like
• 1:54
  they act like they start to like cover their head and like rock
• 1:57
  or like just totally dissociate and they just don't act in any
• 2:01
  of the stereotypical ways of either the avoidant or the
• 2:04
  preoccupied. Babies, because they have
• 2:06
  learned to associate a parent with fear.
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  And this is a real sad situation, and thankfully, it's
• 2:14
  not that common for children to be badly, abused and neglected.
• 2:18
  It's not as common. Certainly as 4K just to be a
• 2:20
  little bit ignored sometimes and you know or two, I mean not
• 2:25
  that. That's not like bad to end up
• 2:27
  with an avoidant attachment style because a parent is kind
• 2:30
  of cold or to end up with a preoccupied attachment because
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  the parent isn't as always as warm as you I want but it's that
• 2:37
  stuff is not as bad as being abused and or neglected and a
• 2:42
  fearful avoidance style in adulthood looks like somebody
• 2:47
  with. So it can mask, it can be masked
• 2:50
  by either somebody who's more fearful who would look
• 2:54
  attachment, anxious, attachment, or more avoidant, who would act
• 2:59
  avoidant, kind of, but only, if you don't interrogate how they
• 3:03
  deeply feel about themselves. In the world.
• 3:06
  So, here's how you can tell if you have a lot of avoidance
• 3:10
  behaviors, but you have really low self-esteem to the point
• 3:13
  that you think that you're unlovable, then you're likely
• 3:16
  fearful avoidant. Not just avoid an avoidant
• 3:18
  people think they're pretty good.
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  They think they're pretty great, you know.
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  They think that they're pretty awesome and they just don't
• 3:25
  understand why their Partners always up their ass about
• 3:27
  wanting them to change because they're pretty good.
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  And in fact, they think things like man, I shouldn't be in this
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  fucking relationship. I'll be in a relationship with
• 3:34
  somebody would pay It's me. God damn it.
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  You know like I'm pretty good guy /.
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  I'm a pretty great woman and you know like what the fuck that's
• 3:42
  more like how avoidant attachment people feel?
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  They're like I just want to do my own thing.
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  Is that so bad? Like shouldn't everybody have
• 3:49
  hobbies and interests and stuff like what the fuck?
• 3:52
  You know, like that's kind of their that they have more of an
• 3:54
  aggrieved irritated stance. They don't get angry like real
• 3:59
  Angry, super often, and they definitely don't get jealous or
• 4:05
  Rolling or things like that, where they become very fearful
• 4:10
  that a partner is going to leave that they do.
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  They are not fearful that a partner would leave that they
• 4:15
  are not fearful of not getting another partner, they are fine
• 4:19
  on their own. And they don't really think that
• 4:22
  relationships are honestly quite that important as everybody
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  makes them out to be. And as I discuss the origin of
• 4:27
  this, the origin of this avoidant, attachment style is a
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  home where there was not a lot of emotional comfort.
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  Event. So you learn to be overly
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  self-reliant in a preoccupied attachment style as discussed
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  you over emphasized, the need for a relationship, but you
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  still do not at your core feel extremely unlovable, you think
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  you are pretty lovable, but you just want this person to see it.
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  God damn it. You know, why can't, why can't
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  my husband just see that? It would be so much more fun for
• 5:00
  us to lay together on the couch, watching, movies all weekend,
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  then for him to go golfing. Ting.
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  Can't he see how fun that would be?
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  You know, I'm pretty fun. I would make all sorts of funny
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  remarks about the TV show, you know.
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  Like that's like how a woman with preoccupied attachment my
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  feel without understanding that the guy just wants a little time
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  to himself. Like she would take that more.
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  Personally, however, a woman with fearful avoidant that
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  started out as disorganized as a child.
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  So, a woman with fearful avoidant attachment style she
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  Would get extremely enraged. And or she would think that he
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  was cheating on her and not just going to golf or she would
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  pretend not to care at all. But secretly be seething and
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  feel like she's going to go cheat on him to show him, you
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  know, who's boss. So, there's all sorts of like,
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  history, Onyx and deep core issues in in somebody, with
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  disorganized or fearful avoidant attachment due to the abusive or
• 6:03
  neglectful upbringing and And also in that situation.
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  By the way, with the woman who just wants to watch TV the, the
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  fearful avoidant woman in that situation, if he actually came
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  and watch TV with her, the whole weekend, she would start to push
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  away most likely. So that's the other.
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  But because he's showing too much love in that situation and
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  the core feeling of somebody with fearful avoidant attachment
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  is that they're unlovable. So it's kind of this idea of you
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  don't want to be part of any club who would want you for a
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  member. So there's a big push.
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  Paul, you were trained as a kid. The people with this attachment
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  style were trained as kids to think of themselves as
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  unlovable. They were directly told in
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  various ways that they were unlovable stupid on attractive
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  worthless, and there were yelled at, and they were punished, or
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  they were just neglected, physically, and emotionally when
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  nobody for around with somebody forgets to feed you.
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  You start to think real quick that you're not that important
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  when somebody beats you. When somebody She screams at you
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  and berate you. Then it's really hard to think
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  of yourself as lovable. So that's when you end up, sadly
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  with this attachment style, this attachments all is is the one in
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  borderline personality so you could go back to my narcissistic
• 7:20
  borderline podcast. So people with borderline have
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  this, I hate you, don't leave me feeling this push-pull so they
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  want real bad to be in a relationship but they can never
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  trust that. Anybody loves them and we'll be
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  there for them forever. They become To do with the idea
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  of a partner leaving or a partner changing in some way, a
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  partner, not loving them anymore, it feels very ephemeral
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  and fleeting to get somebody's love because of the
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  unpredictability that they had at home.
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  So this isn't so in preoccupied attachment apparent vacillates
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  between being warm and loving and not really very present, you
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  know, either physically or emotionally.
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  They are overwhelmed by maybe depression or maybe substance
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  abuse or something. So they kind of go between being
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  warm and loving and really kind of not be in there, but in
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  disorganized, it's way worse. The parent vacillates between
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  very infrequently warm, and loving, not at all really save
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  athlete more between neutral and terrible.
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  You know? Like it sits.
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  There are no, these are the people who when you're like what
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  were the good part to your growing up?
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  What was a good memory of you and your dad?
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  They're like, I don't have any like people, you know, like I
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  don't have one good memory of me and my dad or me and my mom, of
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  course. It's better when you got good
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  memories of one parent and that can be a buffer, you know, but
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  if you have bad memories of both or even just of Juan
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  particularly, if it was a primary but I mean have listen,
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  your mom could have been the primary caretaker but if your
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  dad Came in Like Hell on Wheels drunk and beat the shit out of
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  you every so often will, you're probably going to have a
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  disorganized attachment Style, no matter how much your mother.
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  Tried to protect you because honestly, she kept you there.
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  So you did learn that the world was an unpredictable place and
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  you're not very lovable or worthwhile because if you were
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  somehow, you would be saved from this shit happening to you all
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  the time. And this again, this is there's
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  a big difference between. You can always count on your dad
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  to be supportive, which sucks. Sure, that sucks.
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  And you can always count on your dad to not hit you in the face,
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  you know, and break break break a bone.
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  Or leave a mark and or anybody with sexual abuse ends up.
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  Usually, with this attachment style because that's like the
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  ultimate humiliation on top of abuse and people who did not get
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  fed and did not get cleaned and did not had, you know, hoarding
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  bugs in the house animals infestation, like children that
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  were taken out of homes or should have been taken out of
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  their homes. If Child Protective Services
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  would have known what was going on?
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  Parents who are scared of their children, getting taken from the
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  home. Because they know on some level
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  that the that the house is so crazy in some way or another,
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  will frequently tell the children not to tell anybody
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  what goes on in their house. And then this even makes a child
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  feel even more in a no-win situation because the parent
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  usually terrifies them in some way saying, oh, you'll get taken
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  out. You'll, your daddy will go to
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  jail. If you tell anybody, you know,
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  or I Bill or somehow you'll end up with people who don't love
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  you, you know? Like there's all sorts of crazy
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  shit that goes on. And if you if any of this stuff
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  resonates with you, then you likely have an disorganized
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  attachment style. If you have not been through
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  enough therapy to already know how to do this podcast yourself,
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  you know, and most people haven't because if they think
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  that they're worthless quite honestly than, unless they have
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  really, really decided to tackle that usually they don't think
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  that they're worth going to therapy and sometimes they enter
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  Wracked with the wrong types of therapists who are not trained
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  in complex trauma, and then therapy turns into just shooting
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  the shit with your therapist. You can refer back to my podcast
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  on that too. But anyway, how do you then work
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  on this attachment style? Well the first step is to
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  acknowledge that you have it that you are.
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  You know constantly have these feelings of never being enough,
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  being completely worthless that nobody will ever love you, that
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  you have to kind of track somebody into loving you and
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  then be hyper. Angel in that they never leave
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  you, you know, and of course, that's how it manifests in
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  control, or jealous behaviors because you feel like, oh my
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  God, I finally got somebody there, you know, of course, I'm
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  not worthwhile them staying with me, just for me.
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  So, I got to watch them like a hawk, make sure that they're
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  always loving me, enough, etc, etc.
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  But anyway, understanding this attachment Style on that, it
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  comes from an abusive and neglectful childhood and then
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  that's not your fault at all that there's no way for a child
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  to survive a Matic childhood without correcting defenses.
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  And one such defense is an extremely argumentative
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  difficult controlling rigid style where they feel that they
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  are protecting themselves at all costs and will never be
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  humiliated again. This goes, I talked about the
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  humiliation idea of scarcity mindset, and there's a lot of
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  overlap children that were in abusive, or neglectful homes,
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  always have scarcity mindset, because they did not have
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  enough. Love consistency, sometimes food
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  and, I mean, it's sad like a very basic things.
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  So, anyhow, trauma focused therapy can really help with
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  this. So, DBT, dialectical behavior
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  therapy, that's not just for borderline personality.
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  Although, as I said, there is a big overlap between borderline
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  personality and having had extensive childhood trauma like
• 12:59
  this, or I mean, some people like to use EMDR, there's All
• 13:05
  sorts of modalities, but the reality is that Therapeutic
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  Alliance is more of a predictor of success, than any individual
• 13:12
  modality, for most things. Although there is enough
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  treatment outcome research on certain things, that we do know
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  that there are effects of certain modalities being better
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  than others. But only for very specific
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  things such as like OCD and simple phobias.
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  Simple means like a phobia of one thing.
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  Like I am scared of a spider. You could have lots of Phobias
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  but it's like one thing that you are scared of.
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  So those do better with exposure therapy with response,
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  prevention, which I've written about a lot and and generally
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  anxiety does better with therapy with an exposure component, but
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  this can be any really sort of therapy that has that EMDR,
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  you're talking about your trauma, so it has an exposure
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  component, which may be what's going on, you know, to help.
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  Although the people who love it, say that it's also, So, the eye
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  movements, it EMDR means eye movement desensitization and
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  reprocessing therapy, and it was its when I was starting out in
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  grad school, it was just starting out.
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  So there hadn't been so much data.
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  Then there's data. Now that says that it can be
• 14:23
  helpful in some ways. But again, anything with an
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  exposure, component is generally helpful, because then you're
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  kind of moving the traumatic memories from Brain stem and a
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  sense to your frontal lobe. You're integrating the traumatic
• 14:39
  memories Into The Narrative of your life.
• 14:43
  This is a key component to dealing with any sort of PTSD,
• 14:46
  so really the way that you got to think of disorganized
• 14:49
  attachment so that you can give yourself a break, you know, and
• 14:52
  not judge yourself for it is it's PTSD from a shitty shitty
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  childhood, where you got a lot of of abuse and neglect.
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  That you didn't deserve that, no, child deserves that, then
• 15:03
  infiltrated your core beliefs. System making you feel that
• 15:06
  you're deeply unlovable and you have to kind of attack in the
• 15:09
  world in order to get your needs met, you know, otherwise you
• 15:12
  will be abused and neglected to get and those core beliefs are
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  extremely, you know, they're they're hard to change unless,
• 15:21
  you know, for sure that you are targeting them.
• 15:24
  And then you can work a situates leon targeting and changing them
• 15:28
  and on engaging differently in your relationships currently so
• 15:33
  that you don't set them up to fail.
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  All in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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  So many people with this attachment style will then be so
• 15:40
  difficult, controlling argumentative, Etc, because two
• 15:46
  things a on some level deeply, they think that it would be
• 15:49
  better to end the relationship. Now, in some way then to have
• 15:54
  the person in theory, choose to end it later.
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  So then, at least it, at least if you're a huge asshole, then
• 16:00
  you're in charge of why your relationship ended.
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  It doesn't like come to you. Unpredictably in the Future and
• 16:06
  to, they are continuously activated, right?
• 16:12
  So they're basically having like traumatic flashbacks all the
• 16:16
  time, right? So if you are not in chart, like
• 16:20
  so so they're not really. So why are they being such a
• 16:24
  jerk there in fight, or flight mechanism fight or flight, all
• 16:28
  the time. So whenever something happens
• 16:30
  that triggers them to think of their early upbringing, not
• 16:34
  consciously, Which they try to do as little as possible, but
• 16:37
  any sort of interaction in which they feel unlovable or less than
• 16:42
  or inadequate, which is going to be most interactions.
• 16:44
  If you've been a traumatized child, that's now an adult.
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  You go on the attack in a fight or flight mode.
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  And some people do fight flight or freeze.
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  They do one of the three. And that's not working in your
• 16:54
  relationships. So you can learn alternate ways
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  to respond, you know, and once you tried to learn these
• 17:01
  alternate ways to respond, and they start to work better for
• 17:04
  you and your Relationship start to be calmer then that feeling
• 17:08
  of Mastery and pride can, you know, move you forward to trying
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  the next difficult thing which would be lets say fighting
• 17:15
  differently or being more generous and open.
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  It's real hard for somebody who disorganized attachment to be
• 17:22
  generous or opened. They feel like a fool.
• 17:24
  They feel like if they are going to be generous and open some,
• 17:27
  you're just going to walk all over them and shit on them, just
• 17:30
  like what happened in their entire life.
• 17:32
  So then but but they very rarely.
• 17:35
  Lisi that they are coming at things in this very closed off
• 17:39
  difficult way because they perceive themselves as the
• 17:42
  victim in the situation frequently because they always
• 17:44
  were a victim. So it's an Adaptive way to think
• 17:47
  when you're a kid and you're a victim that your victim, I mean,
• 17:50
  shit, like, that's pretty normal to think.
• 17:52
  But then when you're an adult and you haven't fully work
• 17:55
  through these issues, you perceive that you're a victim in
• 17:58
  every situation because this is how you were trained to think
• 18:00
  it's a leftover. So in situations Ins.
• 18:05
  If you feel victimized fairly constantly, you're going to go
• 18:07
  on the attack. That makes sense to you given
• 18:10
  your conception of what's going on, but to a partner who isn't
• 18:13
  victimizing you, because adults don't really affect him as each
• 18:17
  other. It victimization is something
• 18:19
  that happens with an imbalance, you know of power.
• 18:23
  So if there's no real imbalance of power, because two people are
• 18:27
  choosing to be together in an intimate relationship, there is
• 18:30
  no one person keeping the other person there with a gun to their
• 18:35
  And, you know, then a partner will obviously Chase against
• 18:41
  being deposited as a perpetrator or reacted to as though they are
• 18:47
  victimizing you when they're not.
• 18:49
  And they themselves may feel victimized by you, you know,
• 18:52
  because you were attacked behaviors, which are doing to
• 18:54
  defend yourself in their mind. You're not defending yourself
• 18:58
  against anything at all because they're not attacking you.
• 19:00
  And so, you see how this would happen?
• 19:02
  So, anyhow deep Insight oriented psychotrauma.
• 19:04
  Oh therapy. Targeting your childhood trauma,
• 19:08
  as well as your current lack of self-regulation skills.
• 19:11
  Because these are the people that fly off the handle because
• 19:15
  they saw that all the time. As a kid, it's hard, not to fly
• 19:18
  off the handle as an adult. If your role models for how to
• 19:21
  behave as an adult were always fucking yelling and screaming
• 19:24
  and acting crazy and threatening stuff, and being violent.
• 19:28
  So, if that's what you saw, it was burned into your brain.
• 19:32
  And even if you don't want to respond that way, sometimes you
• 19:34
  just That help yourself particularly if you're stressed
• 19:37
  and you stress all the fucking time because you grew up like
• 19:40
  shit. So had some compassion for
• 19:43
  yourself, you know, you stressed all the time because everything
• 19:46
  that other people think is normal and automatic such as oh,
• 19:50
  my child just walked in the door.
• 19:52
  What do I do? Well shit, if there's a lot of
• 19:54
  people just do what they saw growing up.
• 19:56
  They say hi, honey, how was your day?
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  But what if you're a kid who came home and your mom said, oh,
• 20:02
  fuck your whole fuck. Oh, God, God, because she was in
• 20:05
  the middle of like snorting coke, you know, or she was
• 20:09
  passed out drunk and you made a noise and woke her, or she was
• 20:12
  like completely OCD and was cleaning constantly and you
• 20:17
  messed something up and she was going to smack you, they're like
• 20:21
  a million, a million terrible things that could have happened
• 20:25
  if your child to experience trauma in this way and none of
• 20:28
  them include a parent looking up and saying hi.
• 20:30
  Honey, you're home. How was your day?
• 20:32
  So for you to do that is It's hard for you to remember to do
• 20:38
  that and to be normal. It takes less, and less over
• 20:42
  time when you practice, it will get more and more natural.
• 20:45
  But think about it. You're always using more energy
• 20:48
  than the average person because you're having to learn what's
• 20:51
  normal. So then everything else in your
• 20:55
  day is more stressful because you're always having to figure
• 20:58
  out what normal is, which is something that other people know
• 21:01
  automatically. So you got to cut yourself some
• 21:04
  slack. And use the self compassion.
• 21:07
  That is mobilized. Perhaps by listening to me talk
• 21:10
  right now and reach out to a therapist.
• 21:12
  And say I think that I want to deal with my abusive childhood
• 21:16
  and how it impacts my relationships.
• 21:19
  You know I think I have disorganized attachment or
• 21:22
  fearful avoidant attachment. That's what you would say to a
• 21:26
  therapist so that everything is out on the table and your
• 21:30
  natural ways of trying to kind of deflect.
• 21:34
  And You know, chafed against the therapist, because they're a
• 21:38
  person to. So you're going to have
• 21:39
  transference. If you think they're trying to
• 21:41
  shape you or move, you or whatever you may be like kind of
• 21:44
  slippery in the session, you know?
• 21:47
  So and that may have been historically, what's happened in
• 21:49
  therapy sessions for with people with this, is that they start to
• 21:53
  perceive the therapist as either useless or as an attacker in
• 21:56
  some way and then they don't really share the depth of how
• 22:01
  they feel on a regular basis. So that the therapist is through
• 22:04
  Sorted and how they could help. And then they think the
• 22:06
  therapist is just useless, like everybody else and like it goes
• 22:09
  into a vicious cycle. But if you come out with, I
• 22:12
  really think I had an abusive childhood, and I want to work on
• 22:14
  it because I think that I have this real difficult way of
• 22:19
  interacting with people. And I even think that I have
• 22:21
  this fearful avoidant attachment Styles and that will really be a
• 22:25
  better step for you and the therapist and can set you up for
• 22:28
  more success, in subsequent therapy.
• 22:31
  All right. Hopefully, this was useful and I
• 22:33
  will talk to you all soon.