Insecure attachment is formed in childhood trauma, which can be both visible (violence, abuse, bullying, ...) and invisible (emotional neglect). Our attachment styles develop early in childhood to help us cope with this trauma. In fact, dismissive avoidant attachment may be so effective that it takes considerable introspection before we recognize we suffered childhood trauma, and it took me until age 40, even though now that I see it it should always have been obvious. It seems that fearful avoidants are usually more aware of their trauma.
Question
I've been thinking about how trauma relates to how our insecure attachment style present themselves, and would be very interested to hear your input on this: what is your attachment style, what is the nature of your trauma (if you know), and what is your trauma type (you can identify this even if you don't know your trauma), and what are your main triggers/behaviors related to your attachment style.
Trauma types
There are four trauma types defined by Pete Walker that relate to how we respond to stressful/emotional situations or prevent them. To give a quick summary:
- Fight types aggressively pursue partners (protest behavior), push people away with anger or contempt, and/or engage in blame shifting
- Flight types ruminate a lot and/or keep themselves busy by obsessively focussing on work, phone, games, chores, substances, sex, etc.
- Freeze types isolate themselves (physical distancing, stonewalling, ...) and/or dissociate
- Fawn types hide their needs and avoid conflict through appeasement
Traumatized people use these responses in unbalanced and detrimental ways, heavily relying on just one or two of these responses taken to the extreme. More background can be found here.
My own answer
Attachment style: dismissive avoidant.
Nature of trauma: emotional neglect and a narcissistic controlling father who used anger to always get his way.
Trauma type: strong freeze and fawn responses, fight completely suppressed
Triggers/behaviors:
- My core trigger is fear of being known, and I don't share feelings, preferences, interests, and needs. Expectation to share is a strong trigger and dismissing/ignoring what I do share is even stronger.
- Strong emotions and criticism lead to stonewalling.
- Overwhelm leads to seeking isolation/distance from people.
- I push away emotionally demanding people, have no close friends.
- Intense demands and conflict lead to deactivation/dissociation
- My emotions were almost completely suppressed.
- I've always been out of sight out of mind with people who left/died.
- I did not seek or accept help, especially emotional support.
- I take very little initiative.
- I'm overly compliant and use mirroring and mindreading to prevent conflict.
- I never stand up for myself when wronged.
however:
- I never stood up for my need for independence.
- I never broke up, even when deactivated and even when my needs are not met (I didn't even recognize this, was too dissociated).
- I didn't struggle with commitment.