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More about attachment disorder
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Attachment is a mutual and profound emotional and physical relation between a child and his parent(s). Attachment requires the physical and emotional availability of child AND parent.
Attachment is the basis for all later relationships and can be safe or damaged.
With a safe attachment the child will come to his parent for help, security and care. The mere physical proximity of a parent can comfort a tense child. The child enjoys the mutual intimate and loving relationship and reacts to this. The child learns to develop curiosity to his surroundings and also develops the longing and the possibilities to examine these surroundings. Through these examinations he'll develop a sense of competence and control, while he knows he can return to the safety his parents can offer him at the moment the tensions become too much for him.
A safely attached child reacts to loss or disturbance of a significant relationship with anger, acute sorrow, fits of crying, fear and rebellious behaviour. The child can keep off attempts to comfort him, can go looking for the 'lost' parent and experiences an intense longing for his presence. He can be withdrawn and lethargic and the intensity of these behaviours will grow with time.
A cut off first attachment can mean for a safely attached child that he will attach in an anxious manner afterwards.
Causes of disturbed attachment
A child can sustain a trauma in certain circumstances, through which an attachment disturbance develops: a lasting pattern of anxious and/or distorted attachment behaviours which inhibits the possibilities of the child to develop satisfying relations with others. In the first instance this will influence the relationship with his parents, later it will extend to all relations, as much the friendships as the more intimate.
Death of a parent, a life threatening disease or (threats with) suicide. The consequence of the loss depends on de quality of the attachment before the loss, the nature of the loss, de quality of the replacing care takers and, when applicable, the nature of the reunion.
Extra stress through reunion with a parent after a long absence is something many traumatised children are faced with. It can be a difficult process and it can further traumatise the child, despite it could be in the best interest of the child or even that it is the wish of the child himself. The situation can inflict a loyalty conflict in the child, because it can be felt by the child as unfair or unwanted for the remaining parent or current care taker. The renewed contact with an absent parent can enlarge the feelings of helplessness and fear in the child because of what he has heard or fantasised about that parent during his absence or because of what he has been through with that parent before. Reunion can be a realistic threat for the well-being of the child when that parent has physically or sexually abused the child before.
Non-availability of the parents
- capricious, physically/sexually abusing and/or neglecting parents
- emotionally or physically non-available parents
- hospitalisation, outplacement or other regular changes of care takers
- being left by the parents or other sudden loss of contact with parents
Internal consequences of a damaged attachment
Fear controls everything. The child is afraid his parents are no longer there or will be there but not in the same way as before when he leaves. Although he can't find any satisfaction in the way his parents treat him, it still offers him a certain safety. The loss of that safety must be prohibited, so the child stays around and his dependence on his parents gets acknowledged.
The child can't examine his surroundings in his own way and playing is superficial and without joy. The child can not develop longing or possibilities for examination, so that he can not develop a feeling of competence and control. Now not only the fear of unsafety keeps him inside, but also the fact that he doesn't WANT to play and CAN'T play.
All this makes that the child cannot look at himself in a healthy way. His feelings about himself depend on the measure of safety he feels at a certain moment, but this is a feeling he can't offer himself, so that it depends on impulses from the outside, without giving him the feeling he can influence what's happening.
The child can react with 'I don't care' when he looses (one of) his parents., but will anyhow intensify his anxious behaviour, so that his behaviour will be more clamping, tedious and demanding. He will swallow caring attention but will feel minimal satisfaction and comfort.
This fear for unsafety also determines the behaviour of the child towards other people. Because he can't find safety and comfort with people, the child will rather try to find comfort in material properties than in human contacts.
He can be very able socially in the mean time, but he's only superficially responsive in relations. Feelings he's showing seem superficial too and don't seem to come from himself. This is why attempts at rapprochement generally yields very little.
Later attempts of other people to approach the child can't offer him comfort or security any longer and the child no longer is able to assess this. People are inclined to reject him because they get nothing back from him after an emotional investment. Handling a child that gives nothing in return is very heavy emotionally, but people should look through his hostile and/or apathetic reactions because he often reacts disdainful or rejecting when he feels insecure and vulnerable. And at the moment affirmation isn't offered, his negative feeling that nobody loves him gets confirmed.A child that wasn't able to safely attach himself to his parents at a young age develops ways to help him through life. These ways turn out to be damaging when the child uses these models to deal with all his significant relationships.
Children with an attachment disturbance show several clusters of damaged attachment behaviours. These can be named like this:These are protecting styles of interaction with other people the child developed to meet attachment needs as safety, comfort, intimacy and care. These patterns can occur loose or in combinations and in higher or lower intensity. They all are based on the omnipresent fear to get hurt and rejected again.
The child clings to his parents. His demands for attention evoke just the behaviour of his parents he's afraid of, something that in return intensifies the clinging behaviour. Fatigue, disease and other stress factors also increase this behaviour, that can get across as manipulative. Soothing doesn't help because his basic fears aren't taken away.
The child is angry, frustrated and vulnerable. He pretends to be very self-assured and has plenty of jaw, but is hidden message is 'I need you'. He needs loving relationships but distrust these at the same time. While he wants proximity he rejects attempts of other people or misinterprets them. The child continually lives in a state of unmitigated tension and worries.
While it is clear what he needs, he can't take comfort in. This is a bottomless-pit child: however hard is tried to fill him, he stays empty.The parentificated child believes his parent is vulnerable and needs protection, so he doesn't turn to that parent for fulfilling his needs. Rather he behaves as his own parent. He'll often sacrifice himself to spare the parent from feelings of pain, because he believes that these will destroy his parent in one way or another, so that he will stay behind alone. A parentificated child will generally feel responsible for the well-being of his parent and blames himself when the parent is unhappy, is unlucky or has problems.
This dynamic is often demonstrated with children of parents who are addicted and with families where sexual abuse took place. It develops when a parent is emotionally dependent, considers his environment as hostile, lost significant persons in his life and then turns to the child to provide for his emotional needs. The child will fulfil these needs as good as he can, so that the relationship that means survival for him can be maintained.
The parentificated child is very capable in fulfilling the needs of adults and to hide his own fears and wants. He'll develop into a obsessive caretaker who keeps giving and who silently gets angrier all the time because his own needs are not acknowledged or fulfilled. He believes he gives very much and will enjoy the little bit of mutual attention he gets without having to ask for it, because he has learned to be happy with every crumb and not to ask for more. To ask for attention bears the unbearable risk of being rejected.The superstar can be very successful in his performance, as a replacement for reciprocal intimate relationships. He'll identify himself with the role of superstar, which enables him to keep control and avoid proximity with other people. Dependence for him would be the same as loosing control. He often concentrates on these areas where independence is the standard. He has little tolerance for set-backs, mistakes or performances that are less than perfect. He's inclined to work overtime so that no time remains for relationships. His behaviour is concentrated and fixated and can be driven and obsessed when he tenses up through environmental factors.
The child gives up to turn to adults for fulfilling his needs. He accepts no replacement and turns to nobody else. Separation of care takers calls up no or little reaction and care takers seem to be interchangeable. The facial expression of the child is immobile, non-flexible and seldom changes.
Because he is compliant, polite and attractive, follows the rules and causes no problems, this child is easily overlooked and neglected.
The child is not liked. He is not interested in interaction with others or in emotional contact. However much is given to him, he gives nothing in return. This compliant, non-involved child seems disinterested and non-empathic towards others.The child acts self centred and seeks for possessions rather than relationships. His excessive drive for independence averts his asking for help or accepting it. His distaste of feelings comes from painful and unavailing attempts to attach to parents who rejected him.
He's often surrounded with people and possessions and behaves in such a self secured way that the emptiness of his emotional ties stays hidden.Recovery of attachment disturbance
Recovering a disturbed attachment is possible but can be an icy process. However honest and intense it may be, love alone is not enough to make up for what the child has learned in his early years: that he can't trust upon others to fulfil his needs.
And when the situation seems to improve to the point where the child seems to feel more joy in the relationship, feelings of vulnerability and the loss of borders are coming up together with it, so that the child will go through an attachment crisis which will destroy the whole process. The child believes that he doesn't deserve the positive feelings that go together with a reciprocal attachment and that it will only be a matter of time before he'll be disappointed in it or be left alone again. His negative behaviour is meant to precipitate a crisis and to break the tension.
This is a translation (from English into Dutch), summary, revision and again a translation (from Dutch into English) from chapter 12 from the book 'Treating traumatised children', by Beverly James.
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