Life does not always turn out the way we’d like. We carry our stories. In some moments, we might feel like kings. In others, we feel like failures. We feel grotesque. For some, the story says, “I’m too much.” For others, it might say, “I will never be enough.” In certain states, every line of the story reminds us we are defective, unsafe, lacking power to choose our life. Some stories empower and open up the world before us. Others isolate us, from people or from goals that seem unattainable.

Some stories confirm themselves. Despite our best intentions, some might appear to play out again and again as our behaviors sabotage our desires or elicit the reactions we fear most. It might seem as if we’re doomed to repeat the play forever.

 Meaning-Making and Automating Our Reactions

“The real connection we long for is the connection with ourselves; the connection with where we are here and now…When the connection with our own presence is broken everything just starts to feel empty.” —Jeff Foster

We carry stories. These stories are about our identity in the world, our connection to others, our purpose, what we are allowed, what they are permitted, our motives, and their intentions. These stories are the underlying codes that dictate the most mundane of choices. These choices might include what we eat, how we present our bodies when in public, or how we react to a romantic partner’s facial expression. These stories, created in response to experience, shape our predictions of every interaction between Self, Other, and World. While only occasionally accurate, they become the automatic, unquestioned backdrop of life. [fat_widget_right]

Subconsciously, we keep watch at an animal level. We track bodily reactions and micro-expressions of others, internalizing these as reflections of our identity in the world and creating rules around the best ways to navigate social interactions. At every emotionally charged moment, we are either building new stories or confirming old ones, and confirmation is easier.

We adapt, invisibly—especially in childhood as our templates are being set—to the surrounding culture and climate. We take it in and recreate it internally. And often in that process we separate from parts of Self. We reject or contain parts that threaten our survival in those settings, opting instead to present or create parts that harmonize with our environment.

This is the original trauma: disconnection from Self.

And in those overwhelmed, transformative moments, we forget our choices. We forget the parts we’ve exiled. We land in other parts of consciousness, and we often fail to recognize that our experience has changed because our relationships have changed. We don’t remember any other way of being. We simply go on, saying, “This is who I am.”

This is a dissociation, a disconnection. It’s also a new story, now running in the background, invisibly directing our play.

The parts of Self we contain remain present at some level. Unchanged, hidden within, they insinuate themselves into our daily choices. They are present in the ways we respond to emotion, our confusion, our unwanted thoughts or behaviors, our nameless depressions or anxieties, our reactive tantrums or withdrawals in romantic relationships.

These are the lower layers of experience. They’re the real agents behind our choices and behaviors.

When it comes to trauma, we cannot change the past. There is no do-over. Our storyteller simply weaves our experience into our narrative.

But while we can’t change the past, we can change its meaning. We can change the stories. And if we have patience and intention, if we bring the secret stories up to awareness, we can change our connection to Self, Other, and World.

Parts Framework

A parts framework simply echoes what we know from neurological studies: the brain is constantly making sense, forming a story, building a cohesive picture out of scattered and unrelated fragments. It finds patterns and creates the illusion of a cohesive whole.

In mindful exploration, we come to recognize that we are both the judge and the judged. We experience both simultaneously in our bodies. With practice, we can actually land fully in either position. We might be the abandoned or oppressed child one moment and then flip to become the part that hates that child or some part that feels love and empathy for the child.

By separating our experience into parts, we can observe the relationship between parts. We can recognize and mediate internal conflicts. We can step in and out of states, accessing them for the purpose of learning about them and finding empathy for them.

This is the work.

In these tiny moments of genuine empathy for the parts of Self that have survived trauma, we integrate. We acknowledge, accept, embrace, and join. In these moments, we are feeling what could not be felt in the past. We are seeing it through new eyes and gifting it a new story. This new story, something more palatable, releases us from the need for internal containment. We are providing some hurting parts with the love they need, the relational connection that should have happened after a traumatic moment.

The framework itself invites curiosity, decreases judgment and conflict, and opens up windows of access through which we can provide this missing experience. The end result is a felt sense of gentle witness. We feel seen, heard, felt, known, accepted, and loved.

Regulation First: External, then Internal—Other, Then Self.

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” —George Eliot

At a subconscious level, we track surroundings and social connections for physical and interpersonal threats. Doing with others utilizes our sympathetic nervous system. Being with someone is healing. Accessing our parasympathetic branch allows us to rest and digest, both physically and metaphorically.

External regulation occurs when we can witness the body of someone else in close proximity, remaining externally present to our experience without physical overwhelm on their part. When their body calms, smiles warmly, looks back at us with soft eyes, and remains connected to ours, our body calms. This is co-regulation. This is where we feel free and welcome to express ourselves with the knowledge that an Other is not burdened by us, wants us, will see the best of our intentions and “get” us. This is also an antidote to shame, an invitation to reveal those parts we thought we had to hide in exile.

Someone else can provide the regulation, by remaining calm and offering verbal assurance, validation, and permission, for example. But once we have internalized this experience at some point in life (whether with another person or even through watching movies), we can also provide our own calming as an internal process.

Many of us default to dissociation, controlling, fixing, placating, distracting, or other methods of internal management. These are often reactions internalized from early life caregivers. But our bodies naturally calm when internal parts are finally met in the ways they have yearned to be met.

Mindfulness and Distancing: States, Transitions, and Cycles

As trauma is stored in parts or states, with particular networks formed during traumatic periods, the way to heal is to head toward and access those states. By doing so, we bring new energy and kinder eyes. We amend an old story that was written with limited perspective. Each state comes with its own state-dependent memories, perceptions, expectations, rules of engagement, emotions, physical posture, and beliefs. Meeting each as a part—as a different version of you with its own persona—requires development of an observer. In other words, a part that is outside and separate that can provide empathy and support.

With practice, many people find state-shifting becomes easier. Quick shifts might require nothing more than remembering a friend’s smile or imagining a favorite place in nature. Longer-term shifts come when actually bringing novel experience, or missing experience, to some part of self that is expecting and preparing for negative outcomes.

Life becomes a bit easier when we recognize we are not our thoughts, not our sensations, and not our emotions. We can do this through mindful awareness, or by observing mind and bodily reactions. These will all play out on their own, and we can observe them safely, from a chosen distance. When we start to actually feel our own physical responses to each internal/external stimuli, when we give each response a name, we remove the mystery from these micro-transactions. Things may then become a bit more predictable, a bit more understandable, a bit more acceptable. We recognize that we’re okay, that things are as they are and nothing more. We recognize a story that makes sense, coming from a source we trust, and our body calms.

When it comes to trauma, we cannot change the past. There is no do-over. Our storyteller simply weaves our experience into our narrative. But while we can’t change the past, we can change its meaning. We can change the stories.

This in itself is a missing experience.

For many of us, there was nobody in childhood just sitting with us, looking at us with soft eyes, saying, “This is what you’re feeling in your body… It’s okay to feel this. It makes sense. Everyone feels this. This is a word we use to describe it… This is what you can expect… It will pass. You will be okay. I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not burdened at all by your experience. Let’s just sit and feel it together.”

In working mindfully, we can observe all of these processes in real time. By accessing states, we can witness physical reactions, notice changes in perception and expectation, and begin mapping out the different parts that arise in response to triggers and resources. (In this case, triggers describe anything connected to defeating beliefs and resources describe anything connected to empowering beliefs.)

We come to see patterns in the way we relate to others, by observing internal reactions in triggered moments. We notice protective parts that seek confirmation of our worst fears, present evidence by bringing up memories, and project old fears into present experience. And in this, we find choice points: windows of opportunity to respond instead of react.

We can begin a relationship with these parts, once we differentiate from them. When we meet a stranger and feel our body constrict, we can recognize this reaction as that of the child inside, reacting to meeting a male that reminds it of its father. We can talk to the child, meet it, give it assurance and validation.

Transitions, too, come with stories. Transitions between physical settings, between internal states, or between modes and strategies used to navigate present needs. With practice, we can feel our body respond. Maybe it contracts to protect or expands to connect. In this, we can learn to tolerate uncomfortable states for longer periods of time, even breaking them down to simple bodily sensations. Those who are avoidantly attached may find peace in physically calming with an Other. For those on the anxious end of attachment, we can find genuine connection internally, ever present and responsive.

Distancing allows both space and connection. This is the process of stepping out of a hurting part and landing in a more safe or neutrally-observing part. We separate in order to meet, in order to experience an Other at an internal level.

In moving toward more cognitive distancing techniques, we might notice ourselves calming as we head toward “big picture” thinking. Outside of our present states, we may elicit curiosity, awe, and wonder when stepping back to observe patterns and cycles. From the simple in-and-out of our breath to the contractions and expansions of our life and the universe, to the rhythms of connection and disconnection in the present moment.

Sometimes just imagining hovering above our own body can create a distance that helps us differentiate from internal parts that are experiencing intense emotion. And this separation is actually what gives us the ability to come back and be with those parts in a healing manner. [amazon_affiliate]

Rather than being in the pain, we learn to be with it.

If you would like help beginning this process, contact a compassionate counselor today.

Read on for Part 2: Mindfully Heading Toward Discomfort

References:

1. Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam Books.
2. Kurtz, Ron. (1985). The organization of experience in Hakomi Therapy. Hakomi Forum Professional Journal, 3(1), 3-9. Retrieved from http://www.hakomiinstitute.com/Forum/Issue3/OrganizationExperience.pdf
3. Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). A general theory of love. New York: Random House.
4. Noricks, J. S. (2011). Parts psychology: A new model of therapy for the treatment of psychological problems through healing the normal multiple personalities within us: Case studies in the psychotherapy of mental disorders. Los Angeles, CA: New University Press.
5. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
6. Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal family systems therapy. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
7. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
8. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score. New York, NY: Viking.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. See Avoidant Attachment, Part 1: The Dependence Dilemma.

When we live in a continual state of freeze, we aren’t only hiding, we are living alone (even when we’re in a relationship). Focused on the preservation of Self and resources, driven by self-sufficiency and independence, we come to believe that outside support is not an option. From the outside, it may seem as if we are hoarding food, money, time, words, emotions, and so on. It can also be framed as a conservation of resources in a closed (isolated) system that does not expect any exchange of resources between systems.

With limited resources, efficiency becomes paramount. Many people on the avoidant end of the attachment spectrum may come to depend on the creation and maintenance of a predictable and efficient routine that does not require energy expenditure on avoidable and unresolvable situations like interpersonal conflict.

The Myth of Functional Dissociation

The freeze state, which prepares us to hold and preserve until safety or support arrives, is a very efficient survival response. As such, it brings with it the valuable tool of self-regulation by dissociation. If something feels uncomfortable, we just turn it off. Compartmentalize. Stuff it away. By breaking life into fragments, we can remain present with the portions that are tolerable.

While in many cases this happens automatically, we may also feel as if we’ve mastered dissociation. Though this can happen at both ends of the attachment spectrum, on the avoidant side it can feel functional and intentional. We then might ask our anxious partners (often with disdain versus curiosity, because resentment does tend to build in avoidant attachment), “Why can’t you just turn off your emotion? Why does it have to get so big?”

Dissociation does bring with it some challenges. Memories, emotions, and bodily sensations may become inaccessible. Sometimes the remaining present feels unbearable, so we disappear. If we feel unsafe and dissociative while in a particular moment of life, sometimes we appreciate that moment (or entire relationship) only in retrospect.

Dissociation can also be activated by conflict. The more the other person amplifies, the smaller and more still we might become. Some even dissociate to a point where they become mute (or even fall asleep) during an argument.

If we feel unsafe and dissociative while in a particular moment of life, sometimes we appreciate that moment (or entire relationship) only in retrospect.

So we continue to live in an isolated bubble, preserved and protected, our resources limited because exchange feels unsafe and we believe “Nobody really loves anybody.”

Communication Resignation

“See me. Don’t see me. Get away from me if you can’t see me.”

The spotlight is our nemesis, and words take effort because they elicit our own physical emotional expression, which those around us may judge and reject. The words we put out into the world can be used as weapons against us: they not only reduce the deniability factor when the spotlight comes back around to us, but when others don’t like our words, we may face conflict.

We often resent those closest to us for their perceived judgment and rejection, for crossing boundaries we never articulated, or for not knowing how to draw us out from our silence (that to us is speaking volumes). From our perspective, we’ve been sending out very clear signals that nobody is picking up.

There is a fatalism inherent in the freeze state.

The Evidence

Showing a person on the avoidant end of the attachment spectrum that it’s okay to need people can be a hard sell. So, let’s take a look at the evidence. The following traits are often indicators of an unacknowledged need for people:

• An instinct to hide or diminish personal expression or physical presence in public settings
• Limited assertiveness until trapped (like a cornered animal)
• Caretaking, or lack of self-care when in the presence of others
• A struggle to access empathy in conflict
• A focus on independence or one foot out the door (“I don’t need you.”)
• A search for a partner who looks good or presents well rather than one who fits (with the belief this will reduce negative focus)
• Distraction, deflection, or disengagement in response to uncomfortable emotion
• Functional dissociation (“Just turn it off.”)
• Dissociative activities (movies, social media, porn, and so on) dominate the seemingly elusive alone time when a loved one leaves, suggesting discomfort in a space that was so ardently pursued

Many of us learn early in life to separate from uncomfortable sensations and emotions by dissociating and compartmentalizing. We may become so good at it that we don’t recognize when it’s happening. This is how we handle things like separation. We don’t realize we miss anyone because we dissociate from loneliness. And when they return from that trip to the store, we can fall right back into our story that says we need nobody, that nobody should need anyone.

Healing

If the dilemma lies in our dissociation from discomfort and our own internal denial of social needs, then healing comes in recognition and gradual exposure to discomfort in feeling and expressing those needs. This healing might include leaning vulnerably on others and feeling met at our own level. A sense of agency in meeting our own social needs can feel liberating, and as our bodies learn to relax, over time we may find it even easier to meet those needs. We experience others as more safe and open as we ourselves open up to their presence and accept ourselves the way we wish to be accepted by others.

These tips can help further healing:

• Notice your use of dissociation and dissociative activities.
• Notice your breathing and heartbeat when conflict approaches.
• Speak more. Experiment with using words, directly and precisely, even when uncomfortable. (Keep in mind that language centers in the brain can go offline when heart rate increases or breathing becomes constricted.)
• It’s okay to ask about intent instead of automatically attributing hostile or manipulative intent to the actions of others.
• It’s okay to ask for do-overs.
• It’s okay to ask for breaks during conflict and return once bodies calm.
• It’s okay to express what you know they need to hear. You may be surprised at the lack of judgment, even if you “go overboard.”
• Learn to apologize.
• Express a need each day.
• Express an emotion each day.
• Experiment around emotions, discovering which feel safe and which feel like a struggle.
• Notice patterns you’ve inherited from parents or caregivers. Own those as changeable generational patterns versus unchangeable identity.
• Read and memorize the list of avoidant strategies and notice when you use them.
• Know that transition from self-time to together-time might feel unsafe and energetically draining. If we learn to recognize and observe safety in connection (in the present moment), this can become a source of energy rather than a drain on our reserves.
• Securely attached people more often make decisions that are good for all partners in a relationship.
• Learn to differentiate fear from anger (in self and others) so you can meet your partner when they need you most and when you need them most.
• Get out of your routine. Travel together. Get away from familiar resources to places where your partner becomes your resource and automatic and dissociative activities are not an option.
• Make some household chores a shared process.
• Articulate thoughts and emotions as they arise, just for the sake of feeling known.
• Ask for the spotlight.
• Ask for help, even if it’s just a small favor each day.
• Join a group.
• Notice resources you hoard and practice sharing them until it feels comfortable.
• If your relationships feel “broken,” find a therapist who specializes in attachment.
• When your partner asks for a big response instead of a calm exterior and moving toward them feels unbearable, consider leaning into their emotion, validating it, taking responsibility for your part, and experimenting with the idea that allowing things to get bigger may bring you closer to the safe space you seek.
• Observe someone loving you. Notice their face, their posture, and the experience in your own body when holding that space. Love need not be felt in retrospect alone. It can feel very present, and this is where the healing happens.

References:

1. Kinnison, J. (2016, October 18). Type: Dismissive-avoidant attachment style. Retrieved from https://jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/type-dismissive-avoidant
2. Sattin, N. (2015, December 29). 19: Recipe for a secure, healthy relationship with Stan Tatkin. (2015, December 29). Retrieved from http://www.neilsattin.com/blog/2015/12/19-recipe-for-a-secure-healthy-relationship-with-stan-tatkin
3. Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love: How understanding your partners brain can help you defuse conflicts and spark intimacy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series. See Avoidant Attachment, Part 2: The Downside of Preservation.

We’re in a relationship, and we feel nothing. Or we gather an ever-growing stockpile of resentment, invoking various strategies to escape intimacy without actually rejecting our partner or escalating into conflict. Does this sound familiar?

While romantic relationships may start off with blissful ease, the dependence of connection can eventually feel threatening. We might feel as if their needs are overtaking ours. We may have less time to relax or get things done in the presence of others. We have to hold our guard against judgment or rejection, and we may come to yearn for bodily regulation, free from social threat, in the safety of alone time.

We can’t assert ourselves, because we worry our needs trigger those around us, increasing and amplifying their needs. The most direct path toward self-regulation requires disengagement from others. So as their needs amplify, we withdraw, maybe even shut down, knowing engagement only increases threat of conflict.

Authentic connection may feel unsafe in this conditioned reality of social threat. It isn’t possible for us to lean on an Other, and intimacy is not allowed. Dependence has come to equal imprisonment, and conflict means the demise of self-agency, which to some, may feel like the death of Self. While saying, “Don’t see me,” we resent those who do not see us. [fat_widget_right]

In our more resourced moments—maybe during time alone, when our bodies are calm—we may desire connection, recognize patterns of limited relationships, admit to loneliness, or even regret about the ways we’ve pushed others away. We may be curious how we can become more emotionally available to those we love. It may be the case that we only feel softness and desire for connection in retrospect, when our bodies feel calm and regulated, when resources feel replenished. We feel love only in its absence.

Avoidant Origins

If neglect leads to obliviousness and oppression fosters freeze/dissociation, then we are left with two options. Either we do not know our emotions exist or we actively separate from the discomfort of them, walling them off so they do not exist in our perceived reality.

If reflection teaches us about ourselves, neglect presents a null mirror, leaving us less aware and without language for internal experience. Oppression often removes any permission to speak or assert ourselves. We might feel more comfortable in our minds when we are solving problems and finding value and purpose in that. We may even seek out problems that need solutions, chaos that seeks refinement, or relationships that confirm our belief we cannot depend on anyone because their needs are too great.

When we experience consistent disconnection (oppression or neglect) in childhood, we often feel easily engulfed by the emotional needs of others. We may desire space and freedom to meet our own needs without having to track or navigate theirs. We have learned through childhood experience that our presence—our emotions, our needs, our mere existence—is a burden. So we contain these things. We internalize and enforce counter-dependent rules in ourselves and in others.

We are drawn toward the illusion of connection, often describing our ideal partner as one that “gets” us in such a way that we need not put any effort into explaining, that we need not become vulnerable. This level of attunement is both the missing experience of empathy we lacked in childhood and the mirage of our attachment journey.

When feeling helpless to meet the needs of others, we often use strategies to disengage the attachment systems of those around us, perceiving their escalating emotions as a growing threat (especially when accompanied by facial or other physical expressions of anger that remind us of early life oppression). But this might look like withdrawal and can feel like abandonment to the people we love, who may find themselves walking on eggshells to avoid exposing us to emotions that trigger our feelings of oppression or helplessness (in much the same way that we attempt to avoid triggering their attachment reactions).

Seclusion and Delusion

Stan Tatkin, author of Wired for Love, suggests that we on the avoidant side tend to conceptualize the world in terms of individual systems rather than social/interactive systems. (“I take care of me. You take care of you.”) While we may occasionally function well in pairs or groups, the transition into those settings can feel threatening, and our resistance may present an ongoing challenge in relationship. We live lives more solitary, even in a romantic partnership. [amazon_affiliate]

We are drawn toward the illusion of connection, often describing our ideal partner as one that “gets” us in such a way that we need not put any effort into explaining, that we need not become vulnerable. This level of attunement is both the missing experience of empathy we lacked in childhood and the mirage of our attachment journey.

As a defense, we often remain intent on naming the absence of empathy, even seeking confirmation that our partners are not providing such a basic human need. We might say, “This doesn’t feel like love.” Or, “I want to be loved, not needed.” More likely, we’ll say nothing. We’ll simply resent this relationship in which we feel unseen and unknown, resent partners for not picking up on our signals, for not providing the empathy and acceptance for which we yearn, the positive reflections we never received.

While any extreme attachment posture creates challenges when navigating romantic relationships, those on the avoidant end of the spectrum often feel helplessness in response to external emotion (“You’re supposed to contain your emotion. If you can’t contain your own, I can’t contain it for you.”), reacting instinctively in ways that inhibit intimacy. Eventually patterns of broken relationships and unmet needs may be recognized, and the belief that love is not actually possible may be the result.

The Freeze State: Hiding and Hoarding

When fight and flight are not viable options, we move into freeze. We avoid detection and conserve resources.

That urge to disappear, to become small and quiet—that’s freeze. In decreasing presentation of Self, we decrease risk of being seen. We preserve our chances of survival. For those on the avoidant side, being seen may feel unsafe. But this creates internal conflict.

We may have been born with an innate drive to connect and lean on others, but survival has overridden attachment, though the drive for attachment remains active. The yearning to be seen and loved is countered by the drive to become small and invisible to threats. When safety is the underlying goal, hiding becomes nuanced, entangled in everyday behaviors that others may not even recognize.

Many of us practice any number of these avoidant strategies, but this doesn’t mean we are limited to them. We also carry anxious and secure strategies, right along with the avoidant ones. The challenge lies in recognizing the strategies we default to and working to develop our tool belt of alternatives.

Scarcity is a common perspective between anxious and avoidant attachment styles. The anxious side views interpersonal connection in terms of scarcity. (“I can never get enough. It’s always disappearing.”) The avoidant end tends to view time, space, and other resources in terms of scarcity. And when resources are viewed as individual possessions rather than shared, conservation often dictates competition and resentment. (“My time is not our time. We can’t both get needs met at the same time. When I’m with you, my needs will not be met.”)

A Menu of Strategies: Distract, Deflect, Disengage

While those on the anxious end of attachment often use strategies to amplify and draw attention, we on the avoidant end lean toward the opposite. We actively diminish and contain our reactions in order to avoid detection and negative attention. For those organized around the expectation of continued oppression, negative focus can feel unbearable and unresolvable.

We tend to do whatever is necessary to avoid judgment and rejection, which means a low tolerance for blame or responsibility (and decreased likelihood of apologizing or acknowledging our own faults). While partners may perceive them as premeditated, these survival behaviors are often subconscious and automatic.

Beyond more obvious avoidant strategies like not speaking, physically isolating, chasing alone time and saying “No” by default in order to maintain space and physical regulation, we may utilize a wide range of more subtle strategies to conceal our needs and perceived inadequacies and ensure we avoid attack/judgment/rejection:

• Deflecting or distracting: We redirect attention away from what we consider our flaws. This often presents as “shifting blame” if we tend to put the spotlight on someone else when we feel blamed or judged.
• Scapegoating or gaslighting: We dismiss or invalidate perceptions/emotions. Invalidating reality, we tell others they should not feel a certain way. Others around us may notice a lack of congruence between our words and nonverbal expressions when we deny our emotions in order to avoid conflict. (“You’re wrong. I’m not feeling that. I’m fine.”) As a result, our loved ones may question themselves, feel pathologized, take on blame in an effort to preserve relationship, and/or cease their behavior.
• Placating: We give them just enough to claim we satisfied their request and then shift the blame (deflect) to them for not accepting this as enough.
• Fixing: We offer pragmatic solutions instead of being with them in their emotions (for fear they will realize we do not know what to do and reject us), then blame them (deflect) for not accepting our solutions.
• Disowning fear: We let partners carry the relational fears and pursue and initiate so we never risk rejection.
• Avoiding commitment: We keep a foot out the door in any relationship. We may also reject preemptively to avoid being rejected. We may even hoard resources (emotional, financial, etc) in preparation for the rejection we believe to be inevitable.
• Rationalizing: After pushing others away, we create narratives to explain why we cannot move closer to them. This often leaves us confusingly oblivious to our own strategies and the fact that we’re making things up as we go along.
• Passive aggression: Because a direct expression of emotions feels too vulnerable and leaves us wide open for attack/rejection, we attack in subtle, deniable ways (such as using silent treatment to get attention instead of saying we feel hurt).
• Perpetual deniability: “Did that hurt? I didn’t mean it that way.” “I never said that.” “You’re imagining it. That’s just your fear.” (See gaslighting and passive aggression above.)
• Justification versus assertiveness: We justify our needs instead of stating them and asking for support. Rather than admitting we need time alone, we say we need time to work to avoid hurting a partner who feels easily abandoned.

Within this process lies invalidation of Self and Other. Over time, the shaming inherent in these strategies can change those around us. As they lose their light, they may initiate less, which may make them feel safer (less confrontational) to us. But what this also means is that they may be growing closer to the point of rejection that we expected all along. In this way, by rejecting their bids for intimacy, we create what we fear and expect: rejection by those closest to us.

Many of us practice any number of these avoidant strategies, but this doesn’t mean we are limited to them. We also carry anxious and secure strategies, right along with the avoidant ones. The challenge lies in recognizing the strategies we default to and working to develop our tool belt of alternatives. If you aren’t sure of how to begin, a qualified and compassionate counselor can help.

References:

1. Kinnison, J. (2016, October 18). Type: Dismissive-avoidant attachment style. Retrieved from https://jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/type-dismissive-avoidant
2. Sattin, N. (2015, December 29). 19: Recipe for a secure, healthy relationship with Stan Tatkin. (2015, December 29). Retrieved from http://www.neilsattin.com/blog/2015/12/19-recipe-for-a-secure-healthy-relationship-with-stan-tatkin
3. Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love: How understanding your partners brain can help you defuse conflicts and spark intimacy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. See Part 1: Opposing Attachment Styles.

The conflict is both a fight for and a protection against intimacy.

If we can hold others only as much as we have held ourselves, then we will tend to connect with others who have a comparable capacity for internal discomfort—those at a similar distance from secure attachment. Clinging and avoiding represent methods of maintaining a comfortable distance from intimacy. While we may hate a partner’s method, we also depend on it. We are drawn to it.

The Never-Ending Conflict

The abandoned side says: “If they would just stay and assure me, I would be calm in a minute.”

The oppressed side says: “If they would just calm down and stop attacking, I would be able to stay present with them.”

As conflict approaches, we switch states.

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Dependence and conflict are the primary ingredients required for attachment reenactment. After a certain level of intimacy is reached in the relationship—once we begin relying emotionally on a partner—the relationship begins to take on a new shape. This new shape looks very much like our relationship with one or more primary attachment figures. The anxious side feels an urgent, physically activating preparation for abandonment in the moment, and the avoidant side feels oppressed, trapped, unable to move, unable to choose their own life—both yearning and resigned.

Extremes polarize. If either side relaxes, comes closer to the middle, the other does as well. Either person has an opportunity to end this dance. And in the middle of biological survival reactions, that awareness disappears. Without access to present-moment resources, living in child states, we react not to our partners but to our parents, to the embodied memories of our caregivers.

The Self-Perpetuating Loop

Sometimes it feels like a role in which we’re trapped. Each character plays out a set of cued reactions so rehearsed and precise they may as well have been written in a script.

The avoidant side is well-aware of self but less practiced at communicating internal events (thoughts, sensations, emotions) to other. The anxious side is better at communicating but less aware of internal events, less able to meet them and talk about them objectively without becoming caught up in the physical activation of the emotions.

Conflicts in this relational pattern tend be more drawn out and feel less productive. One side becomes the pursuer, amplifying to draw positive attention, the other the distancer, disengaging to avoid negative attention—together playing out an endlessly retraumatizing dance.

In therapy, the gift is this: coming to a place where either the breakup or continuation feels healthy for both, where each side believes at a physical level they are okay, that the story makes sense, that closure has been found and each person knows how to move forward in gentle compassion for both self and other.

The avoidant side demands less fight, says they cannot remain present in conflict, uses abandonment as a tool, a weapon (“the silent treatment”)—the only thing their partner can hear. The anxious side says they feel like they’re walking on eggshells, unable to expect their partner to remain present with emotional expressions (anger, volume). Each side feels unseen, invalidated, unacceptable (often perceived as a confirmation of the same feelings experienced in childhood).

Fighting styles stay true to attachment styles and survival strategies.

Those on the anxious side tend to amplify, land fully in emotion, demand support, and may be more likely to fight physically, even “small” physical contacts like pinching or blocking a path of escape. Over time, these “small” assaults can escalate.

Those on the avoidant side may be more likely to diminish, freeze, land as far as possible from the emotion, even dissociate. They may remain rigid, stoic, and resentful, wishing their partner might “get it” and end the attack, release the freeze. (“Can’t they see I’m trapped and helpless?”) They tend to fight in ways that are less visible—ways which often feel manipulative, invalidating, and “crazy”-making to the more-direct anxious side. They may placate, deflect, and even gaslight their partners in order to find freedom and self, to regulate their bodies once again as they get away from seemingly endless and fruitless conflict.

Grieving the Fantasy of the Perfect Union

Both sides in this dance carry fantasy and fear, wanting their partner to meet them in a selfless way—to meet their emotions with perfect attunement and empathy and to help them calm their body.

The wished-for scenario is available only in the domain of one-sided attachment (i.e., parent-child relationship). While a version of it can happen in therapy, it is not romantic, nor committed long-term outside of the therapy room. Healthy romantic relationship requires internal connection and acceptance so partners are no longer expected or wished to act as parents—to fulfill a long-unmet need.

Romantic relationships present an inherently bidirectional dependence. In an adult romantic relationship, each side shares control, and each is responsible for their own growth, for communicating their needs, for making choices about the relationship, for finding purpose and support outside of the relationship as well as within it. If either partner stops growing on their own, the relationship stagnates. If either side becomes overly dependent on the other, resentment may build and the relationship may become burdened and tumultuous.

Healing Approaches

In relationship, some of the healing can take place in the way we meet our partners:

• For the avoidant side: Be aware of your partner’s anxious assumptions. Know their need for response … and respond. This is the common commerce of relationship: bid and respond. Ask for attention and receive attention. While it sounds simple, it is far from easy. Without it, the relationship cannot survive over time. Focus on consistent connection, because this is where their wounding happened. And this may trigger you.
• For the anxious side: Be aware of your partner’s avoidant perceptions and strategies. They are as valid as your panic. Tatkin suggests: “If your partner needs time to switch to people mode, ask lovingly for that switch within the next 10 minutes or hour, and put yourself in a place where they can come to you versus you approaching them (which feels like threat and gets equated with control).” In other words, focus on their sense of agency and freedom, acknowledging their wholeness and their right to choose their own life (even when those choices seem insignificant in the grand scheme), because this is where their wounding happened. If you can show them that you respect their valid, separate needs, and that you are not burdened or harmed by them, they may feel honored at a core level, and they may feel safe to love you.

Individually, much of the healing comes down to awareness and ownership, learning to be and stay with each internal emotion, to meet it with a gentle compassion, with the same warm eyes you would use to meet a child or a loved pet. In those moments where you look back through the generations of your family and see these relational/emotional patterns playing out, stay with that. Feel it in your body. Honor the real and present experience of a racer who has been passed a generational baton and has nowhere to run.

• If you are on the anxious side, be aware your experience has taught you to focus more outwardly while sometimes ignoring what is happening internally. This is what creates loneliness and panic. If you can be both with and separate from the internal sadness, you may no longer feel alone. (This takes practice and sometimes the support of a therapist. Even a yoga or mindfulness practice can help.) Remain curious about your internal experience as well as your partner’s. Scan your body before beginning a conversation. Practice holding attention on yourself and your partner simultaneously. If you feel no resources outside of your relationship, focus on developing new hobbies, new social connections—anything to alleviate the belief this relationship is “everything.” Notice how easy it is for you to take the blame your partner deflects toward you. Question that.
• If you are on the avoidant side, be aware your experience has taught you to keep things to yourself and to give up when resources feel too stretched. Practice doing the opposite. Move physically when feeling stuck, and share about your day—even the parts you assume will bore or burden your partner. And, sometimes, ask for help. Experiment. See what happens when you allow yourself to lean into your partner, remaining vulnerable at every level. Know panic lies beneath dissociation. Find safe space (gardening, nature, your partner, a pet, whatever your favorite resource might be) to feel and process that panic.

Break Up or Continue On?

This relationship can work, if both sides:

• Take ownership for their own attachment needs and strategies.
• Take responsibility for the ongoing work of both self-growth and relationship growth.
• Remain willing to experiment repeatedly with ways to meet both self and other.
• Find ways to access an internal home base and witness internal pain.

And, in the end, rather than staying in the relationship out of fear; because a partner completes a missing skill set; by default to maintain status quo and conserve energy; because the intimacy in approaching the moment of breaking up is too high; or because the pain of rejecting your partner (sometimes pain in you that you project onto them) feels unbearable (sometimes forcing dissociation at the thought of breakup), understand this relationship does not have to work. By the time each partner has processed childhood pains and come to see this dance for what it is, the end of this pattern may really feel okay. In fact, if either person has changed, they may lose that intoxicating draw to this pattern. It will just no longer feel attractive, “passionate,” or necessary.

Once we grieve what was missing—once we stop fighting against the reality of it and the seemingly unbearable emotion of it—we are no longer attracted to the same cycle. Some people find the attachment trauma was in fact the only thing they had in common, that they needed to come together to heal each other, that they feel at peace with the idea of parting ways and sending love. Some view it as a lesson they needed to learn or a new version of self that they had to “hurt into.”

From a natural-growth perspective, the parts of us that seek out this pattern do so for a reason. If we have been unable to “be with” our pain—if we have inherited or developed “adult” identities that abandon or attack the parts of self that hurt—then the continual reenactment of relational patterns forces us back into opportunities to meet the pain, to meet the child in us, to finally witness it with different eyes, and to understand what that difference really means. It’s as if the child in us is saying, “This! Right here! This feeling right here—the emotions, the sensations in your body, the instinct to panic or disappear: THIS IS WHAT I FELT! For years! This was real. This happened. Nobody noticed. See me. Be with me. Meet me the way I’ve wanted to be met.”

In therapy, the gift is this: coming to a place where either the breakup or continuation feels healthy for both, where each side believes at a physical level they are okay, that the story makes sense, that closure has been found and each person knows how to move forward in gentle compassion for both self and other. If you’re not sure how to get there, contact a licensed therapist for guidance.

References:

1. Caldwell, J. G., & Shaver, P. R. (2014). Promoting attachment-related mindfulness and compassion: A wait-list-controlled study of women who were mistreated during childhood. Mindfulness, 6(3), 624-636. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0298-y
2. Dekel, S., & Farber, B.A. (2012). Models of Intimacy of Securely and Avoidantly Attached Young Adults. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 200(2): 156 doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182439702
3. Simpson, et al. (2009). Attachment working models twist memories of relationship events. Psychological Science; doi:10.1177/0956797609357175
4. Tatkin, S. (2009). Addiction to “alone time”: avoidant attachment, narcissism, and a one‐person psychology within a two‐person psychological system. The Therapist, 57(January‐February). Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Addiction-to-Alone-Time.pdf
5. Tatkin, S. (2009). The plight of the avoidantly attached partner in couples therapy. New Therapist 62, 10-16. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I-want-you-in-the-house.pdf
6. Tatkin, S. (2011). Allergic to hope: Angry resistant attachment and a one-person psychology within a two-person psychological system. Psychotherapy in Australia, 18(1), 66-73. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Allergic-to-Hope_Tatkin.pdf

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series. See Part 2: A Built-In Path to Healing.

Few of us might consider pain a gift.

To be clear: Relational trauma/abuse is not earned, not to be pursued, and is not being repainted here in a woo-woo, positive light. Pain becomes a gift in retrospect, in the intentional building of a story over time that allows us a sense of redemption from an old story of blame or grief. In the present, pain alerts us to problems and can potentially orient us toward solutions. Repeated pain—the exact same sensation felt over and over—can become a revelation, and in this way can bring a sense of control, a chance to step away from an excruciating pattern.

Do a Google search for “toxic relationship” or “anxious-avoidant trap” and this is what comes up: one particular relational pattern that couples therapists see so often it can feel cliché—a pattern deceptively invisible when you’re in the midst of it. Beneath the standard problems—finances, mess in the home, use of time, how to discipline the kids—lies this incredibly common pattern.

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A good portion of us are living in worlds our partners cannot see—worlds driven by either abandonment or oppression. We are either fighting to move toward others—asking them to relieve the feeling of abandonment and regulate our bodies—or we are struggling to balance self and other, unsure how to unite without losing self, aware that when alone we can feel both lonely and physically regulated. The most avoidant among us, while perhaps giving up on the possibility (or dissociating from it most of the time), still desire connection outside of self.

When these two opposing extremes meet, it can feel electrifying. The child in one sees the other and says at some unconscious level, “There is a consistent person. Now I will be cared for. Now I can relax.” The child in the other says, “There is another child, like me, someone who will not control me. Now I will be safe.”

Over time, though, once a certain level of intimacy and dependence has been attained, the one wanting to feel cared for begins to feel abandoned, and the one wanting to avoid oppression realizes they have re-created their childhood. They have found yet another person who cannot meet their needs, another person who is not really attuned and is instead distracted by their own panic, continuing the belief of the oppressed: “I am alone. I have to be self-sufficient. I cannot count on my partner.” So, they’ll pull away and say with resentment, “Take care of yourself. I have to.” And the dance begins.

The following profiles of “opposing” attachment styles represent extremes. Life is rarely as cut-and-dried or black-and-white as any article. We all carry different traumas in different biological vessels, and we internalize the worldviews of multiple attachment figures (including parents or caregivers; family, friends, or relatives; partners; and therapists) throughout life.

The Abandoned: Mobilized and Fighting to Reconnect

• Attachment style: Anxious/preoccupied.
• Mission: Draw attention. Repair connection. Find consistent security.
• Memory formation after conflict: Gathering positive evidence about the relationship to use as defense against abandonment.

Those who perceive themselves as abandoned may be more likely to ruminate on relationship issues above all else. They may be more likely to reach out, to draw (or demand) attention, even to create drama in order to elicit a wished-for response from others—a response that, when given, has nowhere to land. They may seek assurance while at the same time appearing unable to hear the reassurance given.

Self-abandoned in moments of intense emotion, many are unable to fully take in present-moment interactions. This sets up a kind of short-circuit that, especially in moments of panic-driven attack, perpetuates a loop of conflict and helplessness for all parties involved.

Outside of conflict, those landing on the anxious side bring needed energy into the relationship. They are generally better at talking (or at least more willing), and they use that role to bring more social movement into any relationship, in many ways keeping their partner from getting stuck in isolation (though their avoidant partner may fight them on this). They are also quite willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the relationship. They may hold any blame for relationship problems—blame and judgment their avoidant partner deflects because it feels too threatening to hold. The oppressed partner deflects while the abandoned partner willingly catches.

In the abandoned-oppressed relationship, the anxious (abandoned) role serves as the inhale: energy up, excitement and play, confrontation.

Those on the anxious side often see themselves as pursuing love “the way love is supposed to be”: never abandoning one another, sharing everything, never alone.

• Main goal: Elicit positive attention and preserve external relationship.
• Stuck place: Easily gives up self to hold on to other. Rumination without witness equals self-abandonment.
• Triggers: Partner’s disengagement, partner’s focus on somebody else, partner’s lack of energy/initiative, incongruities in communication (partner says “I love you” with a blank face), or general lack of partner communication.
• Experience: Unable to self-soothe, experiencing internal abandonment, projecting that onto the world so it feels like it is happening everywhere.

The Oppressed: Immobilized and Waiting for Safety (Alone), Permission (Relationship)

• Attachment style: Avoidant/dismissive.
• Mission: Hide and conserve. Remain small and avoid punishment. Present as low-demand/low-need. Wait (with resignation and resentment) for freedom.
• Memory formation after conflict: Gathering negative evidence about the relationship to use as deflection when trapped.

If one were to install a hidden camera in the home of an oppressed-abandoned couple, they might see a dramatic difference in behavior when the oppressed partner is alone. Many people do not realize the lengths to which someone on the avoidant (oppressed) side of attachment will go to maintain invisibility. They may just close the curtains more often, walk softer, use a quieter voice, smile to elicit safety, or remain blank-faced to avoid engagement. They may simply communicate less or keep more aspects of life secret. Many will make dinner after a partner or roommate goes to bed. To avoid arguments and “legitimize” their lack of response or conversation, some may not pay phone bills. Some may exaggerate their work schedule rather than simply asking for alone time. They may apply for lesser jobs that avoid the spotlight or become “driven” in work, living in constant effort to prove themselves and avoid judgment. They may say “I love you” when in reality they are dissociated from any emotion, because they are quite familiar with dissociation as a way of life, and for them it is easier to placate others than to face conflict and “waste time.”

When things get too close and comfortable, the anxious side stops chasing, questions, or may sabotage. At least there is control in when the “inevitable” abandonment happens. Conversely, when things get too distant, the avoidant has been known to switch tactics, even take over the pursuer role. A tolerable level of intimacy/distance is maintained between the strategies of both extremes.

To be fair, sometimes the initial rush of unseen movement is simply getting the to-do list done as quickly as possible (in the absence of an audience) in order to return to a more subdued state and possible self-regulation.

Time is often precious on this end of attachment—partially because the person lives a half-life, hibernating in the presence of others. If the abandoned side fears abandonment, the oppressed side accepts it as truth, believes they are alone, without enough support or resources to survive, and resentful of those asking to share their already insufficient resources. From the outside perspective, self-sufficiency is chosen. As the avoidant, there is no perceived choice. It is a natural reaction to a world in which need was not allowed or may have been outright punished.

There is an often marked conservation of resources on this side of attachment—a planned and monitored rationing of time, space, finances, etc. This is self-sufficient, unsupported life, and its accompanying sense of scarcity and fatalism—a frozen mix of giving up and hanging on, not taking chances, not committing to anything long-term, even hoarding what little is held. At the outer extremes, those on the avoidant side are generally well-practiced at self-denial and rationing, often resentful of a partner who seems more frivolous—a partner who lives a bit more carefree, as if there is support out there in the world, as if there is not constant judgment and anger reflected in the world.

Most often raised in a home where emotions were not reflected, those on the oppressed side remain attuned to lack of attunement from others—sometimes subconsciously wishing their partner would notice when something is wrong so it need not be spoken. Asking for help feels too vulnerable, even if the wish for help feels intense and lifelong. Behind all the blaming, deflecting, and lack of disclosure lies an intense fear of oppression and rejection—a belief communication with a partner is like giving that partner a weapon. Asking someone on the avoidant side how they are feeling can easily be perceived as entrapment.

Those who lean on avoidant strategies are generally good listeners—sometimes willingly, sometimes with resentment—accustomed to putting aside their own needs to present for others. They tend to be naturally respectful of space and boundaries, and partners often lean on them for grounding. They can be quite attuned to their partner’s needs, fulfilling them without the partner asking or noticing—modeling for their partner the kind of attunement they would like, and then blaming their partner for not noticing.

When not in conflict, the oppressed (avoidant) role serves as the exhale for the relationship: energy down, calming, resignation/acceptance (“let it rest”), renew, repair, recover, conserve (which includes ongoing calculations of available time and energy and explains the draw to the energy possessed by those more anxious).

Those on the avoidant side see themselves as pursuing relationship in a realistic way, believing everyone is alone, safe dependence does not exist, and everyone should take care of their own needs and emotions to avoid burdening others.

• Main goal: Avoid negative attention and preserve internal agency.
• Stuck place: Detachment from parts that hurt means little resolution or integration and limited change in relationships (both internal and external). Suppression of emotion can be framed as self-oppression (judgment, control, neglect of emotion).
• Triggers: Any threat to limited resources—time, money, space. Also triggered by animal-level physical signals—angry or disapproving faces, voices, volume—as these threaten safety and autonomy.
• Experience: Feeling internal contempt, projecting that onto the world so it feels like it is happening everywhere. Anger and contempt from the world also mean rejection/abandonment. While felt for moments, the abandonment is often suppressed by dissociation and/or internal judgment/contempt, with messages like “buck up and be tough.”

The Dynamics of the Dance

The dance is a draining, familiar one for all involved.

The oppressed side sees in an anxious other the exact energy it suppresses in self: the helpless, anxious child. While initially drawn to that energy with a sense of kinship, avoidant strategies automatically attempt to suppress/oppress that energy in the anxious partner as well.

Initially drawn to the security and seemingly consistent attention of their avoidant partner, the anxious side eventually realizes they are losing the intense love they felt in the beginning when their partner was so easily enamored. This triggers more panic, more fight for attention. To the avoidant side, already on guard for signs of oppression, the aggression in that panic feels like control. Disdain builds toward the abandoned, increasing the anxious panic and the avoidant withdrawal.

If either side felt safe in intimacy, this dance would not last. When things get too close and comfortable, the anxious side stops chasing, questions, or may sabotage. At least there is control in when the “inevitable” abandonment happens. Conversely, when things get too distant, the avoidant has been known to switch tactics, even take over the pursuer role. A tolerable level of intimacy/distance is maintained between the strategies of both extremes.

References:

1. Caldwell, J. G., & Shaver, P. R. (2014). Promoting attachment-related mindfulness and compassion: A wait-list-controlled study of women who were mistreated during childhood. Mindfulness, 6(3), 624-636. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0298-y
2. Dekel, S., & Farber, B.A. (2012). Models of Intimacy of Securely and Avoidantly Attached Young Adults. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 200(2): 156 doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182439702
3. Simpson, et al. (2009). Attachment working models twist memories of relationship events. Psychological Science; doi:10.1177/0956797609357175
4. Tatkin, S. (2009). Addiction to “alone time”: avoidant attachment, narcissism, and a one‐person psychology within a two‐person psychological system. The Therapist, 57(January‐February). Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Addiction-to-Alone-Time.pdf
5. Tatkin, S. (2009). The plight of the avoidantly attached partner in couples therapy. New Therapist 62, 10-16. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I-want-you-in-the-house.pdf
6. Tatkin, S. (2011). Allergic to hope: Angry resistant attachment and a one-person psychology within a two-person psychological system. Psychotherapy in Australia, 18(1), 66-73. Retrieved from http://stantatkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Allergic-to-Hope_Tatkin.pdf

The experience of trauma often shapes our beliefs of self, other, and world. In turn, those beliefs shape our relationships, pervade our families, spread to our communities, and stretch across societies. Our attachment styles and strategies, which can be categorized by individual beliefs about dependency and support in the wake of interpersonal trauma, often correspond to early relational traumas.

Attachment styles are most often associated with parenting or romantic relationships. They shape the ways we lie and/or cheat. They might define our sexual fantasies and influence our decision to pursue sex as a shared or solo practice. They help mold our political and religious views, boundaries in friendships, assessment of dangerous situations, physical health, epigenetics, over- or under-utilization of health and human services, and interactions with employers or any other authority figure or system.

They may further impact a wide range of interactions between self and other:

• The ways we approach mindfulness
• How we react to stress
• The manner in which we identify and pursue our goals [fat_widget_trauma_ptsd_right]
• How we tend to our own basic needs
• The way we create or withdraw from conflict in any given setting.

Trauma-molded beliefs may predict our ability to thrive or fail when life presents obstacles. In our culture, we can see these extreme echoes and reflections of trauma. They are in the vernacular, the language that defines and divides geographic regions: “Buck up. Emotion is weak. We don’t ask for directions.” These are all avoidant, counter-dependent messages, often assigned and attributed to males in our culture. These are also vestiges of the “rugged individualism” that shaped our country.

The constructed rules that dictate social interactions originated at some point from individual attachment styles that developed in direct response to relational trauma. These internal rules, formed during individual traumas, eventually externalize and spread outward, permeating cultures and influencing conflicts on a grander scale. Rules and beliefs related to anxious attachment—“Your partner is responsible for your emotions, is supposed to take care of you. Individual needs do not matter. It’s more important to belong, to share everything—”can also spread. There is no escaping trauma in this world, and trauma can interrupt even the most robust and healthy generational patterns.

With anxious attachment, there may be a tendency to blame the parents. While it’s true we do form attachment beliefs based on our relationships with our caregivers, in the greater scheme, the trauma-broken innocence was also true for them, for their parents, and for their parents’ parents.

There is no escaping trauma in this world, and trauma can interrupt even the most robust and healthy generational patterns. In the wake of trauma, we are forced to relearn ways of connecting with self and other. And the relearning can span generations—generations that are likely, in the meantime, to be interrupted again by other traumas.

Basic Trauma/Attachment Reactions

Our trauma reactions are hardwired into these vessels we inhabit. The theory of a “defense cascade,” supported by Porges’ polyvagal theory, suggests our trauma responses occur in a specific sequence: we move from our “social nervous system” to “fight or flight” and then to “freeze.”

The work of Peter Levine, developer of Somatic Experiencing®, supports another idea: longer-held, character-shaping postures that are often the response to ongoing or repeated trauma also occur in sequence. To escape from these postures, then, it may be necessary to traverse the sequence in reverse: from freeze, through fight or flight, and then back to social connection.

What follows is a framework of attachment styles that serves as both a defense “cascade” and a progression through beliefs of dependence or abandonment. Note that, while this is presented as a “simplified” model, humans are not simple. We each come with hardwired temperaments and a variety of motivation systems—though our survival and attachment systems often overrides these—and we internalize multiple caregivers. Few of us remain consistently in one attachment style across a range of situations.

Stage 1: Secure Attachment, Internalized Connection

In this stage, the trauma response is one of connection: “I am supported; I can depend on self and other.” The mind and body function in harmony, and desires are easy to identify and express. Individuals may be more discerning in their relationships and better able to move on when a relationship is not working. Posture is more likely to be relaxed and expressive or nonreactive, and a person may be able to bond more easily. The internalized connection may be more attuned: the internal parent is connected, curious, and welcoming, while the internal child is soothed and regulated.

Stage 2: Anxious Attachment, Internalized Abandonment

When threat is imminent, our bodies mobilize into action. We may become loud, often drawing attention intentionally. This anxious stage represents the duality of a screaming child being abandoned and an internalized parent who may be overwhelmed or fleeing from that child. As this relationship is projected onto the world, the feelings of abandonment may feel insatiable. Finding no internal support, the child reaches out to other people in desperation, sometimes chasing and clinging.

The trauma response here is one of fight. Flight is a non-option because it leads away from other, from life. A person who is in this stage may resort to expressive or reactive strategies in order to elicit a response, with an attitude of dependence: “I need you. You’re supposed to take care of me.” A person may experience chaotic or limited boundaries, easily merging with others and losing their sense of self. The body may overwhelm the mind, making it hard to separate the wants of the self from the wants of another.

Relationships may be characterized by hypo-discernment: A person may remain with a partner they no longer care for in order to avoid being alone. In abandoning or being unable to access the internal self, a person may become unable to connect to others in the present moment. Individuals in this stage may create “drama” to amplify their needs and test or sabotage friendships. In a relationship, they may feel abandoned easily and tend to seek romantic or sexual support outside the relationship when they perceive their partner as unavailable.

For healing to take place, a person typically must learn to be with self enough to feel the presence of other.

Stage 3: Avoidant Attachment, Internalized Oppression

We fall into freeze when the energy of fight or flight is spent and neither sequence has completed. Freeze also remains the default when both fight and flight are non-options, as is the case for many children. At an internal level, avoidant attachment develops in reaction to anxious attachment that evoked punishment. As this is a step beyond (or a layer atop) stage 2, the challenge lies first in gradually learning to trust other, then in dealing with the intense feelings of abandonment that lie hidden and compartmentalized beneath this secondary defense.

Individuals in this stage may be more likely to hide in order to minimize attention and potential judgment, and they may be less active in the pursuit of their goals. Counter-dependence means they often avoid asking for help, may avoid doctors when sick, and feel resentment when others act in dependent ways. In the long term, there may be a sense of being stuck—limited facial expression, decreased connection to body and emotion, immobility, lack of energy, risk aversion, and a preference to be alone and away from judgment. There is a knowing, in this state, that to be with others means to lose self, to give up agency or will. People in this stage may think, “If I seek support, I will be attacked. I should get small. Remain quiet. Avoid becoming a target. There is only self.”

In relationships, this freeze state often plays out in hesitation, fear, lack of engagement, minimal expression, low motivation, limited enthusiasm, and greater attunement to anger and controlling actions in others. Those using avoidant strategies tend to look for ways to get out of a relationship before commitment enters the picture. This is the partner who lives with one foot out the door, resists talking about the future, and struggles with dependence in both self and other. Active and impenetrable boundaries preserve self from threat of other, limiting intimacy and threatening relationships.

Relationships may be characterized by hyper-discernment: Individuals may spend years or decades choosing the “perfect” partner, and they may be more likely to leave a friend/partner/lover they truly love after spending years struggling with the relationship, realizing afterward they were simply dissociated from their fear of being alone.

People may be more likely to seek alone time, even lying about demands on them in order to justify the need for space. They are more likely to use unintentional gaslighting as a means of deflecting attention/punishment. While less likely to verbalize their needs, they may tend to blame others for not meeting those needs. Avoidant strategies can, without being directly antagonistic, assert dominance in passive-aggressive ways, such as withdrawal as punishment. Even breakups might be handled in indirect and often ineffective ways—investing months or years trying to get one’s partner to initiate a breakup, for example. With a goal of protecting freedom and agency, individuals may disengage and even dissociate to maintain self as separate from other.

With awareness and attention, meeting self can feel like coming home, and we can begin to elicit and receive from the world what we have needed all along.The avoidant stage represents a reaction to a reaction. The duality of the first stage is still present, but the internalized parent (or protector) has become oppressive instead of abandoning. “We cannot show this neediness to the world. It is weak. It brings social and physical threat.” Tools used in this stage include dissociation and compartmentalization, as individuals attempt to simply maintain baseline survival functions. Strategies in this stage attempt to separate from dependence and present as self-sufficient. Individuals may be unable to identify or verbalize physical sensations in the present.

Completing the Circuit

Presence occurs only in the completed circuit between self and other. This is more than a connection between two parties. Each side must be connected within in order to feel connected without, and vice versa. For the anxious side, this step means moving more toward self and mind. For the avoidant side, it means reaching toward other and landing in body. In attachment terms, if we cannot bear remaining present with the full experience of self and other simultaneously, connection may elude us, and trauma will persist.

We can look out into the world and see the undercurrent of attachment in every facet of existence—every choice, every reaction, every interaction. We rarely see the person before us. When we look into our partner’s eyes, we see the people behind us that laid the groundwork, the ones that defined our beliefs about the possibility of connection.
We meet ourselves in the same ways our caregivers met us, and in doing so, we continue to feel the same pain.
The outside world reflects our internal world. Through our own perceptions and projections, then, the world meets us the way we meet ourselves.

As we learn to meet ourselves with empathy and compassion, our experience of life can change. It may become a little softer, a little more manageable. With awareness and attention, meeting self can feel like coming home, and we can begin to elicit and receive from the world what we have needed all along.

References:

1. Diamond, D., Blatt, S. J., & Lichtenberg, J. D. (2007). Attachment & Sexuality. New York, NY: Analytic Press.
2. Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
3. Noricks, J. S. (2011). Parts Psychology: A New Model of Therapy for the Treatment of Psychological Problems through Healing the Normal Multiple Personalities Within Us: Case Studies in the Psychotherapy of Mental Disorders. Los Angeles, CA: New University Press.
4. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
5. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
6. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Viking.

“It’s like a mother: when the baby is crying,
she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms.
Your pain, your anxiety is your baby.
You have to take care of it.
You have to go back to yourself,
to recognize the suffering in you.
Embrace the suffering, and you get a relief.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s some part in all of us that yearns to belong. This is our safety, our security. It means we can relax, that others are there to hold us, cherish us, praise us, and keep guard when we cannot. It means we matter.

When we’ve experienced a single relational disconnection, we generally recover. When it becomes a pattern—when someone who is “supposed to be there” for us finds ways to disengage or disappear on a daily basis—recovery feels intangible and unattainable. We make decisions about the self, saying, “I’m not wanted. I must be flawed.”

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Anxious Attachment Says: ‘You’re Not Giving Me Enough’

Those landing on the anxious side of attachment are often aware they are seeking others as a way to regulate their overwhelm. They may feel “clingy.” When living in this mode, many feel easily rejected or abandoned, becoming angry when partners fail to live up to perceived expectations. On guard, attuned to signs of others leaving, they easily fall into internal panic, exhibiting protest behaviors in often futile attempts to elicit caring responses. They may guilt or blame partners into submission, choosing to argue (and continue arguing) because it feels better than no connection at all, because preoccupation allows no other choice.

Many in this mode give up their own desires in attempts to win their partner’s approval, placing survival needs over authenticity. The “real” identity of their partner is often less relevant than the fact the partner presents as available just often enough for the preoccupied one to maintain an illusion of love. This can leave their partners feeling like disposable place-keepers, while for the anxious one, self-justification creates a paradoxical argument: “I would not put this much effort into someone who was not ‘the one.’ ”

Some have referred to this as “fantasy bonding”—in love with the idea of the person, often ignoring uncomfortable parts.

Many anxiously attached individuals recognize—in calmer moments, after the fact—they’ve been so involved with their own discomfort and dysregulation that they failed to catch unspoken emotional cues from partners that might have led to feelings of mutual connection and intimacy.

Anxious Relationship with the Self

Sometimes the panic itself becomes the enemy, and the anxious person develops strategies to hide or contain it, saying, “If others see this panic, they will leave me.” This message itself perpetuates internal conflict—self against self—amplifying pain as internal parts polarize.

While many, trapped in anxiety, function excessively in the presence of others (which can be perceived by others as demanding), when alone they may find tasks difficult to complete. Sometimes, in the absence of constant reassurance, they find their motivation dissolved. They may recognize an absence of perceived selfhood when not in the presence of another.

As familiar as the relational desperation becomes, they may find that when real intimacy is offered, they do not know how to be with it. It may fall flat. They may tell themselves they are just bored. They might distract themselves from it or sabotage it. It invokes too much shame, bringing to awareness parts of the self that they do not know how to meet.

Origins of Anxious Attachment

Many theories describe the creation of anxious attachment, citing both nature and nurture. One of the foremost frames the caregiver as someone overwhelmed by their child’s emotion. It might be a parent who appreciates or loves the baby while also feeling out of sync, helpless, as if there is no way to calm the baby. This is an unfortunate misattunement or inaccurate empathy. The baby, of course, gets more attention when crying, thus training it to use tantrums as a primary way to elicit attention and meet its security needs.

Another theory, one that could work in conjunction with the above: the caregiver who carries abandonment wounds actively (even subconsciously) creates dependence in their child, ensuring the child will need them and remain with them. The child of this parenting strategy is thus trained to remain a child, to take a dependent role in intimate relationships in order to get needs met.

Anxious Attachment in Conflict

Those on the anxious side of attachment fight in and for relationship, feeling incapable of calming until another person meets their needs for assurance. This often leads to long-term deterioration of the relationship as their partners learn to distance, placate, and resent rather than pursue seemingly endless conflict. This withdrawal by partners may perpetuate negative beliefs: “They are trying to leave me. I am not lovable. I have to make my emotion bigger to get a response.”

Open Letter from the Avoidant to the Anxiously Attached

I see your panic. I hear it in your breathing, your sighs, your many signs and gestures—the ones meant to elicit attention from me. I resent you in this mood because it means I lose a partner and gain a child. I become the parent. I become your “fix.” In your panic, my existence is no longer mine. I’m no longer free, whole, separate from you. With nobody in you to meet me, I am trapped and alone.

Your dependence becomes a weight for me to carry. It’s like a child in you with nowhere to go. Sometimes it feels like an insatiable bully, entitled, demanding I care for it. But it has no sense of time, and I could meet it for hours, resenting you each minute. And nothing changes.

I want to be loved, not needed.

Part of me also yearns to be taken care of.

Therapy for the Anxious: Bonding with the Self

In moments of interpersonal conflict, many of us switch to younger states. We disconnect from present-day resources, reacting not to partners but to parents. Even with adult partners, we return to perceptions, expectations, and strategies learned at an early age. We become the child in the empty room, feeling ourselves empty until it fills once again. Or we become the child playing in our room, safe, away from the needs or threats of others throughout the house, hoping no one comes to the door.

Invariably, in order to heal and decrease dependence on others, those on the anxious end of the spectrum will find themselves exploring ways to build an internal support structure—some part of the self that remains strong, dependable, unthreatened by intense emotion. This might be framed as “self-validation” or as an “internal parent.”

In the beginning, though, they naturally seek others—friends, partners, and therapists—to provide this support, validation, and witnessing. “This isn’t the way life is supposed to be,” they may say. “We are supposed to be able to depend on others.”

Some may recognize a resentment of the therapy work, even a shame in it. They may view self-sufficiency or self-soothing as a secondary strategy, only used when one fails to belong in the world. They may feel conflict internally and with their therapist, feeling blamed while also feeling victimized in relationship: “I’m the one who feels so devastated when people leave me. Yet you’re saying I play a part in that.”

Another Way to Frame Anxious Attachment

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

It’s hard to take ownership of the child inside, noticing that it reaches out to make demands of others—a natural next step when it finds no internal caregiver available.

There’s a message often internalized in childhood: the unspoken message from a parent saying, “I can’t handle this child! Let someone else take care of it.” It’s a message repeated internally when emotion is high, when the old state is triggered. Many in therapy eventually realize they actually hate the child in them. They hand this emotional part of the self out to others, saying to friends, families, and partners: “I can’t handle this child in me! It’s too much! You take care of it.”

It’s important to begin separating parts in this way, to speak of each in third person, to gradually hear the dialogue already occurring between them. This is differentiation, and it is a necessary component of self-soothing. We cannot witness a part when we are that part. It requires some distance. Effective witnessing requires the development of an internal “other.”

Developing internal parts is something most of us have already done many times throughout life. We’ve developed internal guards and gatekeepers—judges, parents. These are the parts that judge and contain us today.

We can also develop an internal witness—one that does not judge, is not threatened by any emotion, does not attack, pull away, pity, analyze, or try to fix. One that meets us with empathy and compassion to witness our pains and joys in the ways we always wished an other would.

An intentionally developed part is just as valid as the parts that developed automatically in life. The compassion and affirmation we can give ourselves is just as real and valid as the internal abuse we already trust. It’s all internal dialogue between parts of the self. In therapy, we are just making that dialogue more conscious and intentional.

Certain therapeutic approaches, such as Hakomi and Internal Family Systems, work precisely to create an internal environment of acceptance and unity, facilitating integration through differentiation of parts.

Some Final Points and Considerations

• Our own perceptions are less accurate when the body is in fight-or-flight mode. We easily catastrophize when activated. Mindfulness practice can increase present-moment awareness of our bodily activation level. When it gets too high, it’s okay to take a break, to step away from the argument, and to connect with resources to help your body calm. Life looks different on the other side of the nervous system.
• Another way to tell if you are activated: Can you hear someone’s “no” and not take it personally?
• It’s important to begin recognizing the elements of fantasy in your relationships. Do you want an equal partner? Are there moments you really do want to be taken care of? Most of us experience both.
• This struggle is common. It is human.
• Do you give up your own interests, ideas, ideals, and pursuits in order to keep a relationship?
• It’s okay to grieve the fantasy.

References:

1. Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love. New York: Oxford University Press.
2. Kinnison, J. (2014). Type: Anxious-Preoccupied. Retrieved from https://jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/type-anxious-preoccupied
3. Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find- and keep -love. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Editor’s note: This article represents the second of two parts. The first part moves from disconnection to autopilot, then from autopilot to self-awareness.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” —Carl Jung

Complex trauma represents an expected response to ongoing and extreme interpersonal threats, revealing in its process the capacity of a core “Self” to preserve what matters most, even when it means separating from it. Part I of this article framed multiple selves as a natural adaptation to systems in which we must “fit” by placing parts of Self in storage, giving examples of potential self-containment strategies. Part II now moves toward reintegration of what was necessarily preserved while navigating the tunnel of childhood.

From Awareness to Attuned Self-Compassion

After years of automated disconnection and internal judgment, integration is often felt as an awakening, a softening toward what was once perceived as an enemy, a protective hesitance becoming a grateful encompassing. It is felt most profoundly in the surprising arrival of ownership and empathy for Self. The epiphany, or “aha” moment: a recognition that “I am not this intense emotion, nor the judgment of it.” It’s the point at which we realize this “part in exile” has been trying to get our attention, to elicit from us a response it never got from our caregivers. This gives us a chance to feel what it felt, to finally see it, to stop containing it as something evil and instead embrace it and feel with it.

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Likewise, the containing part ceases to be perceived as a bully when we realize it has been protecting us all these years, that some part of us believed our core to be so valuable and worthy of protection and preservation. It’s a simple moment of self-compassion (often with a response felt physically), telling Self: “Yes, this did happen. This present feeling is how you felt for so long. I feel it in my body. I get it. You did not deserve this pain nor create it, and I will not punish you or leave you.”

After years of automated disconnection and internal judgment, integration is often felt as an awakening, a softening toward what was once perceived as an enemy, a protective hesitance becoming a grateful encompassing.

“I am too much for others” becomes, for instance, “I have been judging myself as too much in order to contain myself and avoid re-creating the feeling of distance I felt from my father.”

One might realize: “I am afraid of others because I fear myself.” Or: “I depend on others because I have abandoned myself.” Or: “My emotions grow and overwhelm precisely because I try to diminish and dismiss them.”

In the experience of abuse and neglect, these are the missing ingredients: attunement and compassion, allowing a moment of empathy for that contained part, that child who was hurt, who reacted the only way a child could. And a recognition in that moment of empathy: “All of this pain is also me, and everything that matters most in me has been preserved.”

From Compassion to Integration

Healing comes through integration, balancing of extremes, an olive branch offered between “enemies,” an internal dialogue of acceptance and compassion. It requires access to some part of Self that can simply observe—some witness able to watch our thoughts and emotions without landing in them, without becoming them. (This is where mindfulness comes in.)

When we know each part—when we can observe without judgment and treat it with compassion—it has no reason to polarize or amplify. It calms and centers. It synchronizes. It trusts our own core.

Many people, when imagining some part of Self as a child outside of their body—experiencing that child’s life, feeling their feelings—notice an internal stirring, even a release, recognizing that as they are empathizing and speaking compassionately to a child outside of Self, they are also landing in their own child part, hearing their own words of compassion, and feeling accepted.

This internal love—acceptance and appreciation without judgment—changes the entire experience of living.

Intentional self-compassion offers release from all these arbitrary rules we’ve carried. It’s a chance to experience both freedom and connection simultaneously, internally, knowing that as we navigate the countless systems of the world, external integration echoes internal.

Editor’s note: This article represents the first of two parts. The second part, which appears here, moves from awareness to attuned self-compassion, then from compassion to integration.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes).” —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Those who seek therapy for complex trauma often do so unknowingly. They may first notice depression or anxiety, numbness, spaciness, lack of motivation, or a failure to connect or thrive. They might simply feel stuck, uncomfortable, or confused, either as an individual or in relationship.

Complex trauma refers to the way we organize our “Self” in the wake of ongoing or repeated exposure to interpersonal disconnections (sometimes overt abuse, oppression, or neglect; sometimes simple, unintended, unavoidable misattunements). At its base, complex trauma represents an ability to exist in pieces—an adaptive preservation of Self at any cost. While initially adaptive, this separation from parts of Self sometimes brings confusion in all relationships—internal versus external, Self versus Other, “what should be” versus “what is,” present versus past or future.

We stop cooperating with our “selves.”

Internally, we move from equality to hierarchy, subjugating the very parts we want to protect.

We adapt to each imperfect system (i.e., family of origin) by internalizing the system rulebook and policing ourselves to enforce the system rules. To maintain relationship with caregivers and preserve Self long enough to survive childhood, we contain parts that do not “fit” the system. We dis-integrate. Self organizes against Self, and we become walking dualities: the containing versus the contained, the rigid head versus the chaotic body. It happens automatically to all of us, with extreme reactions happening in extreme adaptations.

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This is the complexity of complex trauma: “missing experience” creates an inability to heal, yearning for unmet needs while protecting against them. Just as we internally separated parts that seek connection from parts that seek safety, we push externally against whatever we need most in life because there is no agreement.

At some level, we wait for the elusive experiential safety that will release us and reverse the process, bringing everything together.

From Disconnection to Autopilot

When ongoing threat remains familiar—when it lives within our homes, permeates the atmosphere, and becomes just another layer of everyday experience—we adapt to it. Assuming we come into the world with particular needs and dispositions, in the tunnel of childhood we often temper parts of Self. We fold and contain in order to fit.

Assuming we come into the world with particular needs and dispositions, in the tunnel of childhood we often temper parts of Self. We fold and contain in order to fit.

Even as infants, we track and respond to nonverbal cues of caregivers. We see their responses to various emotions, and we learn to contain whatever triggers them to fight, flee, or disappear. Often, this includes either particular emotions or emotions in general. We adapt to their system and separate from our bodies to avoid exiled, “unwanted” parts of Self. In this, we also separate from sensory information, becoming insulated against new input and trapped in the adaptation.

In order to adapt to the system, we become the system. We absorb and recreate our caregivers internally. If caregivers judged us, we judge ourselves. If they dismissed or diminished us, we do the same. If they did not know how to see us, we do not know how to see ourselves; we struggle to notice or articulate internal events. We often go into life not knowing how to regulate our bodies (or how to notice basic signals such as hunger). And while the dis-integration proves successfully adaptive, there remains a subtle knowing: a felt experience of disconnection, a subtle background noise, a gentle reminder that some part of us yearns to be remembered and reunited once safety is established.

These are our fragmented lives: parts of Self, surviving independently by turning against other parts Self, enforcing an embargo on that which would heal.

From Autopilot to Self-Awareness

This is just a lens, a way to begin observing our own internal conflicts, differentiating one side from another: one part judging, one part receiving that judgment and feeling it.

This automated containment system protects us from punishment (fight) or abandonment (flight) of others within our original family system(s).

Internal conflicts can look like this:

• “I want to be seen” might be met internally with “You’re too needy. You’re flawed. If you let others see, they will leave you.”
• “I want to be big” might be met with “You’ll become a target. Stay small to stay safe.”
• “I want to express my energy” might be met with “You’re too exuberant. You show too much. Stay still or they’ll leave you.”
• “I feel angry” might be met with “Anger is not allowed. If you show it, they will leave.”
• “I feel sad” might be met with “You’re weak. If you show it, they will hurt you.”
• “I want to be taken care of” might become “Nobody will take care of you. You are alone. Do it yourself.”
• “I want to experience safety with others” might become “Nobody feels safe with you. You will be alone forever. If you want people nearby, you have to keep a safe distance to avoid triggering them.”

Sometimes the parts we try hardest to contain become most visible to others. We try to hide emotion, and it becomes bigger and louder. This is how we polarize. The containing side attempts to diminish because the other side is amplifying, because it is trapped and simply wants attention. The contained side amplifies because the containing part is attempting to diminish. And so goes the dance.

We land, sometimes, on either side of the conflict. Sometimes we’re the contained part, feeling our own unmet needs on top of feeling trapped. Other times we are that containing part, wanting to survive and meet needs, knowing that if the contained part escapes we will face punishment or abandonment. No matter where our consciousness lands, the other side becomes the villain.

Trauma dysregulates the body. It moves energy levels away from baseline to extremes of hyperarousal (“too much,” panic, overwhelm) and sometimes hypoarousal (“low,” lethargy, emptiness), not only alternating but sometimes getting stuck in either extreme.

When we experience overwhelm in the body, one natural response to this dysregulation (and accompanying confusion or relational struggles) is to just get away—perhaps through drinking, sex, anxiety medication, working out, or power-watching television series online. For some, especially when trauma occurs early in life or when physical escape is not an option, dissociation (mentally drifting, wandering, “spacing out”) becomes the path to something that approximates peace or safety. Whatever route you take to numbness, it ultimately leads to separation from overwhelming sensory input coming through the body. Studies have shown that even when mental denial occurs, when we tell ourselves we are not upset, our body still shows all the standard symptoms of activation and overwhelm.

Big names in trauma, including Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk, advocate not for desensitization approaches that dull perception (repetitive reprocessing of trauma), but for practices that resensitize somatically to awareness of the present moment, the physical narrative, and an embodied experience of safety and control.

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“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: the past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.”
—Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

From Numbness

When we split from Self, we become our own enemy. We deem some core part of Self unacceptable or unsafe and expend huge amounts of energy in an effort to contain and subdue that part.

Sometimes the numbness soothes.

Sometimes it smothers.

Especially in trauma, we move to extremes.

Where we once sought freedom from overwhelming sensations, we eventually embody the separation: fully numb, divorced from life, split from Self, desperately seeking a way to feel real again, to feel connected to others and to life … to feel anything but the empty nothingness we sought and created.

The experience changes from one person to the next. For some, it may be less conscious or intentional. Maybe awareness of behaviors comes from the feedback of others as they accuse you of being irritable or irrational. Maybe they point out how analytical you’ve become, how rigid you’ve become in your rules and boundaries in some apparent quest to manufacture security.

Sometimes the extremes seem less extreme. Especially from a patterned “freeze” response or “learned helplessness,” the only noticing may be more of a familiar giving up, an acceptance of circumstance, buying in to the belief that this is all there is. From the perspective of onlookers—seeing your shoulders fall, your head drop slightly—it might look like a physical collapse.

Character development over the years, adapting around ongoing waves of trauma, commonly moves toward extremes of highly responsible or irresponsible behavior—rigid or chaotic. It might be a complex blend of both, creating artificial structure to protect and control, then engaging in high-risk behaviors to drown out or anesthetize the pain.

Sometimes there’s just the safety of the same old patterns.

Sometimes an anger rises against that monotony. That part contains screams out from inside of you.

Whether it feels safe or not, that unknown, incessant core part of Self keeps making itself known, keeps drawing your attention.

To Overwhelm

Coming back into your body often means a return to the original overwhelm.

Sometimes we can feel it coming. Other times, we are so split from our bodily senses that we don’t feel the pain until it’s too intense to ignore. It might feel like an instant move from “just fine” to overwhelm. What would it be like to drive a car with a speedometer that shows zero or 100 but nothing in between?

“Trauma changes the insula, the self-awareness systems. Traumatized people often become insensible to themselves. They find it difficult to sense pleasure and to feel engaged. These understandings force us to use methods to awaken the sensory modalities in the person.”
—Bessel van der Kolk

Sometimes the only way out is through … through the natural physical sequence of fight or flight—whatever motor pattern that represents in your body, whatever unfinished story it represents in your behavior. Sometimes this requires the help of a trauma therapist, including a therapeutic process of training and resourcing, developing a bond of trust and a mindful grounding in the present moment. The accessing of uncomfortable physical sensations (and state-dependent beliefs that come with the sensations) can become a healing experience rather than a confirmation of negative beliefs formed at a time when you felt incapable of meeting the occasion.

Some people find a grounding, resensitizing support in nature. Others find a necessary social/attachment support in structured groups. For some, it might be yoga or martial arts that return your body to a felt sense of control. Many therapists, particularly those trained in trauma or body-based experiential approaches, come equipped to help a person internalize (to gradually take in, to incorporate into his or her character) an experience and a knowing of safety and control with Self and with Other (the therapist). Whatever the method, for those who have separated from their bodily self, the move to incorporate bodily sensation into their awareness often proves to be a life-altering process.

To Manageable Pain

Sometimes it’s in the shower, cooking a meal, sitting in a garden, or “being” with a therapist. The nervous system drops to a calm hum, the physical containment ceases, and the memories process, unbidden, unstopped. And finally, in stillness, with internal safety and compassion, we observe, feel, accept, and integrate. Sometimes the body shakes—with or without tears. And after all the years of struggle, sometimes a gentle sadness lingers.

Once the overwhelm is past and underlying truths are part of present awareness, only grieving remains. Each new level of awareness brings with it a comparison between what was and what could have been—grieving for the time lost, missed opportunities in life, unmet wishes, past distractions from this centered place of living.

There may be decades of fighting the overwhelm of grieving, and then just the simple, natural, bodily directed process of grieving. No longer does one part of the body expend energy containing the “unwanted” energy of another part. No longer is it “too much” to bear. It just is. We are able to sit with the experience without reaction, without separation, with nonjudgmental presence. It might be less letting go and more letting be.

To Joy

Emerging on the other side of pain, many people find new connections. Many find that the quality of external integration echoes the quality of internal integration, and once Self is internally acceptable, we begin attracting others who also accept and value those parts of Self that we truly value, that perhaps we preserved in hiding so many years.

“If you are divided from your body, you are also divided from the body of the world, which then appears to be other than you or separate from you, rather than the living continuum to which you belong.”
—Philip Shepherd, author of New Self, New World

References:

1. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: the new science of personal transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
2. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. New York: Viking.