On 3 June 2025, we’ll explore fear in both the C and A DMM patterns. We’ll blend in some of Jaak Panksepp’s terminology and thoughts on FEAR, and touch on some Polyvagal perspective.
Fear is discussed beginning on page 42 of Assessing Adult Attachment (the Yellow Book). On Page 44, Crittenden has a graphic showing the affective structures in C patterns which are the primary organizing affects when people are exposed to danger. In the C-odds (C1/3/5/7), anger motivates approach with physical or verbal attack. In the C-evens (C2/4/6/8), desire for comfort motivates approach with requests for affection or comfort, while fear motivates withdrawal/escape.
How might Fight-Flight-Comfort (FFC) relate to the fight-flight-freeze (FFF) system described by the Polyvagal theory? Is desire for comfort a form of a “freeze” response?
For attachment C-patterns, fear is more specifically described as involving the oscillation of invulnerable anger with vulnerable fear and desire for comfort. At the B4 attachment level (just below C2), desire for comfort is the primary organizing affect. C2 involves minor fear. At C4, the mix of desire for comfort and Fear are equal. Fear becomes more dominant in C6 and near total in C8.
At the C3/4 level:
When fear is motivating withdrawal, what techniques can professionals use to activate desire for comfort as the primary driving affect in the moment or ongoing situation?
At the C5/6 level:
When anger has turned to RAGE, and it’s directed to a person in a persistent, ongoing pattern of revenge and derogation, how can professionals help calm the RAGE and activate desire for comfort or fear (FEAR)?
At the C6 (C4?) level:
What’s going on when a C-client is utterly unable to make decisions. Is it out of control feigned helplessness? Is it fear (+FEAR), an intense desire for comfort, or Anger? Or a combination of all three leading to a collapse of an ability to find any protective strategy? Crittenden and Landini say in Assessing Adult Attachment, on fear: “Quite obviously, if all are displayed at once, one’s behavior becomes incoherent, self-defeating, and non-productive.” Is this similar to depression in A-strategies where depression is an overwhelming withdrawal strategy since the person is not able to find A-strategies which can provide protection?
Fear is not described as a primary organizing affect in attachment A strategies. Yet, most professionals can think of examples of clients using A strategies who are, at least at times, overly driven by fear. Panksepp’s conceptualizes FEAR is as a universal primary process emotion, so we should expect to see it in all attachment patterns.
When A strategies predominate and fear is present and driving thinking and choices, how is fear/FEAR different from C-fear?
Is A-fear less about attachment and more about a non-attachment learned FEAR? Is it less about presumed vulnerability and more about learned vulnerability?
From Panksepp’s perspective, FEAR is one of his seven primary process emotions, but it differs from every other PPE (SEEKING, LUST, CARE, GRIEF, PANIC, RAGE) in that it is primarily learned as opposed to based on specific neural systems. Panksepp only identified a few instinctive FEARs such as pain, loud noise, unprotected heights, and strange dark places. Another instinctive fear, however, is not being held.
For C’s, how does not being held shed light on desire for comfort?
For A’s, how does not being held shed light on their often described distal qualities?
What else does this imply for the DMM?
Date: Tuesday, 3 June.
Time: 9:00 am in Seattle. Noon in Miami. 5:00 pm in London
Cost: Free
For: All DMM Group Talk members, and your colleagues
Recording: No.
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