Attachment is a system designed to protect people from dangers, especially relationship dangers. It’s similar to the automatic fight-flight-freeze protection system. The attachment system is complex and involves the mind (psycholocial), the body (neurobiological) and relationships (MBRx). Because humans are highly social and dependent on complex social systems, relationship danger is also complex. The Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) describes attachment and relationship danger in detail, and the DMM Danger List captures some of these dangers.
The attachment system also impacts the developing mind and body. The impacts tend to be lifelong. The way danger is handled via relational experiences impacts the growth and development of the mind and body. Attachment experiences impact (to name a few) neural shape, neural function, emotion regulation, social function, memory systems, and resultant patterns of information processing. Attachment, and DMM in particular, describes two primary patterns of information processing, one is cognitively oriented and another is affectively oriented. Danger is more complex than meets the eye. There are universal and objective dangers that threaten most humans, and there are unique and subjective dangers that are relevant to the cognitive and affective orientations. Danger is also age-salient, and some dangers are more or less relevant depending on age.
Types of danger generally
- Basic survival needs, hunger, cold
- Relationship needs: not being rejected
- Not receiving comfort after experiencing danger
- Loss of very important things: children, parents, financial safety, autonomy
- Trauma (but not necessarily, because trauma can be resolved)
- Abuse
- Neglect
- Violence: being a victim, witnessing violence, death
- Parent’s divorce
- Certain specific things: snakes, cliff edges, swimming pools for untrained swimmers
Possible subjective attachment dangers from a cognitive perspective (attachment A-pattern)
- Doing the wrong thing
- Doing what one wants
- Showing one’s own true feelings
- Taking one’s own perspective
- Expect comfort
- “Leaking discrepant or forbidden information”
- Criticism
- Expressing negative affect
- Engaging in negative behaviors (not following rules)
- Shame, not humiliation*
- Conflict with attachment figure
- Admitting vulnerability
- Intimacy
- Inability to understand child’s perspective
- Inability to act appropriately with child
- Memories of negative affect and negative experiences
- It may be safe to:
- Attend to powerful people
- Follow some external rule-set (even if it leads to harm)
Possible subjective attachment dangers from an affective perspective (attachment C-pattern)
- Abandonment, being alone
- Not being in conflict
- Not being true to one’s own feelings, even if in conflict with other people’s desires
- Not attending to relationships, letting important people not attend to oneself
- Believing that others will do as they say
- Compromise
- Delaying gratification
- Feeling comfortable, i.e. exploration and reflection
- Ambiguous reactions by others
- Acknowledge both good and bad aspects of a person or group
- Collusion-refusal by others
- Humiliation, not shame*
- It is safe to:
- Exaggerate affect
- Insist on perspective
- Deceptive attacks
- Split good and bad aspects of a person or group
- Collude with others
Age-salient dangers
Infancy
- Unavailable mother
- Separation
- Lack of stable caregiver or attachment figure
- Neglect
- Risk of physical harm
- Physical abuse
- Potentially, medical procedures
- Hunger, cold, attack by angry parent
- Uncomfortable or painful physical sensations
- Not: death of parent so long as child’s needs met; abandonment; bullying
2-5 year olds
- Birth of a sibling
- Development of locomotion (and related separation distress)
- Parents not keeping up with child’s ability to explore and get into trouble
- Unpredictable parents
- Abandonment, and threat of it
- Physical abuse
- Deception (can’t deceive an infant)
- Separation changes without advance warning
- Inconsistency
- Over-protection (prevents development of building skill to manage small threats)
- Death of parent
- Sexual abuse
- Psychiatric illness of parent (may be a reduced danger if child is able to understand and manage which is more likely at older ages)
- Too much or too little compassion for child
- Parents failing to shift from doing for the child to negotiating with child (Motherese, Fernald & Kuhl, 1987)
- Parents failure to create hierarchical relationship (inappropriate authority)
- Granting children’s preferences instead of providing appropriate safety
- Handling child’s “No!” with disrespect, inappropriate discipline, or unfairness
- Loud noises, strange people and objects, large or unfamiliar animals, rapid approach, darkness, being alone (from Ainsworth (1978), and Bowlby (1973))
- Social disapproval, punishment, and ostracism after violations of cultural norms; fears from rich imaginations such as a parent’s snoring interpreted as a tiger growl, shadowy objects in a dark room. (Lieberman (2008).)
- Not: moving with both parents
School Age
- Parental conflict
- Bullying
- Name calling
- Moving (relocation), with both parents
- Not: separation
Adolescents
- Moving (more of an irritation unless losing significant peer attachment)
- Early onset of menstruation
*Shame is clearly identified from attachment science assessments as a danger associated with attachment A-patterns. Neither shame nor humiliation have yet been scientifically associated with C-patterns. CSI proposed at the 2018 IASA conference the shame-humiliation distinction.
Danger list contributors: Family Relations Institute DMM assessment trainers, Dr. Patricia Crittenden, Dr. Shari Kidwell, and Rebecca Carr-Hopkins; Mark Baumann; materials from Alicia Lieberman, (Lieberman, A. F. (2008), When development falters: putting relationships first, in Psychotherapy with infants and young children: Repairing the effects of stress and trauma on early attachment (eds, A. F. Lieberman, Van Horn, P, Guliford Publications.), Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.), John Bowlby (Bowlby J (1973). Separation: Anxiety & Anger. Attachment and Loss (vol. 2); (International psycho-analytical library no.95). London: Hogarth Press.)