When people are exposed to danger, survival-ensuring neurobiological processes take precedence over other brain and body systems. The fight-flight-freeze response is an example of one system taking control from other systems. Because humans are dependent on social relationships, relationship danger can also trigger the use of specific neurobiological network systems. Attachment theory describes relationship and attachment dangers.
The Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) describes attachment and relationship danger in detail. Attachment and the DMM describe how exposure to danger in childhood helps shape neural function, and the resultant patterns of information processing (PIP). There are two primary patterns, one is cognitively oriented and one is affectively oriented. Danger is more complex than meets the eye. More things present danger to humans than we might first realize. There are universal dangers that threaten all humans, and there are unique dangers that are relevant to the cognitive or 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 (crying, not following rules)
- 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 a 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*
- 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
- Not: death of parent so long as child’s needs met; abandonment; bullying
2-5 year olds
- Birth of a sibling
- Development of locomotion
- 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
- 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
*Not necessarily a DMM-verified danger or safety
Danger list contributors: Dr. Patricia Crittenden, Dr. Shari Kidwell, Rebecca Carr-Hopkins, Mark Baumann