Attachment theory describes a biopsychosocial system designed to protect people from dangers, especially relationship dangers. It’s a foundational survival system just as is the automatic fight-flight-freeze protection system. The attachment system is complex and involves the interplay of the mind (psychological), the body (neurobiological) and relationships (social). 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 theory 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. 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 the DMM in particular, broadly describes patterns of attachment in terms of the letters A, B, and C. The A pattern is cognitively oriented, and the C patterns are affectively oriented. B patterns are a blend of A and C information processing patterns. Danger is handled differently, and often oppositely, in the A and C patterns, thus danger is more complex than meets the eye. There are universal and objective dangers which threaten most humans, and there are unique and subjective dangers which are relevant to the cognitive and affective orientations. Danger is also age-salient, so some dangers are more or less relevant depending on age.
Danger can be viewed, in one way, with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle. The needs at the bottom are more intense and failing to meet them can cause more neurobiological harm. Attachment needs are in the bottom sections of that triangle.
Types of danger generally
- Failure to meet basic survival concerns: hunge
- Hunger, cold, exhaustion, illness
- Relationship dangers in general
- Threats or actual withholding of love, as a means of control
- Threats of or actual abandonment
- Threats to commit suicide
- Born the “wrong” gender
- Unwanted births
- Guilt/blame as a means of control
- Rejection, especially of attachment behaviors
- Excessive closeness (involvement) by parents to children, includes “affect contagion”
- Role reversal, children taking care of parents
- Parentification, children taking care of siblings
- Inappropriate sexuality
- Not receiving comfort after experiencing danger
- Strangeness (unfamiliarity), sudden change of stimulation, rapid approach, height, being alone
- Loss of very important things: parents, children, financial safety, autonomy
- Separation, unexpected, for brief time without child feeling safe
- Abandonment, without making alternate care for child
- Instability, moves
- Illness, injury, severe medical threat
- Trauma (but not necessarily, because trauma can be resolved)
- Neglect, physical, emotional, medical
- Abuse, physical or emotional
- Violence: being a victim, witnessing violence, death, suicide, murder, war, betrayal, self-injury
- Triangulation
- Bullying, scapegoat
- Family substance abuse, mental health diagnosis
- Parent’s divorce
- Racism, cultural taboos
- 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
- Being seen
- Rejection for showing one’s own true feelings
- Rejection for expressing negative affect
- Taking one’s own perspective
- Expecting comfort or closeness
- “Leaking discrepant or forbidden information” (such as crying)
- Criticism
- 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
- Failing to achieve high performance
- It may be safe to:
- Attend to powerful people
- Follow some external rule-set (even if it leads to harm)
- Acknowledge the full range of feelings others have
- Put other’s needs first
Possible subjective attachment dangers from an affective perspective (attachment C-pattern)
- Inconsistent responses from others
- Rejected inconsistently
- Absence of conflict (peaceful times)
- Not being seen
- Not being true to one’s own feelings, even if in conflict with other people’s desires
- Not attending to relationships
- Not being attended to (especially, subjectively important people not attending to oneself)
- Hidden causation
- Deception, deceptive parents
- 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 may be safe to:
- Exaggerate affect
- Insist on self-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: Dr. Patricia Crittenden, Dr. Shari Kidwell, Rebecca Carr-Hopkins, and Family Relations Institute DMM assessment trainers; Mark Baumann J.D., Dr. Mike Blows, and Emily A. Anderson MA.
From materials by Dr. Patricia Crittenden: Crittenden, P. M., & Landini, A. (2011). Assessing Adult Attachment: A Dynamic-Maturational Method of Discourse Analysis. New York: Norton; Crittenden, P. M. & Newman, L. (2010). Comparing models of borderline personality disorder: Mothers’ experience, self-protective strategies, and dispositional representations. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 15, 433-452; Crittenden, P. M., (2009). Molding Clay: The process of construction of the self and its relation to psychotherapy. New Therapist, 61, 22-31.
Also from materials by: John Bowlby (1973), Separation: Anxiety & Anger, vol. 2 of attachment and Loss, New York: Basic Books; John Bowlby (1980), Loss: sadness and depression, vol. 3 of attachment and Loss (pp. 44-74). New York: Basic Books. John Bowlby (1988), A secure base: parent-child attachment and healthy human development, Basic Books; Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.); 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.); Ben Grey and Grey, Jeremy Gunson (2019), Invisible Children? How attachment theory and evidenced-based procedures can bring to light the hidden experience of children at risk from their parents, in W. Bunston, & S. Jones (Eds.), Supporting Vulnerable Babies and Young Children (pp. 191-207), [Chapter 12] Jessica Kingsley Publishers.