Childhood Bonding: Avoidant Attachment
This is part four in a series of articles about childhood bonding or attachment. In this article, I look at avoidant or dismissive attachment. This strategy often results when the parent rejects the child.
How Does Avoidant Attachment Happen?
Babies are totally dependent on their parents for physical as well as emotional care. What is happening in the parent’s nervous system lays the foundation for what happens in the child’s. A child’s brain is too immature to recognize that she is separate from her environment. Consequently, how well her parent’s nervous system is managing stress determines how well the child does the same. The parent’s struggles with stress become a part of the child and later form the basis of the child’s self-esteem.
Some behaviors of the parent contribute to avoidant attachment, which is called dismissive attachment when the child becomes an adult. These include the parent who
- Rejects the child.
- Fails to attend to the child’s cry or gives too little attention.
- Is absent from the child or leaves the child alone too much.
- Minimizes the value of attachment and her influence in the child’s ability to securely attach.
- Focuses much more on being a teacher to the child than one who attends to the child’s emotional needs.
If you were to watch a child who felt avoidantly attached to her parent, you would notice the child:
- Not crying when she is separated from the parent.
- Avoiding or ignoring the parent when she is reunited with the parent.
- Showing very few emotions toward the parent including anger or distress.
- Expressing more interest in her environment and toys than people.
- Avoiding eye contact with others.
- Struggling to identify what she wants.
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How is Dismissive Attachment Evident in Adults?
If you spend most of your time reflecting dismissive attachment, you
- Appear to not be interested in relationships; inside, however, is a painful longing for connection.
- Look only to yourself when you want to calm down.
- Value your ability to be self-sufficient.
- Attend to your own needs while ignoring those of others.
- Dissociate or leave yourself when you feel strong emotions.
- Recall the facts using very few words.
- Describe yourself as an alien or outcast.
- Cannot recall the emotional quality of past events.
- Focus on the positive or describe your childhood as great or normal.
How to Help A Dismissively Attached Adult?
If you know of someone with a dismissive style of attachment, you may wonder if you can be of any help at all considering that she doesn’t seem to care about relationships. Remember that under the surface lies a deep desire for connection, which may help you to reach out to her. Some things you may do or suggest include:
- Inviting her to lean on you when she is upset about something.
- Approaching her with kind and gentle eyes.
- Encouraging her to connect with a pet.
- Inviting her to join others in social activities where there will be people who care about her.
- Letting her know that she can count on you for help.
- Understanding that it can take her time to move from her bubble of isolation to engaging with you.
- Asking her to tell you about someone whom she thinks could support her.
Next Step?
If you are interested in exploring your attachment style with me, I can be reached at 720-635-7943 in Westminster, CO. I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation during which we can see if we are a good fit for one another.
