Attachment and Relational Trauma

Attachment trauma is unique because its triggers are relational; the trauma gets reactivated in the relationships where emotional risk and vulnerability are involved. This is what differentiates attachment trauma from the PTSD suffered by a war veteran or a frontline first responder. The main trigger of attachment trauma is getting close to others. It’s the intimacy itself that activates the trauma response, causing the person to play out the attachment style that was formed early on in life almost as a defense against the vulnerability of a relationship.

Securely attached individuals do not walk around trying to protect themselves from relationships. They take risks because they are resilient. If for some reason a relationship doesn’t work out, they move on without being scarred.

Relationships that don’t work out actually help to strengthen a securely attached individual. During the post-relationship period they grow rather than diminish and they create a narrative around them where there’s meaning involved in the experience. This is not the case with insecurely attached individuals. They walk away from failed relationships feeling defeated, ashamed, fearful, hostile, and often devasted.

 The Intrusive Past

Reliving a past event in the present moment is a common indicator of trauma. You may find yourself ruminating over a particular event from your past, whether from the recent past or from early in your life. Or you might be subjected to memories popping into your mind unexpectedly and at seemingly random times. These are known as flashbacks. You can also experience reliving an event while you sleep in the form of nightmares.

The experience of unsettling physiological reactions in your body is always present in trauma. All five of your senses can trigger the reliving of a disturbing memory, depending on how the information entered your brain and nervous system at the time of the incident.

 Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

Oftentimes, attachment traumas activate what are referred to as traumatic reenactments, which are unconscious motivations or compulsions to repeat a past trauma in present life. This can occur in present-day attachment relationships where the trauma survivor reenacts their own trauma with someone close to them. This reenactment can come in the form of role reversal or the trauma survivor can unintentionally arrange for their attachment figure to inflict a similar trauma onto them.

The brain is capable of isolating elements of personal history which then get activated later only under very specific conditions (Gerson, 2022). An example of this is a child who witnessed his father beat his mother when he was eight years old, has absolutely no violent urges until his own son turns eight, and he begins to beat his own son because he cannot resist the urge to do so (Cozolino, 2014).

Because trauma memories are trapped in the amygdala, which is the threat detector of the brain, and not in the hippocampus, which is the long term memory hard drive of the brain, amygdala memories can be a cause for reenactments and revictimizations (Cozolino, 2014).

Are You Intimacy Intolerant?

If you have an insecure attachment style, and you try to become intimate with somebody who has a secure attachment style, the lack of drama, the consistency, and the ability of the other person to be present and available actually might scare you off. Your nervous system will not know what to do with all the consistency and reliability, and so it might sabotage the relationship.

Avoidance Strategies

Human beings have natural defense mechanisms, and every human defense mechanism involves some degree of avoidance. As human beings, we instinctively tend to avoid pain and discomfort (Gerson, 2021). Avoidance can range from refusing to go to certain places, to purposely avoiding certain people or certain situations, to attempting to bury or suppress memories, to completely tuning out or “dissociating” as an attempt to avoid reliving a traumatic incident. Avoidance can also involve picking fights with your intimate partner or loved ones in an attempt to create emotional distance when you are feeling threatened by emotional closeness.

Dissociation, as stated previously, is the experience of feeling detached from your own conscious awareness or even your own body (DSM 5-TR). It can make you feel like you are “not real” or like the world around you isn’t real. More severe experiences of dissociation can result in a complete tuning out, as if you’re “here but not here.” Because of this, dissociation can trigger a sense of humiliation or confusion (DSM-5-TR).

Many trauma survivors dissociate quite regularly and don’t even realize it. Dissociation is really just your brain and body’s way of protecting itself from reliving overwhelming traumatic events. It can be worked through in therapy, but to do so requires a willingness to try an entirely new approach to recalling traumatic events.  

 Panic Attacks 

Dangerous situations naturally activate your autonomic nervous system. After experiencing a trauma, however, activation can persist for an indefinite amount of time, even long after the traumatic event is over. Reminders of the trauma can activate a threat response such as fear or anxiety, and it can seem like the fear or the anxiety come from out of nowhere because it is difficult to trace trauma signs back to the original event when you’re actively perceiving a threat. This seemingly blindsiding fear or anxiety can sometimes escalate to full-blown panic attacks.

Panic attacks are characterized by a feeling of intense fear or distress that can come over you abruptly even when you think you are in a calm state. Signs of a panic attack include: heart palpitations, sweating, trembling or shaking, shortness of breath or a feeling of being suffocated, feelings of choking, chest pain or discomfort, nausea or abdominal distress, dizziness, lightheadedness, chills or heat sensations, numbness or tingling sensations, dissociation, fear of losing control, fear of “going crazy,” and fear of dying (DSM-5-TR). 

In addition to experiencing anxiety or panic, you may also find yourself quick to aggression or “on edge” on a regular basis. You may find it hard to concentrate. You may seem overly aware of your surroundings. Sleep disturbances can be exacerbated by chronic stress. You may be constantly on high alert even when you are fatigued. It is quite taxing to be exhausted and fully alert at the same time.

 Preoccupation with Mistrust

Attachment trauma can result in an overall mistrust of the intentions of others. This is an attempt to predict outcomes that were not predictable in childhood after trauma. Attachment trauma can morph into an overall mistrust of everyone, in seeing the world and everyone in it as unreliable. Essentially, this attachment style is re-created in your present life and projected onto everyone and everything. This is the brain’s an attempt to create a sense of consistency and predictability.

 Negative Thoughts and Beliefs

Shifts in thoughts and beliefs are very common after experiencing traumatic stress. As kids, we develop beliefs and perceptions about how we understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. It is common, however, for these beliefs to change after experiencing traumatic events. For example, after chronic trauma exposure, many people report that they start to believe the world is nothing more than a bleak and dangerous place void of any joy or hope. Because of this, many trauma survivors find it hard to trust others. Some even stop seeing the point of living and struggle to find meaning in life after trauma exposure. Too many come to believe that they are going to live the rest of their lives as if they are “broken” beyond repair. Many also begin questioning long-held beliefs about their spirituality and the nature of existence. Some survivors I have worked with blame themselves not only for the way they feel after the traumatic events they’ve experienced in relationships, but for the actual events themselves.

 Intense Reactivity

Trauma can activate very strong reactions of aggression, irritability, guilt, shame, grief, confusion, worry, and profound sadness. Others may experience you as numb or withdrawn. Clients will often tell me that they want to work on eliminating or at least reducing a specific reaction such as frequent outbursts of aggression, but a particular reaction or behavior is rarely the root of the problem. Again, an intense reaction to a traumatic event is just one of many signs that you have been traumatized.

Let’s say you’re angry: your anger is not the problem. The threat response that accompanies the anger is the actual problem (Gentry, 2021). Once you realize this, it will bring you tremendous relief because you will understand that there’s nothing wrong with you personally; what’s wrong is that your nervous system still perceives a threat when there is no actual danger.

Self-Destructive Behaviors 

Trauma can lead to excessive and impulsive behaviors that were uncharacteristic of you before the trauma occurred. These can include forms of self-medicating, such as drinking, drug use, smoking and using tobacco and cannabis products, as well as gambling, excessive spending, excessive exercise, excessive television watching, excessive use of your phone for unimportant things, excessive zoning out, excessive or inappropriate sexual activity including infidelity/extramarital affairs, excessive pornography viewing, detachment from family members, self-sabotaging behaviors, and excessive activity scheduling to avoid down time and keep busy, among other things.

It’s important to understand that trauma can lead to these behaviors, because trauma itself cannot make anyone do anything. Trauma, however, can highly influence your behaviors on a non-conscious level because trauma hijacks your autonomic nervous system and the limbic region (the emotional center of your brain). This can lead you to act out of character until you realize you are not in any danger and until you learn how to interrupt threat responses in your body. You can determine if you’re acting out of character quite simply: if you have begun to behave in ways that are not typical of you, and you experience guilt, shame, or remorse, then you know you are acting out of character.

When it comes to self-destructive behaviors, I want to emphasize that there is a major difference between an explanation and an excuse. Let me be clear: trauma exposure can provide an explanation for why you may be more tempted to engage in behaviors that are inconsistent with your character, but it doesn’t excuse behaviors that are harmful to yourself or to others.

If you find you are acting out of character, it is really important to seek help, especially if you have other people depending on you in your personal life. If you don’t seek help or practice self-help techniques regularly, you could potentially rupture relationships in ways that might be difficult or even impossible to repair. As human beings, when we don’t allow ourselves to think and feel things, we leave ourselves no other choice but to act out. While it is completely normal to be tempted to act out of character when you are perceiving threat after a trauma, it is in your best interest to be accountable for yourself and considerate of your loved ones by taking your path to healing seriously.   

From my book, “Understanding Attachment Trauma”

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