Ambivalent attachment: endless insecurity

For humans, eminently social beings, it is essential to establish healthy relationships with the people around them to maintain a good emotional balance. As we saw in the previous article, the type of attachment that is established between a mother (or her trusted figures) and her baby depends the quality of the child’s future social interactionsalso, of the future adolescent and adult.

Attachment theory: ambivalent attachment

In her observations of the “Strange Situation”, Mary Ainsworth noted that a small percentage of babies (about 10%) showed signs of distress even when their mother was in the room. These little ones, although they played and explored the environment, instead of acting with ease (as securely attached babies did), they were always on alert constantly watching over his mother.

When she left the room, they cried, looked for her, and did not allow themselves to be comforted by any other adult. The anxiety of these creatures was so high that it was impossible to calm them the entire time that her mother was out of her sight. When she returned, they were relieved and went to their mother for comfort, but almost automatically they were angry with her. and they rejected it.

Ainsworth and her collaborators observed that the type of mother of these children responded to a particular pattern in which the bond of mothers with their babies was tremendously unstable. As they noted, on some occasions, these mothers acted warm and close with their children, but on others, when faced with the baby’s demands for attention, they were insensitive and impassive.

This type of ambivalent behavior generated in the babies, in addition to great anxiety, a strong feeling of insecurity. As Bowlby explained, completely helpless and in need of nurturing and protection, human babies are born biologically designed to become attached to their parents.

It is frightening to imagine fear and feeling of vulnerability and abandonment that a baby experiences when the person on whom you depend, the one who has to take care of you and protect you, does not pay attention to you and does not attend to you.

For a baby, so fragile and insecure, asking for help and not feeling protected, cared for and protected, is equivalent to being in a life threatening situation.

If babies grow up in this environment of affective ambivalence, the insecurity generated by not having the certainty of feeling loved, cared for and protected, will accompany them for life. As adults, they will live in a perpetual state of worry and mistrust. and their anxiety levels will always be high. As it already happened to them when they were little, before others, they will harbor a continuous fear of rejection.

If they have a partner, they will transfer all their anxiety and insecurity to life together. Permanently, they will demand attention from their partner and, if they do not get it, devastating doubts about him or her will arise. In extreme cases, these people they can become pathologically jealous and become, by deriving their fear of abandonment and their frustration into aggressiveness, truly dangerous for their partners.

Louis’s case

Louis’s case It was not that extreme, but it does exemplify the effect of ambivalent attachment in adult life.

Luis came to my office aware that he had a serious jealousy problem. The fear he felt at the idea that his wife would leave him made him so controlling that he was endangering their relationship.

Continuously, Luis entered a negative circle in which the fear of abandonment generated him an enormous anxiety that he only calmed down by pressing his wife to make sure she really loved him.

However, it was precisely this pathological control that was causing the rejection of his partner.

two kinds of memories

In his therapy sessions, Luis showed two distinct and extreme types of memories about their parents.

In some, family life was fantasticThey traveled together, laughed, looked after him and everyone had a great time, while theIn others, he remembered disputes, shouting, anger and feeling scared and invisible.

Throughout Luis’s childhood, there were several episodes of serious arguments, temporary estrangement, and subsequent reconciliation between his parents, which ultimately ended up separating permanently.

The adults were so engrossed in their own problems that they barely paid attention to the child when they quarreled.

The little boy felt delighted and very cared for when his parents were together, but all the care and affection disappeared when they argued.

As we have seen with insecurely attached babies, Luis grew up with low self-esteem, a strong feeling of insecurity and constant fear that his parents stopped loving and caring for him.

Throughout his therapy, Luis was able to understand the parallelism between present and past: When the adult talked about his fears and his relationship, it was really Luis, the child, who was talking about how he lived his relationship with his parents and about his fear of abandonment.