Attachment Disorder Therapy

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Among all the professional literature that I had a chance to get by different truths and not truths (and outside of Russia, for obvious reasons, it is not so easy to do), making my way through the jokes of my friends, like "you have a very refined literary taste", who brought me books from the Russian Federation, the competition was won by "Therapy for Attachment Disorders" by Karl Heinz Brisch.

I read rare books binge. And this one is the drunken one. Because it is significant for me not only professionally, but also personally (attachment, death, shame, suicide and depression are all mine, drunken, beloved, passed and significant).

So that's it. I will probably quietly outline here what impresses me. So I digest what I read better.

Here are the facts that impressed me from the research described in the book.

ADHD (called hyperactivity) is often associated with traumatic experiences that are associated with attachment disorders.

Attachment is understood as a kind of experience of a relationship with an adult who is significant for the child (this is not always a parent, it may be a person caring for the child), in which the caregiver has a sufficient level of sensitivity to recognize and correctly interpret the child's reactions. In other words, it is about the empathic capacity of the caregiver.

"Sensitivity differs from indulgence and excessive guardianship and protection in that sensitive parents encourage their child in his growing independence and increasing ability to communicate with strangers" (c)

If a child receives enough care and satisfaction of his needs, where the first year of life is the most significant for the formation of attachment, then a base is formed in him in the form of a feeling of security and trust in this world, where mental processes develop normally. In case of attachment disorders, preconditions are formed for the formation of psychopathologies as more primitive forms of mental defenses.

Moreover, here we are talking not only about the psychological well-being of the child, but also about the organic development of the brain.

We are all born with a need for attachment. This is inherent in us at the genetic level. There is no child who does not need attachment, an adult who can stay in contact with him and take care of him enough for the safety and absence of an extraordinary level of frustration as an adult.

Most often, parents are not capable of empathic interaction with the baby due to their own traumatic experience, where their reactions to the child are either untimely and slowed down (the child may already be in transcendental frustration), or are absent altogether, since they are distortedly interpreted either through the prism of their traumatic experience, or their own projections (when their own needs are attributed to the child). As a result, attachment disorders can be repeated from generation to generation, since we cannot give our children what we ourselves do not have.

The good news is, none of this is fatal. In the sense that such violations are amenable to correction through gaining the experience of secure attachment.

Since attachment disorders, traumatic experiences and the presence of mirror neurons are characteristic not only of humans, but also of socialized animals, all kinds of methods were tested on them.

And even if the rejecting, insensitive mother rat, who has had to endure a lot of abuse, is accustomed to regular stroking, she changes her behavior patterns and becomes much more sensitive to her cubs.

We, of course, with a much more complex psyche of creation and only stroking is indispensable, but the good news is that if we manage to form a relationship, where safety becomes the basis for relationships (and, you know, traumatics, very sensitive comrades, and we are not talking about external security, which may correspond to any "right form", but about a true empathic attitude), then over time the traumatic patterns are compensated by the experience of secure attachment.

Actually, that's why I always and loudly vote for the fact that it is not methods and fresh fish that are important in therapy (sorry, I don’t want to throw it in, but I really didn’t manage to taste the beauty of fresh fish in long-term therapy, only in demo sessions and short-term mindfulness therapy).. So, this is why I think the most important thing in therapy is a true, sincere attitude of the therapist to the client, which heals the soul much more than the sharp turns and skills of the therapist (well, in my experience it is exactly so). And that is why long-term therapy of the therapist himself is so important.

Such things, dear diary.

I'll go further.

UPD. Yes, I forgot another very important point to write.

Attachment disorder is the result of harsh, non-empathic treatment. In cases where children are beaten, bullied, and that's all, questions usually do not arise. But this is a frequent one in therapy: “Where did I get all this from? They didn't beat me, they didn't mock me?” So, citizens. Ignoring in parent-child relationships, especially when it is a form of punishment, is one of the most difficult-to-bear forms of rejection for a child. And neglect through ignorance can be just as boldly considered a form of violence.

And in the piggy bank. Children who play quietly, do not ask for anything and are generally ideal, this is far from a sign that everything is fine. “Outwardly calm children with reliably avoidant attachment, who were initially credited with a special ability to adapt and adapt, a more strongly developed independence or a calmer temperament, when the level of cortisol in their saliva changed as a measure of stressful experiences, even higher indicators were noted than in children with reliable or unreliable-ambivalent attachment. Therefore, the unreliable-avoidant model of behavior [this is when the baby is outwardly calm in response to leaving the mother] should be understood already as a result of the protection and adaptation of the baby "(c).