GRrrrr….  Grievous Reciprocal Triggering

Creates Mutual Miserable Bond (ROPEs):

Reciprocal Operating Pessimistic Emotions

Excessive signaling and triggering from an Anxious partner, as a hungry rat will repeatedly push a lever for cheese. Resulting in and promoting mutual negative emotion and biases. A negative operation of ‘Me Against You’ and or ‘Us Against Them’ within the misinterpretation of shared life.

The touch-response system breaks down over time as an Anxious partner’s excessive signals for creating closeness; asking for reassurance, need for support, etc. are met with an ongoing and consistent flow of negative or absent responses in an Anxious/Avoidant pair bonding.  In so doing, over time, the frayed threads within the tapestry of their shared life is shredded in bitter, negative or malicious ruin. They share a common language of fear.

ROPEs: Entangled in Weeds!

SCIENCE OF ATTACHMENT— SECURE VS. INSECURE—YOUR BRAIN ON FAMILY TRAUMA – PART II

From my previous post, you can see, each human being is unique and complex. Our memories and familial imprint are stored, not only within our explicit {linear, factual} memory and implicit {emotional} memory parts of our brain, but also neurobiologically within our bodies. That is, we store memories not only within our brains but also within the entire nervous system. Neurobiologically: The body keeps the score (trauma). Memory and imprinted attachment language collects countless phenomena of our existence into a single whole, which becomes our personal narrative of what we “see,” and our exclusive “naïve realism.” Memories are retained in our brains and are held within our bodies throughout our entire nervous system which creates our unique and common verbal and body language of Attachment.

In a short, Attachment is the well-documented science of human interrelatedness and is what we ‘feel’ to be true rather than what our logical brain, our explicit memory of factual knowledge, knows to be true.  If we struggle with or are unable to reflect on the difference between feelings and facts, we remain blind to the ways in which we habitually construct and construe the reality of our own lived experience, and who we can see as potential partners.

How do Attachment styles influence our daily lives and our most crucial relationships?

Attachment patterns are passed down from one generation to the next. Attachment results from learned and imprinted familial environment. Children learn how to interrelate from parents and caregivers, and they in turn, teach the next generation.2  

However, it is not “how” you were raised that matters, but “what” you were raised within; the string of experiences of the manner in which your caregivers related to you, to each other, and to your siblings etc. – a symphony, or cacophony, of experiences to which you were consistently exposed to and immersed within as an infant and small child. The resultant Attachment style is how you deal with these deeply imprinted experiences and most importantly, how you subconsciously interpret them resulting in your unique language patterns. That subconscious interpretation as an infant and small child results in a particular Attachment style, either SECURE or INSECURE that is usually well formed by the age of one year old. Attachment is much like a hard coded operating system within your brain and nervous system from which every aspect of your relatedness (both mental and physiological) springs forward.  Whatever operating system you are working with (Windows, DOS, MacOS, or Neanderthal 2.0) determines the type and quality of relational connectedness you experience in adult life.

The general population is roughly split in half between these two types of Attachment style. Insecure Attachment is also further broken down into several distinct functional models, but that is for another blog post. Adults with the different Attachment styles differ in human interrelatedness in a number of significant ways:

• How each style perceives and deals with closeness and emotional intimacy.

• Each style’s ability to communicate their emotions and needs, as well as listen to and accurately interpret the emotions and needs of their partners, and each style’s response mechanism. (Mentalization Skills) Empathy vs Enmeshment

• How each style responds to conflict.

• Each style’s internal expectations about their partner and the relationship (Internal Working Models).

Your personal familial Attachment history and immersive early childhood experiences play a crucial role in determining how and why you relate in adult romantic relationships and how and why you will relate to any children you may have in your life. This personal familial history shapes the above interrelatedness dynamics and differences within Secure and Insecure Attachment styles.

Works Cited

1 Fonagy, P., G. G. (2010). Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.

2 Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and lo ss. (OKS Print.) New York: Basic Books.

**A large-scale study using Artificial Intelligence to analyze 29 long-term studies determined this:

“The top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect (neuroticism), depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety.” —PNAS