Emotion Regulation: Effective Attachment Movements

Interactions with available attachment figures and the resulting sense of attachment security provides for the learning of constructive emotion regulation strategies concerning accessibility to and display of emotions (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2012). Mikulincer and Shaver (2012) provide the example that interactions with emotionally accessible and responsive others provide a context in which a child can learn that acknowledgment and display of emotions is an important step toward restoring emotional balance, and that it is useful and socially acceptable to express, explore, and to try and understand one’s feelings. In children with avoidant histories, the emotions that would have facilitated effective communication and exchange that would have developed from the above described context are defensively modified and cut off and so when experiencing distress children with an avoidant history may be unable to draw upon potentially supportive relationships as a result of being unable to
signal their need for support and becoming embroiled in negative emotions (Egeland & Carlson, 2004).

For a child who has experienced unpredictable or inconsistent caregiving, negative emotions disrupt rather than restore relationships, inhibiting the development of stable close relationships (Egeland & Carlson, 2004).
For them, “emotion regulation” can mean an amplification of emotions and an exaggeration of worries (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2012). Borderline personality disorder can be usefully seen as a disorder of regulation of affect in which, for example, minor threats to a tenuous attachment bond are experienced as devastating (Holmes, 2001). In disorganised attachment relationships, processes of regulation and the integration of behavioural and emotional states may have been disrupted by extremely harsh or chaotic caregiving contexts (Egeland & Carlson, 2004). In the context of inadequate caregiving or recurring trauma, the level of arousal and the need to separate or compartmentalise overwhelming affects and memories may result in the dissociative phenomena (Egeland & Carlson,
2004).

One particularly severe sequel to disorganised attachment linked to childhood trauma is dissociation (Fonagy, 1998). Attachment theorists have linked disorganised attachment patterns in childhood to the use of dissociation as a defense (Liotti, 2011; Fonagy, 1998). It is suggested that children who experience disorganised early attachment relationships are predisposed to developing dissociation as a defense (Fonagy, 1998). The behaviour exhibited by disorganised children upon return of their mother or primary caregiver gives an indication of incoherent integration of structures that is similar to that of dissociation (Fonagy, 1998). This can be observed in the way the child’s attention is frequently disorganised, such as displaying both avoidance and distress signals; or the disorientation to their current environment for example, a glazed expression or odd movements (Fonagy, 1998). While these behaviours may be superficially analogous to severely dissociated adults, there is evidence from studies that link the possibility of having received frightened or frightening caregiving to dissociative problems in adulthood (Fonagy, 1998).

Early disturbances in attachment relationships are not generally viewed as pathology or directly causing pathology, rather they lay the foundation for disturbances in developmental processes that can lead to psychopathology (Egeland & Carlson, 2004). The relations between attachment and later adaptation are obviously complex, but findings suggest that attachment organisation may serve as one of a host of psychological, biological, and environmental factors that directly and indirectly influence both adaptation and the risk of psychopathology (Egeland & Carlson, 2004; Allen, Hauser & Borman-Spurrell, 1996).