Do I Have Attachment Trauma?

Do you crave close connections but tend to psych yourself out of them? Do you sometimes find it easier to say yes to things you don’t really want to do? If these scenarios sound familiar, you may have attachment trauma. It can impact our relationships and our views about ourselves and others. 

What does attachment trauma refer to?

Attachment trauma, a type of relational trauma, occurs in early childhood when a primary caregiver fails to meet a child’s safety, emotional, or support needs, resulting in a broken emotional bond between them. Experiencing attachment trauma makes it difficult to develop meaningful and healthy relationships later in life.

As children, we rely on our primary caregivers for support and love. We expect them to take care of us, both physically and emotionally. We also expect them to keep us safe. 

For example, if your caregivers are loving, supportive, and safe, you will easily have a secure attachment style. However, abusive caregivers can taint your understanding of love and relationships. [1] When we experience adverse childhood events, they impact our development on a mental and emotional level; they alter how we learn to understand love. 

The traumatized person deeply craves love, connection, and safety in adulthood. However, they can also deeply fear all of those things. They fear them because they were taught to. The fears can be conscious or subconscious.

Is childhood attachment trauma a common experience?

​​Sheri Madigan and colleagues conducted a 2023 meta-analysis of data from 285 studies involving over 20,000 infant-parent pairs. [2] The study found that 51.6% of children had a secure attachment, while nearly half showed insecure styles: 23.5% disorganized, 14.7% avoidant, and 10.2% resistant. 

What are the causes of attachment trauma?

So many events or experiences can become traumatic for a child and affect how they attach to others. Some common types of childhood trauma include: 

• Physical violence and sexual violence
• Emotional abuse or childhood neglect
• Caregivers substance abuse
• Caregivers being incarcerated 
• Emotionally unstable or volatile caregivers 
• Caregiver divorce or separation
• Enmeshment (refers to the lack of boundaries or autonomy within familial dynamics). 

How attachment trauma develops over time 

Can adults still be impacted by events that happened in childhood? The simple answer is yes. Our brains, particularly as children, lack the ability to properly address and process what has happened to us. 

When our brain can’t make sense of what happened, that information becomes repressed or avoided. It can lead to repressed trauma and emotional baggage that might affect your life.

People may live their whole lives dealing with attachment trauma without ever realizing it. That’s because they may not have been exposed to situations or resources that show them that there actually is another way to live. These attachment issues may seem covert, but they bleed into many facets of our lives.

8 signs of attachment trauma in adults 

Here are some common signs of attachment trauma in adults. 

1. Hyper-independence

Hyper-independence is a trauma response that results in someone exerting too much control over their life. This is the person who never asks for help. They try to handle everything themselves. They may take pride in their hyper-independence, believing they only need to rely on themselves. This trait is common in adults who have experienced neglect in childhood.

2. Impulsive behaviors 

This is also commonly associated with attachment trauma. People who suffered emotional or physical volatility in their childhood home may seek to control everything to avoid pain. This person may meticulously plan out their entire lives in hopes that their plans will protect them from hurt.

3. Struggle with emotional intimacy

Attachment trauma wreaks havoc on people’s ability to be intimate and vulnerable. Trauma has a negative impact on trust, which is necessary for intimacy and vulnerability. This person may crave deep, intimate relationships but flee once the relationship reaches those levels. This can also be referred to as being emotionally unavailable. 

4. Enmeshment in relationships

An adult with attachment trauma may become enmeshed in their romantic relationships. This can look like a partner becoming too dependent on their partner. They may lack independence and be fawning over their partner’s interests. 

5. Always on High Alert

Traumatized adults may become hypervigilant in their relationships. Hypervigilance refers to the concept of “always looking over your shoulder” or waiting for something to go wrong. It can look like constantly overanalyzing all conversations and interactions. Someone who is always on high alert anticipates something going wrong. 

6. Poor Self-Esteem

Someone who suffers from attachment trauma likely struggles with low self-esteem and self-loathing. Childhood trauma greatly impacts our view of ourselves, as we can feel guilt or shame associated with the trauma. These behaviors can look like thinking poorly about yourself or being highly self-critical. 

7. Guilt

Guilt is a heavy emotion. It’s common in adults who have experienced childhood trauma. A guilt complex can manifest as a constant feeling that you are doing something wrong or that you cannot move past things you have done. 

8. Black and White Thinking

Black-and-white thinking, or viewing something as “all good or all bad,” is a cognitive distortion. This distortion typically develops out of traumatic experiences, which impact our ability to view things clearly. In romantic relationships, this type of thinking can result in high conflict. 

It’s important to note that signs of attachment trauma can look different for different people. A person’s traumas, emotional intelligence, and overall life experiences will shape how they manifest for them. 

The attachment issues quiz

Here are seven self-questions designed to help you uncover potential attachment trauma.

1. Do I often doubt people’s intentions, even without any concrete reason?
2. Do I have a hard time setting boundaries and saying “no”?
3. Are my relationships seeming boring when there are no fights?
4. Am I very worried and afraid of being turned down by other people?
5. Do I always feel that I am unworthy of love?
6. If my partner seems cold to me, do I act needy?
7. Do I always pull away from my partner when things get tough in a relationship?
8. Do I get irritated when my partner and I are next to each other, or do I love them more when we are apart?

Understanding Trauma and Its Impact on Attachment Styles

To best understand attachment trauma impacts, we need to understand the different types of attachment according to attachment theory. These attachment styles are coined by psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Both worked extensively on attachment research. 

• Secure Attachment: Ability to engage in healthy intimacy, communication, and autonomy. Committed to the relationship while remaining independent. Able to resolve conflicts healthily.
• Anxious Attachment: Worries about their partner’s availability and commitment. Often, they struggle to be away from their partner and crave frequent reassurance. Distrusting, fear of abandonment, and sensitivity to criticism. 
• Avoidant Attachment: Can seem emotionally detached or distant. Tends to avoid intimacy, deep connection, and vulnerability. Overly guarded, difficulty expressing emotions, and uncomfortable with conflict. 
• Anxious-Avoidant Attachment: Alternates between anxious and avoidant attachment styles. A tendency towards emotional extremes, difficulty with boundaries, and a propensity for high-conflict relationships. 

Your attachment trauma may look different than someone else’s, and that’s normal. Traumatic situations affect people differently. Understanding your personal reactions to your trauma is of great help to you

Attachment Trauma in Adults and Relationships

Emotional distress, dissociation, or poor self-concept impacts our attachment styles. A traumatized adult riddled with anxiety will certainly display an anxious attachment in their relationships. 

For example, an adult with an anxious attachment style may jump from relationship to relationship in hopes of filling a void. They aren’t aware this is occurring, but it’s likely that deep intimacy triggers their trauma, which leads to them abandoning the relationship. 

Anxious-avoidant attachment is commonly seen in adults who experienced childhood trauma. This can be particularly difficult to manage as it encompasses opposite emotions. The anxiety drives you to seek reassurance, but the avoidance drives you to push the reassurance away. 

Consequences of unaddressed attachment trauma 

When left unaddressed or untreated, attachment trauma negatively impacts our interpersonal relationships. For the anxiously attached, you may seek reassurance to the point of driving your partner away. Or for the avoidant, your distance may drive your partner away due to a lack of connection. 

This situation can leave the traumatized adult feeling hopeless and isolated. They may desperately crave connection while also deeply fearing it. 

The reason can be that their childhood experiences taught them that closeness isn’t safe. Or that the people who are supposed to love them will always hurt them. The adult with attachment trauma has pieces of their wounded inner child still active. These wounds lead them to continue the cycle of their attachment fears. 

Here is a more concrete explanation of how unaddressed attachment trauma can manifest in adulthood. 

• Difficulty in interpersonal relationships: An insecure attachment style makes engaging in healthy relationships incredibly difficult. This feature can apply to platonic, romantic, and familial relationships. 

• Mental health difficulties: Attachment trauma can lead to a multitude of mental health conditions. PTSD is commonly seen as associated with attachment trauma. [3] We also commonly see dissociation or dissociative disorders. This is likely due to the mental distress trauma has on someone’s mind and body. We also see anxiety and depression present. [4]  Sometimes, eating disorders and addiction occur as well. 

• Emotional dysregulation: This can look like someone being unable to manage their anger, sadness, or fears. Instead of addressing and processing these emotions, they tend to spill out everywhere. 

• Impulsivity: Impulsive behavior is also associated with early childhood attachment trauma. In these cases, people are acting impulsively to try to deal with the emotional pain they’re experiencing. This is where risky behaviors come into play, things like substance misuse, unsafe sexual relationships, or self-harm. 

• Heightened Dependency: Usually associated with an insecure attachment style, heightened dependency is common in attachment trauma. This can look like someone being overly reliant on their partner. They may expect their partner to “fill all their boxes” all the time. This results in too much pressure being placed on their partner. Such an attitude also diminishes both persons’ ability to remain independent. 

“Attachment trauma can lead you to withdraw from relationships to avoid further rejection or hurt. Or, you might feel overly dependent upon others and fearful of rejection. If you relate to these symptoms, it is important to know that you are not alone. These painful emotions are remnants of your past.” Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Treating attachment trauma

We don’t have to always struggle with our attachment trauma if we know how to fix it. 

1. Recognize attachment trauma

Healing can start with identifying and acknowledging where we’re at now. Engaging in self-awareness practices requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves. You can gain insight from a variety of books about PTSD and trauma or take self-discovery tests to get to know more about yourself.

Try Breeze

2. Practice self-compassion

Give yourself grace and compassion, and understand that it is not your fault that you have attachment trauma. We can come from a place of love and not a place of judgment. When we’re able to see ourselves as we are and respect that person, we allow ourselves the freedom to change.

3. Learn to regulate your emotions

Learning to regulate your own emotions will lead to greater distress tolerance and a sense of independence, which will help the healing process. First, try to understand emotional triggers. Are there common patterns in the situations where you feel upset, worried, or hurt? Then think about situations in which you’ve felt a social threat and ask, What happened right before I felt this way?

Next, those with an anxious attachment style might feel overwhelmed by racing thoughts, while deep breathing can calm their nervous system. Even if your emotions are strong, it signals to your brain that you are not in danger. 

Try this instead:

• Slowly inhale through your nose for four seconds.
• Hold on for 4 seconds.
• Take 6-8 seconds to exhale through your mouth.
• Repeat the cycle a few times to feel more grounded.

Living with an incomplete attachment style places your nervous system on high alert, looking for signs of abandonment or rejection. Mindfulness exercises can help you gain self-awareness, discover new, healthy ways to express your emotions, and focus on the present moment. 

According to the study, regular mindfulness practice can help you self-soothe anxious attachment thoughts and gently soothe your body when it enters “panic mode.” [4] 

4. Try mental health support from Breeze

Try journaling your concerns. You can write whatever comes to mind. You could start with something like “Today I feel…” or “I’m thinking about…” to release emotions and feel less sensitive. With the Breeze app journaling, you can do periodic checkups on your mental state to gain tips when you need them. 

In addition, Breeze has a guided breathing feature that you can practice anytime you require a moment to unwind your anxiety. It allows you to approach yourself with more self-compassion and gently reminds you, “You are safe, and you are enough.”

5. Try Trauma-focused therapy

Psychotherapy that focuses on attachment trauma is one of the best ways to heal it.

“Early attachment trauma rarely heals without appropriate psychotherapy. Having healthy relationships certainly helps. But I find that most wounded people tend to choose mates who also had troubled childhoods. When this happens, the usual result is to get retraumatized instead of healing”. Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP

You can try therapy approaches that fit you best:

Adults who receive trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) learn cognitive coping skills, affective modulation techniques, and relaxation techniques. Furthermore, TF-CBT employs cognitive-restructuring strategies and exposure principles tailored to the traumatic event.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): This method uses bilateral stimulation to help process traumatic memories, lessening their emotional impact and facilitating integration with special eye movements. For attachment trauma, an analysis of the EMDR method found that it can help people control their emotions and lower traumatic stress. [6]

Schema therapy is a cognitive behavioral therapy technique that focuses on recognizing and changing early maladaptive schemas (EMSs), which are self-defeating core themes or patterns that recur throughout life and are deep-rooted in attachment trauma. Behavioral pattern breaking, cognitive restructuring, and experiential interventions like chair dialogues and guided imagery are some of the integrative methods that schema therapists use to shift and change unhealthy schemas.

Real-Life Examples of Attachment Trauma

Leo had always prided himself on his independence. But beneath the surface, relationships felt “so oppressive.” He’d withdraw when someone got too close, cancel plans, become irritable over minor issues, or feel numb during emotional conversations. Breeze was surprised to learn that his attachment style was avoidant. 

But after reading the breakdown, it all made sense: Leo grew up with caregivers who discouraged emotional expression. He discovered early on that relying on others was not safe.

Using Breeze’s reflection tools, Leo began to notice how he dismissed his own needs, telling himself to “get over it” or “deal alone.” The app’s emotional expression exercises provided him with scripts to practice in low-stakes settings. Leo found it easier to name his emotions without shutting down, and he began to experience closeness without being afraid of losing himself.

Key Takeaways

• According to attachment theory, attachment trauma occurs from early experiences with primary caregivers that disrupt the natural bonding process. This can include childhood neglect, physical or sexual abuse, or inconsistent care. 
• It can leave you feeling emotionally unavailable or manifest as attachment disorder, like disorganized attachment and/ or insecure attachment style with people-pleasing tendencies. You may find it challenging to trust others, form healthy relationships, or avoid intimate connections altogether.
• Attachment trauma can make it challenging to engage in healthy, meaningful relationships since it impacts us and our mental health greatly, and alters how we learn to understand love.
• Healing attachment trauma includes learning how to create healthy attachment bonds with therapy, developing knowledge about your needs and own emotions, a healthy sense of self, and coping strategies to deal with relationship difficulties and emotional challenges.

Sources:

1. Lahousen, T., Unterrainer, H. F., & Kapfhammer, H. P. (2019). Psychobiology of Attachment and Trauma-Some General Remarks From a Clinical Perspective. Frontiers in psychiatry.
2. Madigan, S., Fearon, R. M. P.,. The first 20,000 strange situation procedures: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin
3. Ein-Dor T, Doron G, Solomon Z. Together in pain: attachment-related dyadic processes and posttraumatic stress disorder. J Couns Psychol. 2010
4. Catanzaro A, Wei M. Adult attachment, dependence, self-criticism, and depressive symptoms: a test of a mediational model. J Pers
5. Edenfield, T. M., & Saeed, S. A. (2012). An update on mindfulness meditation as a self-help treatment for anxiety and depression. Psychology research and behavior management.
6. Wesselmann, D., Armstrong, S., Schweitzer, C., Davidson, M., & Potter, A. (2018). An integrative EMDR and family therapy model for treating attachment trauma in children: A case series. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research.