The below is from Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair – Daniel P. Brown, David S. Elliott
These items are unchanged and appear on page 108 of the above text.
Secure Attachment
- Seeks emotional closeness with others
- Able to establish emotional intimacy
- Comfortable with mutual dependence
- Comfortable being alone
- Positive self-image and other image
- Warm and open with others
- Accepts criticism without significant distress
- Strong sense of self
- Self-esteem
- Self-observational skills
- Self-reflective skills
- Able to trust in relationship
- Relationships tend to be stable, lasting
- Open with others about feelings
- Positive feelings about relationships
- Balanced experience of emotions—neither too little nor too much
- Values attachment
Dismissing Attachment
- Avoidance of getting close or being intimate
- Discomfort with closeness
- Ambivalence
- Dismissing behaviors
- Aloofness and contempt
- Mistrust about depending on others
- Difficulty getting close
- Preference for remaining distant
- Fear of closeness
- Lack of emotion or minimization of emotional expression
- Discomfort with opening up, especially about private thoughts
- False self
- Pulls away if someone gets close
- Illusion of self-sufficiency
- Alexithymia
Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment
- Excessive worry about relationships
- Worry that one’s partner won’t care as much as he or she does
- Obsessive preoccupation with and rumination about the relationship
- Excessive need for approval
- Ignoring signs of trouble in the relationship
- Fear of scaring people away
- Fear of abandonment/rejection/criticism
- Resentment when partner spends time away from the relationship
- Angry withdrawal
- Frustration if partner is not available
- Feels extremely upset/depressed when receives disapproval
- Easily upset, with intensified displays of distress or anger
- Jealousy
- Fear of being alone
- Compulsive caretaking
- Submissive, acquiescent, suggestible
- Seeks attachment at the expense of autonomy
- Work, school, or friends get less attention than the relationship partner
- Compulsive care-seeking
- Partner describes self as “smothered” or “suffocated”
- Eager to be with partner all the time
- Needs excessive reassurance
- Clinging, demanding, nagging, sulking
- Desire to merge
- Attempts to win favor or impress
- Forces responses from partner
- Self-centeredness, showing off, center of attention
Disorganized/Fearful Attachment
Disorganized Internal World
- Dysregulated psychophysiological state
- Affect dysregulation (too much or too little)
- Lapses in self-observation or monitoring
- Discontinuous self-states and affect states
- Cognitive distortion, confusion, and drive-dominated thinking
Disorganized Behavior
- Impaired self-agency and goal-directed behavior
- Inhibition of exploration and play
Disorganized Attachment Behavior
- Activation of contradictory attachment strategies
- Controlling behaviors
- Submissive or excessive caretaking behaviors
- “Stable instability” in relationships
- Defensive aggression and helplessness
- Inability to elicit desired responses
v1.1 7-Mar-2022
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