Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation

by Bruce Ecker

The attachment pattern known as insecure-ambivalent or insecure-resistant uses the opposite strategy of maximum emotional display, which is in this case an adaptive solution to a very different problem: a caregiver who is inept and/or self-preoccupied, but has been responsive at times when the infant’s behavior was intense enough to attract the distracted parent’s attention. That pattern of learning is an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, which is known to produce particularly tenacious learning. This infant understands—subcortically—that showing intense neediness and emotionality—such as throwing a tantrum—is what is required, but is not reliable, for getting the self-absorbed parent to respond as needed, and that whether needed interaction occurs at all depends on the infant making it happen. Thus, the infant has, by adaptive necessity, learned a fundamentally controlling, manipulative style of interacting, one aspect of which is an anxious, hypervigilant attention to the presence and emotional state of the care-giver. In adults, this attachment style is often termed preoccupied to characterize a consistent, high level of emotional involvement in relationship matters.