Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

by Jessica Fern

Expressive dissonance, which is when someone’s facial or verbal expressions are mismatched with their emotional states. Someone might be laughing when they are angry or smiling when they are actually upset, which can be confusing to children (or anyone for that matter).

A person who is functioning from a dismissive style will tend to keep people at arm’s length. Usually priding themselves on not needing anyone, people with this style will tend to take on an overly self-reliant outlook, valuing their hyper-independence and often seeing others as weak, needy or too dependent. Although they may present as having high self-esteem, people functioning from a dismissive attachment style often project unwanted traits onto others and inflate their sense of self to cover a relatively negative self-image.

Living with a sense of chronic disconnection from themselves, others and the world, they might at times experience the longing to be close, but then feel at a total loss as to how to bridge the gap between their isolation and others, missing opportunities to receive support from their partners or to provide care to their loved ones.

In my therapy practice, I often notice that people who are relating from the dismissive style initially describe their parents or current romantic relationships as being great, even ideal, but just a few minutes of deeper questioning into their actual childhood experiences or current relational patterns reveals that things aren’t actually so perfect. This occurs because the deactivation of their attachment system has made it difficult for them to access and consistently stay in touch with their true feelings.

When someone with a dismissive style starts to work on healing their insecure attachment, they must begin by no longer dismissing and distancing from themselves. This requires that they no longer deny their desires and needs, allowing the longings and wants for connection that have for so long been forbidden.

I am generally comfortable without close relationships and do well on my own.

I want to be in relationships and have some closeness with people, but I can only tolerate closeness to a limit and then I need space.

I either struggle with making relationship commitments or if I do commit, I may secretly have one foot out the door (or at least have the back door unlocked).

Parents who are loving but inconsistent can encourage the adaptation of the anxious style. Sometimes the parent is here and available, attuned and responsive, but then other times they are emotionally unavailable, mis-attuned or even intrusive, leaving the child confused and uncertain as to whether their parent is going to comfort them, ignore them, reward them or punish them for the very same behavior.

In this scenario, the child can become dependent on their hyperactivating strategy in order to survive, fearing that if they let their attachment system settle and rest then their needs will never be met. This in turn can lead to a chronically activated attachment system that exaggerates threats of potential abandonment, which may or may not actually be there.

Over-involving the child in the parent’s state of mind, where the parent’s emotions or state of mind is more central to the parent-child interaction than the child’s. In this case, the child might be asked (whether explicitly or implicitly) to be responsible for meeting the parent’s needs, making the parent feel better or supplying the parent with meaning and purpose.

When the state of mind of the parent is the centerpiece of interactions, the child is left to constantly monitor and be concerned about their parent’s state of well-being, which can encourage a role reversal in which the child is acting more like the parent in the relationship. As a child, being responsible for a parent’s well-being is a misplaced, confusing and overwhelming responsibility.

A defining factor of the preoccupied style is how the person’s hyperactivated attachment strategy not only amplifies their attachment bids, but also intensifies their focus on their partners. Because of this, they may end up constantly monitoring their partners’ level of availability, interest and responsiveness.

Frequently consumed by fears of abandonment, people functioning out of a preoccupied style will easily give up their own needs or sense of self, yielding to the needs or identity of their partner in order to ensure proximity and relationship security.

Due to their history of unpredictable and inconsistent love, they can have considerable challenges with trusting that their partners truly love them. They may frequently fall into self-critical and self-doubting loops, questioning if they are truly worthy enough to receive their partner’s love.

People functioning from this style tend to jump into relationships or bond very quickly with people. Often idealizing their partners, they may confuse anxiety and intensity for being in love, hearing and seeing only what they want to see and missing potential red flags. They may not allow enough time to get to know someone beyond the honeymoon phase in order to assess if this person, and the relationship, are truly a good fit.

If someone with this attachment style perceives even the slightest possibility that their partner is disconnected or disinterested, they can become demanding, possessive or needy for approval, reassurance, connection, contact, and greater emotional or sexual intensity.

although they’re aware of their partner’s feelings, they’re not necessarily reading those feelings accurately. People with this attachment style might be very precise in detecting even the slightest change in their partner’s mood or state, but they’re more likely to assume that the shifts are personal to them and that they are negative, when neither may be true.

I am very attuned to others and can detect subtle shifts in their emotional or mental states.

I often worry about being abandoned, rejected or not valued enough.

I tend to overfocus on my partners and underf...

I need a lot of reassurance that I am loved or desired by a partner; however, when my partners give me reassurance or show their desire for me, it either doesn’t register for me or I have trouble receiving and believing it.

I tend to commit to relationships and get attached very quickly.

Children with a disorganized attachment style have an attachment system that seems to be hyperactivated and deactivated at the same time. They don’t display a consistent organized attachment strategy in the same way that children with a secure, anxious or avoidant style do. Instead, they seemed to lack a coherent organization of which strategy to employ, often vacillating between the anxious and avoidant insecure attachment styles.

The disorganized attachment style is most commonly associated with trauma and it typically arises when a child experiences their attachment figure as scary, threatening or dangerous.

The predominant factor leading to this style in childhood is having parents who are suffering from their own unresolved trauma or losses.

Parents who are on an emotional roller-coaster. Parents who have drastic, unpredictable fluctuations in their moods, actions or mental states can be extremely confusing for the child, leaving them uncertain whether to approach or withdraw.

Family chaos. Factors such as illness, financial stress, job insecurity, parents who are imprisoned or handling addictions, and even a culture of overachieving in which every minute of a child’s life is scheduled with extracurricular activities can all create a home of chaos. It is difficult to feel safe and secure when the home that we live in and the people we rely on are unstable, unpredictable or even erratic.

They want to be close to people, but being close can be a sensory assault that is confusing or that dysregulates them for days.

In adulthood, the disorganized attachment style is referred to as fearful-avoidant. People with this style of attachment experience a clashing fear of either being too close or too far away from their partners.

People with this insecure attachment style have the characteristics of both the dismissive and preoccupied styles—their desire for closeness and their longing for connection are active, but because they have previous experiences of the ones they loved or depended on hurting them, they tend to feel uncomfortable relying on others or are even paralyzed by the fear that speaking their feelings and needs could be dangerous and make things worse.

People with this style are easily overwhelmed by their feelings or subject to what I call emotional flare-ups, where their intense emotional states can take over, disrupting their ability to function and, at times, taking others down with them.

When this type of healing has yet to occur, people functioning from the fearful-avoidant attachment style will tend to see themselves as broken and unworthy and will expect that others are untrustworthy or will only hurt them in the end.

I often don’t feel safe or fully trusting in relationships, even if my partner acts in safe and trustworthy ways.

When in conflict, I can vacillate from being overwhelmed or aggressive to being dismissive and numb.

I often expect that the worst will happen in a relationship, even when things are going well.

I have elaborate negative fantasies about what will go wrong or how my partner will inevitably hurt me beyond repair, even if things are mostly going well.

There are times when I look fine on the outside, but I am actually a complete tsunami on the inside.

I frequently experience the conflicting internal drives of wanting to be close and share myself but fearing that closeness or vulnerability will be dangerous or cause the relationship to end.

Being high in the attachment anxiety dimension relates to increased fears of being rejected, neglected, abandoned or separated from an attachment figure.

Our boundaries are the ways we protect ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally. They are how we establish our sovereignty, as well as how we open ourselves to others.

If connection and love from our caretakers was absent, inconsistent or dangerous, we may want love from others, but then have difficulty fully letting it in.

Giving love can also feel problematic when we have attachment wounds. We are unsure whether our partners will receive it, see it as enough, reject it, take it for granted or take advantage of it.

When our boundaries are porous from the outside in, we are being too wide open. We let other people’s thoughts, opinions, preferences and judgments eclipse our own inclinations, wisdom or better knowledge. Absorbing is when we take in what is not ours, when we lack enough self-definition that we leave ourselves underprotected while being over-connected.

When our boundaries are porous from the inside out, we become intrusive to others, trying to inhabit their skin or meddling too much in their business. We are intruding when we give unsought advice or tell people what they should or shouldn’t do in the name of helping them. Usually the help we’re offering was either unsolicited or not a match to what the other person actually needs.

When our boundaries are rigid from the inside out we are obstructing input from others, whether that is their love, attention, feedback or requests. When blocking, we are guarding what comes in and disallowing the influence of others, usually from fear of being hurt or attacked. When blocking, we can come off as prickly, abrupt, edgy, defensive, frozen or withdrawn.

When our boundaries are rigid from the inside out we restrain ourselves from expressing what is true for us internally. We restrain our feelings (positive or negative), thoughts, preferences, requests and even the affection we have for others. Restraining is usually the result of feeling unsafe in expressing ourselves, so we instead hold back and hold in to try to stay protected at the expense of being connected.

But our relationships with siblings or close friends can function as some of the most important attachment bonds that we have. For many, a friend or sibling can serve as a primary attachment figure, and when there has been attachment wounding with partners or parents, it is these very connections that can provide the corrective attachment experiences and healing from the attachment disruptions we’ve had with others at the relational level.

structural violence refers to a type of violence that is often invisible yet intricately built into social structures. People’s lives are complicated, confined or even lost because of heterosexism, classism, racism, ableism and sexism. Structural violence may be less obvious and direct than physical violence, but it is just as impactful and harmful.

When you’ve shared years or even decades with someone in a monogamous identity together, this can be a particularly arduous transformation process and not every couple survives it. The paradigm shift can expose all of the underground issues that a relationship already had brewing and that would have eventually ended the relationship anyway.