Secure versus Insecure Relating: From Infancy to Adulthood
MOST OF US REALIZE THAT INSECURITIES, fear buttons, negative expectations, and sensitivities were programmed into us by past experiences. We understand that once a fear button has been installed, we become vigilant, cautious, or self-protective from that time forward. At the root of this is an alarm system deep in the brain programmed to scan for signs that past neglect, abuse, or frustration is happening again. Operating in concert is the storytelling part of the brain, which systematically feeds us worst-case generalizations (“If I open my heart, I’ll get hurt”) and interpretations (“He doesn’t care how I feel”; “Nothing I do is ever enough”) that mirror our childhood programming.
These fears get automatically projected onto our partners, affecting how we view events, what we expect to happen, and how we react. Unconsciously generated, this projection takes place without our permission. The process operates like all conditioned reactions: we know that being bitten by a particular dog in the past can program a phobic response to any dog in the future.
Generally, the younger we are when a disturbing event happens, the more unconscious power it will have. Events that occurred in infancy, when our nervous systems were least resilient, have the most power of all. These triggers can also be the least obvious to us — especially if the original pain occurred before we had words.
Before two years of age, our right brains are dominant. Most of our information about our safety and security comes via our caregivers’ vocal tones, touch, facial expressions, and gestures — through nonverbal communication. We learn whether crying brings us relief or punishment. Maybe we come to the conclusion that we need to scream to be heard. Or perhaps we find that it works better to clam up. Whatever we learned then is probably reflected in how we express ourselves today.
Our patterns of emotional expression as adults are largely shaped by how we were treated before age two — and by how we witnessed family members treating one another. Some lucky children felt loved, accepted, and respected and saw their parents relate to each other in healthy, loving ways. As adults, these are the people who seem to instinctively know what to say and do to develop healthy partnerships. They have a rich emotional vocabulary and a wide behavioral repertoire, thus giving them the resources required to respond creatively rather than automatically to life events.
But most of us did not receive optimal caregiving. We didn’t learn the communication skills to successfully resolve issues with a partner or repair the emotional rifts that occur when alarms start ringing.
Optimal caregiving means receiving fairly consistent coregulation, such as receiving regular supportive holding, touch, eye contact, and reassuring voice tones. This fosters healthy development of the neural wiring involved in detecting false alarms and feeling safe with a significant other. If we did not get optimal caregiving, then the development of our neural wiring got shortchanged, and we will experience more insecurity as adults.
Research over the last couple of decades has uncovered the key factors in how childhood conditioning affects our entire lives. These new revelations offer important insights and tools to help us unlearn faulty conditioning, reprogram our nervous systems, and meet needs that were not met in childhood. It’s not too late to learn the skills needed for healthy, secure relating. Through mutual coregulation, we can build more resilient and responsive neural pathways in our brains and expand our current repertoire, giving us the ability to build healthy loving relationships.
This chapter explains how we get trained in childhood to communicate emotional needs, and it describes what you can do now to fill in the missing pieces in your past emotional learning.
Coregulation in the First Two Years
Much of communication is a matter of signals and responses. We send out a signal (“I need a hug”) and hopefully get the response we seek (“Let me hold you”). When we signaled our needs as infants, such as by crying, our caregivers ideally offered supportive touch, friendly eye contact, and soothing vocal tones. These responses are the body-to-body biological messages that let our nervous systems know we are safe. This signal-and-response process starts at birth; we come out crying and, hopefully, are quickly placed on our mother’s breast to receive skin-to-skin contact. This birth imprint would have told us, “Welcome to a safe world, little one.” These actions bring regulation to an upset nervous system. Ideally, our caregivers continued to coregulate us during childhood whenever we were distressed or in need.
If we do not get the response we need, we will change our signal. In some cases, our distress signals get louder — cries turn to screams, fits, and tantrums, and we may find it much harder to settle down when a parent finally does respond. In other cases, we may give up and stop signaling our distress. We shut down our feelings. We learn these communication patterns even before we learn to use words. The quality of our cry — whether it gets amped up, shut down, or remains innocent and vulnerable — is programmed by the quality and consistency of the responses we get from the adults around us.
In your first two years of development — before your left brain started developing its complex verbal language capacity — physical coregulation from a caregiver let you know you were safe. As any responsive parent can attest, nothing works better to calm a distressed infant than supportive touch, holding, eye contact, and a reassuring voice tone.
Did your parents hold you when you cried? As you became more active, did you run to them when you were hurt or upset? How did they respond? Their responses impacted the early development of your brain circuitry and how you learned to express yourself emotionally.
If children get coregulated fairly consistently, they learn how to communicate emotionally in a way that maintains a sense of security. As adults, they will automatically transfer this into words and actions that create love and happiness in their relationships. Studies show that the more consistently infants are given relief for their distress in ways that include coregulation, the more able they are to feel trusting and secure in their adult relationships.
Coregulation in infancy is a biological process that promotes vital connections in the developing brain. These neural connections provide the higher brain with the means to self-regulate the survival alarm and to keep false alarms from taking over. Partners with well-developed higher brain circuitry are able to stay in tune with each other and quickly repair upsets.
Optimal Caregiving for Emotional Security
When we are around six months old — as we start to crawl and explore the world — the ideal parents support us to explore while helping us feel safe and secure. Their consistent coregulation sends the message: “I’ll be here for you when you feel fear or upset. If you feel a need to connect, just signal. I am here to give you loving attention and respond to your needs. I will hold you and help keep you safe from danger. Otherwise, I’ll give you plenty of room to explore. You can trust that I’ve always got your back.”
In this optimal situation, if some unfamiliar event or object frightens us in childhood and we cry, our parents will hold us. If we go to them, they will look into our eyes reassuringly. If we explore new territory, we can look back and see them watching us and feel safe to keep going. This teaches us to realistically assess danger. Their responsiveness also teaches us that our feelings and needs matter to other people.
In this way, an infant learns: “I am safe to show my distress or my needs. I will receive quality attention from my caregiver. My feelings are valued.”
How We Learned to Communicate
Take a moment and imagine hearing your adult partner tell you, “It’s safe to show me your needs and let me know if you feel upset or distressed in any way. I am here for you. I care how you feel. If you’re unhappy, I won’t overreact or try to talk you out of it. I want to really listen to you. I want to hold you and reassure you that you are loved and safe.”
How would this affect how you communicate with your partner?
Now imagine yourself saying these same things to your partner. This will be a lot easier to imagine if you experienced healthy bonding and coregulation when you were little.
Experiences with early caregivers provided our initial training in how to trust relationships and how to express our feelings. Typically, we did not receive a reassuring response every time we were vulnerable and distressed. Depending on the amount of missing or negative responses we received, we may have learned to expect that others would not be interested in our feelings.
That’s what happened to Eric. As a child, his parents rarely picked him up when he cried. They believed this would spoil him and make him too dependent, and so Eric learned to shut down his crying. Meanwhile, Donna learned she had to scream to get attention, instead of expressing feelings in a vulnerable, direct way. Both Donna and Eric learned to act out their feelings through reactive behaviors. So as adults, their capacities to express feelings were still underdeveloped, and they easily fell prey to states of fight, flight, or freeze.
Luckily, anyone can heal these sorts of reactive tendencies, no matter what happened in childhood. And there is no better person to do this with than your significant other. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood! We can give each other now what we missed then.
For a moment, imagine that Donna experienced different childhood programming. What if she had received more consistent attention and responsiveness from her parents? Then as an adult, she would be able to express her feelings more vulnerably. Instead of reacting with anger when Eric gave her advice, she would notice her inner resistance and realize that, instead of advice, she needed him to listen. She would be able to say, “Eric, I appreciate your help, but right now, I’d really appreciate it if you could just listen to me talk about it. Would you do that?”
Or, if she started to get annoyed by Eric, she would catch her reactivity before it escalated, since her nervous system would have developed the resources to do so in childhood. She might interrupt her reactivity and ask for support: “Could we just pause for a moment? And can I have a hug?”
If Eric’s emotional resilience had been more developed in childhood, he could catch his reactivity when Donna voiced her complaints. He would be better able to calm himself, hear her, and express his real needs.
Secure Functioning in Intimate Partnerships
Securely functioning partners trust that their distress matters to each other and will be responded to in a positive way. Secure partners believe, “It’s safe to tell you when I feel distressed or have a need. I am not afraid to show emotional vulnerability.” They have a sense that “I can depend on you. I’m not worried you are going to leave. And you can depend on me. So I can ask you for help easily, and you can ask me for help easily.”
Secure partners believe that if there’s a rift or rupture in their connection, it will get repaired. They think, “No big deal. We’ll reassure each other that we’re safe, resolve the issue, and keep moving forward together.” They don’t automatically assume that a relationship is threatened if there is disagreement. They trust their ability to perceive accurately and communicate effectively. Though they may experience differences, they can listen openly to each other and be empathetic. Their alarms don’t hijack their higher brains or their abilities to communicate.
Secure partners place a high value on respect for differences. Decisions have to make sense and be good for both partners. Secure partners will tend to be collaborative rather than competitive.
With secure functioning, there is an ease of flow between being together and being alone. Secure partners can interrupt their solitude and easily make a friendly connection when the other person wants to make contact. On the other hand, they don’t get triggered or feel abandoned when that person does something independently.
Have you ever wanted to connect just when your partner needed alone time? This is a common source of distress in relationships. It can lead to triggering and reactivity. But if we are functioning securely, it’s relatively easy to shift between connecting and separating, between contact and being alone. If your partner is busy, you can wait to connect later. Or if you are busy, and your partner wants contact, you can easily shift and connect — even if just for a minute.
How Securely Functioning Partners Communicate
Securely functioning partners feel safe to reveal vulnerable needs and feelings. They can talk about anything, knowing that if conflicts or misunderstandings occur, they have the tools to resolve them. If they feel distressed or have a need, they’ll express it at the appropriate volume level. They won’t have to turn their volume way up in order to get attention. It won’t be mixed with angry protest or anxiety. They won’t shut their signaling down or hide out. They will admit their needs and their fears and reach out for reassurance. And if either partner notices that the other is distressed, they will quickly respond with touch, eye contact, and simple, soft, reassuring messages. Each partner knows what their partner needs to feel safe, and they know how to calm and reassure their partner when needed.
Coregulation is a natural part of a secure couple’s daily life — not only in response to distress calls, but as a way to nurture their sense of connection. Secure couples touch often. Partners may frequently hug at departures and arrivals and check with each other throughout the day. Even when they are apart, they will still feel connected.
Secure couples know that interdependence is the root of healthy, happy relating. They know that, as couples therapist Stan Tatkin says, “Relationship is like a three-legged race.” Ongoing happiness is based on both partners staying vertical and moving forward together. The basic rule is: “If you fall, then I fall.” You cannot leave one partner on the ground.
Taking a stance that treats their relationship as a three-legged race, secure partners know that it is in their own best interest to find mutual solutions — and to respond in a caring, helpful way when a partner is in distress. A secure couple has no interest in who is right or who will win if there’s a difference in needs. Partners work together to arrive at a solution that works for both.
As in a three-legged race, if one person feels off balance, that person needs to know how to reach out for help in an open, transparent way as soon as possible. If a distressed partner needs reassurance, the other knows how to quickly respond with coregulation or comforting verbal messages. Secure couples get triggered, but they have learned how to accept their triggers and quickly reassure safety or repair.
How Securely Functioning Couples Handle Distress
All couples go in and out of synch and will occasionally be at odds. Distress occurs even in the best relationships. How such distress is handled makes all the difference.
The following steps summarize what a secure couple will do if someone is distressed or gets triggered. This sequence is described from the point of view of you being the partner who gets triggered. Of course, it could be the other way around.
1. You notice that you are upset, distressed, or triggered.
2. You approach your partner and express your distress in a simple, vulnerable way.
3. Your partner responds by coming forward to coregulate and reassure you.
4. This calms you and helps you feel safe again.
5. It also helps you trust that your relationship can handle occasional upsets.
6. Your connection is strengthened, and your overall trust is deepened.
In a secure partnership, if you get distressed or triggered (either by your partner or by some life event), you know it is your job to approach your partner for reassurance. You do not expect your partner to read your mind. You don’t avoid your feelings or keep them hidden. You do not try to provoke a response through baiting or indirect requests. You do not blame or guilt-trip your partner. If you catch yourself in a reactive pattern, you notice it and revise your approach as soon as possible.
When triggered, secure partners will give a simple, direct distress signal (such as, “Ouch,” or, “I just got triggered”). Just like a secure child, they will readily show their need for reassurance. Secure partners will reveal their soft, vulnerable feelings, core fears, and core needs to each other.
On their date night, if Donna had felt secure (as Eric was checking his cell phone), she might have said: “Eric, you’ve been working so much lately. I’m starting to miss you. I’m feeling lonely. I need to feel our connection more. I’d like to hold hands while we’re sitting here. . .and maybe later lie on the sofa and cuddle.”
In this example, Donna readily admits her core feelings and asks for coregulation. Approached this way, Eric would have felt safe. He might have responded with empathy and reassurance, expressing through touch, eye contact, a soft voice tone, and words, “You are safe with me. We are together. Our love is strong.”
Even if Eric could not give Donna exactly what she wanted, if he were operating as a secure partner, he could listen and offer empathy. He could appreciate her willingness to ask. This type of coregulating response promotes self-regulation in each other.
Secure Couples Quickly Calm Each Other’s Distress
We would all prefer to feel and act more like a securely attached couple. We learn to function more securely as we develop the capacity to express our needs simply and vulnerably, to reach out for hugs and reassurance, and to respond to our partner’s distress.
An easy way to foster secure functioning in your partnership is to become proactive in offering reassurance. As soon as you notice your partner is triggered or in distress, don’t wait to be told. Offer coregulation and reassurances of safety right away.
Be an early responder. Remember, the longer you wait, the louder survival alarms will ring. And if your partner’s alarm is ringing, yours will soon be ringing, too. It is best to calm distressed states as soon as possible. The longer a couple stays in distress, the more cotriggering occurs.
Occasionally saying “I love you so much” or “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me” can help tremendously. A firm but gentle touch on the arm can quiet inner demons. If you are both triggered — invite your partner to pause with you. Then reassure each other as quickly as possible that everything is okay. Turn your relationship into the safe harbor you may not have experienced as a child.
Do you know what is usually at the core of your partner’s distress? You will find this out in the next two chapters. Knowing your partner’s core fears provides vital information about what to say to dispel these fears.
As a simple example, let’s say your partner was raised to believe that being loved and accepted was dependent on how well he or she performed in school or sports. And you know that your partner feels insecure about being adequate or loved — harboring a deep-seated fear that his or her value depends on being smart, perfect, right, or accomplished. If he or she comes home one day feeling distressed about a poor performance review at work, you know what to say to bolster self-confidence and turn off your partner’s alarm. Saying “I think you’re great just as you are” can be both reassuring and healing.
Of course, it’s easier to offer reassurance when your partner is triggered by someone other than yourself. But even if your own behavior triggers your partner, you can still reassure safety. When you are cotriggered, after calling for a pause, say something like, “I love you. I know we’ll get through this.”
Your inner sense of safety will grow as you learn how to coregulate each other’s nervous systems — in the particular ways that work for each person.
When We Don’t Get Enough Coregulation in Childhood
To discover the best ways to calm and reassure your partner, it helps to understand what happened when your partner was a child. If children don’t receive enough coregulation and reassurances of safety, their nervous systems will become especially sensitive to certain types of perceived threats. As adults, they will end up exhibiting some form of insecure functioning, such as a tendency to hear criticism in a harmless comment.
Research on attachment, or how humans learn to pair-bond, has discovered two modes of insecure functioning — avoidant and preoccupied. These insecure modes are normal adaptations; they are not pathological conditions. They represent a child’s natural adaptation to a type of family culture, where otherwise loving parents simply don’t provide enough coregulation — usually because they, themselves, did not get it growing up.
To navigate the rough times in a relationship, we all need to understand how childhood programming informs our ability to feel secure as adults. As you read these descriptions, keep in mind that there are no pure types. Sometimes our behavior seems “avoidant,” while at other times, we may act more “preoccupied.”
Growing Up in an Avoidant Culture
Some families do not provide much warm and fuzzy contact such as holding, rocking, and hugging. Such homes are underexpressive when it comes to feelings. In these families, a child will adapt by learning to “take care of himself” — numbing feelings, shutting down self-expression, and keeping busy or distracted.
Parents may be physically present in the house, but when the child is crying or in distress, they rarely respond with comforting touch and reassurances of safety. Children who do not get these kinds of coregulating responses discover they are on their own when it comes to emotional distress. Their nervous systems adapt by finding substitute means to manage distress, such as focusing on toys or spacing out in some way. These children may appear quite self-sufficient. Parents can even leave the room, and the child will hardly notice.
In the past, so-called experts were fooled into believing such a child was confident and autonomous. They routinely advised mothers to resist their urge to pick up their crying infant because this would spoil the child and foster dependency. “Let the kid cry it out,” these experts advised. “That way, your child will learn to be more independent.” While decades of experts were fooled into thinking the child benefited from this kind of treatment, scientific research now shows this advice to be a perfect formula for creating the type of insecure functioning called avoidant attachment. As researchers developed the means to measure stress hormones, they found the avoidant child actually suffers the highest levels of internal distress. These experts on child-rearing got it entirely wrong!
Eric’s mom followed the recommended practice of these misguided experts, starting in the first months of his life. As predicted, little Eric did end up crying far less than most kids. He stopped crying and became a well-behaved, self-entertaining boy — much to the pride and joy of both parents. But deep inside, his nervous system was numbing out his distress. His cortisol (stress hormone) levels were extremely high.
Children with this pattern develop a low expectation for getting a calming response from the adults around them. So they stop sending out distress signals and go mute. They stop seeking closeness. They distance, disengage, and withdraw when they get distressed. Sadly, due to unwitting emotional neglect on the part of their caregivers, these children don’t see other humans as a source of relief or comfort when they feel upset.
As infants, we are wired to give a distress signal and get a reassuring response. If we don’t get such a response — or even worse, if our caregivers leave the room when we cry — we may conclude there is something fundamentally wrong with us for showing our needs. Avoidant children learn to suppress their feelings. They may first learn to trance out on their toys, and then later they do so in their work, their intellectual interests, their hobbies, or their sports activities.
These children weren’t displaying the confident independence the child-rearing experts thought they were seeing; they were numbing their anxiety and pain. More recently, researchers observing avoidant children have found that the quality of play they engage in is more dreamlike and less lively than how secure children play. The stress hormone cortisol measured in their saliva is found at a higher level than in any other children. Their nervous systems are trying to self-manage their distress through a trance-like state.
Avoidant as Adults
The avoidant mode is often rewarded in our society, which values speed, efficiency, and performance over our emotional connections with others. Avoidant adults do seem more achievement-oriented. They place a high value on self-reliance. They think they like to be alone, that they are independent. But this so-called independence is not based on a sense of security. They don’t like to feel needy, and they don’t like to experience neediness in others. They may even fear being swallowed up if they get too close.
Avoidant partners may try to limit intimate contact. They may even feel relief when a partner leaves them alone. Avoidant partners can find it easier to shift from being together to being alone, finding it easier to say good-bye, than to shift from being alone to reconnecting.
Combined with this, avoidant partners also can have a big focus on work or activities. They overrely on nonrelational activities to calm and comfort themselves. It can jolt their nervous systems, like a mini-shock, to suddenly be approached and interrupted by someone while they are working, and they may become annoyed.
Avoidant partners may carry fears of failure or not being adequate. They may worry that a partner will find them not good enough. This emphasis on performance often stems from a childhood in which they received positive attention primarily for their successes.
They will tend to carefully calculate and edit things in their mind in order to avoid upsetting a partner. They worry that if the other person knew what they were thinking, they might lose the relationship. They will be quick to claim nothing is wrong.
This inclination to claim things are fine is an example of how avoidant adults tend to underexpress themselves emotionally. They do not talk much about how they feel, and they have trouble responding when a partner expresses emotions. They will tend to stay in their head, rationalize, intellectualize, give advice, defend themselves, or in some other way push feelings away. This is all because they never were shown by a significant other that their emotional states matter and that their feelings can be discussed. They simply have not yet learned that talking about feelings can lead to relief of distress.
Instead they may tend to get overwhelmed by emotional content and want to escape. They can seem allergic to discussing past events: “The past is the past. Why do we have to keep going over it? What good is it? Just let it go and move on.”
Giving advice is their typical response to a partner’s distress — offering intellectual help, using reason to fix things or explain things. They do not recognize the coregulatory power of just listening or offering physical coregulation.
When they get triggered, they will usually start ignoring, acting reasonable, withdrawing, or shutting down, like Eric did when Donna got upset about his cell phone on their date night. This can make it seem like people who operate in the avoidant mode don’t care about others or don’t have feelings. On the contrary, avoidant partners are suppressing their feelings in order to deal with the extreme distress of their own self-doubts and insecurities. Shutting down occurs because they are so sensitive, and their nervous systems are so easily overwhelmed. Thus, they need to keep things calm. Withdrawing is preferred because they believe that expressing their feelings will only make a situation worse.
Growing Up in a Preoccupied Culture
Some families tend to make warm physical contact and hugs available quite a bit, although inconsistently, or parents may be overexpressive when it comes to emotions. Trying to get a coregulatory response from a parent may even come with a cost, like “Stop being such a cry-baby,” or “I’ll give you something to cry about!” In such a home, the child sometimes gets held and sometimes not, depending on the feeling state of their caregiver. The preoccupied mode of insecure functioning results when parents are responsive some of the time but inconsistently. It may seem to the child that getting positive attention is random, like flipping a coin.
Sometimes the parent is right there, hugging, kissing, eye gazing, and responding with affection. But at other times, instead of being attuned to the child, the parent is “checked out.” Many factors can produce inconsistent responsiveness in a caregiver. He or she may be consumed or overwhelmed by his or her own emotions and unable to respond to the child. The child’s distress may push the parent’s buttons. Or the parent’s unmet emotional needs might spill out onto the child. When this occurs, the child is forced into a painful role reversal, where the child attempts to regulate the parent’s state.
Regardless of how it happens, the uncertainty of getting a response leads to a background state of anxiety or anger in the child. The child’s alarm system becomes highly sensitized, monitoring the caregiver’s every move. The child’s radar is up. These children always seem to question, “Are you going to be there for me this time?” Anger can build up for all the times the parent did not respond. So when the parent finally does show up, these children do not readily calm down. They may harbor some form of angry protest or be flooded with anxiety. Not receiving a consistent coregulatory response at this critical developmental period, the child’s brain does not develop stable self-regulation circuitry.
Donna’s mother tended to have emotional highs and lows. Her mood swings interfered with her ability to consistently respond to her child’s cries. Sometimes Donna’s mom did hold her and rock her. But just as often, her mom was absorbed in her own emotions and did not do this. Worse yet were the times her mother’s upsets spilled out onto Donna. As a result of this inconsistency, little Donna showed signs of being anxious and angry by the time she was one year old. She adapted to her family conditions with a form of insecure functioning called preoccupied attachment. (Researchers also use terms like ambivalent, anxious, or angry-resistant attachment to refer to this insecure mode.)
The preoccupied mode of functioning looks like what our society would call clingy or needy. Children in this mode seem to suffer stronger abandonment fears when the parent leaves or gets focused on something or someone else. When preoccupied children are distressed, they signal it louder and longer. Angry protest will often be mixed into their signals. Even before they have language, the child seems to be asking, “Are you really there for me? Do you love me? Can I ever really be secure with you?” When the parent does respond, the child’s anxiety is difficult to soothe. Doubt lingers: “Even as you hold me now, can I really trust you to stay?” While being held, preoccupied children may squirm, hit, kick, cry, or yell. It’s as if their nervous systems have to dramatically amplify their distress signals to get attention because of a lingering doubt they will ever be adequately and consistently soothed.
Preoccupied as Adults
Adults in the preoccupied mode tend to feel anxious about whether a partner is really there. They strive to feel connected, and they pursue closeness. In daily life, preoccupied partners find it harder to say good-bye and separate; they find it easier to shift from being alone to reconnecting. They are sensitive to withdrawal. They tend to harbor fears of being alone or abandoned.
Partners in the preoccupied mode tend to talk a lot. It often takes them a long time to say anything. Too much silence makes them anxious. Talking calms them down and makes them feel better. They can be very expressive and easily jump from one topic to another — not noticing when this overwhelms their partner. They like to say everything, to think out loud. Meanwhile, the listener may tend to check out due to information (or emotional) overload.
Preoccupied partners may doubt their self-worth, believe they are overbearing, or that they are a burden. They look for signs they are not important and worry that their partner doesn’t care about the relationship as much as they do. If they think they are not being heard, their distress signals may get louder and longer.
When Donna and Eric were on their date night, Donna was triggered as Eric checked his cell phone, and she fell into a preoccupied mode. The stories she fabricated revealed core fears of abandonment: “I am not as important to him as his work. Our date night is not as special for him as it is for me. I’m all alone.”
Preoccupied adults will feel like they have to keep knocking on the door to get in to really connect with a partner. But their form of knocking will be some reactive behavior like prodding, questioning, or complaining. They worry that if they don’t pursue, they will never get a response. This may soon escalate to criticizing, attacking, or blaming — typical reactive behaviors of a preoccupied pursuer.
Some preoccupied partners have a tough time being comforted. They may at times seem to push a partner away with angry protest: “I don’t trust you. I’m not going to relax. You’re going to abandon me all over again.” Although they seek closeness, they expect or fear the worst — further abandonment. When this results in reactive behaviors like complaining or criticizing, the person’s partner is usually triggered to withdraw — which activates even more fears of abandonment.
In contrast to the avoidant adult, who just wants to move forward as quickly as possible and forget the past, a preoccupied partner has a tendency to bring up the past and rehash old disappointments in an attempt to regain a sense of connection.
Insecure Functioning in Your Relationship
Partners operating in the preoccupied or avoidant mode tend to behave in ways that bring about the outcomes they fear most. Instead of seeking or offering reassurances of safety, they react aggressively, defensively, or self-protectively. This, in turn, triggers resistance or resentment. Over time, partners spiral down into deeper levels of distress. After a while, almost anything they discuss winds up triggering both of them. They cannot just speak from their hearts, openly, simply, vulnerably, and undefended. Instead, they communicate using a metaphorical sword or shield — depending on which insecure mode dominates their nervous system.
Everyone has access to both sword- and shield-like behaviors and will use one or the other depending on the circumstances. Likewise, any of us can behave as more avoidant or more preoccupied, depending on many factors. In general, the more one partner becomes a preoccupied pursuer, the more the other will behave like an avoidant withdrawer — and vice versa.
Let’s look in detail at how communicating with a sword or shield perpetuates a couple’s sense of danger.
When Donna starts acting like a preoccupied pursuer, she hides her softer core feelings and needs behind a sword — complaining, criticizing, prodding, questioning, provoking, pressuring, making suggestions, yelling, or blowing up.
Deep inside her soft heart, Donna is trying to say things like: “I miss you. I want to connect. I’m afraid I don’t matter to you. My old fear of abandonment is getting triggered.” Essentially, she needs reassurance that she is important to Eric. She wants to feel connected. If she felt safer, she’d probably say something like, “Will you please hold me and reassure me that I matter to you so I can feel connected with you?”
But because of the preoccupied culture she experienced in her family, the emotional language patterns her brain developed didn’t include the vocabulary of a vulnerable, direct request. As an adult, she still doesn’t realize vulnerability is an option — so she reaches for a sword instead, imagining this to be the more powerful alternative. This echoes how she used to erupt in angry protest, scream, or get clingy in childhood.
Donna may think she is only knocking on Eric’s door, asking to be let in to receive emotional connection from him. However, clanging on his door with a heavy metallic sword sends out a different sort of message. Eric takes her critical words and harsh voice tone as a rejection, as evidence that she does not value or accept him. In response, he can either get out his own sword or put up a shield. Having grown up in an avoidant household, Eric favors the shield as his main defensive tool, and an all-too-familiar pattern of escalating reactivity is set in motion.
Communication with the sword is fueled by reactive feelings like anger and frustration. Donna makes accusations: “You don’t care. You’re cold and insensitive. You only think about yourself. You always . . .You never. . .” Donna has no idea that her sword-like communications scare Eric.
Communicating with a Shield
Eric has learned to disengage or defend himself in an effort to calm things down. He pulls out his shield, using logic, reason, or distracting conversation.
Deep inside his soft heart, Eric may be trying to express things like: “I’m afraid you don’t accept me. I fear I’m not good enough. My fear of rejection is getting triggered.” He, too, would like to reach out for reassurance that he is accepted and valued by Donna. If he felt safe, he’d be able to ask, “Will you please hold me and reassure me that you accept and value me as I am, that you don’t require me to change in order to be acceptable?”
But Eric was seldom comforted or reassured in childhood when he felt upset. He learned to just go to his room and deal with his feelings on his own, mainly by numbing out and trying to distract himself with toys or stories of adventure he would make up in his head. His nervous system never learned it was possible to directly express his distress to another human being or that his feelings would even matter to someone else.
When Eric does things like walking away, pushing feelings away, lecturing, and staying in his head, he thinks he is only trying to keep things calm. But to Donna, he appears to be closing the door to her, shutting himself off in another room. This type of behavior will often trigger a partner’s fear of abandonment.
Eric has no idea Donna’s alarm system interprets his distancing behavior to mean, “You don’t matter. I don’t like being close to you.” That is how communication with a shield is often interpreted by others — who will either put up a shield themselves or use a sword in an attempt to break through and connect.
However, no matter what we experienced in childhood, and no matter what type of insecure functioning we exhibit, it’s never too late to develop a deep sense of emotional security. The nervous system can self-modify. We can all learn to feel safe and secure — even if we have never felt this with a partner. We can learn to communicate in ways that get our real needs met — our needs to know and be known, to love and feel loved.
In the next few chapters, you will learn more about how reactive cycles work so you can transform reactive patterns and use upsets to strengthen your love and sense of security.