Attachment--Part IV

So here is something else interesting about our attachment styles: the way we grieve our losses depends in large part on the way we are attached. People with a secure attachment style feel sad, empty, desperately sad. And they are able to move on relatively soon.

For example, it is a sad thing to lose a relationship for anyone. But people with an anxious attachment style pine, agonize, and obsess about the loss for months or years. It doesn't feel possible to move on because their loss triggers that original relationship disruption that feels as if it will kill their souls. It is difficult to redirect such grieving people, as they become fixated on their loss and will tell it to anyone who will listen--for years afterward. It mirrors the primal sense of loss they may have experienced even at a preverbal stage.

People with avoidant attachment styles are those who are prone to shake themselves off and act as though the whole thing is an inconvenience--nothing more. They are so defended (guarded) against feeling vulnerability or pain that they will put up a wall and move ahead quickly to something else. People like this can either become loners--it's easier to be without someone to be attached to--or can move into high risk behaviors such as addictions, crime, or promiscuity (love 'em and leave 'em--except it isn't love, it's the Clint Eastwood or 007 type use of women).

People with secure attachment styles grieve--yes they do. But it is a "cleaner" grief--not tangled up with the original attachment issues. And they are able to achieve appropriate closure and move on in a reasonable time, and move on usually to another satisfying relationship in an appropriate amount of time.

Another interesting layer over the grief and attachment matrix is that of individual temperament. Feeling dominant people are able to identify more of their experience, and while this gives them a sense of control, it doesn't tell them how to move on or to obtain closure. They really waffle for awhile trying to do something other than ride the waves of their feelings. Consider this awful combination: an anxiously attached, feeling dominant individual in mid-life crisis. Oh dear...
Concrete thinkers can't figure out why they feel so lousy during grief and therefore don't feel that their grief is altogether valid. Grief for them is somewhat like running your tongue over the hole where a tooth used to be that was just extracted. They want to be told what steps to take to do grief "right," since they approach life in the most efficient and correct way possible. An avoidant thinking-dominant, concrete thinker would be a real therapy challenge.

The action-oriented individual wants to go out and hike the Appalachian trail or take up sky diving. If they can offset their sadness with strenuous activity or the adrenaline rush of a high risk hobby, they will do it. The sadness will remain with them for awhile, but they will forget how painful it is since they are consumed with thrill-seeking. Let's hope this individual is securely attached. However, many are not. An avoidant, action-oriented person will, with a determined glint in the eye, decide to do an extreme sport or some kind of criminal activity that calls for a "no-heart" attitude. The anxiously attached person in this category will be weepy but will still stay involved in high risk behavior, the proverbial guy in a bar, crying into his beer after everyone has stopped playing pool, etc.

The thought-dominant, abstract thinking individual presents problems that many people don't know how to address. Caught up in her obsessive thoughts, she feels blindsided by the flood of feelings--all of which feel irrational and make that individual feel quite out of control. Many such people are fearful of feelings because they can't connect the feeling in the moment to what is happening. Therefore, many of these individuals don't think that either their response is abnormal and chastise themselves, or they begin reading so they can mechanically confront their experience from a logical, rational, cognitive manner. This is not the person who will allow himself to cry unless it makes sense where the sadness is coming from at that moment, and whether he thinks it will do any good in the long run for him to be crying. Because feelings are such a problem to thought-dominant, abstract thinking people, they can feel crazy in grief whether their attachment style is secure or anxious. They actually feel better if they are avoidant, but over the long haul they struggle to reconcile what has happened to them experientially with their cognitive perspective of the grief event.

Well, there you have it.
In the words of Forest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."