Attachment Presentation

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Attachment Styles

Secure Attachment

Anxious Attachment

Developing Secure Attachment

Avoidant Attachment

Anxious-Avoidant Attachment

• If a child is neurodivergent, they may struggle with emotion regulation and handling social stress. As a result, these challenges can make ruptures with a caregiver more frequent and distressing.
• A caregiver with neurodivergence may struggle to accurately attune to their child’s needs due to their diverse ways of thinking and coping.
• A neurotypical caregiver might have difficulties understanding and attuning to a neurodiverse child’s needs.

Neurodivergence &Attachment

• Lack of trust from the neurodivergent individual in the relationship due to ASD related characteristics

• History of feeling misunderstood and invalidated.
• Those with ASD and ADHD have an increased risks of development of anxiety and depressive symptoms, which are also directly related to attachment wounds.
• The wins! A neurodivergent parent is more likely to form a secure attachment with thier neurodivergent child.

• Communicate openly and listen empathetically
• Secure attachment requires communicating in a respectful, open-hearted way. When conflict happens, collaborate with your partner to help each other feel understood and connected, even when you disagree.
• Seek out others with healthy relationships
• If you want to run a marathon, it’s helpful to surround yourself with successful runners. In the same way, you can improve your relationships by observing how people with healthy relationships think and behave.
• Minimize stressors
• Stress can worsen attachment issues. Be proactive by committing to self-care, addressing conflict before it escalates, and engaging in calming activities with your partner.

• Examine your beliefs about relationships
• Views about relationships tend to get set early in life. For that reason, it’s important to investigate what is actually true about your current relationships and abandon outdated beliefs and interpretations.
• Act opposite to your anxious or avoidant style
• If you have an anxious attachment style, try taking small steps toward becoming more independent. If you have an avoidant attachment style, try letting down your guard and initiating intimacy.
• Increase your emotional awareness
• Learning to express and tolerate your emotions makes you better able to accept and empathize with those of your partner. This decreases reactivity and increases attachment security.

Attachment Repair

Attachment Theory

Attachment styles are fixed patterns of behavior that a child develops by the age of two. Once the behaviors are locked-in, three out of four people never change that pattern later in childhood, adolescence, and ultimately as adults.

Secure Base

Caregivers who provide a secure base allow infants to become autonomous, inquisitive, and experimental.

Anxious Development

when an infant learns that their caregiver or parent is unreliable and does not consistently provide responsive care towards their needs.

Avoidant Develpment

parent has ignored attempts to be intimate, and the child may internalize the belief that they cannot depend on this or any other relationship.

Disorganized Development

parents to display either frightened or frightening behaviors, resulting in the disorganized infants being confused

Anxious-Avoidant (Insecure)

Alternates between anxious and avoidant attachment. Simultaneously desires and distrusts intimacy with their partner, resulting in contradictory, inconsistent behavior. tendency toward emotional extremes difficulty maintaining healthy boundaries prone to high-conflict relationships

Anxious (Insecure)

Self-critical and seeking validation from others Worries about their partner’s availability and commitment. Often feels incomplete without their partner and may seek excessive reassurance or struggle with jealousy.

• distrustful of partner and relationship
• afraid of abandonment, rejection, & conflict
• sensitive to criticism & hungry for approval

Avoidant (Insecure)

Can come across as aloof and emotionally detached. Tends to avoid intimacy, vulnerability, and commitment, often spending time away from their partner.

• overly rigid, guarded, and distant
• uncomfortable with emotions and conflict
• difficulty expressing needs and wants.

Secure Attachment

Able to show balanced and healthy emotional responses

- Learn the world is for exploring, caregiver is a safe person to help make sense of the world- committed to relationship, but independent - attentive, affectionate, and accepting - able to handle and resolve conflict