Attachment and Trauma: Who’s to Blame?
Often clients chose to isolate themselves because they feel intrinsically bad and responsible for the abuse.This sense of inner badness is the result of the child’s attempt to make meaning out of the abuse. By assigning responsibility for the abuse to their own badness survivors are able to view their parents as good people.
It was just not knowing. A lot had to do with the feeling I had at that time, that it was all my fault. So therefore I didn’t connect with anybody…I isolated myself from my family, because the contact with them always felt is going to cause chaos and pain to other people…when mum died I felt I was to blame (Sue 1/6+7, 2/5).
Sue's example shows how a negative self-representation of being bad, nasty, dirty, tarnished, contagious, or responsible for bad occurrences keeps survivors of abuse in a state of isolation. Only when this self- representation changes are DID clients able to make progress in their recovery.
The importance of emotional bonds and attachments for human functioning, prospering, and self-development has been discussed over the years by many great scholars (Ainsworth, 1969; Bowlby, 1988; Briere, 2002; Harlow, 1986; Herman, 1992; Honneth, 1995b; Mead, 1934; D. Stern, 1977; Winnicott, 1971). They believe that humans, like all other mammals, have inbuilt neuro-physiological structures in the limbic cortex through which they attach to parents or caregivers to assure the physical and emotional survival of the individual and the species.
Without Attachments We Die
Harlow's experiment (1986) with rhesus monkey babies suggests that the need for attachment and contact is even more important than the need for food. Without attachments and contact these little monkeys died. Even under most adverse circumstances, for example children being removed from their abusive families, all they long for is to be given back to their parents. Ainsworth believed already in 1969 that humans have wired-in neuro-physiological structures that assure attachment seeking behaviours.
Attachment to the Perpetrator
These attachment structures are also significant for understanding the legacies of sexual abuse. It has been noticed that survivors of interpersonal trauma are drawn to attach to the perpetrator in an unconscious attempt to elicit a caring response and to minimize the threat to their lives (Graham, Rawlings, & Rigsby, 1994; Ross, 2000). This phenomenon has also been called 'The Stockholm Syndrome".
This attachment to the perpetrator becomes even more noticeable when the perpetrator is a family member or otherwise known to the victim. When abused by a person close to them, victims struggle to integrate the fundamental human task of attachment with the instinctive recoiling from pain through withdrawal or shutdown. This conflict is a source of considerable emotional pain (Anderson, Martin, Mullen, Romans, & Herbison, 1993; Freyd, 1998; Ross, 2000).
The Shift of Locus of Control
In order to become or stay attached to the perpetrator on whom the child’s well-being depends, it assigns responsibility for the abuse to itself. For reasons that make perfect sense to the victimised child it comes to believe that it deserved to be abused or even has caused the abuse. Ross (2000) calls this psychological phenomenon ‘the shift of locus of control’. It protects the child’s attachment to the perpetrator and provides it with a sense of being able to change its situation.
By being extra ‘good’ and anticipating the wishes and wants of the perpetrator, the child might now be able to elicit a caring response from the perpetrator (Ross, 2000). For some abuse survivors ‘being good’ becomes a life position of being over accommodating and over compliant with the people around them.
Recovery processes need to address the attachment to the perpetrator issue and identify the cognitive distortions inherent in feeling responsible for the abuse. This is often strongly defended against. The self-preservative instinct to attach is reactivated by starting to view the perpetrator as bad and hurtful and causes intense feelings of loss, isolation, abandonment, or even impending death. Ross (2000, p. 264) describes this as “…the deepest conflict, the deepest source of pain, and the fundamental driver of the (clinical) symptoms”.
It has been my clinical experiences that without addressing this vital issue, recovery efforts come to a halt.
- Posted in: Attachment ♦ Coping & Strategies ♦ Living with DID ♦ Mental Health ♦ Parts ♦ Relationships with Self ♦ self-care ♦ Sexual Abuse ♦ Support ♦ Therapists ♦ Treatment ♦ Understanding DID
- Tagged: attachment, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, multiple personalities, neuro-pathways, recovery, research, Stockholm syndrome, Therapy, trauma, trauma processing, treatment
Hey Jessica have a great break and look forward to catching up with you in Feb. Take Care.
Thanks for all the support and the chance to air my feelings. Have a good Christmas day everyone. Go well, stay well, Jessica. P.S. I’m away for a month. Catch up in Feb.
Oh my gosh!!! I so have so much to say!!! And I want to comment but at the moment its giving me verbal Diarrhoea and i’ve had half a glass of wine so well Gudrun I’m afraid I agree in part with Jessica…. and in part with Jae – well sort of see whats she is saying. Hey Jessica….makes me a bit angry too. And Katie … well can understand what you are saying for your circumstance but not for mine. Oh ugh!!! aaaggghhh!!!!! Sorry!!! will have to think about this – I guess I am more with you Jessica!!!
I have no compassion for my father, and have no reason to. some people might, but it is not a route I need to go down. I am not about to play god by forgiving those who have done wrong because ‘they know not what they do.’ He knew very well. If he couldn’t get it from my mother, he got it from me. He was NOT a good enough parent. I don’t need to hear this.It would have been better if I hadn’t been brought into this world.I’m not about to say “oh, poor him.” I am thinking of all the lives that he has destroyed. Get real.this makes me really angry’;/
Hi Katie, Jessice, and Uznco, the attachment bond to one’s parents is enormously strong! Nature has very securly and deeply instilled the need to attach so that the young babies/children survive. Being angry with one’s parents for being abusive or failing to be protective is often hard, especially when there have also been acts of love and/or compassion.
I think the only benefit of being angry with one’s parent is that is opens the possibility to hand back the responsibility for the abuse and neglect. I don’t think it’s majorly important that parents have to be told how much they failed the child. (Off course it feels good to get an apoligy and hear of regret!)
Most important is that the survivor can lessen the burden of responsibility on his/her own shoulders. If you can wholeheartedly say that you have fully given back responsibility, you can build a new relationship with you parent(s). A relationship based on the knowledge of their shortcomings and of your compassion with another human being who brought you into this world without an understanding and without the skills needed for good enough parenting.
Hey there Katie, I no what you mean I struggled so much with this, but I remember my therapist saying to me, its ok not to hate the person that abused you, this may sound wierd to a lot of people but it gave me permission some how to forgive myself, I was so confused at my feelings around this, and I did hate this person for things but there were things I loved him for as well. Once I worked out my own feelings and did get angry with him etc I stopped needing answers.
Thanks for your comments, Go well, Jae
My dad was the only one I’ve ever felt like understood me and loved me, even though he abused me. My mom was always in and out of the hospital, and dad was all I had. I try to have friends, even, and it’s like I can’t keep up with being friends with people. I’m pretty much a loner now. When dad died, a light went out in me, even though most people think what he did was really bad.
Just read attachment and trauma; who’s to blame.
I think this isue is sitting heavily on me at the moment, and I donn’t think I have dealt with them enough in my sessions. As a child, i am aware that I was often looking for an alternative father.but every single one of these attachments ended up in sexual abuse, therefore it was easy to think, ‘it must have been my fault, I asked for it, I sought it out, I let it happen, I wanted, even liked it??!!’
I guess I wanted someone to love me and this was the only way I had got to know. The other men were much more ‘gentle and loving, sometimes doing it in the name of god, promissing me forgiveness’ At least they wern’t doing it in anger.
I had even created a part of me as a boy, Gregory, so that my father would just relate to me in a close but non sexual way, and this worked sometimes, I learnt about tools and fixing things, and painting and electronics and I enjoyed going to the rubbish dump with him to scavenge for anything useful. But these thing were just little interludes and the rest of the time I spent trying to assess how safe it was to be arround. At least I learnt how to judge moods and how to hide or run or make myself invisible. I lived with constant fear of his erruptive anger and criticism, always trying to keep enough distance betwee him so that he couldn’t touch me , even by accident.
Then I think, ‘WHERE WAS MY MOTHER?!’ I have so few memories of her. it distresses me greatly. I tried to look after her but I never knew how. I wish I could make it up to her now but she died many years ago. She died when she was my age. Sometimes I want her so much.
Are there two train of thoughts with this attachment to the perpetrator and The shift of locus of control? Like does happen when you start realising that it wasn’t your fault and that you did nothing to deserve the abuse and it happens gradually through therapy or is it something that just hits you?
Oh, wow! I finally understand that! Thank you!