A QUICK GUIDE TO ATTACHMENT ORGANISATION SECURE (can process emotion effectively) I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me AMBIVALENT (use a ‘hyperactivation’ strategy) I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away AVOIDANT (use a ‘deactivation’ strategy) I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being

IPC AND AFFECT REGULATION: Deactivation Strategies (think about effect on IPC) Maximising distance to avoid interdependence Negative and positive affect (seen as a danger signal) is deactivated Negative affect difficult to alter by positive affect (can’t ‘let guard down’) Excessive self-reliance/control Repression of painful memories Cognitive and behavioural distancing from source of distress Suppression of distressing thoughts Attribute hostility to partners Affect dampening via escapism Difficulty in reducing tension Self-inflation used to suppress personal deficiencies Seeing others as ‘different’ Defensive Projection of own unwanted traits

IPC AND AFFECT REGULATION: Hyperactivation Strategies (think about effect on IPC) Problem with exploration Anxious attention on attachment figures Difficulty in detaching from psychological pain Ruminate on negative emotion and thoughts Negative affect difficult to alter by positive affect (tends to have reverse effect) Minimise distance by clinging/controlling Emotion-focused coping Undifferentiated emotional architecture – affect ‘spreads’ to other emotions – ‘incoherence of mind’ Exaggeration of personal weakness and viewing of others as similar (to increase potential for ‘connectedness’) Defensive exclusion of psychological pain by Projective identification

IPC AND AFFECT REGULATION: Secure Activation Strategy Generally appraise situations as less threatening than insecurely attached individuals Hold optimistic expectations about ability to cope with the causes of their own distress Have ready access to painful memories but are not contagiously spread Will disclose personal info to others and express emotions in a relatively open way Will adopt support-seeking as an affect-regulation strategy Deal with conflict by compromise and by integrating their own and others’ positions Can acknowledge physical signs of anger and express it on controlled non-hostile manner Engage in problem-focused coping

AAI ANALYSIS – Example 1 (Describe your relationship with your parents when you were young) Ooh gosh. Erm . . . I’ve got a reasonably good memory for my childhood, I can remember the house really clearly and I specifically remember my pram so I must have been about 2 or 3. I can remember my mum saying that my pram had to be sold, I can also remember, mind you, you asked about relationships (Yes) I’m talking about places aren’t I? (Yes, yes particularly early relationships) Early relationships . . . (You can remember) I used to do a lot of things. I used to go out with my dad because he was he was in business and he used to take me out in the van. I can remember that erm more other things like going into town and going shopping. I used go with my mum and my grandma and we used to go most Saturdays. I can remember going on holidays with them, I think I must have had quite a happy childhood erm I know I was cared for a lot, I can remember getting my bottom (giggling) smacked in the bath, that was my dad and he felt really upset afterwards er I can remember sometimes things like getting very cross when I was little and every time I got cross I’d say ‘Right, I’m going to live with my grandma’, then I’d walk off up the road which was only a few blocks away. Is that the kind of thing?

AAI ANALYSIS – Example 2 (Violence?) I can remember once, coming home from school, I stopped with my brother to see a sow who had given birth to her little piglets. We were late and our parents were probably waiting for us, who knows, maybe they were anxious. And my father came for us by bicycle and with one of those twigs you find in trees, he made our legs turn red because of the lashes he gave us as a punishment for what we had done: we had stopped to look at the newborn pigs instead of going back home directly. (Did your mother love you?) Mmm. I don’t know. I suppose she did, in her own way. And I suppose she still does, in her own way . . . Whether she loved me or whether she loved being a mother, I don’t know.

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