Is it attachment issues or neurospiciness?
One way towards change is deeper understaning of our inner worlds
The idea of “attachment styles” has become mainstream. Almost everyone knows of the three : Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidant. These styles of relating were observed by Bowlby and Ainsworth in the 1960s, and in theory they worked only with “neurotypical” children and mothers. I say in theory and use quotations, because autism, while recongnized as its own condition in the 1940s, and published as a “disorder” in the first DSM in 1952, our understanding of autism, adhd, and other neurospicy ways of being, are still not fully understood today. We now know about “high masking,” individuals, the trauma masking causes, and how neurodiverse people tend to have/hold more trauma than neurotypical people. We know more about the sensitivity, physical, psychological, and emotional, of neurospicy people. So, it is questionable if the studies done on attachment styles were actually done on “neurotypical” people which brings about some questions that have been floating in my brain for over a year now and am finally able to begin to put into words.
As I learned more about autism in general, and specifically how it impacts me personally and my family, I began to wonder “What if the avoidant part of my “disorganized” attachment isn’t really about avoidance at all, but about sensory overwhelm? I’ve thought back to many of the times I’ve been “avoidant” and using the new lens of a recent autism diagnosis, began to understand myself better. A truth was I wasn’t trying to avoid the conflict, I was trying to self-regulate and calm my extremely activated nervous system.
Over the last several months I started testing this new lens on my relationships - and becoming curious if the other person was actually ignoring me or if they were in their own sensory overwhelm. If what could be viewed on the outside as “avoidance” isn’t about avoidance at all, but about trying to find some inner peace and calm from sensory and emotional overwhelm, could I have more compassion for them (and myself) in the situation? The answer was generally yes.
Also changing the story from it being about “avoiding me” meant that all the anxious narratives that came up about how they now hated me, I was “bad” and “unloveable”, etc also had to change - because it wasn’t about me, it was about their own internal landscape. Which, if you’ve read any of the work on attachment, they agree with this.
Avoidants avoid to help calm their inner landscape, and anxious persons reach out to get connection to calm their inner landscape. And those of us with both, well, it still applies.
So if our attachment style is about calming our inner landscape, and if neurspicy people avoid people or situations to do the same, what does that mean and does it matter?
We’ve all been fed the fairy tales since birth about how relationships are supposed to work, what “true love” is, and how we are “supposed” to relate with each other. How we need to find our “one and only” to find true happiness, how long-term, “serious” romantic relationships are the only ones that matter or have any real value, how we are only a “half” and being in romantic relationships makes us “whole”.
Those of us socialized as female have been trained to “serve” those socialized/perceived as male, and frankly everyone else too. We’ve been fed gender roles. We’ve been told how act to attract a mate, keep a mate. Those of us socialized as female were also taught how to communicate clearly, how to nurture, how to consider the other person (to our detriment if need be), while generally speaking, those socialized as male were not taught these things. (I’m not stating this as an excuse for men to not communicating, I am pointing out that we were socialized differently so the way we approach relationships is going to be different. Thanks to neuroplasticity we can change this relational training and patterns).
We’ve also been told to intrepret the actions of others, and the intention behind the actions, without being curious, without asking, without looking at our own wounds and motivations. We’ve been told if someone does X then it means Y, always, no exceptions, no space for humanity or compassion.
So when we look at attachment styles, while yes it is agreed that the purpose is to calm our internal systems, it is assumed that the motivation is only about relating, whether we want to be in relationship and or fear losing our autonomy, and that our “refusal” to change (because it is agreed we can change our attachment style with therapy and other inner work), proves how selfish we are or how much we don’t care about others, or even our inability to have and be in loving, nurturing, and nourishing relationships.
But what if our attachment styles are simply a reflection of our lack of resources to manage our neurospicy sensitivities in a world that doesn’t give space for anyone or thing that isn’t “neurotypical”?
What if the stories we’ve been fed about what relationships are “supposed” to look and be like are unnatural and false, are purely constructs of the oppressive systems we live under?
What if we became curious, about our own inner world as well as the inner worlds of others?
What if instead of assuming a person has an “insecure attachment style” we reframed it as they are neurospicy and have not yet developed nurturing and nourishing resources that to work with their neurospiciness because they’ve never been given, taught, or shown them?
What if we aren’t broken, but simply different?
Most of us with neurospicy brains, especially those of us who weren’t diagnosed until well into adulthood, have been told we are “too sensitive” our whole lives while being given nothing to help manage our sensitivities. We’ve been told their is something wrong with us. We’ve been told we’re too much when we ask questions for clarity. We’ve been told our emotions are too big and irrational (because emotions are supposed to be rational?). We’ve been told we’re “too much” in a million different ways almost every single day of our lives.
On the flip side, we’ve also been told we’re lazy, lack motivation, lack initiative. We’ve been told we just need to try harder, to be more disciplined. We’ve been told we aren’t sensitive enough, are selfish and self-centered. We’ve been told we’re too impulsive, uncaring, and self-indulgent. We’ve been told we’re “not enough” in a million different ways almost every single day of our lives.
Those with autistic brains can relate to being told we’re too much, those with adhd can relate to being told we’re not enough, and for those of us with both, what’s commonly called audhd, we can relate to both - because those are our experiences.
Many coaches, counselors, and therapists who work with neurospicy people were trained to try and make us more “neurotypical”. Many of us have never been taught how to work with our brains instead of against them, how to embrace our difference instead of being ashamed of it. In fact, most of us have been told we are defective, not different, and almost everything, including the spaces we go for help, tend to back up this narrative.
Many agree there are a lot of issues with the attachment studies done by Bowlby and Ainsworth. I would argue that perhaps part of the issues with the studies is they didn’t (and given the time, couldn’t) look at the neurospiciness of both the children and mothers who participated. Perhaps our mothers weren’t neglectful in intent, but were so overwhelmed and shutdown that this often led to children at least feeling, if not being, neglected?
Let’s circle back to our adult relationships. The more we are able to understand and have compassion for each other and ourselves, the more nurturing and nourishing our relationships will become. We need tools and resources however to help us manage the reality that we absolutely feel things - be they emotions or textures or sounds or light or, or, or - more intensely than “neurotypical” people. Perhaps one way to work through our “attachment issues” is to work on developing these resources for ourselves.
I have found somatic work to be an amazing resource for this. Many of us have been dissociated and disconnected from our bodies as a way to survive and mask. It is generally accepted that people who experience trauma dissociate as a way of coping. I want to pose that neurospicy people are traumatized by living in a world that doesn’t understand, respect, or accomodate them. Trauma is not only from abuse or neglect, it can come from chronic misattunement - our caregivers not understanding us leading to us feeling different and we don’t belong.
Masking is a form of dissociation. We push down our sensory experience, pretending it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. Often we get so good at masking we forget how sensitive to things we truly are until our nervous systems won’t let us forget and we go into overwhelm and meltdowns.
Coming back into our body, learning our “tells” when we are approaching overwhelm, and having resources to help us calm our systems, will help us not only navigate a world not meant for us, but and will also help us in our ways of relating with others, especially others who are also neurospicy.
The work of the revolution requires us to learn new, nurturing, and nourishing ways to be in relationship with ourselves, each other, and all beings on our planet. The more we are able to look at our current ways of being as an adaptations to living in a world that doesn’t understand or have space for our sensitivites, to more we are able to deconstruct the socialization and harmful relational training we’ve received. Learning new ways of being takes time, practice, and patience - with ourselves and others.
Language and understanding are important. Attachment wounds do exist, they are real, but they are not the whole story and only give us a piece of the entire picture of what it is to be human. If we sum up all of why a person responds to certain situations in a specific way to it just being attachment issues, we are not considering the full lived experience of the person, we dehumanize them and put unrealistic expections on our relationships.
We can all learn new ways of being in the world. And. One of those new ways of being is by seeing a person’s full humanity, to be curious, to give space when needed, to have compassion. It requires us to not label or be dismissive, but to be vulnerable and understanding. It invites clarity, not through assumptions, but through communication and care. It requests us to come into our body, to be present to what is, to practice both acceptance and autonomy, to learn helpful ways of calming our own shame and overwhem, to dislodge the harmful toxic training and indoctrination we’ve received about ourselves and relationships.
To find our ways to deeper, more intimate, nurturing and nourishing relationships, we have to begin with ourselves. Recognizing our own ways of being, how they may be harmful to our relationships and find our new ways of being takes practice over time. It requires we have right resources available to us in order come more fully into ourselves instead of hiding who we are. It invites us to find peace, connection, and safeness.
I currently have a few 1:1 spots available, if you are interested in starting this work. You can reach out to me here, or at the links below. Note I have a sliding scale, so please do not let finances stop you if you are interested in working with me. xoox
This is the first publication of this essay.
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