Approximate reading time: 20 min

I decided to end 2022 on a ‘non-procrastination high note’ and finish my Type A attachment Strategy post!

(You are thrilled….I know you are!;-)

I have exactly three days to get this thing written!

Honestly, this is the strategy that has been truly eye-opening for me….

I don’t think I will ever look at a smiling, well-behaved child exactly the same way anymore.

PS I am not going to be writing about the disorganised attachment simply because it’s not really an attachment style, it is more when people don’t seem to fit into any of the other three categories.

(Plus we haven’t learnt about it yet!)

Just a reminder that our attachment strategies are self-protective strategies that we developed as infants to elicit protection from our attachment figures, namely our parents or any carers.

This Type A strategy is known as the Anxious Avoidant and according to research, it affects about 22% of the general population.

In the Ainsworth ‘Strange Situation’ assessments, which are used to help identify an infant’s attachment strategy, the child is separated from the mother and then reunited 3 minutes later. During that period a stranger will enter the room and attempt to soothe and calm the infant. When using this assessment these avoidant attachment types generally show no or very little sign of distress when their mother leaves the room. The infant is usually quite happy to play as normal when the stranger enters the room and shows little interest in the mother when she returns.

This type A attachment strategy develops when the infant has experienced negative or punitive responses to them showing any distress or anger. They have essentially learnt that by inhibiting their negative behaviour or emotions, they will gain more of their attachment figure’s attention.

They have learnt that

“When I am good, mummy/daddy is happy!” 

 “When I am good my relationship with mummy/daddy gets better”

When I feel bad, no one helps.

The primary function of the C-type strategy is to use exaggerated negative emotion to scare and manipulate an unpredictable parent into paying attention and being more responsive to their needs. As a result, these children are often the ones whose behaviour is labelled as outrageous with them likely being labelled as the problem. 

The primary function of the type A type strategy is to prevent rejection by their attachment figures.

By hiding their own distress, they essentially reduce their parent’s anger or discomfort and their parents are then ever so pleased to have little or no evidence of any problems.

It is important to point out that rejection for an infant does not simply mean that the child is maltreated, physically, emotionally or sexually, nor does this ‘rejection’ need to be linked with anger. A depressed or overly stressed parent that is unable to attune to the child’s needs, or give them the comfort that they need, can be just as devasting and as damaging for the small child.

As American psychologist, Dr Edward Tronick shows in his ‘Still face experiment below’ babies are extremely responsive to the emotions and the social interaction that they get from the world around them.

By three months of age, the infant can successfully learn to inhibit all their negative affect and is often labelled as

“the good baby”. 

Over time the young child begins to split their somatic feeling

(What it feels like in their body)

from their display of feelings.

(What they show to the world) 

By 24 months these toddlers are now able to show false positive affect. Meaning that they are able to smile and say that they are happy when they might actually be feeling anxious, sad or worried. 

This sunshine effect is when children display false positive emotions that are completely at odds with their situations. What is truly heartbreaking is how many children who go through such horrific abuse are often described as being such positive, happy children who never gave off a single clue about the abuse that they were suffering.

Possibly one of the saddest examples of this ‘Sunshine effect’ has to be little

Victoria Climbié.

For those of you who haven’t heard about her, her story is pretty harrowing.

Victoria was a 7-year-old little girl from the Ivory Coast whose parents allowed her great aunt to bring her to London in 1998 under the pretence of giving her a ‘better life’.  (Her intention the whole time had been to use Victoria to claim benefits)

Fifteen months later their daughter was dead.

Victoria’s case was, at the time, UK’s worst child abuse case ever. 

The horror of what this little girl had to endure is almost unimaginable.

(If you are particularly sensitive you might want to give this next paragraph a miss)

Victoria was bound hand and foot and then forced to sleep inside a bin bag in the bath. (Binbags filled with her own excrement.) She was tortured, beaten starved, burnt with cigarettes, had boiling water poured over her head, was hit with bike chains, wires, shoes, belt buckles, coat hangers, wooden spoons and hammers. She was forced to eat her food like a dog. 

The examiner at her  post-mortem examination, Dr Carey recorded evidence of no fewer than 128 separate injuries to Victoria’s body, saying,³

“There really is not anywhere that is spared – there is scarring all over the body.”

What was so heartbreaking was that this little girl was failed on so many levels. Before her death, Victoria was known to “Ealing Housing Department’s Homeless Persons’ Unit, no less than “two further housing authorities, four social services departments, two child protection teams of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), a specialist centre managed by the NSPCC, and she was admitted to two different hospitals because of suspected deliberate harm.”

“The final irony was that Haringey Social Services formally closed Victoria’s case on the very day she died. The extent of the failure to protect Victoria was lamentable. “³

During the inquest ³ into Victoria’s death these were some of the comments made about her 

“Some of the injuries were fresh, so she was recently beaten. There was a cut over her right eye. There was a healing burn on her right cheek. It was horrific to see that…and with all of this…this girl was smiling.”

(Priscilla Cameron – Her childminder)

“Victoria had the most beautiful smile that lit up the room.”

(Patrick Cameron -Her childminders son)

“She liked to dress up and was given clothes to dress up in by the nursing staff.
Nurse Taub would take her to see the babies in the neo-natal ward and bought
her sweets and treats.

She was a “little ray of sunshine”

 (Dr Rossiter)

A social worker who did not speak to Victoria at all during their meeting observed that Victoria was appropriately dressed and seemed bright and happy:

“Victoria did not present as a frightful, fearful child; she presented as articulate, she presented as
confident.”

 Victoria was transferred to Barnaby Bear ward. Following her arrival, she was examined by  Dr Ajayi-Obe. She found Victoria to be a “jolly child” who was not unduly distressed by what was happening to her at the hospital. 

“You could beat her and she wouldn’t cry … she could take the beatings and
pain like anything”

Karl Manning (Her Aunts Boyfriend who participated in her abuse) 

All these observations occurred whilst Victoria was receiving some of the
worst child abuse imaginable.

I am obviously, not for one second implying that Victoria or any other child is somehow culpable in any way for their abuse simply because they don’t say anything. But it really has hit home for me the importance of understanding that just because children

‘seem’

happy, confident and OK ...

doesn’t necessarily mean that they are.

Sadly it is so often these ‘good children’ who are truly a delight to teach that pass through our school systems relatively unnoticed. While many of the C – strategy children. who are acting out their aggression, get the support that they might need to help them;

these A-type children are simply left internalizing everything.

So I guess the frustration then becomes how do we tell the difference, between a happy confident securely attached child and a child using fake positive affect to get by in the world?

I suppose from my experience as a teacher it’s about learning to look at the child as a whole and not just taking that big smile at face value. I while back, a couple of days after I had my first lecture on this, I taught in a reception class with the most beautiful little child ever. I mean all children are beautiful, but hell Gabriel was something else. He had these huge blue eyes, eyelashes that should be illegal on a boy and the happiest most smiley face I had ever seen on a child. What unnerved me a little was how his smile seemed almost like it was permanently painted onto his face.

Honestly, Gabriel was a walking talking Cupie doll.

I will never forget at one point I corrected him on something, I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but it was something very minor. I just remember those beautiful blue eyes staring at me, as he tried desperately to blink back his tears. To no avail, of course, because he then started to sob like his life was ending. I sat with him, I explained that I wasnt angry with him….and he calmed down. It was clear that he hadn’t even processed all his emotions yet, his face was still wet with tears and the Perma smile was back up again!

He simply couldn’t even help himself.

That happy smile was his emotional armour.

One of the telltale signs of this Type A strategy in children is the panic that can arise when they are unable to predict what an adult will do; this overreaction of emotion at even the slightest perceived threat. They are trying so desperately, all of the time, to get things ‘right’ and when they don’t they can emotionally fall apart. When these A’s feel under threat their natural tendency is to exonerate the powerful others in their lives and then internalise this deep sense of self-blame.

This type A strategy is termed a ‘distancing’ strategy because these types have learned to distance themselves from their own true emotions and also distance themselves from other people, with the belief that emotional closeness to other people is dangerous. In adulthood, these types tend to dismiss their own feelings, perspectives and intentions, while often being more preoccupied with the perspectives, desires and feelings of others.

Type A individuals have to behave as if following this rule: Do the right thing from the perspective of other people without regard to your own feelings or desires. ²

They are very cognitive and think about everything.

As infants, they learnt that thinking, particularly thinking about cause and effect, is critical to their survival.¹ Hence they subconsciously (and often consciously), analyse, rationalise, and justify all sorts of things going on around them, including other people’s behaviour!

Sometimes they can explode with anger, anger that they have no explanation for. All of this only compounds this deep sense of shame that they already carry around with them.

Because really, isn’t everything all your fault anyway?

(Oh My GOD when did this turn into my autobiography!!)

While individuals with milder forms of this A-type strategy can go on to live relatively functional and healthy lives, (all be it they are slightly inhibited) there are more serious levels of attachment disruptions that lead to more concerning self-protective strategies developing.

With a little help from Clark Bain’s book Attachment-based Practice with Adults,¹ I’ll just briefly look at 4 of them.

Compulsive caregiving:

These strategies include behaviours where the child essentially has a role reversal with their parents whereby they take on the responsibility for caretaking. (Also known as the parentification of the child). These children learn to imagine what their parents may be thinking and, essentially, how to make their parent’s needs and goals more important than their own.

Compulsive compliance/performance:

This is when the child appears to be bright, competent or socially accepted. They are those over- achievers who are compelled to perform well simply because they are petrified of falling short of their parent’s expectations. They are driven by the fear of disapproval from their parents. These types often suffer from underlying anxieties and emotional agitation which can end up being expressed in somatic ways such as illness or depression.

Compulsively promiscuous:

This strategy reflects the person’s belief that there is someone out there to whom they can be physically close while retaining emotional distance. This then translates into superficial social promiscuity where the person has a wide circle of social contacts, who are then kept very superficial for reasons of self-protection. In some people, this social promiscuity can translate into sexual promiscuity or even sexually abusive behaviour.

Essentially the message these people are sending out is

“I can have sex with you. but you can’t hurt me and I can’t hurt you because this means nothing!”

Compulsive self-reliance:

This strategy is based on the belief that they deserve no one and therefore they avoid any close relationships. So sadly for these people, human contact has proven to be too troubling and predictably damaging.

Ok, I’m done!!!

Hopefully, this has given you a little more insight into yourself, or perhaps family members or friends. I truly believe that there is so much value in us learning to understand why people behave in certain ways.

I completed my goal! (I am a machine!!!;-)

Have an amazing first week in 2023!!

PS. Random musing….

I think poor Taylor Swift gets a pretty good beating in the press sometimes. But I love this song and, personally, I feel it does a pretty good job of describing what it feels like to have an A-Stategy at times. Sometimes I truly feel like I am the biggest villain in my own life. I also think the funeral scene depicting her ‘future family’ could also be quite telling of what her own family life might have felt like growing up?

Plus I love how all her different ‘parts come together at the end!’

We must love them all!!!

Credits

1. Baim, C., & Morrison, T. (n.d.). Attachment-based practice with adults: Understanding strategies and promoting positive change. Pavilion Pub (Brighton).

2. Crittenden, P. M., & Landini, A. (2011). Assessing adult attachment: A dynamic-maturational approach to discourse analysis. New York: W.W Norton &.

3. Laming, W. H., Lord. (2003). Gov.uk – The Victoria Climbia Inquiry. Retrieved January 1, 2023

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/273183/5730.pdf