Attachment styles form during infancy and go on to define the way you interact with others for the rest of your adult life. Issues that stem from insecure attachment styles—including Reactive Attachment Disorder—can have a serious and negative impact on your relationships, emotional regulation, lack of self-esteem, impulsivity, inability to connect and bond with others, lack of mentalization, and poor sense of self, even as an adult. To successfully treat these issues at their root, you must first understand where they come from and how they form. Learn how to address the root causes of Reactive Attachment Disorder with a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with this overview.
What Is Reactive Attachment Disorder?
Reactive Attachment Disorder, also known as RAD, is an attachment disorder that revolves around the lack of healthy emotional bonds between a child and their parental figures. It stems from insecure attachment, which is the result of neglect and/or abuse during infancy and early childhood. Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder struggle to manage their emotions, form meaningful connections, and accept comfort or care from others both in childhood and later in adult life. Reactive Attachment Disorder can also lead to Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders, Addictions, and other Mental Health Conditions throughout adulthood.
Reactive Attachment Disorder is closely associated with avoidant, anxious, or despondent behaviors. Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder are perfectly aware of their surroundings and the things that happen around them, but there is an emotional disconnect, disassociation, a feeling of outer body experience, and/or detachment from reality. They often do not show affection, present with flat affect, or highly oppositional, combative, and defiant. They also struggle to receive comfort or care from other sources of support due to their inability to bond and connect. This can lead to children with Reactive Attachment Disorder withdrawing from social situations due to lack of social skills training, paranoia, inability to trust others, and inappropriateness in social encounters.
Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder
Because Reactive Attachment Disorder stems from the insecure attachment created by your relationship with caretakers during early childhood, your experience is unique to your personal history, upbringing, childhood experiences, including traumas, neglect, abuse, and your history. However, there are a few general symptoms that are common across numerous cases, including:
- Not seeking or appreciating comfort
- Not feeling or showing a positive response to comforting interactions
- Avoiding eye contact
- Avoiding physical touch, especially physical comfort such as hugs
- Tantrums stemming from fear, anger, rage, anxiety, paranoia, or sadness
- Attempts to control others, situations, relationships, and environment, even at the cost of breaking rules and social norms
These symptoms start in childhood, but without necessary professional interventions using evidence-based treatment models under the care of a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, they continue to escalate and worsen throughout adolescence and into adulthood causing significant detriment in relationships, career, and health.
Reactive Attachment Disorder in Adults
Without proper assessment, evaluation, clinical interviewing, diagnosis, and relevant treatment plans, Reactive Attachment Disorder continues to adversely impact all of your relationships, career, self-image, and overall Mental Health well into adulthood. Many symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder are the same for adults as they are for children, including detachment from others, inability to connect and bond, lack of social skills, paranoia, inability to trust, lack of communication skills, poor cognitive processing of emotional information, withdrawal from social situations demanding proper decorum, and difficulty showing or receiving appropriate affection and care.
However, there are other symptoms that can arise or worsen as an adult. These include control issues, anger management, addiction to chaos and drama, vindictiveness, ruminating thoughts, compulsive actions, impulsive behaviors, high reactivity to internal/external stimuli, lack of trust, paranoia, detachment, being disconnected from reality, feelings of void and emptiness, and an inability to understand, process, or express thoughts and emotions. Adults with Reactive Attachment Disorder also struggle to form both platonic and romantic relationships, which can lead to the belief that they do not belong anywhere and never will.
Causes of Reactive Attachment Disorder
Reactive Attachment Disorder, like all attachment issues, stems from insecure relationships with a parental figure or figures. There are many different ways this can happen and many different ways a child can respond. Below are some examples of causes behind insecure attachment and Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Abuse
Verbal and physical abuse are common sources of insecure attachment styles. A child who grows up in a dangerous environment does not have the stability and care they need to form a strong, healthy bond with their parental figures. Experiencing chaos, uncertainty, lack of safety, physical or emotional pain, and fear of punishment at the hands of parental figures or caretakers rather than unconditional care leads to mistrust, paranoia, discomfort in intimate relationships, inability to bond or connect, lack of boundaries, inability to mentalize, lack of social causality, and other maladaptive behaviors such as the avoidant behaviors of Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Neglect
Neglect can also lead to the development of Reactive Attachment Disorder. This can revolve around not having basic and crucial physical needs met, such as parents leaving a child hungry, tired, sick, unsafe, or scared for long periods of time. It can also refer to emotional needs, such as parents failing to care for or provide comfort for their crying baby expressing discomfort for a variety of reasons. These experiences teach a child that they cannot rely on their primary caregivers. As a result, children learn the world is unsafe and relationships are not trustworthy or reliable. Individuals learn to push back against emotional intimacy and instead resort to disinhibited attachment behaviors, due to feeling uncomfortable to establish and maintain meaningful, rewarding, or long-term connections. This, in turn, leads to avoidant behaviors and a dislike or distrust for seeking comfort from medical or mental health professionals.
Unsafe or Unhygienic Environments
Children need and want stability, safety, reliability, and security. If their environment is unsafe, unclean, unstable, or if they lack physical care and protection, they do not receive sense of stability, safety, or internal security. Children who experience danger or who feel they are in danger are more likely to develop insecure attachment styles—especially if their caretaker was the source of feeling danger, unsafety, insecurity, neglect, or lack of protection.
Even without explicit danger, an unhygienic environment causes discomfort and puts the child’s safety at risk. For example, a child who spends long periods of time in soiled diapers, a dirty bed, or an otherwise unclean environment is left feeling uncomfortable and in high level of distress. Over time, these experiences teach the child that they cannot trust, depend, or rely on their caretakers to provide a clean, warm, reliable, secure, safe, and healthy environment.
Experiencing Multiple Caretakers
It is common for children who have different parental figures throughout their lives to develop insecure attachment and Reactive Attachment Disorder. Moving from caretaker to caretaker or moving from one parent’s home to the other makes it extremely difficult to develop lasting bonds with either parental figures or caretakers. It also makes it very challenging to trust or form any meaningful bond or healthy connection with parental figures or caretakers, especially if some or all caretakers fail to provide a safe, reliable, sustainable, adaptive, healthy, and positive home environment.
This is very common for children of divorced parents who move between parent’s home or experience different stepparents over time. It can also happen with children in foster care who move from house to house frequently. Experiencing these things as a child can exacerbate attachment issues and, without intensive and skilled interventions, lead to significant Mental Health Disorders, Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders, Reactive Attachment Disorders, Addiction Issues, Marital Discord, Intimacy Issues, and interferes with performance at work or career success in adult life.
Inconsistent Caregiving
A parent-child relationship can suffer and lead to an insecure attachment style. Some parents may physically be present, but are highly preoccupied, abusive, have a history of addictions or untreated traumas of their own, or may be absent due to work much of the time or other circumstances. Others might struggle to provide consistency for their child due to Mental Health issues. The inconsistent parenting teaches the child that care is not consistent or reliable, and so the child learns that the affection and protection they receive may be fleeting, unsustainable, and must not be trusted.
Treatment for Reactive Attachment Disorder
Insecure attachment does not have to be a lifelong condition. Evidence-based therapy models such as Mentalization-Based Treatment can help adults address the root causes of Reactive Attachment Disorder and build a secure attachment style. If you are looking for effective, lasting Mental Health treatment from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Irvine, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Bel Air, Century City, Brentwood, Westwood, Huntington Beach, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, and the surrounding areas, contact Blair Wellness Group to see how our evidence-based treatment plans can help you.
