Welcome back to the Dr. Sia channel.

Today, we're going to talk about ambivalent attachment.

If you haven't checked out any of my other videos on attachment, please make sure that you do that by visiting the Dr. Sia channel.

And well, yeah, let's get started.

All right.

So let's talk about ambivalent attachment.

Now, it's sort of like, and I'm assuming here that you've already learned about basic attachment and that you know what attachment is, that if you checked out some of my other videos.

So if you haven't done that, please make sure that you do that, like I said in the intro.

All right.

So what is ambivalent attachment?

Now, ambivalent attachment is when a child learns that their parents emotions are volatile somehow.

And with volatile, I basically mean that they have emotionally unstable parents.

So the parent unintentionally, and this is always the case with attachment, any harmful attachment that's been done to a child, and more often than not, if I dare say so, is done unintentionally.

So we're not looking to blame anyone here.

We're just looking to understand what's happened.

So what happens is as the child is attaching to their parents, so they're building that relationship between each other.

That's like the attachment where the child is developing understanding of how they will be kept safe in that relationship and what they can do to maximize their survival, meaning maximizing their survival means anything that they can do to make sure that their parents don't leave them, abandon them, stop feeding them, killing them, et cetera.

So it sounds really bad, but if you go far back enough to sort of when we were cavemen, we were actually doing those kinds of things.

And unfortunately, some people are doing those things even today.

So we have a mechanism inside us that ensures our survival and that's attachment.

Now for ambivalent attachment, the child has learned that their parent is somehow not stable, that they're volatile somehow, that they tend to have a lot of strong emotions and they don't really know themselves how to regulate those emotions.

So the parents of ambivalent children themselves have this sense within them that they might be not loved by their children, that they might be abandoned by their children.

Now in the beginning, when the child is born, this is not a problem because the parent will be overjoyed and everything will be great and they'll really join the child in that attachment there.

So in those phases, it's fine.

It's the later phases where the child begins becoming a bit problematic.

As they begin becoming a bit problematic, the ambivalent parent, if you will, themselves now are beginning to have to correct the child's behavior.

They're having to say what's right and what's wrong.

And as they do that, they really don't know how to regulate their own emotions.

So they start really intensively shaming the child.

So rather than, for example, saying, oh, don't do that.

That's not right.

They might become overly emotional, overly punitive, overly upset somehow.

So the child starts learning to not just navigate their own emotions, but also become a caretaker of their parents.

They start learning what they can do and not do to be taken care of.

For example, we all have this thing where we avert eye contact from our children to sort of regulate.

You know, we're going too much emotion here.

I'm just going to look away so that I can regulate me and then I'll come back to you.

Now, an ambivalent parent might not let the child do that.

So they might go, where are you looking?

Look at me looking for that smile.

Can I get that smile?

Give me that smile.

And so the child learns that the only way that they can regulate inside is to regulate the person in front of them.

And in turn, the only way they can be regulated themselves is by making sure that there's somebody there to regulate them.

So how does this then relate to ambivalent attachment in adults?

So people who have ambivalent attachment as adults tend to be hyper-aroused meaning that they are overly aroused, meaning they tend to get overwhelmed.

They tend to get overly anxious.

They tend to cry even though it's not tears of sadness.

They're just overwhelmed and teary.

They might get panic attacks.

And none of these symptoms will come out when life is going well and everyone is happy.

When everyone is happy at a party or a celebration of some form, they'll be fine.

It is when they are feeling hurt and when they're feeling anxious that situations like this will be problematic for the person who is ambivalently attached.

Now, this is also true for all other attachments.

But in particular for the ambivalent attached person, the problem will happen when it's about how do I keep everyone else pleased at the same time as going for my own wishes and wants.

So here is something that a lot of people won't tell you about because maybe they don't know.

I don't know.

But what happens is for ambivalent attachment is that their wants and their own wishes just disappear.

These wants and these wishes are so intertwined that if you want something, if you wish something, that generally comes from inside.

And the real only argument that you have for that is, well, it would be nice.

It would feel good.

Now, to a person who's got ambivalent attachment, something feeling good, something feeling nice is not enough as an argument.

What they will need is to compile as many shoulds and ought tos and need tos as possible to be allowed to even do something.

And that's something.

And where do those shoulds and those oughts and need tos come from?

Other people's oughts, other people's shoulds and other people's wants.

So the person who is ambivalently attached is constantly looking out for what other people want, what other people need, what other people think and what they should be doing and so on and so forth.

So one of the scariest situations for a person with ambivalent attachment is a situation where their own wants are coming to question and not what they ought to should or should to ought or ought to want, but just what they really genuinely want.

So let me give you an example.

Have you ever been with that person where you've asked them, what do you want to watch tonight?

Would you like to go to the cinema?

What would you like to watch?

And they go, oh, it's really complicated.

I hate it when you ask me what I want.

I hate it when you make me have to pick.

And therein is one of those really big signs because the person is afraid to make a mistake.

They would rather not have a want and hear what you want so then they can want what you want because what you want is what they should want.

Another sort of piece of evidence that we can understand that a person is ambivalently attached is that they'll constantly be looking out for trouble, meaning they'll constantly be looking out to make sure that everyone else is okay.

So this person will be highly sympathetic and understanding of a friend who goes through problems.

They'll be the first person who's there to help out.

Unfortunately, and what so often happens for people who have ambivalent attachments is that they then expect that sort of self-sacrifice back.

So they might say, I didn't go to my exam just to come to help you today.

That's how good of a friend I am.

Secretly hoping, because they're not allowed to be nice to themselves, that someone else will be nice to them instead.

Now again what unfortunately happens to people who are ambivalently attached is that they spend their lives in self-sacrifice and only sometimes unfortunately when it's too late do they find out that no one else who accepted their kindness had that same model of self-sacrifice inside and was willing to give back that same level of sacrifice.

So people who are ambivalently attached often go through life feeling that they're being misunderstood, not appreciated enough, not loved enough, not given back what they have given, and they'll have many stories of the major sacrifices they've made for other people and how no one ever gave them anything similarly back to them.

So you can see how this attachment, all it's trying to do is to make sure that a little child survives, survives by being highly attuned to other people's needs as a child to their parents.

And it may have worked for them when they were children, but as adults you can also see how it doesn't work anymore because as adults what happens is this system of over-arousal, hyper-arousal, this system that keeps the person looking out for what everyone needs misses out on one crucial factor.

And that crucial factor is what do I need?

What do I want?

What do I desire?

What are my passions?

What are my urges?

What are my likes and dislikes?

How do I live a life for me, by me, with other people in that life?

How can I have a want when other people's wants always sit on top of my own?

So when a person who's ambivalently attached distances themselves, they do that because that reduces some pressure.

They can say, finally, no one's around to see me have wants.

No one's around to give me their wants.

Now I can be me for a little while.

I've had a lot of patients in COVID-19 who do have ambivalent attachments who are saying to me, finally, I can relax a little bit.

The pressure is off.

When I'm in isolation now, I feel like I can relax a little bit, like I'm finally allowed to do some of those things that I've always wanted to do.

They might say things like I've always watched Netflix.

I've always seen the programs, but it's just always I've had this little bit of a guilt that I'm not allowed to do that.

But now I can finally watch it with no guilt because that's what I'm meant to do.

I am meant to sit at home, watch TV, not engage.

I finally have permission to do the things that I wanted to do and no one's putting pressure on me to do anything differently.

Now, so they'll feel fine during the COVID-19 times, but as soon as that's gone and people are integrating again and people's oughts and shoulds are balanced against their potential own wants, the anxiety will rise again and all of those problematic patterns will arise again.

Now, one question that I very commonly get here is what can we do about these attachments?

And I've said it before and it's not good news in the sense that there is no level of meditation.

There is no level of just sitting there and thinking about things.

There is no level of journaling even that's going to fully get you to that level of understanding all of your attachment patterns.

What you need to fully understand all of your attachment patterns is two people together, these days not in a room necessarily, but being together in the same emotional space or social space, whether it's Zoom or Skype or whatever you're using to be there with that person, who are focused on these patterns.

Who, together with you, your sole goal is to identify these patterns, bring them out into the light from the dark so that you can make choices in your life, conscious choices about whether you want to keep these patterns or whether you want to let them go.

So the answer always has and always will be some form of therapeutic setting.

Now some therapies do this better than others.

Some therapies specifically focus on doing these.

And if you want to know more about therapies that specifically focus on doing these, make sure you check out my other videos on intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy or ISTDP for short.

As per usual, I hope you enjoyed this video.

It's COVID-19.

I ain't got much else to do.

So basically what I'm doing is Instagram these days and video recording and now and again replying to emails and that's it.

And I'm hoping that you're keeping yourself healthy too.

It's just really hard sometimes.

It's so sunny out there and I just want to go out and go to the park and I want to enjoy and get people together.

But what are you going to do?

People are dying.

Anyway, that's a downer.

All right.

Okay.

Let's do something else.

I'm going to go and I feel like eating noodles.

I'm going to cook myself some noodles.

Not because I ought to.

I definitely shouldn't.

Not because I need to.

But you know, I just want it.

Anyway, please subscribe.

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Do anything you can do to subscribe.

Sorry, to support the channel.

It just means so much to me to know that I'm just not talking to myself out there, you know, sending these videos out and then looking at it myself and then editing and whatever else I do and then finding out that I was all by myself.

Anyway, I'll see you next time.