Attachment Disorder in Adults: Causes, Signs, Impact, and Treatment

As you look at your relationships, whether they’re with colleagues, your neighbors, family members, or a romantic partner, would you say that they are healthy? A healthy relationship is one with good communication, where conflicts are resolved well and aren’t prolonged, where there is mutual understanding, if not appreciation, and freedom from any kind of attachment disorder. Healthy relationships promote your well-being and are worth prioritizing.

Many things feed into a relationship to make it healthy, including how you form and maintain emotional bonds or attachments with others. When this goes wrong, as it has with an attachment disorder or one of the different forms of insecure attachment, it affects your relationships in significant ways. The good news is that there’s help available to address this when it happens.

Breaking Down Attachment Disorder

Attachment disorder is one of the ways that a person’s ability to form and maintain relationships can go wrong. It’s a condition where a person, often as a child, struggles and has great difficulty with forging healthy emotional connections and attachments with other people. It’s also sometimes referred to as reactive attachment disorder (RAD), which is one type of attachment disorder, and the other is disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED).

DSED often results from neglect in the early years of life and a lack of consistent attachment to a caregiver, while RAD is often the result of neglect or mistreatment. A child with DSED may be overly familiar with people they don’t know, wandering off to approach or talk with strangers, even hugging or touching them.

A child with RAD, on the other hand, may be emotionally withdrawn, sad, or irritable. They may not respond to or interact with people and have difficulty calming down when they feel stressed. Even in those moments of stress, a child with RAD won’t necessarily look for comfort or respond well to it. Without effective treatment, RAD and DSED may persist into adolescence and adulthood.

RAD or DSED might sound like another way to talk about an insecure attachment, and while they are related, they are distinct ideas and concepts. RAD (or DSED) is a condition that’s often associated with the early trauma, neglect, or inconsistent caregiving that a person might receive in early childhood. RAD is a diagnosable condition marked by a significant impairment in the ability to form and maintain emotional attachments with others.

An insecure attachment is similar to RAD in that it refers to an attachment style that’s characterized by a struggle to form and maintain relationships, and it’s caused by a variety of factors that include relationship experiences, trauma, or parenting styles. Insecure attachments come in various forms, and they exist on a spectrum that ranges from mild to severe difficulties in creating and maintaining emotional bonds with other people.

Some of the key differences that exist between RAD and insecure attachment are that RAD is a recognized clinical diagnosis, while insecure attachment functions more as a descriptive term for an attachment style. Additionally, RAD is typically and generally considered a more severe condition than an insecure attachment. Thus, RAD often has a more significant impact on daily life and relationships.

RAD makes a person unable to initiate or respond to social interactions with other people in a developmentally appropriate way. It is a condition that requires treatment and clinical attention to address. While it may lead to the development of insecure attachment styles, it isn’t the same thing. This is not so much to downplay the various forms of insecure attachment as to point out the severity and significance of attachment disorder.

DSED can lead to other kinds of social difficulties, particularly through not respecting people’s boundaries and asking intrusive questions. The lack of inhibition and extreme trust of strangers poses problems of its own, too.

Causes of Attachment Disorder

There are several different possible causes of attachment disorder. Often, it develops in infancy or early childhood. It can be the result of experiences of severe neglect or maltreatment, experiencing trauma or abuse, or receiving inconsistent caregiving at that crucial stage of life.

Some of the situations in which attachment disorder could develop include a child raised in institutional care, they don’t have consistent caregivers, or who is in a situation where there are multiple caregivers or frequent changes in caregivers. The result is that they have difficulty forming healthy emotional bonds with others.

Signs and Symptoms of Attachment Disorder

As noted earlier, there are two main types of attachment disorder: the inhibited type and the disinhibited type. The inhibited type can be described as being emotionally withdrawn and prone to avoiding social interactions. They may struggle to respond to affection from others or to show affection to them. They also have limited emotional expression and will often appear unresponsive or distant.

The second type is the disinhibited type. They can be characterized by the fact that they are overly familiar with people, showing affection to anyone regardless of the relationship they have with them. Due to having difficulties with recognizing and respecting others’ social boundaries, they may be overly familiar with people. Additionally, the disinhibited type is also characterized by attention-seeking behavior with strangers.

Some individuals exhibit symptoms of both types of reactive attachment disorder, depending on the circumstances. Having a better understanding of the specific type of attachment disorder is a huge help because it can guide the treatment and support that will be most effective for the individual.

Attachment disorders in adults can manifest in various ways, but here are some common signs and symptoms to look out for:

Having difficulty trusting others A person with attachment disorder may struggle to trust others or to form close relationships with them. This part stems from a lack of the ability to accept or seek out emotional proximity from others. This lack of trust in others may lead to suspicion and deep distrust.

Intimacy issues They may have difficulty with emotional intimacy or physical touch. Showing and receiving love may be hard for an individual with the inhibited type of attachment disorder, and even physical touch may be uncomfortable for them.

Emotional dysregulation This includes experiencing intense emotions and mood swings. They may have difficulty understanding and managing their own emotions as well as managing stress effectively. The result is anger outbursts or withdrawal from others, as well as being impulsive and acting without thinking.

Social difficulties Another sign to look out for is experiencing challenges in social interactions, such as having difficulty empathizing with other people and their feelings or understanding social cues. This, in turn, can make the individual avoid social situations or feel anxious in such settings. Often, low self-esteem can accompany attachment disorders.

For those with the uninhibited type, other social difficulties can flow from a lack of awareness of social boundaries.

Avoidance or resistance An adult with an attachment disorder may find themselves feeling distressed when offered support or comfort, leading to them avoiding or even resisting physical touch that’s intended to comfort them.

Getting Help

Though attachment disorders can be quite challenging and have long-term effects on a person’s relationships and mental health, there are options available to help overcome them. Recognizing them and intervening early makes a significant difference in helping you form healthier attachment patterns, but the main thing is to put in the time and work, proceed with patience, and seek support for the journey.

There are some self-help strategies you can pursue to address attachment disorder, and they include journaling, which can help you process as well as understand your emotions. By journaling and self-reflecting, you can develop a better understanding of your attachment patterns and behaviors in relating to others.

Learning how to set and respect your own and others’ healthy boundaries helps nurture healthy relationships. Also, engaging in self-care activities like being creative, exercising, and getting rest can help with emotional regulation and developing a positive self-image. Self-regulation techniques like mindfulness or deep breathing are also helpful for managing emotions as well as dealing with stress.

It is important that you have support as you try to overcome attachment disorder. Having a support network means that you have people around you who can provide validation and emotional support. There are support groups that can become part of this network of support, which is valuable for personal growth.

You can also seek help from a professional, like a therapist. Several therapies can help address attachment disorder. Some of the effective therapies include attachment-focused therapy, which helps you to understand and resolve past trauma that could be at the root of present issues with attachment. Emotionally-focused therapy can help you form secure attachments by working through your emotions and improving your relationship skills.

Another therapy that can be helpful is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which can help you identify and change negative thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to issues with attachment. Lastly, therapies such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) can help you develop better emotional regulation and self-awareness.

In addition to these, medications may be prescribed to address symptoms of conditions that often accompany attachment disorder, such as anxiety and depression. With help from a therapist or counselor, you can overcome attachment disorder and build healthy relationships with others. Reach out to our office today and speak to a counselor or therapist to learn about the options available to you as you begin that journey.