Daughter Detox

by Peg Streep

  You have a fight with your husband in the morning, and you think to yourself, Now I’ve done it. He’s going to leave me for sure , and then this thought morphs into what your life will be like without him and how no one is ever going to love you and you become frantic, sending email after email to him in the office. Or you’re at work and you’ve totally muffed the call with an important client, and you begin thinking that you’re going to get fired—your boss made it clear how key the account was—and that no one will ever hire you again.

  The avoidantly attached daughter has developed other unconscious coping mechanisms in response to her childhood treatment which are maladaptive in different ways. The two types of avoidant styles—dismissive and fearful—reflect differences in unconscious motivation. Those with a dismissive style tend to see themselves as solo voyagers, not interested in long-term connection; they see relationships as a hassle and the people who need to be in them as weak. They feel superior. The fearful avoidants actually long to be in a relationship but because they see people as untrustworthy, they fear the vulnerability and potential emotional pain that might ensue from intimacy. Like the anxious daughter, the fearful one is easily triggered and prone to misread other people’s motives and intentions, unable to access what she’s really feeling deep inside other than her fear. It’s estimated that roughly 25 percent of us are avoidantly attached.

  NOW, ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF EMOTION . . .

  Emotional processing happens on both a conscious and unconscious level, and the most recent research asserts that people who are better able to navigate life are those who use explicit and conscious processing of emotion to self-regulate in times of challenge and stress. What does explicit processing entail? Anett Gyurak, James J. Gross, and colleagues explain: The person who can process explicitly is (1) aware of the cues that elicited the emotional responses, (2) aware of the emotions she’s experiencing, (3) aware of how regulating the emotion consciously affects her behavior.

  Studies show that this ability to regulate emotion consciously improves mental health, increases the level of coping, and actually reduces stress and reactivity in ways that suppressing emotions does not. (This actually happens on a physiological level, as neuroimaging studies show; activity in the amygdala is actually reduced by explicit processing of emotions but not by suppressing feelings.)

  Let me give some real-life examples: You and a friend get into a tiff about an event you’re planning together, and you are really about to lose it on her when you suddenly think about the fact that she’s under enormous stress financially and you consciously tone down your feelings and words. Do that often enough—consciously regulate your feelings—and it may even start to happen without your thinking about it. Or, alternatively, you realize that you’re as angry as you are because she’s belittling you in the same way your mother did, and that’s tipping the scales and making you nuts. In that moment, you get what’s triggering you, and, yes, you consciously take a deep breath and begin to let go of the anger.

  That’s conscious regulation of emotion in action. For all the reasons I’ve outlined, this is generally not an unloved daughter’s strong suit, but the good news is that emotional regulation—learning to read cues, labeling emotions, and becoming conscious and aware of how feeling impacts behavior—are all skills that can be learned.

  SELF-CONTROL, EMOTIONAL PROCESSING, AND MENTAL MODELS

  For our emotional intelligence to be functioning optimally—permitting our thoughts to inform our feelings and our emotions to inform our thinking—we have to be able to self-regulate sufficiently so that we’re able to control our impulses. Again, impulsivity is hardwired into the species—that fast, unconscious “thinking” that has you react to the car ahead swerving on black ice before you’ve consciously registered it, the pump of adrenaline when you feel physically threatened—and that resides in the amygdala, part of the limbic system. To avoid certain bad impulses—that drink, those cookies, those cigarettes, that temptation you’re trying to avoid—we need the cool processing provided by the prefrontal cortex where the slow process, cognitive thinking, takes place. The prefrontal cortex is the home of executive function, and it’s the latter that provides the brakes—what we usually call self-control or willpower—for the impulse. It will not surprise you that there’s evidence that our childhood experiences—specifically those connected to our mothers—also affect our self-control.

  To eat the marshmallow or not? That was the dilemma posed by Walter Mischel and his colleagues to a large group of four-year-olds over 50 years ago at Stanford University in an experiment so famous that it’s now known simply as the “Marshmallow Test.” Each child was seated at a desk; there was a single marshmallow on a plate and, beside it, a bell. The researcher then told the child she had to leave and the child was free to eat the marshmallow and ring the bell. But, she promised, if the child waited until she came back, the reward would be a second marshmallow. The wait, by the way, was 15 to 20 minutes, which is a very, very long time if you are four and there is a marshmallow sitting in front of you, absolutely begging to be eaten.

  Videos online testify to the agony and the anguish. A few kids give in right away—they succumb to the temptation even as the door swings shut. Others touch and stroke the marshmallow lovingly, lick its edges, and then finally give in. But 30 percent of the children manage—by closing their eyes, covering their faces, fiddling with their hair and clothes, and otherwise distracting themselves—to hang in until the researcher comes back and get the coveted second marshmallow.

  What ultimately made this experiment famous is that Mischel and his colleagues tracked these kids through high school and after, and discovered that those who could resist the marshmallow for those 15 minutes had a different skill set than their peers. They were better planners, had higher SAT scores, were more self-confident and could manage their frustrations better, and were more focused. In short, the self-control they exhibited as four-year-olds was a reliable predictor of how much self-control they would have as adults. The marshmallow-resisters had a bright and shiny future, which got educators and psychologists alike all excited about teaching willpower as a skill.

  What this boils down to is to be able to outwit the impulse to snarf that candy and take the long view. Once you’ve mastered that, you’re in great shape for mastering many of life’s challenges, including setting and achieving your goals, resolving conflicts, planning, and, yes, recovering from setbacks and failures.

  But does the experiment only measure self-control? Perhaps not. What if, as Celeste Kidd and her colleagues hypothesized, your decision to gobble or wait had as much to do with your beliefs about how the world works and people act as anything else? How much of your decision about the marshmallow hinged on other factors—your belief that the researcher will actually keep her promise and give you a second marshmallow, for example, or your assessment that no one else in the room will take your marshmallow and eat it if you don’t? Is it your self-control or your view of the world that’s being tested?

  That’s exactly what Kidd and her colleagues wanted to find out. In their study, the marshmallow task was preceded by an art project, one involving crayons and the other, stickers. The experimenter produced a worn-out set of crayons and then gave the child the choice of using them or waiting for a brand-new set. For the second project, the researcher produced one small sticker and then gave the child the choice of using it or waiting for a new set of multiple stickers. In each case, the children were confronted with a reliable or unreliable experimenter. The reliable experimenter delivered on her promise (a fancy tray of art supplies or brand-new and abundant stickers), while the unreliable one came back, apologizing, saying there’d been a mistake and the child would have to make do with the crummy crayons or single sticker.

  The children were then given the marshmallow task, and the results were revelatory. The kids who’d discovered the experimenter was unreliable waited a mean of three minutes before eating the marshmallow;
those in the reliable situation waited twelve. More important, only 1 out of 14 children waited the full 15 minutes in the unreliable situation and got the second marshmallow; 9 out of the 14 in the reliable situation waited the 15 minutes and got the second marshmallow.

  While the researchers don’t talk about attachment in their article—they talk about unreliability—I think all of this makes terrific sense. Attachment theory explains a great deal about human behavior, and perhaps the ability to exert self-control is yet another area where what we learn at the beginning affects both our abilities and mindsets, in childhood and long after. To a small child, an emotionally unreliable or inconsistent or cruel parent doesn’t just demonstrate her nature, but the nature of the world and relationships. If you’re used to broken promises, it makes sense that you’d eat that marshmallow pronto. Not surprisingly, that’s also what Annie Bernier and her colleagues found in an experiment that looked at both self-control and executive function in infants. (Yes, there’s evidence that a year-old baby has executive function in a rudimentary form.) Surprise, surprise: The more responsive the mother was to the child’s needs, the better she communicated, and the more she was able to allow the infant some autonomy along with support, the greater the demonstration of self-control and executive function by the child.

  So if self-control has been an issue for you (you can’t resist shopping or buying things you don’t need, that bag of cookies gets eaten pronto, you can’t give up those cigarettes, you’re faced with that empty wine bottle at the end of the night), yes—Mom’s a part of that. But she’s lurking in the shadows, too, when you can’t focus on the long-term when you’re planning to make a shift in your life or when you need to hunker down and concentrate. Self-control is bound up with the ability to set goals and to follow through with them as well.

  Once you’ve figured out if and how the issues of self-control and mastery of your emotions are working in your life, there’s very good news. These are skill sets that can be worked on, improved, and acquired. We’ll be focusing on just that in Chapter Seven .

  LOOKING AT YOUR ATTACHMENT PATTERNS

  Consider the following four statements—developed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz—and decide which of the four describes you most accurately. You may, in fact, agree with more than one since attachment styles actually aren’t as discrete as the categories make them seem and there may be some overlap.

  A. It is easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.

  B. I am comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.

  C. I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.

  D. I am uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.

  If you have answered A as the way you most usually feel, you are securely attached. If you have chosen B, your answer indicates dismissive-avoidant attachment. If you have chosen C, you are more anxiously-preoccupied than not. D corresponds with fearful-dismissive attachment.

  UP CLOSE: ARE YOU ANXIOUS OR AVOIDANT?

  Please keep in mind that the three types of insecure attachment—anxious-preoccupied, fearful-avoidant, and dismissive-avoidant—are not as cast in stone as the categories would seem to imply nor does every individual fit neatly into one or another. These tendencies may mix or change over time or within or across relationships, so as you begin to think about your own attachment style, please keep that in mind.

  Compared to the secure person who manages upset reasonably well, the anxiously attached woman is rarely on an even enough keel to do so. For those with anxious attachment, even a trickle of pain or disappointment feels like a tsunami, threatening to pull them under. They are not only always on high alert and worried about getting hurt or abandoned but they also have a habit of exaggerating and misreading the cues offered up in all manner of situations.

  This is what Patti told me: “I am always quick to jump to conclusions, and I keep losing friends because of it. I take everything to heart so when someone doesn’t call me as she promised, my head doesn’t think things like ‘she got busy’ or ‘maybe she forgot.’ No, I end up writing a whole script about how she’s not really my friend or she’s using me or something. And then when I do talk to her, it’s my script I am answering, not her words. I keep working on this in therapy but it’s a lifelong habit.”

  Anxiously-attached daughters of hypercritical and demanding mothers usually have trouble with any kind of criticism and, moreover, often see criticism where none is intended. Any comment that sounds even vaguely critical can throw the anxious person into an overreactive state of high alert, which often has the unfortunate consequence of escalating into an argument that was highly avoidable in the first place. Take this scenario: Anne is about to go grocery shopping and as she’s heading out the door, her husband calls out: “Do you have your list? Don’t forget the milk!” She doesn’t answer but feels instantly picked on, the way she was as a kid when nothing she did was ever good enough for her mother. Now, she did shop without a list last week and did forget the milk, which created chaos the following morning, but did he have to bring that up? By the time she’s done shopping, she’s in a full snit, and when she gets home, she starts yelling at her husband, asking why he’s always criticizing her. He is, as you might imagine, bewildered.

  Anxious attachment is filled with paradoxes and contradictions. On the one hand, you are a scaredy cat on the prowl and alert to rejection, slights, and criticism. You feel intensely vulnerable all the time because you really want the close connection and ties you didn’t have growing up, and you desperately want validation. On the other hand, you are also very volatile, quick to pick a fight, apt to be jealous, and subject to emotional highs and lows. All of that has to do with what you didn’t learn in childhood: how to manage and regulate your negative emotions. So when you’re on the defensive, you slip into high offensive and start the rollercoaster on the track. And you’re really apt to play tit for tat because, somehow—wrongly—you feel that’s just and it makes you feel more in control; it confirms your view of the world, the one you learned as a child. So when someone doesn’t call you back right away, then leaves you a message, do you wait to return the call so he or she “will know what it feels like”? When you’ve reacted because you felt slighted and the person—it could be your spouse or partner, a friend or colleague—tries to ask what happened, do you roll your eyes or disparage him or her, just as your mother did you?

  Unloved daughters who spend their childhood on tenterhooks with mothers who are sometimes attentive and available and sometimes not—asking whether the Good Mommy or the Bad Mommy will show up today—become anxious and always on the prowl for validation and reassurance. That’s not true for the daughters of consistently unavailable, hostile, or intrusive mothers. The experts call this type of attachment “avoidant.”

  These women are coming from a different place. Their experiences have taught them that needing someone puts you at risk, that rejection is painful, and that people are untrustworthy and unreliable. They armor themselves by being wary of intimacy and connection or avoiding closeness altogether. They stay outside a relationship, even while appearing to be in it.

  But there are differences. Psychologist Kim Bartholomew expanded the theory by suggesting that there were, in fact, two kinds of avoidant attachment, fearful and dismissive, and they are distinguished not just by their views of themselves but of others. The fearful avoidant has a low opinio
n of herself, and while she really does want intimacy and close connection, her fear of rejection trumps all because she thinks highly of other people. If she’s nothing and he is something, why on earth would he want her? Ditto in the realm of friendship: If Deidre is smart and accomplished and very popular, why would she possibly be hanging out with me? This unloved daughter comes across as needy and insecure and tends to be passive in relationships; she doesn’t pick fights the way an anxiously attached woman does. Her inner voice is filled with internalized self-criticism.

  In contrast, the dismissive-avoidant has a very high opinion of herself, on the surface at least; she’s not hesitant to voice her opinion that relationships aren’t very important to her and she’s fine on her own, thank you very much. She is proud of her self-reliance. That stance, though, is a protective one, meant to defend the fragile self within from rejection or emotional wounding. That said, unlike the fearful-avoidant, the dismissive doesn’t want an intimate relationship or friendship, preferring instead to be emotionally invested in other pursuits such as career, work, and hobbies. These folks, by the way, are the ones the popular culture identifies as narcissists much of the time.

  Let me repeat that these three types of insecure attachment—anxious-preoccupied, fearful-avoidant, and dismissive-avoidant—aren’t as fixed as the categories would seem to imply, nor does every individual fit neatly into one or another. These tendencies may mix or change over time or within or across relationships. That said, take a look at the following descriptions and see how accurately they reflect your self-portrait. Please remember that this isn’t an opportunity to drown yourself in self-criticism; it’s about knowing yourself a little better.