Inability to bond & Affective Target Location Error

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How do you know if you might have an inability to bond (also called “insecure attachment”)?

Inability to bond doesn't mean you never feel "connected" to other people, that you never feel sad or broken when rejected or when you lose them, or that you don't feel strongly about others.

Inability to bond is based on inner conflict. Part of you wants to bond with other people, just like everybody else does. But due to trauma, other parts of your mind don't feel safe doing so, so they "take you over" emotionally and prevent you from caring "too much", bonding "too deeply" or being "too vulnerable" (they numb out and detach from others who they feel could hurt them). There's a constant tension between needing to love or be loved, and needing to feel safe, in a way that being with full ability to bond don't have.

Inability to bond can be selective (can trust some people but not others, or maybe only animals) and can be strong or weak (you allow yourself to be somewhat vulnerable, but not too much). It's not all or nothing.

Typical symptoms are:
>Confuse love with dependence (I need you), pity (for a needy partner), lust, loneliness, duty, or wanting to rescue the other person.
>Feeling "empty" within the relationship, or like "something's missing", or confusing this emptiness with depression
>Sex perceived as a mostly or wholly physical, not emotional bond, leaves the person feeling empty
>Feeling lonely despite being surrounded by people, or having an intimate relationship with someone
>Feeling like there's a "hole in your soul”, or feeling like you’re “on the outside looking in” at other people’s lives
>Using addictions to numb away the pain caused by the above
>Feeling unloved despite being in an intimate relationship
>Approach-avoid relationships, "independent" relationships (emotionally detached), codependent relationships
>Chronic self-neglect
>Discomfort or feeling awkward with spontaneous expressions of love (kissing, hugging, caressing)

Nice pseudoscience tbqh m8

This is very believable but I'm not convinced it's a separate thing from ETLE rather than just the romantic/affectionate side of AGP.

None of this has been observed as being particularly elevated in MtF individuals nor does it explain FtMs. Sorry but into le trash it goes

>>8436347
FtMs are noted to detransition after realizing they wanted to be men to be strong and escape trauma from their childhoods.

That could well be their equivalent.

>>8436352
FtM's on hrt do not notably detransition at significant rates, stop citing memes as fact

(3/3)

Bonding issues are caused by lack of nurturance in childhood (emotional neglect). One or both parents may have been emotionally "unavailable", which is just a synonym for an inability to bond.

The Depression Connection

Interestingly enough, bonding issues and depression can be related. Depression can be caused by repressed or blocked grief, and grief is just the other side of the same coin as bonding issues.
Bonding issue means you can't bond due to excessive fear or shame), having blocked grief means you can't process losses (since you repress the normal feelings of grief due to fear of emotional overwhelm, rather than processing those feelings). "Losses" don't just mean death, they can include being rejected by someone, losing old dreams, having relationships fall apart, or anything else that might cause you grief.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? Can anybody relate to this, or does anyone have questions?

>>8436325
Bonding issues aren't pseudoscience, there's growing interest among psychologists (as part of "attachment theory").
I'd be willing to bet many or maybe most people here experience insecure attachment, and fit one of the types in >>8436322 pic related.

>>8436347
Why does it not explain FtMs? Women can experience bonding issues too, it's just symmetrical.
Bonding issues result from trauma. They can accompany extremely low-self-esteem and excessive fears or chronic anxiety.

>>8436334
ATLE and AGP might be related, yeah.
I think this is much more important though: if bonding issues (resulting from trauma) cause dysphoria in some trans people, then healing that and reducing those bonding issues should reduce their dysphoria., since they'll be able to love themselves and bond with women properly.

>>8436376
Making up things and calling them theories without testing them is pseudoscience. It's how we got all of the Jung/Freud nonsense during the early days of psychology.

>>8436320
wew
confirmed not trans, cancelling my HRT

>>8436376
Of course people on a board made for reclusive social rejects is going to be full of people who have bonding and attachment issues, are you serious?

The question is whether trans people demonstrably have significantly increased levels of attachment issues and the answer is N-O!

>>8436352
>>8436374
I don't view detransitioning as strongly related to ATLE.
The vast majority of people with bonding issues keep them until death, since they never fully resolve them. Psychology is simply not advanced enough, and most psychologists/psychiatrists aren't good enough, that they could help you heal from such trauma.
It's like rape survivors, their relationships are never the same. You can learn to cope with attachment terror, but never fully get rid of them.
Even if most gender dysphoria was caused by ATLE, transitioning will remain the most effective treatment until psychology can catch up and find effective ways to develop secure attachment.

>>8436384
People call "AGP" pseudoscience too, yet look at the people here who can relate to that.
If you wait until the mind is fully understood, we'll all be long dead.

>>8436391
>People call "AGP" pseudoscience too
Because it is.

>Yet look at the people here who can relate to that.
Being able to relate to a narrative does not make it true.

>>8436389
>The question is whether trans people demonstrably have significantly increased levels of attachment issues and the answer is N-O!
Do you have more on this?
And even if that's so, that doesn't mean bonding issues can't lead to the development of gender dysphoria.

>>8436374
Never said the rates, just that it's a known motive for transition.

>>8436389
>Of course people on a board made for reclusive social rejects is going to be full of people who have bonding and attachment issues, are you serious?
Because Susan's hons or reddit hugboxers seem more wholesome and psychologically well-adjusted to you?

>>8436396
Trans people psychology has been studied to death. Depression and anxiety are elevated, not attachment issues.

>>8436405
I'd guess the number of them with jobs and relationships is higher so yes

So how do I cure this?

>>8436456
Tit Skittles or a 12 gauge

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>>8436470

>>8436413
>Despite the importance attributed to the problems connected to the attachment motivational system in structuring numerous psychopathological conditions in adulthood (Caviglia, 2003; Dozier, Stovall, & Albus, 1999; Ma, 2006; Sperling & Berman, 1994), little research has so far been carried out from an attachment perspective on adults suffering from GID and has been restricted to children and the parents of children with this disorder. Birkenfeld-Adams (1996, reported in Goldberg, 1997) has used the PAAS, a testing tool designed to classify attachment styles in preschool age children, to demonstrate the existence of a prevalence of ambivalent attachment styles among children with this condition. In addition, a research program has been conducted on the parents of children suffering from GID using the Adult Attachment Interview (Cook, 1999; Coates & Cook, 2001, p. 184). This study demonstrated that, in the vast majority of cases, parents display a state of mind with reference to attachment that is insecure, either dismissing or entangled. What is even more interesting
is that both parents often display a significant prevalence of unresolved/disorganized status of mind with regard to traumas or losses that, in the study participants’ memories, were linked to and organized around gender themes. As has already been indicated by Stoller (1968),
this may mean that the difficulties related to gender, which are already present at a higher generational level but are clinically silent, could manifest themselves symptomologically at a lower generational level through the onset of gender dysphoria.

cont

>>8436456
Go see a psychologist/psychiatrist specifically about your attachment issues. Gender therapists and social workers are less likely to be familiar with attachment theory or competent at solving it, and they might misattribute signs of insecure attachment to gender dysphoria, and therefore think you have just one condition instead of two.

>>8436490
>Although gender problems have not been found in parents of individuals with GID, (Zucker & Bradley, 1995; Zucket et al., 1997, cited in Dettore & Ristori, 2005), highly stressful factors or traumas (loss of important family members, abortions, illness of parents or con- flicts between them) were found in the primary attachment figures’ history operating just before or during early childhood of patients with GID (Coates & Moore, 1998; Zucker & Bradley, 1995). At the same time, several recent studies have also shown a high rate of traumatic experiences (Di Ceglie, 2000; Gehring & Knudson, 2005; Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 1999; Kersting et al., 2003; Kuehnle & Sullivan, 2001) in the autobiographical narratives of individuals with GID, which may relate to specific, though as yet unknown, transgenerational dynamics

From: Gender Identity Disorder and Attachment Theory: The Influence of the Patient’s Internal Working Models on Psychotherapeutic Engagement and Objective. A Study Undertaken Using the Adult Attachment Interview

>>8436413
>I'd guess the number of them with jobs and relationships is higher so yes

I cant possibly imagine how you can live perfectly normanl life, be 100% functional with wife and kids and career and then become trans at 40 y/o, thats some bs.


>>8436490
they are pretty useless or unaffordable, there are no gender therapists pretty much, If I was trans Id have to go thru psychiatrists to get hrt prescription or greenlight orchi

>>8436320
>>8436322
>>8436491
God, why do people feel the need to pathologize things that just happen to a small amount of the population?
There are tons of well adjusted trannies who come from great homes and lead happy lives. Quit making up shit.
Being a tranny is just one of the human expressions of gender identity.

>>8437074
>they are pretty useless or unaffordable, there are no gender therapists pretty much, If I was trans Id have to go thru psychiatrists to get hrt prescription or greenlight orchi
Still I think psychiatrists can help with attachment problems more than anything. I'd suggest calling a really good unaffordable psychiatrist, explaining to him that you can't afford him, and asking him to recommend someone more affordable but still good. You'll avoid dealing with the 99% affordable shitty psychiatrists.

>>8437078
>pathologizing
I'm positing an alternative explanation for why trans people suffer. Some might transition but still find themselves distressed at least from time to time, because they only solved their gender dysphoria and not their attachment problems, and the two are linked and might feel the same. And, yes, some trans people might mistake attachment issues and other sequelae of trauma for GID, and transition unnecessarily.
See >>8436490 >>8436491
As >>8436389 says I think attachment issues are relevant to most people here.
I also think that every child should get attachment-tested in childhood and get treatment if necessary, for the same reason children are sent to pediatricians regularly, and for the same reason people with GID should get puberty blockers. Almost 50% of people in the general population have insecure attachment like in >>8436322 pic, that's huge.

>There are tons of well adjusted trannies who come from great homes and lead happy lives. Quit making up shit.
"Tons" makes me think you're in denial.

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>>8437078
yes, and there are tons of well adjusted people with downs syndrome. that doesn't mean it isn't a profound mutation with devastating, life-altering consequences.

>>8437168
I know that it's 'you need therapy' and good look finding good one, I shouldn't have asked.
Iv no idea who would be any good and I dont want to deal with psychs anyway. Sorry to bother you.

>>8437268
You're not bothering me, don't worry. What I meant was that the top psychiatrists have good connections, and can hook people up to colleagues who they consider good, as opposed to picking random ones off the internet.

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Can you have attachment issues if you never attached to anyone in the first place but in your first and only relationship where you actually tried you had no problems developing a secure attachment?

On one hand I don't think people with shitty attachments can form healthy relationships just because they decide to do so, on the other what kinda kid never bonds with there parents and fails to develop literally any relationships for the first 21 years of life? I was abused as a kid but don't remember actually caring about my parents before it started so I doubt I just reacted to abuse (not like I don't have any issues from it I just didn't really seem to affect my tendency to see my family as furniture and food dispensers)

Can you have a dismissive attachment style and just randomly snap out of it or have one person you make an exception for?

Or is the reality more simple and I'm just really introverted and most people genuinely not worth bonding with in the first place

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>>8438542
>what kinda kid never bonds with there parents and fails to develop literally any relationships for the first 21 years of life?

>>8436490
Psychiatrists and researchers can describe this shit clinically, but attachment problems exist because people are shit. Instead of bothering trans people, go tell shitty people who cheat and abuse to stop being cunts.

This wasn't causing nor was caused by my actions or my gender identity. They are not related. No psychobabble can prove this: it is other people's fault that they traumatize you, not the other way around. It was uninvited.

People shouldn't be trusted because they are untrustworthy in general.

>>8438736
Its true but how do you get over it and find and stop being lonely and unable to love?
First part of the op is full of plot holes. But the underlying problem is very real. I had learned I cant trust people in my childhood years, Im afraid no one will understand or accept me at all.

>>8438736
>Instead of bothering trans people,
She's just got a theory about us, she's not 'bothering' us...

I think it's all produced because of emasculation trauma, coupled with repressive environments. There's a shiitton of counter examples of what you're saying, and even if the number is high, it may simply be that hiding a secret sexuality makes it risky or hard to create deep bonds.

>>8442851
MEF?