Beyond “Adult Attachment Styles” : How Our Brains Learned to Stay Safe
- Maria Niitepold
- Oct 29, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2025
We often hear about secure, avoidant, or anxious attachment styles, but those three categories only scratch the surface of understanding. In reality, attachment is not about fixed “types.” It’s about how our brains and bodies learned to stay safe in the presence of danger, uncertainty, or loss.
Patricia Crittenden’s Dynamic-Maturational Model (DMM) of adult attachment reframes these patterns as self-protective strategies. They are not pathologies, but forms of intelligence; creative ways our nervous systems adapted to whatever environments we grew up in.
The Core Idea: Understanding Adult Attachment as a Safety System
From the moment we’re born, our nervous system scans for cues of safety. When caregivers are reliable and responsive, we learn that it’s safe to feel, think, and connect all at once. But when comfort is inconsistent, frightening, or conditional, our brains adapt to survive.
Crittenden identified three broad families of self-protective strategies:
Type A — The Thinkers: rely on control, logic, and self-sufficiency.
Type B — The Integrators: balance thought and emotion.
Type C — The Feelers: use emotion and intensity to connect or protect.
Let’s explore each.
⚪ TYPE A : THE THINKERS
Deactivating Strategies: Using Thought to Manage Feeling
Core logic: “If I stay composed and self-reliant, I’ll be safe.”
Main function: Minimize emotion and maximize control to avoid rejection or punishment.
How this develops
When caregivers reward competence but withdraw from distress, a child learns that vulnerability is risky. They adapt by suppressing emotion and focusing on achievement or control.
Common sub-strategies
A1 – Idealizing: remembering caregivers as “wonderful” while omitting pain or neglect.
A2 – Distancing: detaching from emotion and relationship needs.
A3 – Compulsive Caregiving and Compulsive Attention: gaining safety by caring for others.
A4 – Compulsive Compliance and Performance: perfection as protection; “If I do everything right, I won’t be rejected.”
A5 – Compulsively Promiscuous (Socially or Sexually): seeking safety through charm or attention without real intimacy.
A6 – Compulsively Self-Reliant (Social or Isolated): refusing help; equating dependence with weakness.
A7 – Delusional Idealization: rigid, unrealistic beliefs about safety or perfection.
A8 – Externally Assembled Self: identity built entirely on roles or external approval.
In adulthood
These individuals often appear competent but emotionally flat. They may say “I’m fine” while their body tells a different story. They intellectualize pain and may feel uncomfortable when others express strong emotion.
In therapy
Healing focuses on safe emotional reconnection — teaching the nervous system that feeling is not failure. Gentle pacing, body awareness, and validating need are essential. The shift sounds like: “I can feel and still be in control.”
🟢 TYPE B : THE INTEGRATORS
Balanced Strategies: Thought and Feeling in Harmony
Core logic: “I can think and feel at the same time.”
Main function: Flexibly use both cognition and emotion to stay connected and safe.
How this develops
When caregiving is mostly predictable and emotionally available, the child learns that distress can be comforted and emotions can be understood. They don’t need to exaggerate or suppress feelings to maintain connection.
Common sub-strategies
B1 – Distanced from Past: comfortable but detached from early experiences.
B2 – Accepting: able to acknowledge both positives and negatives without defensiveness.
B3 – Comfortably Balanced: can trust others while maintaining autonomy.
B4 – Sentimental: warm, affectionate, slightly nostalgic.
B5 – Complaining Acceptance: recognizes imperfection with humor or mild frustration.
B0 – Balanced Other: emotionally integrated and reflective of others’ perspectives. They stay emotionally steady, understand their own feelings, and can see things from other people’s points of view.
In adulthood
B-strategy individuals can name emotions, recover from conflict, and use relationships as a source of growth. They’re capable of both empathy and boundaries.
In therapy
Work often focuses on deepening reflection, resilience, and self-awareness. Even balanced individuals can learn to recognize subtle avoidance patterns that emerge under stress.
🔴 TYPE C : THE FEELERS
Hyperactivating Strategies: Using Emotion to Manage Uncertainty
Core logic: “If I express enough emotion, someone will respond.”
Main function: Amplify feeling to maintain closeness or control in unpredictable relationships.
How this develops
When care is inconsistent — sometimes warm, sometimes rejecting — the child learns that intensity keeps the caregiver engaged. The result is high emotional energy but low trust in stability.
Common sub-strategies
C1 – Threateningly Angry: anger to demand attention; “You’ll listen if I’m loud enough.”
C2 – Disarmingly Desirous of Comfort: using vulnerability or sweetness to elicit care.
C3 – Aggressively Angry: open conflict as connection; equating anger with strength.
C4 – Feigned Helplessness: needing rescue to ensure attachment.
C5 – Punitively Angry and Obsessed With Revenge: retaliating to restore a sense of power.
C6 – Seductive and Obsessed With Rescue: seeking safety through charm or sexualized closeness.
C7 – Menacing: intimidating others before they can hurt you.
C8 – Paranoid: expecting betrayal; interpreting neutrality as threat.
In adulthood
C-strategy individuals often describe “feeling everything at once.” Their stories may be rich in emotion but hard to follow, reflecting how feeling overwhelms sequence and logic. They may crave closeness yet fear rejection.
In therapy
Healing centers on integration: helping emotion find structure without losing authenticity. Sequencing events, grounding in the body, and pacing affect are key. The therapeutic message becomes: “I can feel deeply and still make sense of it.”
⚫ COMBINATION & DISRUPTION PATTERNS
When both danger signals — rejection and unpredictability — are present, people may switch between A-like detachment and C-like intensity. This mixed A/C pattern often emerges from complex trauma.
Under extreme stress, strategies can fragment further:
Insecure Other (IO): vacillation between systems, uncertain self-identity.
Unresolved Trauma (Utr) or Unresolved Loss (Ul): lapses in reasoning, emotional flooding, or sudden incoherence during recollection.
Therapy focuses on restoring coherence and helping the client’s cognitive and emotional systems cooperate again.
From Survival to Connection
Every attachment strategy once made perfect sense. Your brain did exactly what it needed to do to keep you alive and connected in an unsafe world.
Healing is not about “fixing” your attachment; it’s about updating it for the world you live in now, where connection and safety can coexist. Through awareness, body-based grounding, and new relational experiences, thought and feeling can finally work together.
The Takeaway
Whether you lean toward thinking, feeling, or balancing both, your attachment strategy tells a story of survival and intelligence. By understanding it, you gain choice. And choice is the beginning of freedom.
Many of my clients come to this realization on their own through reading posts like this one and then feel ready to take the next step toward deeper healing. If something in this post resonated with you, or if you recognize your own patterns here and want support moving from survival toward secure, connected relationships, I’d love to help.
Here are a few gentle next steps you might consider:
Request Free 15-Minute Consult for EMDR Therapy in Gulf Breeze / Pensacola
We can talk about what’s showing up for you right now and whether my approach (integrating EMDR, Brainspotting, and somatic work) feels like a good fit.
No pressure, just an honest conversation.
Explore EMDR therapy: Often especially helpful for rewiring those “thinker” or “feeler” patterns at the nervous system level. Learn more about EMDR with me
Discover Brainspotting: A gentle, body-based way to process stuck emotions without needing to overthink or retell everything. Read about Brainspotting here
Continue reading: If you’d like to keep exploring on your own for now, here are a couple of related posts:
Comments