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the big confusion i have around attachment theory atm is like, what the hell was going on with everyone's attachment prior to the 20th century? were most people somehow better parents back then? were people running around with huge attachment issues but it didn't matter as much? were there other mitigating factors like stronger communities or, like, just more pressing practical issues to deal with? because it just doesn't seem like there were a ton of people running around with horrendous attachment issues in the same way as it seems like there are now (or is that impression totally wrong, idk)?
@QiaochuYuan The sexual revolution drastically changed the way we think about relationships. back in the day if you got married to somebody with attachment problems you just had a spouse with attachment problems until they resolved in the relationship, if at all
@QiaochuYuan my hunch is that the answer to this is the same as to "did people not have gender dysphoria/autism/whatever in the past or?" i.e. that society just wasn't built in a way that could allow this issues to emerge. it didn't matter. things closest to "surviving" mattered
@diviacaroline idk i guess i just don't know enough about history to really say but that's not the very cursory very surface-level impression i get? people seem like they just did stuff (worked or whatever)? there wasn't like therapy culture etc
@diviacaroline like okay here's a random example from the 18th century. this somewhat randomly selected group of men was able to pretty casually form relationships with women who didn't even speak their language. these guys were not like, scared to talk to women lol https://t.co/x3ZNXssDg5
I guess maybe we have different meanings of horrendous? To me, people working when the alternative is starving isn’t much evidence about whether they have attachment issues My guess is stuff like the soldiers befriending locals could easily happen today? I also see the second half of the story about escalating abuse as evidence that those people didn’t have especially secure attachment styles 🤷🏽♀️
i'm in thailand rn and i see a lot of couples where the man and woman don't really speak the same language in any reliable way,, and ngl i do not envy the situation, and it mostly makes me feel that they have entirely different values of what a relationship is i don't think things like attachment theory and forming a deep soul to soul bond are anywhere on their radar
@the_wilderless @QiaochuYuan @diviacaroline Yeah I really think most people are actually pretty satisfied with a nice warm body they can get along with and feel fond feelings for over time Also what are you seeing River? do you mean like expat men and local women or something? Or ppl from different tribes..?
@QiaochuYuan I think they were just running around with bad attachment issues, like a couple barely tolerate each other but divorce was too shameful. Men would sometimes leave, and start an entirely new family. Ppl got married regardless of attachment bc fewer choices + pressure on marriage
@QiaochuYuan Stronger norms/more social pressure to conform made personal imbalances feel different; the recent past humans more rigid social exoskeletons which changed the experience of/conversation around individual issues massively.
i don't think i explained my question well but this gets at some of the vibe of what i'm confused about - people seem to me to have been more functional in the past despite living lives that seem like they could be objectively worse / more traumatizing or whatever https://t.co/isNFyWMehf
@QiaochuYuan since facing adversity, struggle, conflict, and death do not inherently make life worse or traumatizing. What makes life worse/traumatizing is living in a world/society that has no real need for you (or is outright working to make you unnecessary) because of what that opens up
@QiaochuYuan people don't want to do as much as they possibly can, if they don't need to. necessity-driven feats aren't pretty and come with costs. every animal evolved to "function" broken. we'd mostly "function" too in harsh conditions, but we wouldn't want that.
@QiaochuYuan More functional in the confines of much more narrowly defined roles. That's probably half the answer to your riddle. The other part is that to be 'traumatized by conflict', you first have to have a worldview that makes cruelty abhorrent to you. Monkeys don't get PTSD from war.
@QiaochuYuan i'm confused about this too! my best guess is that effects of insecure attachment interact with culture such that we are negatively impacted in ways our culture affords, and in the past culture afforded different expressions
@QiaochuYuan maybe naming it made it worse! also re:tweet 2, society kinda moved up maslows hierarchy together, so if your peers were all on level 1 or 2 as well, it probably didn’t strike as painful comparison not absolutes makes us happy
@QiaochuYuan First thing the women did when they got the vote was ban alcohol cause a third of them were getting beat up on the reg We're a couple generations removed from causeless death and casual violence as a typical lifestyle, we are just now moving up the hierarchy to attachment stuff
Prior to the 20th century, traumatic life experience was nearly ubiquitous for everyone, with the exception of small numbers of elites. Relationships formed around dynamics of trauma-bonding and mutual needs for survival, due to the ever-present immediate threats of starvation and violence.
@QiaochuYuan Haven't had a chance to delve into this, but there was a micro-field called "psychohistory" (not the Asimov thing) in the 70s that attempted to study parenting historically—you might find answers there: https://t.co/iXoB7pSA3Y
@QiaochuYuan reading in the gospels how Jesus is constantly telling people how their Dad loves them, no really he really does, makes me think ideal parent figure protocol and christianity have at least some active ingredient in common and hence attachment issues were probably widespread
@QiaochuYuan Anxious attachment is only maladaptive if it’s actually safe to relax hypervigilance. Avoidant attachment is only maladaptive if it is actually safe to rely on other people. Secure attachment becomes maladaptive if it’s not actually safe to do both.
@eshear @QiaochuYuan Yes! Attachment styles are points on a quadrant of low/high avoidance (safeguarding autonomy) and low/high anxiety (safeguarding connection) drive. In different circumstances, it's optimal to be at different points of that spectrum. Screencaps from Jessica Fern's "Polysecure". https://t.co/3bBJ1SSh0m
@eshear @QiaochuYuan This makes sense. I definitely became more anxiously attached when I realized I cannot fully trust my partner, so I needed to pay attention to get more information. I relax around people I can trust and who are responsible and reliable.
@eshear @QiaochuYuan this gets at the correct frame for undoing trauma imo: recognize the patterns are actually adaptive, but adaptive for a reality you're no longer in (unless you're still in it). allows one to treat themself with grace and kindness and gently rehabituate to the new reality
@eshear @QiaochuYuan In my model, a securely attached person withdraws from unsafe scenarios as they recognize them – and they’re attuned enough to do this (Secure attachment doesn't imply indiscriminate connection. Can detach when unsafe.) I guess it depends on how final the specific “unsafety” is
@QiaochuYuan i think most people just did not have to consider it fr for most of human history, because there was not nearly so much churn in their social networks it was quite literally impossible until fast, affordable long-distance travel became a thing
@QiaochuYuan thinking about however many thousands of little life stories I've picked up from books/wiki/etc, I think the majority of people were messed up forever. but there were social scripts, material constraints, and ugly outlets that meant it was just suppressed for life
@QiaochuYuan yeah all the intuitions in your question seem important. And combining this from Emmett + having fewer relationships/looser social fabric = less surface area for reattunement, growth baked in? https://t.co/94dtyZm66n
@QiaochuYuan Anxious attachment is only maladaptive if it’s actually safe to relax hypervigilance. Avoidant attachment is only maladaptive if it is actually safe to rely on other people. Secure attachment becomes maladaptive if it’s not actually safe to do both.
@QiaochuYuan Lots of object-level acting out various dramas, but less pressure to pretend you're OK. In the West, under the rule of the Roman church most people were functionally pagans who just had to keep their heads down and submit. Prior to that people were just unambiguously oppressed.
@QiaochuYuan But at the same time, less of a reward for *showing off* how psychically wounded you were. This starts to break down with Romanticism, e.g. The Sorrows of Young Werther inspired lots of real suicides.