These strategies result in a tendency to detect threats in nearly every transaction with the physical and social world and to exaggerate the potential negative consequences of these threats. These strategies are also indicated by overdependence on relationship partners as a source of protection (Shaver & Hazan, 1993) and perception of oneself as helpless and incompetent at affect regulation (Mikulincer & Florian, 1998).Īccording to Shaver and Mikulincer (2002), hyperactivating strategies involve excitatory pathways that increase the monitoring of threats to the self and of attachment-figure unavailability. These efforts at closeness can be aimed at establishing not only physical contact but also perceived self-other similarity, intimacy, and “oneness” (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003). Hyperactivating strategies include a strong approach orientation toward relationship partners, attempts to elicit their involvement, care, and support through clinging and controlling responses, and cognitive and behavioral efforts aimed at minimizing distance from them (Shaver & Hazan, 1993). In the literature on attachment, these active, intense secondary strategies are called hyperactivating strategies(Cassidy & Kobak, 1988) they require constant vigilance, concern, and effort until an attachment figure is perceived to be available and a sense of security is attained. Some of these coping strategies, such as motivated inattention, have been characterized as “preemptive” (Fraley, Garner, & Shaver, 2000), because they avoid or short-circuit the experiences of vulnerability and distress, whereas others, such as suppression and repression, are “postemptive,” because they are aimed at minimizing perceived threats and vulnerabilities that have already been encoded. With practice and experience, these deactivating strategies often broaden to include literal and symbolic distancing of oneself from distress whether it is directly attachment-related or not.Īccording to Shaver and Mikulincer (2002), this distancing involves active inattention to threatening events and personal vulnerabilities as well as inhibition and suppression of thoughts and memories that evoke distress and feelings of vulnerability.
This goal leads to the denial of attachment needs avoidance of closeness, intimacy, and dependence in close relationships maximization of cognitive, emotional, and physical distance from others and strivings for self-reliance and independence.
These secondary strategies of affect regulation are called deactivating strategies (Cassidy & Kobak, 1988), because their primary goal is to keep the attachment system deactivated so as to avoid frustration and further distress caused by attachment-figure unavailability. More info from Attachment Theory and Affect Regulation:Ĭonsequences of Attachment-Related Strategies on the deactivating strategies associated with avoidant attachment and the hyperactivating strategies associated with anxious attachment mentioned in Attached Deactivating