Stress As A Response To Not Being Emotionally Available
Being emotionally available is an active disposition that responds to empathic understanding.
The development of this emotional availability according to attachment researchers Emde and Sorce (1983) is built on the relationship between caregivers by providing emotional security to babies and promotes their curiosity in situations in which they feel indecisive.
Emotionally available people are those who were able to establish a secure attachment relationship with their caregivers while people with insecure attachment show greater difficulty when it comes to emotionally regulating themselves, so they may not be emotionally available.
Characteristics of an emotionally available person
Emotionally available people are capable of an affective regulation that corresponds with secure attachment
This attachment style is characterized by being flexible and open, which allows the experience and expression of a wide variety of emotions and includes both the expectation that the person with whom they interact will respond in a sensitive way and the ability to adjust one’s own reactions.
These are the main characteristics of emotionally available people:
Causes of being emotionally unavailable
One of the main reasons why a person may not be emotionally available is because their attachment style is insecure This attachment is characterized by a maladaptive regulation of negative affects (Diamond & Aspinwall, 2003).
The cause is associated with early experiences with caregivers who were not very participatory or unpredictable in the interactive regulatory processes of the child’s affects (Schore, 2003a).
People with insecure attachment have maladaptive strategies when it comes to emotional regulation.
1. Problems recognizing and expressing emotions
They arise difficulties in recognizing and expressing your emotional states, and those of others Because of this, they appear to lack empathy and emotional coldness.
2. Avoidance of conflict situations with evasive strategies
They can range from not being present or not being close, or dramatizing their emotional state by not being able to regulate information perceived as threatening.
3. Cognitive distortions arise
These cognitive distortions about their self-concept trigger negative reactions from others, reinforcing the ideas of rejection or absenteeism that have been the source of emotional discomfort during the formation of the attachment style, so They further reinforce these defensive behaviors by perceiving the affect as hostile
Emotional immaturity in emotionally unavailable people
Daniel Hill (1944), in his theory of affect regulation, points out that People who have insecure attachment tend to develop a narcissistic personality understanding narcissism as a personality bias that can be on the mild part of the spectrum or the most severe.
Emotional immaturity is the difficulty in making decisions, committing, or assuming responsibilities according to one’s chronological age. It is manifested in the fear of developing as a person: fear of commitment, lack of intimacy, ambivalent attitude in their behaviors that range from extreme closeness to maximum distance for no apparent reason, contradictory communication, tendency not to give clear answers, etc.
Emotionally immature people may be this way because they received unstable or hostile and critical affections, or quite the opposite Emotionally immature people seek to maintain a state of well-being based on the absence of the challenges of adult life.
These behavior patterns are transformed only by the nature of the relationship in which one is involved This relationship can be emotional, like a couple, or in therapy, where you develop the ability to reflect on your own patterns of worry.
The capacity for emotional regulation is the most important aspect and the one that will determine how a person will do in life, both in their emotional relationships and in the workplace. Therefore, this ability must be enhanced in stressful situations.
Stress is the adaptive effort faced with a problem and the nonspecific reaction To avoid negative stressors, which are usually associated with stress, it is a priority to know how to discern between an important and not so important event, and to approach them from a correct perspective of their relevance to provide a healthier response. However, everyday life involves situations of suffering or disturbance as well as positive daily events.
According to attachment theory, The internal feeling of insecurity gives rise to the need to make a decision to seek proximity as a strategy for emotional regulation If this decision turns out to be negative, the person has no alternative but to use defensive strategies, such as: excessive dependence, hypervigilance, hyper-activation and deactivation of the attachment system.
The strategies that allow emotional regulation are based on security, and on the active and constructive management of negative affects and the creativity that gives access to positive emotions.
Concluding
In conclusion, emotional unavailability involves the activation of stress as a response of preparation, defense and activation to deal more or less adequately with life situations.
Finally, to keep in mind is that this article does not include an analysis of people who suffer from alexithymia or other types of psychological disorders, which interfere with emotional availability.
