Now, as adults, when there is a loss or a trauma, a person's gonna experience distress. A loved one has died. This can activate the attachment system and the need for safety. But now the person they look to for safety or comfort is gone. So this can activate early childhood memories pertaining to how separation distress was dealt with.
What the clinician is gonna be looking for is how scared or anxious the person is without the loved one. So people with an anxious attachment may be ruminating, be more insecure. They're gonna feel more lonely. They're gonna be more scared of what life will be like without this person. People with an avoid attachment style may shut down, be numb, and feel flooded when emotions are being evolved. The avoidant person may withdraw from other people because talking with other people starts to stimulate memories of their loved one, and that can be too much.
So there can be increased social isolation and staying away from reminders. The person with a disorganized attachment style, of course, can really be triggered as well, experiencing more severe symptoms of anxiety and shutdown. For the secure person, it can be said that time heals all wounds. Yes, there's distress. Yes, there's upset. But the person with the secure attachment is able to cope with it, reach out for help, receive help, and deal with the distress that comes with loss over time.
With more complicated grief, there's the loss, the trauma of the loss, but it's being fed by feeder memories stemming from caregiver child interactions. So grief and trauma can compound each other. Where does attachment fit in? Well, research has shown that maladaptively stored memories pertaining to caregiver child interactions can account for the variance in how a person reacts to loss. And research also shows the same type of relationship between attachment style and reaction to a traumatic event.
So it's important for the clinician to know that we are dealing with both trauma and loss, that these two issues interlock. The death itself, the loss itself can be traumatic. And at the same time we go through a trauma, we lose our assumptive world. This can be a secondary loss.