Change Your Brain Every Day - What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder?

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

When Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) occurs in children, it becomes very difficult for a parent to establish a meaningful bond with their child, which often leads to more problems for the child down the road. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen describe what RAD is, and tell you how to identify the signs and symptoms.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. So we are back with Attachment Week, and we're going to talk about reactive attachment disorder. In a second, I'm going to have you talk about that. But you, when I first met you you kept saying I had attachment issues which are not true I'm heavily attached till death do us part I'm very clear about that took me a while to get attached but now you have what you want

yeah you kept running away and breaking my heart for like 18 months I used to call her the black widow I'm not a fine black widow. And then fine, she is. But then when I- I'm not. Try and go away and you'll find out. Got her attached, I call myself the widow tamer. I am clear, till death do us part, my love. Right. She says the only way she's running is if she's chasing me. Yeah, you're not going anywhere. I love that, but it took a lot of work. And part of that came from your sort of anxious attachments.

Well, part of it came from, let's just be really honest, a really hard divorce and not wanting to do it again. But when I talk to you, you're like, well, you know, you may have issues from, you know, anxious attachment. So what happened when you were a child that might have contributed to that? Okay, well, so according to you, because I think I was fine. And then all of a sudden he's asking me these questions. I'm like, oh, wait, maybe there's something here. So, you know, we were really poor. And I know my mom did the best she could.

She worked a lot. My mom worked a lot. She worked three jobs. She was never home. I mean, we were really poor. And I know my mom did the best she could. She worked a lot. My mom worked a lot. She worked three jobs. She was never home. I mean, like, never home. So she was gone all the time. And I would wake up in the middle of the night. She wouldn't be there.

She was supposed to be there. She'd be working overtime. She'd be doing whatever she was doing. I would wake up in a panic. I mean, like, freaking out panic. I'd end up being hysterical. I used to go through the phone book. This is terrible. I used to go through the phone book. This was back before we had cell phones. And I would go through the phone book, calling 24 hour diners and having them page my

mom. I was thinking maybe she went out and got something to eat after work or what. I was so scared that something happened to her. And then all of a sudden, I mean, this really sounds morbid. This sounds terrible. But there's a point where I couldn't keep doing that. I'd miss school because I'd be up all night worrying about her. And she'd come in. She's like, honey, I was working. I was working late.

I didn't want to call you and wake you up. I'm like, you didn't want to call me and wake me up? Are you kidding me right now? So I'd end up missing school because of all of this. And like this happened over and over. And you'd think that I eventually, I would start to realize, but you don't because she was all I had. My mom was all I had. So I would get so scared. So eventually though, I did start to change that. I mean, the sad thing is, is that eventually it does change. And so probably around 11 or 12, I started to like literally, it's really morbid, but I started to think to myself, okay, so if something happens to my mom, like what do I do? And I would like

literally visualize, like what am I going to do step by step? Someone comes to the door and tells me something happened to my mom. What's next? Like I would visualize every single step like in detail, like is my mom dead? And I'd visualize that happening and then where what's gonna happen next like who am I gonna go live with? What's going to happen? Like what am I gonna do? Where am I gonna stay? What's my room gonna look like? I mean I would go through this whole process and I would do that almost daily Until I could tolerate it. I Mean, that's what I would do until I could actually tolerate the thought of it So it's really weird, but I mean, I don't know if other people have done that,

but that's what I would do until I could actually stand the thought of it. And you had a very ambivalent relationship with your dad, which we've talked about before. Ambivalence, one word. Telling him not to ever talk to me again is probably not ambivalent. Well, then he died in your arms. He did, but that was many, many years later. As a teenager, I told him not to talk to me again. So that's a little bit different than reactive attachment disorders. That is an anxious attachment, which I think is why you threaten my life constantly.

You can't say that on the air. I always tell people if I'm dead, I didn't do it. But it means he deserved it. But it means he deserved it. Reactive attachment disorder happens when children don't get the nurturing that they need. And they then don't connect properly. So, for example, a baby cries and no one responds or offers comfort. A baby is hungry or wet and they're not attended to for hours.

No one looks at, talks at, or smiles at the baby. A young child gets attention only by acting out. A young child is mistreated or abused. Sometimes the child's needs are met, and sometimes they're not, so it's unpredictable. So I have a question. So when you're reading this list, my mom was actually very loving.

She was amazing, but she wasn't there. And I was left with people who actually were not nice people sometimes that did many of those things on that list. So could that create it? Absolutely, it doesn't have to be a parent. It just has to be a consistent, loving adult. But because she's gone and you had terrible babysitters, that's going to set you up for attachment issues. Now you don't have this, you have, you know, what we would call an anxious attachment. That's so much better. I mean, you're better than I think you've ever been.

Early signs of an attachment disorder. Child avoids eye contact. Never smiles. Doesn't reach out to be picked up. Rejects efforts to calm, soothe, or connect. Doesn't seem to notice or care when you leave them alone, because it's this thing we call learned helplessness. They try and it doesn't work. They try and it doesn't work. They try and it doesn't work. And then they say to hell with it

and stop trying. Later on, what we see is they have an aversion to touch or physical affection, control issues. They'll go to great lengths to remain in control and avoid feeling helpless. Anger, problems, difficulty showing genuine care and affection for others. And they have an undeveloped conscience because our connections often help our frontal lobes to develop. And so I have seen many, many kids over the years with reactive attachment disorder. So this sounds pretty severe. So I'm assuming that there are categories of attachment disorders and which are worse. Right, there are mild, moderate, severe. And types that are worse than others.

And types like anxious attachment. Which doesn't sound quite as extreme as this. It's not as extreme. And I first started seeing it after the crisis in Romania where there were just thousands of orphans who'd been neglected and then end up getting adopted by Americans and then their children were just a mess. So did you when you were in medical school I'm assuming you've had to watch some of the same videos I did about monkeys when they put them in cages and they don't attend to them and how they start

ripping their own hair out and slamming their heads into cages. I mean, it's terrible. They'll die. But they'll often do things to harm themselves. They create self-harm. If you take a baby monkey and you isolate it and you don't cuddle it, you don't nurture it, even if you feed it, but you don't nurture the baby monkey,

what they do to themselves, they'll cut themselves and hit their heads on the walls. And it's really horrible. Did you hear about the study? There was an emperor who wanted to know what's the natural language. It was an emperor in Europe. And so he wouldn't allow anyone to be around the babies because he wanted to know what the natural language, if children didn't have input

from others and he never found the answer to the question because they all died that we require attachments in order for our brains to properly develop the good news is there's treatment. What I often find is their brains are just so busy. And so as they've been malnourished emotionally, they're often malnourished physically as well. So feeding them right, getting them to exercise, time can really help. And you have to work hard on the relationship. And when you have a child that's difficult, so I think, well, one, you should scan them to go. Because often with this kind of neglect also comes abuse. And with abuse comes traumatic brain injuries as well.

And so, you know. But I want to clarify, that is abuse. Of course it is. But I mean traumatic brain injury kind of abuse too. And virtually no one talks about, well, we have to put their brain in a healing environment. So the food they eat matters. The boundaries that you give them in a loving way matters. So it's really optimizing the physical functioning of their brain. But what you're saying is... And then going back to time, physical time,

so that you can become important to them. But have you seen, when someone has suffered that severe of an issue as an infant, have you seen them ever be able to reverse to have a pretty normal life? Yes. Wow. But it requires a lot of effort in our four circles. So you've heard us talk about the four circles. We have to optimize the biology of their brain and their body. We then have to actually help them develop empathy and their ways to do that, connect them with social skills, and then with their purpose in life. And so it really requires all four of those circles in order to help heal reactive attachment disorder so know their brain optimize your ability to

relate with them and then supervise the environment that they're in those are some of the big pillars that we work on here at Amen Clinics. Stay with us. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way

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