The Two Attachment Strategies You’ve Never Heard Of with Dr. Carol GeorgeThe Two Attachment Strategies You’ve Never Heard Of with Dr. Carol George
Flip Your Lid with Kim Honeycutt
Kim Honeycutt talks with attachment expert Dr. Carol George about two lesser-known attachment strategies, failed mourning and personal suffering, and how they stem from early experiences of being emotionally turned away. Their conversation links these patterns to shame, relationships and the need for attachment-focused therapy, especially for those carrying deep, long-standing pain.
51:07•18 May 2026
Two Hidden Attachment Patterns That Shape Love, Shame and Recovery
Episode Overview
- Dismissive and preoccupied attachment can both include unprocessed grief, described by Dr. George as failed mourning and personal suffering rather than fixed personality traits.
- Early experiences of caregivers turning away in moments of distress can lead to role reversal, where the child feels responsible for regulating the parent and carries intense shame into adulthood.
- Online attachment quizzes and trendy labels often miss the developmental roots of attachment patterns and are no substitute for thorough assessment by trained clinicians.
- Relationship-based therapy with an attachment-informed practitioner is presented as crucial, because problems formed in relationship usually need relational repair and safe, trusting connection to soften.
- Couples often pair with others who also carry incomplete mourning, which can fuel recurring conflict, porn use or serial partnerships when core attachment needs remain unspoken and unmet.
“Our biology says the worst thing can happen to me is to be left and abandoned and isolated without a parent. So what can I do to make you be my parent?”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between therapist and host Kim Honeycutt and attachment researcher Dr. Carol George offers a fresh angle: look at attachment first. Aimed at people wrestling with deep-seated patterns – including those whose drinking or compulsive behaviours stem from old relational wounds – this episode breaks down attachment in a way that’s both brainy and very human. Kim asks Dr.
George to explain two lesser-known attachment strategies: **dismissive: failed mourning** and **preoccupied: personal suffering**. These aren’t “just personalities”; they’re survival strategies shaped when caregivers turned away at crucial moments. Dr. George traces the history from Mary Ainsworth’s early studies and the “Strange Situation” to the Adult Attachment Interview, showing how classic labels like secure, dismissing and preoccupied grew out of real families, not TikTok graphics.
She stresses that what many people call avoidant or anxious styles often mask unprocessed grief and shame. As she puts it, *“Our biology says the worst thing… is to be left and abandoned and isolated without a parent. So what can I do to make you be my parent?”* You’ll hear how role reversal, emotional shutdown and over-functioning for others can carry into adult relationships, including marriages, porn use and serial hookups. Kim and Dr.
George gently but firmly point out that “changing our behaviour doesn’t work” on its own; these patterns were built in relationship and usually need relationship-based therapy to soften. For anyone in recovery who’s ever thought, “Why do I keep ending up in the same kind of relationship?” or “Why do I feel so ashamed when I need help?”, this episode offers language, science and a bit of humour to make sense of it.
It also gives practical encouragement to seek out therapists trained in attachment work and to choose support that goes deeper than trendy online quizzes. So, could understanding your attachment story be the missing puzzle piece in your healing?
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