Brian Kinney: Why is he like this?? (attachment theory edition / part 1)
So, I've been obsessively collecting qaf meta ever since I came here a few months ago, but ultimately the thing that explained almost everything about why Brian does what he does, why he is the way he is, and why his and Justin’s relationship works, was Attachment Theory (particularly David J. Wallin’s book Attachment in Psychotherapy which is fantastic even if you’re neither a therapist nor in therapy). And now it makes up 80% of my headcanon. So have a seat because I'm about to wikileak all my research.
This post got very long as usual, so I’m splitting it into two parts.
Disclaimer: This is obviously not a scientific article and I am neither a psychologist nor an expert in Attachment Theory, so don't take this with more seriousness than a tumblr analysis deserves. If you find a factual error, let me know. If you want to learn more about attachment theory, Wallin’s book is great!
Attachment style in the smallest nutshell
Our attachment style reflects not just the way we form relationships with others, but also our capability to process our own emotions and needs, our self-perception and life experience.
Brian has a predominantly avoidant attachment style, which develops in children who are emotionally neglected or rejected by their primary attachment figure (usually the mother). Brian's avoidant attachment style means that he is pathologically independent and it’s really difficult for him to be emotionally open with people and to form secure, trusting, close relationships with anyone. It also means that Brian is terrible at feeling, understanding and dealing with his own emotions, especially those related to attachment and those that are painful, so most of the time he just denies or suppresses them.
Attachment style forms in very early childhood and is believed to be mostly constant throughout life, although some factors can change it, e.g.:
the relationship with parents changing, e.g. a parent dying, leaving or developing a mental illness,
forming new consistent attachment relationships and developing new emotional patterns.
Brian’s childhood and emotional development
We don't know everything about Brian's childhood, but we can make some guesses based on his allusions or by interpreting his adult behavior.
@thoughtsickles wrote a beautiful post about it.
I imagine baby Brian was often left on his own when he needed soothing (if anyone would let her baby “cry it out” it would be Joan Kinney) and when they interacted, Joan wasn’t emotionally attuned to him. I can see an echo of that when they interact on the show - it’s like each of them is in a separate bubble. They talk next to each other rather than with each other. Each of them wants to be heard or get a reaction, but neither wants to hear the other out. Now compare them to Justin’s scenes with Jennifer.
Infants and toddlers learn their own emotions when the attachment figure (e.g. mother) acknowledges their emotional states and responds to them in an attuned way. For example, smiling when the baby is smiling, mirroring and soothing the baby’s sadness, or reassuring when the baby is scared. This is called co-regulating and these experiences teach the child how to self-regulate and how to build a connection with others. If Brian didn’t have that, he had to develop his own, dysfunctional ways to suppress his overwhelming or threatening emotional states (fear, pain, sadness, loneliness, etc.) in order to function. He also learned that he can’t count on anyone else for help or comfort. And quite possibly, he was also punished or isolated for showing anger, pain, weakness, complaining or crying.
And while arguably Brian had an opportunity to learn more secure and nurturing patterns with Debbie and Michael, we don’t know how much they actually helped him, how consistent they were in their support, and it also all started late in Brian’s development, so it was already filtered through layers of his emotional dysfunction and distrustful worldview.
We also know that Brian was abused by his father and - as far as he remembers it - his mother failed to protect him. We don’t know exactly what Brian’s relationship was with Jack. Even though I believe it was closer than the one he had with Joan, I don’t believe Brian ever relied on Jack for safety or emotional support, so my guess is that he had no positive effect on Brian’s attachment style.
Brian’s avoidant attachment style manifests in many tragic ways, both internal and external:
Part 1: Brian’s emotional avoidance and relationship with himself
“Just don’t think about it.”
Brian suppresses and dissociates from difficult emotions (through denial, distraction, drugs, alcohol and sex) rather than feeling and processing them, because otherwise they would overwhelm him - his ability to handle difficult feelings never fully developed.
Suppressing difficult emotions doesn’t get rid of them, it just pushes them out of consciousness. They still run in his nervous system, causing him pain and discomfort, and his emotional needs remain unaddressed.
The only difficult emotion Brian engages in is anger, but it also overwhelms him. When he gets angry, he gets enraged and he lashes out. He had a lot of experience with anger at the Kinney family home, where it was common and maybe even respected, as a show of "strength." And I’ll bet you nobody there knew how to manage it in a functional way.
Expressing anger allows you to physically release some of the tension and pain that's built up inside, so at some level it feels good and can be helpful. But if you don’t know how to release anger in a non-hurtful way, it ends up isolating you from people you're close to and reinforcing your deep-rooted belief that you're a piece of shit. On an instinctual level - pushing people away is the point of Brian's anger, because he feels the safest and in control when he's alone.
Because his emotion-processing capability is impaired, Brian relies on cold, pragmatic logic, obsessive control, sarcasm, eloquent rules of life and cynicism as scaffolding to substitute feelings. He’s also built up a cool persona of someone who can't be hurt because he doesn’t give a shit. Of course, Brian sees his emotional detachment as strength, not an impairment. He probably thinks people who succumb to feelings are weak, embarrassing and needy.
“Just don’t think about it” is what Brian told Justin whenever Justin wanted to talk about the bashing or got triggered by thinking about it. “Forget about it.” And it seems like Justin listened to this shitty advice until his suppressed anger blew the lid off when he joined the pink posse. “Just don’t think about it” is also obviously how Brian decided to manage his trauma from the bashing, which made it that much harder for Justin to process their shared experience. “Just don’t think about it”, aside from “never seeing a shrink and a series of hopeless addictions,” is Brian’s secret to being surprisingly “high-functioning” despite suffering from some profound dysfunctions and emotional wounds.
“Like I give a shit what God thinks about me. He'd better be worried what I think about him.”
Brian has terrible self-worth, because his parents rejected and/or neglected him. In the baby brain a parent’s rejection means "I'm unlovable" or "There's something really wrong with me," because babies are incapable of thinking "There's something wrong with my mom and that's why she's neglecting me." Your survival fully depends on your mother and she can do no wrong. And then there's the fact that Brian knew his parents never wanted him to be born.
How do we know Brian has terrible self-worth? Because:
He regularly engages in dangerous, self-destructive, self-sacrificing and self-neglecting behavior.
He never expects people to be there for him (Michael being the codependent exception) or to treat him well.
He never goes after anyone, and he doesn’t fight for what he wants or needs from other people (It’s your choice who you wanna be with). Because he doesn’t feel his emotional needs are important, especially to other people. He doesn't believe people would or should choose him.
He thinks he's a disposable element in other people's lives. When he gets abandoned, he just accepts it because that's what he thinks he deserves.
He rarely stands up for himself when his friends misjudge him or treat him unfairly. (On some level he believes the bad things they say about him)
Despite his terrible self-worth, he has fantastic confidence and self-esteem, because self-esteem and confidence are earned from success and other people's approval. Brian knows he’s attractive, competent, admired and successful. He makes sure his success is apparent to everyone, through designer clothes, glamorous home decor and status-symbol cars. He's also condescending to people he considers "below him" - you can't be better than everyone else unless there are people worse than you. But having to constantly improve and prove his value to other people is still a show of insecurity in his innate self-worth.
In fact, the drive (desperation) to prove his value as a person, as a man, as a professional, as a sexual MVP, is proportional to the size of the void of self-love that he tries to fill inside him. But filling the void of self-love with outside validation is like filling a gas tank with water - it's not gonna get you anywhere, no matter how much you pour in. You can know for a fact that people like, desire and respect you, while deep down you still believe you're a worthless piece of shit that doesn't deserve love. Brian’s competitive promiscuity is the primary source of fuel for his self-esteem, that’s why he can’t give it up.
Brian’s love language is acts of service, sacrifice and financial support, because he believes he has to earn other people's love. And no matter how much he does for other people, he’ll never feel like he's earned that love. That's why he never asks for help, even from the people that we would say are “indebted” to him.
Money is important to Brian, because a deal is a deal. When you pay for something, you're almost guaranteed to get it. That can't be said for human kindness or love - reciprocity in relationships is unreliable and complex. And Brian doesn’t think he deserves it anyway. But money means security, predictability, stability and it means you don't have to be at anyone's mercy. And money is how Brian earns his place in his friends’ lives.
