Why is Attachment so important?
As a Therapist specializing in EMDR and Trauma for the last 5 years, I can now confidently say that every issue anyone comes to me with can be traced back to an attachment wound. An attachment wound is how our brain organized information about our safety, getting our needs met and feeling validated and seen as children. Humans are programmed to connect, and as a young child we depend on our caregivers for food, shelter and comfort. Any break in what we perceive as “safety” from them causes a fear response. Fear that we won’t be fed, we won’t be protected. And let’s face it, its very difficult as a parent to provide your child with a 100% sense of safety. Any inconsistency, paired with specific traumas will likely trigger an anxious attachment response, where we intensely fear abandonment and reach for people who we feel are detaching from us in an effort to restore internal homeostasis. If our efforts are thwarted enough times by emotional abuse or neglect, we may become avoidant, where others attempts to connect with us cause a sense of disgust and a desire to run away. In both cases, we have learned and then internalized that we are not safe, we are not going to be consistently cared for, and that it is our fault. This creates a lack of self love which manifests as unworthiness, scarcity, low self esteem and self sabotage.
For context, until we are approximately 8 years old we have no conscious mind. We take everything as directly and at “face value” as possible. We understand behaviors, not words or explanations.
Example: Angry Parent
Your mom is stomping around the house. She tells you that “its not about you,” but she is not really paying attention. You want comfort. You feel her frustrated energy. You feel uncomfortable and nervous and want her to hug you, but she doesn’t notice. You feel powerless to help her or feel better in yourself. Since she is not making an effort towards you, a childs brain determines that they must have done something wrong, either to anger their mother or in that their mother doesn’t want to comfort them.
What could be a better outcome? A mother is angry, the child becomes upset. She spends a few moments hugging and cuddling them until they feel better, and then she returns to her own process, while checking in that the child is okay from time to time. This makes the child understand that people can be angry around them and things are still okay, they are still safe.
Example: Substance Abuse
I feel that this is a hugely overlooked issue due to our societies’ radical acceptance of alcohol despite the extremely far reaching impacts on safety, mental health and children's mental health. If alcohol was not so easily accessible and accepted, I almost guarantee that at least 50% of childhood sexual abuse cases would not occur. The next point will discuss sexual abuse.
When a person consumes alcohol (or drugs), their mannerisms, personality and behaviors change. They may become more happy, more angry, more impulsive. A child, not having any understanding of substances or “being drunk” can become extremely confused when a parents behaviors vary so widely. This confuses a childs brain, which is actively wiring itself to attune to and understand its environment. The overall message would be inconsistency. Sometimes Mommy is like this, sometimes Mommy is like that. The brain has no idea why, and tries to guess and understand patterns. This can create overthinking and people pleasing as the child attempts to be validated and stay safe.
Trauma and Boundaries
Boundary violations can occur in many ways, with sexual abuse being the most objectively destructive. Overall, abuse of any kind teaches a child that its okay for other people to hurt them, (emotionally, physically, psychologically/sexually) and that because it happened, they must deserve it. In almost any abuse situation the child will experience shame afterwards, and automatically discern that they experienced the abuse/pain/sadness because they deserved it or brought it on themselves. The closer or more authority based the figure is (parents, grandparents, older siblings), potentially the worse the impact as the child desires to follow rules and be accepted and loved by this attachment figure. A way that I often describe the impact of these events is that it “breaks the brain” in terms of understanding another person’s responsibility, feelings, needs or body versus the your own. There is no longer any sense of boundary in how the child feels versus pleasing others to try and manage their own internal states. When there is secret keeping as in the case of much sexual abuse, this further instills shame and confusion on the child, where they will now work extra hard to be accepted and self soothe through impulsive behaviors such as cutting, negative thoughts and risky behaviors or substance abuse as they become teens. In the case of sexual abuse, many children experience pleasure followed by extreme despair and shame as the adult will then obviously pretend this never happened or threaten them to keep it a secret. The child does not understand these changes in behavior towards them, similar to the substance abuse example.
Essentially, from the most basic interpretation of any family dynamic or experience as a child, the more confusing the situation, the more crossed the wires in someone's brain become, causing any number of mental or behavioral attempts to feel better.
Attachment does not simply have to do with the relationship between us and our parents as children, it is our relationship to safety. To feeling seen, heard and important. Because at a primal level these things keep us safe. Even those who manage to find secure healthy relationships as adults will project their anxiety or avoidance onto something else: family members/group dynamics, climate change, work, money. We cannot escape this inner experience of fear.
Because of the deep impacts on our programming and energy bodies that trauma and attachment wounds cause, I never utilize solely talk therapy in addressing any sort of issue. Our brain has figured out the “best way” to manage our inner experience or dialogue, and it takes getting into our bodies and subconscious in order to understand and release or change these processes. EMDR, IFS and energy work are my preferred methods. For many people we need to understand, and then reprogram our inner childhood for safety, self love and grounding.