Passionate About Attachment
Today I got fired up about something, I got fired up about attachment. Secure attachment. Some of you may not be aware that there are several different types of ways that us human beings attach.
When we are fortunate and blessed to have attentive and caring parents that monitor our sounds and our cries of distress when we were little, and they attend to us as best they can. And, they make repairs with us when they are late, or they miss a cue. We develop what is known as secure attachment.
When we aren’t so fortunate, we can develop avoidant attachment, or ambivalent attachment. Avoidant attachment is when our caregivers looked at us if we were specimens or objects, they look at us to see if they need to do something to fix us, to clean us, to tend to us. We were more of a task, rather than a person. This attachment adaptation is more left-hemisphere dominate.
In attachment there is a wide spectrum, at the top is where we are secure. Imagine an inverted U, my dear friend and colleague, Sarah Peyton, talks about attachment in that way. With the inverted U of attachment, you can use the Goldilocks story.
On the left-hemisphere side where it’s more task-oriented, it might be too strict, too rigid, too hard. So, it’s like Goldilocks going in and sitting down in Papa Bears chair, and it’s just too hard!
On the other end of the spectrum is Mama Bears chair. That would be more right-hemisphere dominate; it could be too soft, or too much, it could be intrusive or just not available, gone. That’s like sitting down in Mama Bears chair and it’s so soft you just sink right in and you become enmeshed. You can’t tell the difference between yourself and Mama Bear anymore.
Then, when you can finally find your way to Baby Bears chair, you go clear up to the top of this inverted U, you sit down in his chair and it feels “just right.” Well, that’s what all of us human being would like to really enjoy experiencing in our life.
At the far end of the bottom of this inverted U, it’s still a spectrum, there is disorganized attachment. That’s when our lives were most likely quite terrifying. Or, our caretakers or our parent were either terrified or terrifying. I want to hold this with exquisite gentleness and care. Because on the far-left side we are avoidantly disorganized in our attachment. We are in an isolated sense of aloneness and we have this bubble of insulation around us so that we can’t feel our emotions. We don’t want to get too close and the eye gaze might be too difficult, so we can get very task oriented. We like to use our SEEKING circuit because it pumps us with dopamine, and it feels good.
On the far-right side of this spectrum we have what can be known as co-dependency. Rather than having two isolated bubbles, they become enmeshed and we can’t tell the difference between ourselves and the other being. There is a wide spectrum between those two different ways of experiencing.
I’ve been working with a group for several years, and, I hold them all with so much love and care inside of me. I want to acknowledge that many of us have come from a background of disorganized attachment someplace between those two ways of being.
When we focused today on “secure attachment” and what it looks like when a child is born into that kind of an environment. It felt a little ouchie at times. When we haven’t had that experience, there can be a part of us that when we are honest, we feel jealous. We’re like, “Well that’s nice for them, but what about me!” There can be a little anger perhaps, that wants to come up and be heard around how that wasn’t my experience and I wanted that to be my experience!
Rather than making those parts wrong, ever, I want to empathize with them. I want to acknowledge what it was like to be so alone and not to receive that closeness that we need as human beings. Where our vulnerability is held as precious and protected.
I am passionate about providing a place where no matter how you experienced your attachment adaptation, in this life, I want to create spaces where people can come, how ever they are to receive resonance, warmth, and understanding with compassion. So we can develop our capacity to have earned secure attachment. Because the truth is, we all have those secure attachment seeds deep within us. They are a part of our birthright.
In my experience that is how I have come to develop what I do in the world, through The Healing You Method, and I feel very passionate about that.
If you’d like to learn more about that I encourage you to reach out, there are new groups that form and communities that become enduring where you get to experience this way of being. You get to learn the skillsets and you get to practice the language while you develop enduring relationships with others that look forward to seeing you each week.