We are designed to want things. From earliest infancy, we seek what will help us survive. Starting with the most basic needs of food, protection, and comfort; we attach ourselves to those who provide the materials, nurturing, support, and love we need to sustain us. Attachment is a biological imperative; without it, none would survive.
In the human species, as in many other species, during the vital primary months of development babies attach themselves to mothers physically, neurologically, and emotionally. A powerful bond is created, beginning in utero. Infants are genetically programmed to depend on this core relationship, to anticipate that their needs will be anticipated and met. This repeated expectation evolves their sense of trust, security becomes predictable, and confidence builds. This process of reliance continues beyond early childhood in stages and phases that are biologically and culturally driven.
This biological and social bond is what makes parents fiercely protective and possessive; it enables children to thrive, to learn about the world and the world’s people. From earliest experiences, children form notions of what to expect, ideas of how their overtures will be received. Their accumulated experiences tell them about themselves and where they fit in (or do not). They learn which behaviors will get attention and how likely they are to be satisfied. The child-as-forecaster acquires predictive skills about the probability of success at gaining what’s wanted.
Attachment is a vital though imperfect process. Attachment facilitates emotional connection, empathy, and compassion, social adhesion, and the abilities necessary for social relationships. When attachment goes well, the child can differentiate themself from the mother figure and progressively move toward independence and relative self-sufficiency. The child’s brain and nervous system become adept at self-soothing and self-regulation. They are increasingly able to withstand adversity, absence, deprivation, uncertainty, ambiguity, and even self-sacrifice. Self-control, reasonable risk-taking, and tolerance develop from trial-and-error experiences.
When attachment is impeded, consequences can be devastating. Early deprivation often results in a nervous system that cannot quiet itself. This leads to heightened arousal—a fight-or-flight response—as the default state of the brain. The individual becomes overly vigilant, restless, defensive, lacking the capacity to trust and form attachments. An absent, detached, or preoccupied mother leaves a child literally empty with experiences of neglect, abandonment, and loss of mother’s psychological milk as legacy. The child learns to expect hardship, to perceive the environment and people as threatening and unsatisfying. It becomes enduringly difficult and burdensome to draw close to people; intimacy becomes a zero-sum game.
Causes of attachment disorder abound (such as with scandalous Eastern-European orphanages or drug-addicted, sex worker mothers). It is simplistic to reduce attachment problems to early childhood harsh or adverse conditions. The larger problem is that children can perceive neglect and deprivation, even when their needs are routinely met and material resources are provided. Jealousy of a sibling, victimization by bullying or ridicule, distracted or otherwise occupied parents, or self-esteem issues can develop when a child feels he or she doesn’t measure up and can progressively harden their heart and paralyze their ability to form healthy attachments. Character flaws are part of human nature. A sense of entitlement—the beliefs and feelings that all that we desire is rightfully ours—is prominent among these. When “big” entitlement is frustrated, resentment, antagonistic behaviors, and reality distortion grow by leaps and bounds. The so-called “injustice collector” is created.
In some cases, emotionally needy children become too attached. These youngsters become overly anxious and have trouble separating from their parents because of excessive fearfulness and stifling dependence. Given the multitude of factors that can sabotage attachment, it is astounding that attachment ever develops!
Nonetheless, miracle of miracles, attachment grows and flourishes regularly. It is the norm. Healthy attachment is resistant to derailment once it has had a chance to take root. The ability to form attachments is robust and rewarding, gratifying in the extreme; yet it is a delicate and intimate process, requiring nourishment, practice, environmental opportunities, and continual reinforcement.
British psychiatrist John Bowlby did important work in attachment theory in the 1950s. Bowlby’s work suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds with caregivers. This is a life and death, sink or swim issue. Early bonds set the stage for later relationships; early bonds influence attachments all throughout the life cycle. Flawed attachment to caregivers leads to problematic relationships, social pathology, inability to trust, and generally poor bonding later in life.
Research based on thousands of observations documents the damaging effects of absent or limited caregiving. Some of the grievous examples are drawn from abysmally poor Eastern-European orphanages. Many of these children develop reactive attachment disorder, a disorder affecting children who have survived severe neglect and/or abuse in their early years. Reactive attachment disorder features an inability to form healthy attachments with caregivers, leading to difficulties in social interactions (including school experiences), trust, and emotional regulation.
Otherwise loving adoptive parents are beleaguered and confused by their child’s aggressive behavior, their aversion to affection, their lack of sympathy and empathy. Significant deprivation and lack of proper bonding in the early years sets the stage for attachment difficulties that persist for life.
Even with a secure foundation, attachment can be damaged by loss. Loss or dereliction by a loved person or highly valued love object (such as a house gone in a flood, a book of cherished photos consumed by fire) can have a profound impact on one’s basic integrity. The more you have established satisfying healthy attachments, the less likely you are to disintegrate in the face of loss.
Onlookers don’t walk in your shoes.Neediness and vulnerability cannot be ameliorated by circumstances, personal achievements, or the perceptions of others.
Children born from the same parents and raised in the same environment can and will turn out very differently. One child may grow up to be a self-indulgent criminal, while their sibling becomes a self-made leader, a philanthropist.
In my own family, my older son succumbed to drug addiction, but his brother (same genetic and environmental conditions) is a different person altogether. It happens all the time. (In 2016, I published a book entitled When God Takes Away: Living With Loss and Surrender. This book documents the loving saga of Neal Steinberg’s life and his tragic death from a drug overdose in 2013. My book also has chapters on the effects of different losses besides loved ones, including loss of varied relationships, body functions, possessions, opportunity, and innocence.)
Living is inevitably interwoven with not only with loss, but with innumerable opportunities for personal growth and evolution. Our preparedness and experiences of attachment greatly influence how we adapt and cope with losses.
Attachment develops in a setting of facilitative availability and nurturing by early caretakers. In animal experiments on attachment, “Harlow monkeys”—chimps raised in a laboratory setting in the presence of wire mannequin monkeys—consistently failed to thrive, sometime dying. Deprivation, neglect, irregular care negatively impact attachment in children at risk. Unfulfilled needs are experienced as trauma.
Traumas occur throughout life. Early deprivation is but one example. Few of us are spared. Psychological trauma—sometimes accompanied by physical neglect—arouses perception of threat to survival and security that lasts continuously in the emotional parts of the brain. Trauma is a firebrand that leaves deep emotional scars. Painful conscious associations as well as subliminally traumatic memories get triggered by real life experiences in the here and now, almost always to the detriment of the survivor. Current situations link past experiences to present overwhelming negative emotions. Despite the absence of present threat, the nervous system vastly overreacts, launching into a defensive fight-or-flight mode. Super stress, with symptoms including panic, accelerated heart rate, fear, mistrust, catastrophizing, negative interpretations and forecasting. This is PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome, a boom industry these days). No small wonder.
The emotional brain becomes overactivated and logic doesn’t work to get rid of the distress.
Poor attachment habits and deprivation history predispose traumatic reactions. Trauma events can damage attachment and erode capabilities previously developed.
Just as many causes can lead to cardiac arrest (e.g., blunt force trauma, organ shutdown, hemorrhage, toxicity, etc.), traumatic events can result in psychological disarray and turmoil well beyond the inciting stimulus. Psychological trauma, mistreatment, abuse, or deprivation have a final common pathway. They assault resilient attachment, resulting in fixation or regression to more primitive, more paranoid ways of dealing with the world.
It doesn’t end there. Poor attachment invites trauma. in numerous ways. Failure to bond reciprocally, mutually, productively leads to dysfunctional relationships, socially maladaptive behaviors, and a host of physical health vulnerabilities.
Unresolved traumas and brain dysregulation and instability are basic to many psychological syndromes. When adequately addressed and treated, spectacular maturation and growth become possible.
A mind and body preoccupied with pain, fear, threat, internal turmoil and overarousal cannot relax, trust, relate, and be open to mutual exchange with others. A person’s historical issues with attachment and trauma intertwine with present day ambiguities and ambivalences in the complex challenges of human relationships.
We cannot attribute all mental distress or disorders to traumas or attachment issues. We should, however, make use of established intervention protocols as major effective tools in restoring functioning and stability that have been eroded or damaged by various life’s disruptive events.
The ability to attach emotionally, to trust and bond with others, is vital to health and emotional self-regulation. Proper attachment, an indispensable part of early life, can be warped by early deprivation, neglect, and/or abuse. Those with faulty early bonding are more heavily affected.
We can’t rewrite history. Poor childhoods, abuses, injuries, and harmful influences abound. How can they be addressed? What can be done to repair and recover?
There are three types of interventions that significantly heal trauma and allow a person—in body, brain, soul, and spirit—to recover, develop, and strengthen emotional attachment.
Adequate therapeutic interventions to address and heal trauma and develop neurological and interpersonal abilities, most notably trust and the steady flow of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness.
A number of neurological treatments, power therapies, and energetic interventions have proven effective for healing traumas. Among these, EEG neurofeedback is extremely useful for restoring emotional regulation, subduing traumas, and training the brain to be much more in touch with emotional sentience. This treatment calms and retrains the fight-or-flight overarousal syndrome so problematic in and characteristic of defensiveness, fear, anxiety, and trauma.
Thought Field Therapy (TFT) has a successful track record of eliminating the core substructures of trauma.
Once the neurological overarousal and automatic defense mechanisms are subdued, meaningful interactive and dynamic psychotherapeutic interventions can build trust and practical knowledge toward establishing rewarding attachments.
If you are intrigued by this important topic of attachment and want to find out more, feel free to contact me.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
