The Same Wavelength

Attachment is the natural bond that is formed in infancy. Each person was created with the innate ability and desire to attach. Our parents or caregivers responses to our initiation of connection determines how we attach as adults. The attachment style that we get imprinted with as an infant becomes our framework for all future attachments. UNLESS we determine to process our own difficulties in childhood and pain in attachments. In which case we can develop earned secure attachments.

In his book Right Brain Psychotherapy, Allan Schore (2019) says, our earliest relationships structure our emotional brain in ways that have long-lasting consequences for our emotional well-being. If we are nurtured by our caregivers, our emotional brain develops in such a way as to allow us to become comfortable with our own emotions and to respond to our social environment healthily. If we have early relationships that are attuned and connected we will be able to handle and live within the spectrum of all of the emotions that we may encounter in life and still feel safe. If we, however, grow up in an environment that does not nurture our emotional selves, then the development of our emotional brain is compromise.

In a discussion today my mentor described it to me like this- whatever we experience in infancy with our caregivers will become the foundation that our attachments, and emotional life will be built on. If there is a safe, secure, and emotionally attuned environment we have the ability to grow and develop exponentially. If there is not a safe, secure, and emotionally attuned environment our emotional and relational foundation will be skewed. We will be able to build superimposed relational/emotional structures however they will be limited and faulty due to the lack of foundation within the right brain. We will have emotional vulnerabilities that may be triggered at any time.

We help others most- our friends, family, children, and spouses by working through our own personal childhood difficulties, traumas, and pain. Kind of like the airline that instructs us to put on our air mask before helping others. In this case- we can not help others until we do the work in our lives.

Allan Schore (2019) Goes on to say, To find our way to an emotionally healthy and secure life once we've suffered early relational trauma is not a question of making the unconscious conscious; rather, it depends on restructuring the unconscious itself. The most effective way to achieve such change is through relationally based, emotionally focused psychotherapy with an empathic and attuned therapist who is willing and able to be an active participant in the process.

Healing attachment injury is an arduous and painful process- but the reward of living life truly connected to others is worth it! If you would like to learn more about attachment and the four attachment styles check out my podcast as I covered this topic today!

Work Cited

Schore, Allan. (2019). Right Brain Psychotherapy. W.W. Norton & Company, New York.