Reflecting on Attachment

The first years of your life are essential to establish the future foundation of who you are. And our parents and caregivers are the single greatest influence on this. As children we spend the majority of our time, especially during our first and most critical years of life, in a family environment. Although we go to school, we spend less time in school than in the company of our parents or caregivers. Even beyond caregiving, parents play a critical role throughout a person's developmental years. For example, parents select their children’s environments all the time based on things that they think are good for them, like neighbourhoods, schools, sports, and even friends, etc.

Attachment is an evolutionary model that explains how humans develop and function in relationships across their lives, and it's one of the most researched areas in psychology. Our attachment style is formed in response to the emotional quality of the relationships provided to us by our primary caregivers.

Early attachment experiences strongly influence our development in many key areas, including how our brains and immune systems develop, how we learn to self-regulate in response to both positive and negative events, and how we learn to experience and communicate our emotions and needs. As adults, our attachment experiences inform our perceptions and our understanding of relationships, and this greatly influences how we feel and behave towards others and towards ourselves. It's also why we choose the partners that we do. So, it's a hugely important topic that deserves your time, attention, and reflection.

Because caregiver neglect, parental inconsistency and a lack of love (both experienced and perceived), can result in long-term emotional distress, and decreased human potential and happiness, it's important to learn how our caregiver experiences have shaped us, and for us to consider working towards healing these wounds. Not only do these experiences influence how we behave in relationships with others, but they also influence how we treat ourselves, such as our ability to notice when we are suffering and how we respond to our own needs.

Identifying and understanding your attachment style with your caregivers can help to explain why you respond differently when dealing with certain challenges, such as times of uncertainty or stress, conflict, strong emotions (both negative and positive), and how you relate to failure. It can also help you understand how you communicate emotions (both yours and the emotions of others), how you experience intimacy, and how you elicit and respond to care from others.

Attachment Development

Early in life, we are designed to focus on learning about other people’s reactions and how our behaviour can affect those around us. As babies, we are completely dependent on our caregivers for food, warmth, safety and affection. As a survival mechanism, our brains have evolved to be very focused on establishing connection with others, whilst being highly sensitive to any form of disconnection.

The effects of our early attachments with our caregivers can trigger many changes genetically, cognitively, socially, and physically which can have either positive or negative lifelong consequences. So, it's not surprising that our early attachment experiences affect our relationship with ourselves and with others because the same motivational systems that gave rise to the close emotional bond between us and our caregivers, is responsible for the bond that develops between who we are as adults in emotionally intimate relationships. Although our early attachment experiences do not necessarily have to define us, they do provide us with a template for relating to ourselves and to others.

How it Goes Wrong

Even for parents who want the very best for their children, there are many reasons why they may struggle to be emotionally present. For example, if you had a parent who was not responsive to your needs, or who may have even punished you for having certain emotions, you may struggle with knowing how to be secure in yourself. Then in your role as a parent, you may have difficulties with regulating your emotions or other emotional awareness blind-spots that lead you to repeating the same behaviour with your own children.

Sometimes, parents lack the knowledge about how their behaviour affects their child’s developing brain, or they may hold cultural or outdated beliefs about emotions and parenting that downplay the importance of maintaining an emotionally responsive connection with their children.

There are also more complex challenges. In households with children who are experiencing behavioural or other developmental difficulties, parents often become preoccupied with caring for that child to the detriment of the needs of the other siblings in the home. In situations where there is domestic violence, it may be difficult or unsafe to show emotions. Often these caregivers had parents who were exposed to similar upbringings themselves.

Drug and alcohol use can also negatively influence the emotional availability of a caregiver. Some parents have illnesses that make it difficult to show appropriate emotional reactions, and parents experiencing significant mental illnesses may struggle to engage with their children in ways that create and maintain a healthy and secure bond.

However, there are also more common forms of disconnection that affect us all. Technology and screen time have become a major part of our busy lives and it's common to see parents disconnecting from their children by simply using their phone. In families where both caregivers work on a fulltime basis outside of the home, children are often left without the availability and security of at least one caregiver for large parts of their upbringing.

The early experiences that you had with your primary caregivers plays a direct role in the development of your brain, which in turn influences your ability to regulate your emotions. Insecure or inconsistent styles of attachment result in the experience of feeling overwhelmed and unsafe in a child. This may lead to being on high alert all the time or becoming numb as means of protection. Left unaddressed, this can persist throughout a person's life and can greatly affect adult relationships with others and with ourselves.

It's clear that emotional regulation can be more difficult for those who grew up with inconsistent, unavailable or abusive caregiving. The good news is that we can learn to work with and heal our wounded attachments. This involves developing a new set of emotion regulation skills, which can be learned.