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Hi, it's Sam here.
So lately, the topic of attachment in child development has garnered a lot of attention.
And if you're not familiar with this concept, attachment is something that developmental psychologist John Bowlby described as the human need to form a strong bond to your caregiver during the first years of life.
Understanding our attachment patterns can shed light on relationship patterns and help us to heal from disruptions in the safety and security of our early childhood relationships.
Because when we know the cause of something we want to change, it's much easier to change it.
Our attachment style reflects the security or insecurity of our primary bonds in early childhood.
And that affects our ability to bond in adult relationships, both in friendships and romantic partnerships.
And it heavily influences our ability to regulate stress and maintain physical health.
For example, if a caregiver left suddenly in our childhood, we may fear that our romantic partner will leave us too, and that can lead to trust issues.
Any discussion of attachment begins with what became known as the strange situation experiment.
And this experiment was designed by researcher Mary Ainsworth, who temporarily separated one-year-olds from their caregiver and placed them in a room with a stranger to observe their reactions.
Ainsworth identified four main attachment styles based on how the child behaved.
Those styles are known as secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized attachment.
So let's take a moment to unpack each one.
A secure attachment is our best-case scenario.
In essence, it's when we know someone is attuned to us, when we feel seen and felt by another person.
This behavior is marked by the child showing signs of missing their caregiver when they leave and greeting them with relief when they return.
This ideal attachment pattern usually indicates that the primary caregivers are meeting the child's need for attention and attunement.
But what if a child shows no signs of distress when the caregiver leaves the room and active avoidance of that person when they return?
This signals an avoidant attachment.
It could mean that the child's distress is met with indifference at home.
If a child is ambivalently attached.
They display clingy behavior when the parent tries to leave and they're not soothed when the parent returns.
This usually indicates inconsistency in warmth and attention from the caregiver.
Sometimes they respond and show attention, and sometimes not at all.
This tends to lead to an overactivation of attachment circuitry, meaning clinginess from fear.
And lastly, we have the disorganized attachment, and this one is one of the most detrimental.
It occurs when a caregiver shows a severe lack of attunement and exhibits behavior that's scary to infants.
In this case, the child is terrified when they return.
As we would expect, adults who were securely attached as children can better attune to others and display emotional balance, flexible responding, empathy and moral awareness.
Avoidantly attached adults tend to be more emotionally restricted, controlling, and aloof.
Ambivalently attached adults tend to show anxiety and insecurity in relationships.
And adults with an ambivalent attachment tend to have major impairments in their ability to relate to others and regulate their emotions.
So, after all this information, I think we need a nice slow deep breath.
And during this pause just see if you notice any self-diagnosing thoughts and just allow them to come and go without believing them right away.
As any psych or medical student will tell you, it is human nature to begin identifying with and diagnosing ourselves as we learn about various mental health disorders.
And this may have felt like a lot of bad news, but the great news is that we have the power to repair less than ideal childhood attachment patterns.
And if you'd like to know more about how understanding these patterns can be really useful, UCLA psychiatry professor Dan Siegel offers a course on making sense of your life experiences and understanding their effects on your current relationships.
We'll put a link in the episode notes.
In tomorrow's episode, we'll explore ways in which mindfulness meditation helps us to re-parent ourselves.
Until then, take care and I'll see you back here soon.
Doug.
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