Poor attachment happens…
November 16th, 2009

We’re made for attachment. You need a secure connection in your childhood to “feel and deal” with the stresses of life. If your primary caregiver had an insecure home environment growing up then you probably got the same. You can’t give what you don’t have! But if your parent, caregiver, etc had a secure connection then they could give you the same.

So mom is stressed that she can’t pay rent. You come inside from playing with a hole in your new shoes. Crack. Pop. Bam. “You tore your new shoes! Money doesn’t grow on trees. You’re not playing outside the rest of the week!” You run to your room and hear your mom crying at the kitchen table. Later, you overhear her say to her sister she doesn’t know how she can afford to take care of you like she wants. The cement drys. The imprinted lied is hardened. You internalize a message that she didn’t intend to communicate. “It’s all your fault. You’re such a burden, etc.” Her inability to feel and deal with life’s stresses and keep a secure connection with you set you on a hidden life-long path of “look(ing) for love and evidence that you’re worth keeping”. (Points for working in a lyric from the new Pearl Jam album)

You may not remember the explicit details of that or a thousand other little exchanges. But when you’re overwhelmed with painful emotion that you can’t process, it gets stored implicitly in your brain. Until the emotion is detoxified, the past becomes the present as your body feels what you felt when you ran to your room even though you’re 20 years older. The above example is mild. Many experienced much more traumatic (large T) events as a child. Some experienced many little (small T) traumatic events that added up. Sadly, there are many that got both. (290-291)

The impact of these events are not able to be processed by your undeveloped hippocampus so the memory is stored emotionally. Later she will suffer from “anxiety, depression, and negative thinking” (284) that she won’t be able to “snap out of” on her own. The pathway to healing is a more powerful experience in the present care of another that will allow them to process what happened and discard the negative.

Breaking it down:

1. Your childhood experience most likely contained events that were mildly or strongly beyond your ability to process.
2. If your immediate caregiver didn’t have a secure environment (unless they experienced the healing and processing of their wounds) they could not assist you in processing and may have caused some/most of your disturbance.
3. The place that was supposed to be a shelter from the storm became the center of the storm (great quote from a friend) and your overwhelmed emotions stored these memories implicitly.
4. These implicit memories guide your thoughts and their following actions beneath the surface of your awareness.
5. The path to these implicit memories is non-verbal. The empathetic, non-judgmental, nurturing care of another can give you safety to explore your feelings and ultimately re-experience these moments as you find healing from the lies they imprinted on your soul. (freely apply this principle beyond the human to human interaction but instead the human to divine…have fun swimming)

Thoughts?

*Unless noted differently quotes are from Healing Trauma. (Click on my amazon link if you want to purchase.)