Attachment: Phase One—Childhood

Attachment: Phase One—Childhood

In our day-to-day usage of the word “attachment,” we tend to think of our adult self and how we attach to our current friends, family, and love interests. But the theory took off when psychologists developed “The Strange Situation” experiment. This experiment observed a mother and a 1-year-old baby, and the baby's reaction to the stress caused by his/her parent leaving her/him alone in a room with a stranger. So, basically, we have been programmed to exhibit our attachment behavior since birth. We know, if we are not protected, we will die. That part of our brain is already up and running at the age of one.

“The Strange Situation” observed 12-month old children while under four different stress situations. First, to get a good idea of how a child reacted when s/he felt safe, the children were all observed in their homes with their mothers. Then the next experiment was to see how they reacted under the stress of the mother leaving the room. This kind of behavior is now exhibited as adults in how we act out in stressful relationship situations such as someone breaking up with us, someone not being connected, and someone not liking us. It is then that we watch what we learned as a child: proximity seeking, abandoning by withdrawing, anxiety when someone doesn’t call back in a certain time.

In the experiment psychiatrists observed the 4 types of Attachment Behavior:

1.) secure,

2.) anxious,

3.) avoidant, and lastly

4.) disorganized.

Secure attachment knows that you are taken care of, bodily and mentally.

Anxious children have learned they have to be vigilant to catch their attachment object (the relationships), or try and control their attachment object to get them to exhibit close and abiding behavior, so they will not feel anxiety. (This behavior is unconscious, so there is no fit in to society aspect. That would imply that it has a conscious component.) 

Avoidants have given up on getting the other to attach. They are still tremendously affected by the mother leaving the room. They have learned that it does no good to show their feelings. Their emotions may actually invite an attack.

And Disorganized Attachment flip flop all around, because they are attached to the one who abuses them. This means that they have simultaneous unconscious urges. They need to get close to their protector, while knowing that their protector will abuse them; that's crazy making.

How do you integrate any of this—especially disorganized—if you are 12 months old? This is the point of the experiment. An infant cannot. We don’t even have the emotional hardware to solve this issue or deal with it until we are seven years old. So, as adults, we keep trying to work it out in relationships. If we don't know what we are doing, and we are unconscious. We are literally doomed to have the same relationship over and over and over. To put the icing on the cake, if an avoidant, an anxious, or a disorganized attached person gets into a good relationship, they will try to make it more comfortable by unconsciously making it like the past. We effectively burn the house down while we are in it, metaphorically. We can't stop it.

As a more advanced observer of self-behavior, sometimes we might even see our behavior from the place of an observer and wonder what the hell we are doing. Although we might believe we are on the path to change, we still are powerless to stop what we are doing in some situations and with certain triggers. This is because of the anxiety, the very real, very ingrained anxiety that we will die, like the one-year old child, who doesn’t know the difference between being left alone for ten minutes and being left for another person.

This is a very short over view. It is about 10%-20% of Attachment Theory. It is the biggest part of the foundation of Attachment Theory though.

This study, however, may lead you to answering questions in relationships, such as a dismissive attitude by your partner.  He shares with you that “all relationships are painful.”  When attachment theory would say that “he was being stressed by you mentioning the way you felt.” His response was to dismiss and explain away instead of meeting you and your feelings head on.

If you are reading the book: ATTACHED. by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Check out pages 65-67, 86-91, 142-149, 212, and 221-222 for more information.

These are some pages that are pertinent to this blog. One thing that is really prominent in securely attached behavior is they will say “I Love You,” first if they do, in fact, love somebody. That is under the “nongame-playing part.” They know that even if the other doesn't love them, they are just saying their truth.

If the other doesn't reply with “I love you” too, they know they will be okay. They know that when they love, they don't give too much of themselves or restrict how much they give. So, it’s okay to not be loved back. They will eventually heal and love someone else.

This, of course, is just a couple examples of how attached behavior from childhood is reflected in our daily lives.

Hypnosis and learning self-hypnosis to become an observer of the self is a great way to help this process. Also, psychotherapy combined with hypnosis is also a great way to unhook from this behavior.

I feel so lucky and honored to have one of the city’s best Licensed Family and Marriage Therapists using Attachment Theory in his practice as one of my closest friends, Keith Allen, LMFT (615-943-1911). Keith basically wrote this with a little input from me. So, thank you, Keith for sharing your knowledge with us.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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