Making sense of Attachment theory – feeling safe enough to be confident to connect deeply as well as explore confidently
I like to explain Attachment theory as way of understanding human behaviour – starting from way, way, way back.
Long ago Freud said that human babies need food. Give them more than that and they will never become independent! Those were the days when parents of children who were hospitalised, were not allowed to stay over with their sick children. The days when we still had very little understanding of how our brains have developed, through evolution, to need extremely close and reciprocated interaction between adult caregivers and human babies.
It was Harlow who observed primate behaviour and then did experiments on monkeys to examine if primate babies indeed need food only in order to survive. He removed the baby monkeys from their mums and placed them with only a wire figure with a milk bottle fixed to it. The babies who fed from these artificial mothers drank the milk, but appeared anxious and fearful to venture away from their source of food. If they were removed from this wired mother and placed back with groups of peers before a 90 period, they could eventually (it took some time) adjust and re-integrate with their group. If they were only placed with a group after 90 days of being just with a wire mother, they were almost impossible to re-adjust with their peer group.
He then added a second type of wired mother – one with a plastic face-like attachment and a cloth wrapped around her wired “body”, but with no milk. The little monkeys who had these two kinds of “mothers” would suck milk from the bottle in the just wire “mother”, but would cling to the cloth “mother” and touch her face. They would be much less anxious and would easily venture away from her and explore their environment with confidence! They were also much easier to re-integrate with their peer groups – with confidence.
The conclusion was postulated – perhaps primates need more than just food to feel optimally safe and confident enough to explore their environment. Connecting securely leaves them able to confidently explore independently.
Bowlby examined this phenomenon amongst human babies who had been removed from their parents. Over the next plus minus 60 years, several researchers spent time observing human care-givers with their infants, closely paying attention to the process of the infants making their needs known, the adults deciphering the signals of the infants and responding – meeting their needs, keeping the infants safe. Researchers (Sroufe) also did longitudinal studies (the same infants observed as toddlers, as pre-teens, teens, young adults and then as parents of their own children) over a period of 40 years, to track how relating to caregivers as infants impact on their behaviour in all of their later life stages.
These are the core concepts:
- We survive because our nervous systems sense danger or safety and spur us to turn towards safety.
- Trouble is – since we have been walking on only two legs, women give birth really too soon (we should stay in the womb for quite some time longer so we have more mature nervous systems and capabilities by the time we are born).
- Because we are so helpless at birth and for really long after (compare us to other mammals), human babies are extremely dependent on their adult care-givers because they are totally helpless and have very little skills to keep themselves safe or communicate their needs!
- Human babies need extremely attuned (tuned in) caregivers who are dependably focussed on deciphering the baby’s signals and meeting their needs.
- Human babies need food, comfort, playfulness, to be delighted in, structure, predictability, shared experiences, help with emotional regulation (validation, understanding and acceptance of their emotions), encouragement, and to be taught competencies. We simply cannot do that for ourselves as children – for many, many years! We need our caregivers to help us a lot with this – until we can.
- How we learn to relate to others whilst growing up, is how we relate to others eventually as adults!
- Only when we feel safe, do we feel confident to explore with curiosity – as infants, youngsters, teens and eventually as adults.
- When we feel safe, our nervous systems focus on being curious, exploring, growing, and eventually functioning optimally in our adult relationships and communities.
- We feel unsafe when our caregivers are unpredictable, undependable, neglectful, absents or dangerous.
- When we feel unsafe, our nervous systems develop to stay focussed on shutting down, blocking out perceived threats, disorganised thoughts, emotions and behaviour.
- When we grow up not having dependable caregivers, we do not go to others for help – we find it extremely difficult to trust, with reason. As infants, youngsters, teens and eventually as adults.
The good news: As an adult, you can do something radically different now that you are becoming aware of this information. You can change your own ”wiring” / Attachment style. You can also change the way you parent (even if your children are already adults themselves.) That is the power of having some understanding of this!
The routes to changing how you feel safe is:
- Increased self-awareness (read, learn, get information)
- A securely attached important other
- Psychological therapy in a good therapeutic relationship
I write this with a sense of endearment. I wish we had known all of this much earlier, but I am very thankful that we do know this about being human.