The Basics of Attachment (Part 1 of 6) {EP 34}

Robyn: Attachment is one of those buzzwords that's beginning to get talked about a lot in the mental health world, in the parenting world, and, thankfully, even in the education world. This is great. Of course, of course. Recognizing the impact of attachment on development and behaviors is huge. And helping us shift to that question that's being asked by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey in their new book, What Happened to You. But like most things that have become really popular buzzwords, a lot of important nuance is being lost when we talk about attachment and what it really is. In the month of June, I'll be releasing podcasts and blogs that bring us back to the beginning. This focus on attachment started last week in my interview with Bethany Saltman, episode 33. Bethany is the author of the part memoir, part biography, Attachment Scientist, Mary Ainsworth. Today- in today's episode, we're going to explore the basics of attachment. If you keep coming back to this month long series, we'll be exploring secure and insecure attachment, disorganized attachment, and we'll wrap up the month with a look at how attachment changes. Including an interview with both my mentor Bonnie Badenoch. But Bonnie is more than just my mentor, like she's a part of my team. She's been a part of what's- what's evolved into my own inner community, my own- she's become part of my safe haven secure base experience. And we're going to talk about those words in today's podcast. But Bonnie's been a part of my own personal journey, and kind of the shifts and changes in my own attachment neurobiology. So that should be a really fun, interesting interview that we'll put at the end of this series looking at how attachment changes from more like a theoretical construct. But then we'll look at it from a more kind of practical space as well when I chat with Bonnie. 

Robyn: I'm Robyn Gobbel. And welcome to the Parenting After Trauma podcast where I take the science of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human and translate it for parents of kids who have experienced trauma. And like people are telling me this podcast really applies to parents and humans, sort of regardless of whether they resonate with the idea of having experienced trauma. But that is my primary goal here is to take the science and translate it for parents of kids who have experienced trauma. I'm a psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience working with kids who have experienced trauma and their families. I'm also a self diagnosed brain geek and relationship freak. I study the brain kind of obsessively and even teach the science of interpersonal neurobiology and a certificate program. So I started this podcast 34 episodes ago, although it's actually probably something like 37 episodes ago because I've put a few bonus episodes in here and there and haven't numbered those. When I started this podcast all those episodes ago with the primary purpose of getting you free and accessible support as fast as possible. So that means that this podcast isn't terribly fancy, I don't do a lot of editing. You'll probably hear cockadoodledoo in the background or hens cooking about. Especially today it's morning, which is primetime for cockadoodledoing and hen ‘I just laid an egg’ clucking. If you love this episode, add Parenting After Trauma to your favorite podcast episode, and share it with your friends and colleagues. Be sure to head over to RobynGobbel.com to discover all the free resources I have for you, including a free 45 minute masterclass. On the three questions we should be asking ourselves when faced with challenging behavior and our kids. Is this child regulated, connected, feeling safe? You'll be able to find that 45 minute masterclass. Again, it's free at RobynGobbel.com/masterclass. While you're over on my website, poke around and discover all the other free resources available. And then definitely be sure to check out The Club, a virtual community of connection, co-regulation, and of course, a little education for parents of kids impacted by trauma. A member of The Club, who also works supporting adoptive families recently wrote to me and said, ‘I've been working with families adopting children with trauma for almost 10 years now. And The Club is the best thing I've seen in this community to give families access to the practical tools that they need to parent their children. But even more importantly, to make them feel seen, loved, and supported by a community who truly understands their challenges and struggles. What you are building is nothing short of amazing!’. So that's like the best review ever, and really sort of captures everything I was hoping to accomplish when I started The Club just five short months ago. The Club opens for new members approximately every three months. So snag a spot on the waiting list. And you'll be the first to know when it opens RobynGobbel.com/TheClub. And of course if you love this podcast, I'd be so grateful if you left your review. Many, many thanks to Lisa, who said this over on iTunes. ‘I'm incredibly thankful to have found Robyn’s podcasts and programs. Most trauma informed training appropriately focuses on kids. I'm incredibly grateful to find a resource that equally, if not even more honors, supports and sees the adults involved in the healing process. Thank you, Robyn’. And thank you, Lisa! When y’all leave reviews it increases the chances that more people will find the podcast. And then we're just one step closer to everyone in the whole world understanding the neurobiology of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human

Robyn: Attachment. All right, let's begin this deep dive into attachment. It can be hard sometimes to remember that when attachment theory first began to emerge. It wasn't exactly received with welcome arms and these declarations of ‘aha, this is genius!’. In fact, the psychology and mental health community were initially pretty skeptical and, at times even overtly rejecting, of the idea that a significant portion of the humans that we become is laid in the foundation of our experiences with our caregivers. John Bowlby’s idea that children's development is impacted by how they're cared for was not exactly a popular one. But he persevered. And by now y'all- love know that I love the characteristic of tenacity. Bowlby offered to the world that each of us has this inborn system that we have ultimately labeled our attachment system. But more than that, it was Bowlby who first suggested that a child's attachment to a caregiver ensures the child's physical and emotional survival. So let's pause and just think about that for a second. It was Bowlby, who told us that connection is a biological imperative long before Steven Porges gave us the science to back it up. Now, I'm very of course grateful for Steve Porges and the polyvagal theory and the relational neurosciences that are confirming what Bowlby so boldly and brave offered up. Which is that attachment to a caregiver ensures a child's physical survival. It's a biological imperative we need it to survive. We need connection to survive, physically survive. 

Robyn: So first and foremost, our attachment systems keep us alive. It's so easy to forget this one. But when I think about how attachment theory applies to my work in the office, and in The Club, when I'm teaching, and in my personal life. Remembering that at its core, attachment is about physical survival. Helps you make sense of some sometimes pretty bizarre behavior, including, y’all, in myself. We'll talk about this even more as we explore insecure attachment and, particularly, disorganized attachment as this month goes on. 

Robyn: Another thing that's often forgotten about, or kind of minimized when thinking about attachment is that according to Bowlby, we are all born with a drive to maintain both connection to our caregivers, and ultimately to other humans. And our distance. That attachment theory isn't just about connection. Attachment theory is about distance from connection. Attachment theory is about both togetherness and autonomy. Ultimately, Bowlby came to identify these different drives and how they're expressed. Labeling them safe haven which are behaviors that keep us close and secure base. Which are behaviors that allow us to have autonomy, curiosity, and exploration. Interestingly, a strong secure base, a strong desire for autonomy, curiosity, and exploration relies upon us first having a very strong safe haven. Bowlby noticed that babies have three different attachment behaviors. So first, he talks about how babies have a drive to seek, monitor, and maintain proximity to their caregiver- caregiver. So that's sort of lingo there, right? Seek, monitor, maintain proximity to their caregiver, what does that mean? Babies and children and then ultimately, humans, have behaviors that are designed to keep us close to each other. So tiny little babies? Well, first of all, they're completely adorable. They're literally crafted and created and designed in a way that pulls us towards them and wants us to keep them close. Right? Babies cry, right? And cries, you know, kind of resonate and reverberate in our own nervous systems as- as something that alerts us that there's a problem and then creates in us this drive to help solve that problem, right? So they're- they're these behaviors that babies have to keep us close to them, and drawn to them, and wanting to move towards them. And then eventually, of course, babies develop and their motor skills are such that they can crawl, and creep, and walk, and run toward their caregivers. We also now know, from neuroscience, that as babies are growing and developing, their brains begin to internalize their caregivers. They literally create patterns of neural firings in their own brain that represent their caregiver. So what this means, and why I'm talking about this right now, in seeking monitoring- monitoring and maintaining proximity to their caregiver. Is that as babies grow older and develop and then, ultimately spend a little bit less time, right? In direct proximity with their caregiver, they can seek and maintain proximity to their caregiver in their minds, because they have created an internal representation of this caregiver. They literally have, like, a neural net that represents their caregiver and now they can seek and maintain proximity to their caregiver in their minds.

Robyn: The second attachment behavior that Bowlby talks about is that babies use their attachment figure as their secure base. And so what that means, is that once a baby's needs for proximity are met and their nervous systems are repeatedly soothed. Their innate and inborn natural desire for learning and curiosity and exploration begins to bloom and open up. They begin to explore, go out into the world, and check things out, and then return back to their caregivers. This is an innate part of being human. Humans, when they're regulated and their- their needs for safety and security are met, are designed to move out in the world to seek, and explore, and to be curious. They need that- we need that for our brains to continue to grow and bloom and for us to have, you know, fulfilling satisfying lives. Tiny, tiny babies do this, using their, you know, caregivers as a secure base. First with just their eyes, right? As they look around and explore because they don't have, like, the motor ability to literally move out and explore. But then, of course, as they develop, you know, they're- they develop the opportunity to be able to actually crawl away from their caregiver and go and check things out, and find that thing that's over in the corner of the room, or- or their eyes land on their favorite to- toy and they go toward it, right? A baby's secure base behaviors, these explorer behaviors, are supported by the fact that they know that their caregiver is there and available. And for tiny babies, because we don't leave babies alone without supervision and without caregivers because it's not safe for them. Tiny, tiny babies know that their caregiver is physically there and available. And they use their eyes, they use their motor movements, even in their neck to kind of look over their shoulder and, eventually, you know, to use their legs and arms to return to their caregiver. But as babies grow older, and into toddlers, and preschoolers, and school aged children who are separated from their caregivers more and more and more and more. They have the internalization of their caregiver, in their mind, and in their nervous system. So their secure base behaviors to explore are still supported by the fact that they know their caregiver is there. There meaning internalized into their own nervous system, which allows them to have the felt sense to know that their caregiver is out there in a world somewhere. Maybe they're at school and their caregivers at home or at work. But this internalization of their caregiver allows them to lean into the trust that their caregiver is still there. And this opens up, then, their innate drive for exploration. 

Robyn: Okay. And then Bowlby’s third attachment behavior that he identified was that babies flee to their caregiver when they're afraid. So when babies become overwhelmed and aroused, when they have a need, that they can't meet themselves. Whether it's like a physical need, or an emotional need, you know, they need to be soothed. They turn a back toward their attachment figure, back towards their safe haven, in order to get that need met in order to be soothed, in order to find co-regulation, in order for their big feelings to be met. And then these two systems work in harmony. The- the afraid, like kind of fight flight, danger danger system, works in harmony with this safe haven, find safety, return back to the safe haven system. This creates physical safety, and ultimately, emotion regulation. So that's something to really pay attention to, that as babies become aroused, as they get more accelerator in their nervous system, and potentially begin to feel dysregulated. They have a need to feel soothed, and to have their emotional experience, co-organized and co-regulated by a caregiver, that arousal- that increase in arousal, then it kind of kicks on their attachment system and sends them back toward their safe haven. Okay? So these two systems work together in order to help babies experience, for again. First of all, physical safety. But ultimately, this paves the way and lays the groundwork for what we eventually call emotion regulation. 

Robyn: But then, Bowlby took this all one step further and talks about how, like, as development unfolds, and kids begin to experiment with these behaviors that keep people close, as well as behaviors that allow for their autonomy, and curiosity, and how to balance these relational opposites. Kids begin to develop, and internalize. Meaning they're creating neural networks around these ideas about themselves, and about others, and about the environment. So it's through the attachment experience, and developing attachment and behaviors of safe haven, and secure base, that our kids begin to develop and internalize ideas about themselves, who they are, others, who they are in relationship to others, and their environment. I want you to just hold that thought for a minute. This idea of internalized ideas that emerged from the attachment experience. We're going to come back to those ideas, and we're going to repeatedly come back to them as we further explore secure attachment, insecure attachment, disorganized attachment. 

Robyn: But before we go any further with that idea about the internalization, let's look over briefly, at Mary Ainsworth. Mary Ainsworth. You heard Bethany Saltman talk about Mary Ainsworth in last week's podcast episode. And I highly recommend Bethany’s book which is largely memoir, as well as, it becomes a biography of Mary Ainsworth and I just love the care, and attention, and like reverence, that Bethany offers up to Mary Ainsworth, who is critically important in the history and development of attachment theory. So, Mary Ainsworth, a brilliant scientist, took Bowlby’s theories, and she really did the work that was needed in order for attachment to become a part of what's now our everyday language. So Ainsworth, through her dedication to science, attachment, parent child pairs, and her brilliant, and keen observation skills, learned that attachment systems actually are malleable. That means they can be shaped and changed. She taught us, and this is huge. I mean, this is what really lays the foundation for attachment theories, applicability, both to clinical work and my work as a therapist who relies on attachment theory is kind of my primary theoretical orientation. As well as what this means even more, you know, more practically, more every day than that. Which is in our regular relationships, specifically, our parenting relationships. So what Ainsworth discovered is that attachment is about a parent's non verbal communication and interactions with their babies. Said another way, attachment is not about what parents do for their babies. It's how they do it. That becomes profound. And helps us remember as both clinicians and parents, you know, whatever hat you're wearing as you're listening to this podcast. Is that we need to stay focused on listening to the story that's under the story. Do you remember how Anne Heffron and I talked about that, like at the very, very beginning of this podcast, one of my first episodes. And I talked about listening for the story under the story, and we have this six week workshop that, maybe we'll do again this summer. I don't know. It's not what parents do for their babies. It's how they do it. So then, Ainsworth work- Ainsworth worth. Man, it's a kind of a tongue twister. Ainsworth's work eventually brought to us what we now call the strange situation. Which was a groundbreaking simple, and short laboratory experiment that still holds up today. Decades later, we still consider the strange situation to be, kind of our bedrock. That allows us to begin to classify an infant's attachment to their caregiver. It's- so through Mary Ainsworth’s work with the strange situation, as well as the continued work of a brilliant Mary Main. Both of these Marys and all the amazing contributions that they've made, not just to attachment theory, but- but to humanity. We now have language that describes attachment behavior and it's language that you're likely familiar with, right? Like we have these classifications of secure attachment, insecure anxious, or- or ambivalent attachment, insecure avoidant attachment, and eventually disorganized attachment which was added through- because of the work of Mary Main. We also now understand that we not only can categorize attachment based on secure and insecure, right? There's secure attachment and then there's insecure anxious, insecure avoidant, insecure disorganized. We can also categorize it based on organized and disorganized. And in the organized category, insecure, avoidant, and anxious. Those are organized ways of being in relationship, and then in the disorganized category is disorganized. So you're gonna have to keep coming back and listening to this podcast. And, you know, checking out how this series involves to learn more about secure versus insecure, and then organized versus disorganized. These are all just such important topics that I'm going to give, you know, a podcast episode to each of these different topics. Otherwise, I wouldn't be giving- doing podcast episodes, I'd be, I don't even know what you would call, I mean, we would- we- it would be like a three or four hour episode. That is not what I want to record, nor is that what you want to listen to. 

Robyn: So for now, let's just go back to Bowlby's idea, that attachment lays the foundation for a child's inner working model. Those internalizations about both themselves, their caregiver, and the environment, the world around them. So Bowlby asserted, and you know, decades of attachment research now completely supports, that a child's earliest and most repeated experiences in the attachment relationship shape, their view of, well, basically everything. Babies who would end up being classified as having secure attachment, become kids who are confident in themselves, believe they have power and autonomy, believe that they are good people, even though sometimes they do things that are not good. And believe that, generally speaking, other people are good, too. So do you hear in that, like how, attachment develops into beliefs about themselves, and other people in the world, right? So these beliefs, ultimately become what you could think about as, like our lens. These colored lenses even. That we can never take off, or even know that we're wearing in which we look at everything through. They impact how we see and experience everything. And if I only ever saw the world through gl- green lenses, not only would I see everything tinted green, I wouldn't know, really, that I was seeing everything tinted green. It would just be how I was seeing things. And I wouldn't know that it was different than how other people saw things. But those green lenses would impact how I saw, experienced, and interpreted everything. So that's what our attachment interworking models do for us. Or like these the lenses, that we don't even know we have, that impact how we see, interpret, and experience everything. So now neuroscience and memory science helps us understand that babies do in fact have memory. It's just that they have memory that we'll call implicit, as opposed to expli- explicit. Meaning, babies don't hold on to experiences in explicit memory with this like picture in their minds and this sense of like, ‘oh, I remember that’. But they do, in fact, have memory. They have memory inside their minds that help them predict what's going to happen next. It just doesn't have that sense that you and I have now that we make explicit memories that has this felt sense of ‘oh, I'm remembering something right now’. 

Robyn: So, for example, and I use this example also in the Trauma, Memory, and Behaviors video series. So if you haven't seen that, and you want to understand a little bit more about memory, you might go check that out. It's at RobynGobbel.com/VideoSeries. But the example I give in that, and then I'll offer up again here is that, you know, after having experienced this a couple of times. Babies start to know when their- that when their caregiver opens up the fridge and brings out one specific container, it means that they're going to get something to eat soon. Right? Because they've had positive experiences with being nurtured, and fed, they likely become physically excited about the prospect that they're going to get to eat again, soon. Their digestive system begins working to prepare their body for food and digestion, right? They might move towards their caregiver with delight and anticipation either- either like physically like they kind of toddle toward, or you know, they're strapped into a highchair. They get all excited, and their limbs start really moving, right? So all of this happens, because they have implicit memory, about what that one container means is going to happen next. They certainly don't have this kind of felt sense of remembering, or this thought of like, ‘oh, yesterday when that container was brought out of the fridge, something yummy happened next. And when I get fed by mommy, I feel so loved, and warmed, and nurtured. And she looks at me with such warm eyes, I just can't wait for that to happen again’. That isn’t what happens for babies. But they have an implicit memory that helps them know and anticipate what's going to happen next. And so, of course, the same is true for attachment and relationships. That these repeated experiences of being seen, and safe, and soothed by their caregiver, or not seen, and safe, and soothed by their caregiver, creates implicit memories about themselves. Like I'm good and adored, my voice has power and helps me get what I need. Or implicit memory about their caregiver, which could sound something like ‘I can trust grownups, they aren't perfect, but overall, they helped me get what I need’. And then implicit memory about like the world and the environment that they live in, which sounds something like ‘the world is mostly safe and predictable’. So this is what Bowlby was talking about when he said that attachment leads to babies inner working model. It's these repeated experiences that lay the foundation for how babies experience themselves, other people, and the world. 

Robyn: So, like I mentioned at the beginning, June, for me, is let's explore attachment month, I'm going to be blogging and podcasting about attachment. We're going to look further at like, what is attachment? What's secure versus insecure? Why does that even matter? Right? How do these different experiences and attachment develop? And then, ultimately, of course, what everybody wants to know is. How do we change it if it's not secure? So if you haven't already, hit subscribe to this podcast, you're gonna want to make sure that you do that now. There's going to be more than one episode a week. I got a lot to cover in one very short month. Thank you, thank you for taking the time to connect with me today. And for caring about kids impacted by trauma. I am so, so, so grateful for you. If you're new here, definitely subscribe to this podcast in your podcast player. And then head over to RobynGobbel.com/masterclass where you can watch a free three part video series on What Behavior Really Is and How To Change It. Please take a moment to share this podcast with your colleagues, friends, grandparents, teachers, everybody. The sooner the whole world understands the neurobiology of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human. The sooner our kids are going to live in a world that sees them for who they really are. Completely amazing. Sometimes- sometimes a lot struggling. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in today. I will see you here next time.