How Secure Attachment Develops: A Closer Look (Part 2 of 6) {EP 35}

Robyn: If you love this podcast, I'd be so, so grateful if you left a review. The first review I received about the podcasts said that the podcast was changing their family. So a user named DarkBean, which is a fabulous user name by the way, went on to say “I highly recommend this podcast to anyone working with children who have experienced trauma. I suggested it to all my friends, your foster and adoptive parents. Truly any parent would benefit from Robyn's voice in their ear. It will help you parent your children from a place of seeing their true needs as well as provide you with tools for self compassion, which is so necessary in this hard work”. DarkBean, oh my gosh, thank you so much. I'm especially grateful that my message of self compassion is being heard. When y’all leave reviews. It increases the chances that more people will find the podcast. And then we are just one step closer to everyone in the whole world understanding the neurobiology of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human. 

Robyn: All right, so here we are looking at attachments again. And we're gonna do this all throughout the month of June. I think that one of the most striking awe inspiring, and honestly, extremely overwhelming pieces of research to emerge from attachment research is that 85% of the time a child attachment experience will parallel the working model of attachment of the principal person caring for them. So that was a statement made by researcher Eric Hesse, who made the statement that based on all of his research and observation and analysis of his research, like what they found in doing attachment research. So what that means is that 85% of the time, kids have the same inner working model with regard to attachment. So that's secure attachment, insecure anxious, insecure avoidant, disorganized attachment, as the primary person caring for them. In the world of research, 85% is a huge correlation. Huge, huge, huge! It is very relevant and eye opening. It sends this message of like, well pay attention. There's something here there's something here in this data, that almost certainly wasn't an accident. 

Robyn: So since this is true, that our kids are very much likely to develop the same attachment style as we have, it makes sense for us to first look at what secure attachment means in adults. If you're new here, and you haven't heard the previous episode, on this series on attachment, which I think I called the Basics of Attachment or back to basics or something like that. You might want to head back and listen to that one first. Or at least when this one is over, go back in your podcast player and listen to the episode prior to this one. And then the episode prior to the prior one, so two episodes ago, was when I interviewed Bethany Saltman, who was the author- who is the author of a Strange Situation. A memoir about her experience exploring the science of attachment slash, like a biography, even on Mary Ainsworth, who was extremely important in the origins of attachment theory. So if you haven't listened to those yet, you're gonna want to go back either now or when this episode is over. 

Robyn: So because this is a podcast and not a research paper, I'm going to just summarize and put into normal language some of what we know about adults who have inner worlds that are organized in a way that we would describe them as having secure attachment. So generally speaking, adults with secure attachment have many, or even most, of these five characteristics. And y’all there's way more than just five characteristics. These are just the ones I'm going to talk about today. So the first characteristic: the adults with inner world organized in a way that we would describe as secure attachment. I know that's a really clunky way to say that. But I actually think it matters to think about attachment as the way our inner worlds have organized, as opposed to just saying adults with secure attachment. But one of the characteristics that adults who have inner world organized in a way that we would describe as secure attachment is x-ray vision goggles, that's what I call them. If I was maybe more of an academic or just a little bit more refined, or maybe if I just didn't spend my entire career working with children, I might call these x-ray visions, quote, unquote, reflective functioning. So reflective functioning is well researched, and identified, and defined in attachment theory and research. But what adults with reflective functioning, or adults with good x-ray vision goggles, have is the ability to stay to look past behavior. And to stay really curious about what's going on inside their child that is leading to that behavior. So they can see the behavior like a cue or a clue, which y'all we talk about that on this podcast all the time, right? Like the behavior is just information about what's happening on the child's inner world, right? So it's just what we can see. So this is an easier skill for adults with secure attachment to be able to see past behavior, stay really curious about what's going on inside that is leading to that behavior. They also have the ability to recognize that their own unique history and experiences impacts how they see their child and their child's behavior. So basically, they have like x-ray vision into both their child and themselves. And are able to understand that the- their own experiences color the way they see everything, including their child. We talked about this in the interview that I did with Marshall Lyles. So if this is a topic that piques your interest, you might want to kind of scroll back and find that interview with Marshall Lyles. Marshall is so brilliant to talking about these x-ray vision goggles. 

Robyn: Okay, so that was one of the characteristics of an adult whose inner world is organized in a way that we would describe a secure attachment. The second characteristic we're going to talk about is emotion regulation. When well, certainly no human, regardless of their attachment style is regulated, emotionally regulated all the time, definitely not. Adults have a secure attachment have a pretty wide capacity for their ability to stay regulated in the face of their child's dysregulation. Now, this is super important because if a crying baby who has a nervous system of dysregulation, always created significant dysregulation in their caregiver, the baby wouldn't get soothed, right? So a securely attached adult can, I mean, at least part of the time, notice their child's dysregulation make meaning out of it, like, ‘my baby is crying and needs help, I need to soothe them’. And then they can stay regulated themselves, in order to be able to sue them provide the co-regulation that child needs. So that adult kind of maintains this ability to keep a foot in both worlds. A foot and ‘Oh, my child is dysregulated and needs help’. And I can feel it enough that it matters to me, if I couldn't feel it at all, it wouldn't matter to me, I wouldn't do anything about it. But I can feel their dysregulation enough that it matters to me. But I can stay, you know, I can stay regulated enough myself that I don't get flooded by their dysregulation get dysregulated myself, because then of course, a dysregulated adult is never very effective as soothing a dysregulated child. So number two, emotion regulation. 

Robyn: Number three, and the characteristics we're going to talk about today is responsiveness. Adults with secure attachment can respond to what is like actually, really happening in the moment in front of them, and adjust accordingly, based on what happens in the very next moment. So the brain is an anticipation organ, like a brain is always attempting to anticipate what happens next. And there are some mental flexibility in adults who have secure attachment and their ability to, yes, anticipate what's about to happen next. And maybe that's right, and maybe that's wrong. And if they were wrong, and what they anticipated what was about to happen next, they can adjust, they can be flexible, and sort of shift to like, oh, well, x happened instead of y. And then they make new anticipations based on what really happened instead of just what they were expecting to happen. This makes adults with secure attachment pretty good at the dance of relationships, or like the serve and return of relationships. So like, you know, even if we looked at like physical serve and return. If I was playing tennis with somebody, and I was only focused on my own experience that I- you know, when I hit the ball in this one way, it was my anticipation it was going to get hit back to me in another way, and therefore I was only going to be prepared to hit the ball again if it came back to me in the way I was expecting. Well, that would make me a terrible tennis player, which in fact I am. But I don't think it has to do with this exactly. I just have really poor hand eye coordination. But if I want to be successful at playing like a game of serve and return like literally tennis. In my office with kids, I play lots and lots of balloon volleyball, which is kind of like tennis. I mean, it's you know, got a lot of serve and return going on. So if I want to be good at that, I want to hang in that game and honestly have it be fun. I need to be able to make moment by moment adjustments based on what actually happened. How does that ball- how does that tennis ball get served back to me? How does that balloon come back to me? Which is very likely not going to be in exactly the way I was expecting it. And so I have to be able to adjust to it, and then volley it back, volley back what I'm given instead of what I'm expecting to be given, okay? So that's responsiveness, having that ability to kind of dance in the relationship and adjust to the serve and return. 

Robyn: The fourth characteristic is flexibility, that adults with secure attachment have some flexibility in their nervous systems, which allows them to be pretty good at providing structure and predictability for their kids, and in their family, and in their relationships, and even for themselves, get comfortable veering off of it when necessary. So this is similar, of course, to the responsiveness, these two work together this responsiveness and- and flexibility. That adults of secure attachment are good at and understand the importance of structure and predictability. Yet inside that structure and predictability, there is flexibility. And the flexibility and ease that allows us to kind of shift and change as needed, while staying inside our window of tolerance, right? That like when things don't go the way that we planned, you know, that's stressful. So an adult with a nice wide window of tolerance and a history of, you know, predominantly experiences of secure attachment or a secure state of mind, we could say. An inner world that's organized in a way, right, that we would describe as secure attachment has the flexibility. They can adjust to those unexpected moments and stressors while staying inside their window of tolerance. 

Robyn: And then the fifth characteristic we're going to talk about today about adults in secure attachment. And again, I'm not even kind of attempting to say like this is an all inclusive list, not at all. There's just the ones that I'm talking about today. The fifth characteristic is that adults with secure attachment have the capacity for relationship repair. And this is so, so, so important. I mean, this might be one of my favorite things to emerge from attachment research. Is that no body. No caregiver. No- no nobody is perfect, right? And secure attachment actually doesn't come from an adult who meets their child's needs all the time. Right secure attachment is actually largely born out of the times when a caregiver initiates a repair with their child, after they've had some sort of rupture. Adults with secure attachment can see that the rupture has occurred, right? And then can stay regulated enough through the vul- vulnerability of acknowledging that rupture. Humble enough to offer the repair, yet strong enough to remain the child's secure base. I mean, y'all, we've talked about this on the podcast, like none of us are perfect parents. Perfect parenting isn't even ideal. Imperfect parenting is- is first of all, that's just what it is. So there's literally no reason to try to do anything else, because it's not even possible. But it is in the moments of imperfect parenting, it's in the moments of falling out of attunement with our kids or doing something that we would call messing up or regretting. And then noticing the impact that that behavior that we did had on our kids, that that impact matters to us. Right? I- I've hurt my child, I've hurt their feelings. My child's, you know, really been hurt by the way that I behaved. I noticed it. It matters to me. And then I can tolerate the vulnerability of coming back and saying, ‘Oh, buddy, I'm sorry, that happened that never should have happened’, you know, something like that. That is probably one of the most important pieces in secure attachment. And if we really got nitty gritty at what it means to be the child of an adult who has the capacity for repair. What that means is as the child I'm experiencing being seen first, or you see me, you feel that we're off. You know the difference between being attuned and misattuned with me. It matters to you and you are willing to initiate something that helps us get reconnected. I matter to you that much. That you're willing to figure out a way to help us get back in touch with one another. And that is just such a profound experience for a child to have. So I think when you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense why an adult who has the capacity for repair is that fifth characteristic that I'm talking about this morning. 

Robyn: So just as a quick, quick review, those five characteristics I just talked about was one, x-ray vision goggles. Two, emotion regulation. Three, responsiveness. Four, flexibility. And five, the capacity for repair. Adults with secure attachment, read their kids cues, stay present, engaged, and regulated even when their child is dysregulated and distressed, right? And then they can provide the soothing that their child needs in order for them to fall back into regulation. Adults with secure attachment are intuitively perceptive also, when to step in and help a struggling child, and when to allow the child to experience some stress. So an example that easily comes to mind for me, maybe based on just the memories I have of parenting my own child, but also of thinking about doing therapy with kids in the playroom. And when a really young child is struggling to do something, you know, figure out how to put a puzzle together, figure out how to use scissors, open a drawer that's particularly sticky and isn't opening. I have a lot of memories of that happening in my- in my playroom with like the arts and crafts drawers where they were- they were stored, right? An adult with a state of mind that resembles secure attachment is witnessing that struggle, right? Encourages the child's ability to manage that struggle, right? So doesn't rush in immediately doesn't immediately alleviate that child's struggle. But also it kind of intuitively knows like when that child becomes so distressed or struggling so much that it's time to step in. 

Robyn: So thinking about like the puzzle example, right? Like if I'm watching a toddler, do a puzzle. And you know, I want to let them struggle, I want to let them like figure out like, ‘Oh, it doesn't go here. Oh, it doesn't go here. Oh, it doesn't go here’. And eventually that struggle starts to cause some frustration, because it's frustrating to get something wrong over, and over, and over again and not have it like go the way you're expecting to. Which would be the like, the puzzle piece to go in perfectly, right? So as that happens more repeatedly, some frustration and struggle continues to escalate, in the child. And as a caregiver with a history of, you know, predominantly experiences of secure attachment, I have this kind of intuitive sense about knowing, like how long that struggle is good for the child. And then I kind of have this intuitive sense of when is it time to step in, and maybe, you know, adjust that puzzle piece and slightly to increase the child's chances of finding exactly how it goes in. But just do something to kind of ease the struggle a little, because there's a lot of learning that takes place once we're totally blown outside our window of tolerance. But we do need to have like a little stress and a little frustration in our nervous systems to learn and grow. And so if I, as an adult, have a neurobiology of secure attachment, that is pretty intuitive, right? I don't have to think a ton about, oh, this- this struggle is useful for my child. Oh, I think the struggle just became not useful for my child anymore. Now you're- you're noticing, also that I'm using some words like intuitively and- and really what I want to say about that is that we- if we came to adulthood, without predominantly experiences of secure attachment, we can learn these things. And then maybe we do have to think through, more deliberately, how much should I allow my child to struggle with this puzzle piece before I step in and intervene? And it doesn't necessarily come, you know, really easily and innately from this very intuitive place. But that's okay, too. We can learn some of these- these different ways of being with our kids. And that, not only helps lay the foundation for secure attachment with themselves, but it also is, you know, making steps towards what the researchers call the quote unquote, earned security with ourselves. Okay?

Robyn: So then babies who have caregivers with inner worlds that are organized in a way that we would call securely attached. Those babies, you know, become kids and ultimately adults with what we would label secure attachment. And they have characteristics of, and again, this is not an inclusive list, but these babies have, eventually children become adults, who also have characteristics of emotion regulation, that's age appropriate, of course. Empathy, insight, distress, tolerance, impulse control, relational repair. So again, this is just a really short list, and largely borrowed from Dan Siegel's research on the relationship between brain integration and secure attachment. There's a lot of characteristics that we could bullet point out and list and talk about, with- you know- about kids with a secure attachment, but those are just the six that I've you know, bulleted out here, emotion regulation, empathy, insight, distress tolerance, impulse control, relational repair.

Robyn: Do you remember last episode, that previous podcast about, you know, kind of back to basics and attachment? I talked about how a child's inner working model is born out of their attachment experiences. So kids with secure attachment have interworking models that include statements that sound like, ‘I'm a good kid who sometimes struggles. I can use my voice to get the help that I need. People are generally good. People who will respond to my voice and help me. Generally speaking, the world is a mostly safe and good place that I can figure out. When things aren't safe, other people will help me. It's okay to be vulnerable and trust others. When other people do hurt me, they care enough to make a repair. Our relationship will be okay’. Now I'm known I know I've given you a lot of like bullet points and lists in today's episode, you can head over to my blog, and there is a corresponding blog article that is much more thorough than even what I'm going to put in the show notes. You can- so go to RobynGobbel.com/blog, you'll look for this secure attachment article on my blog, it's going to be labeled article Two of Six in this attachment series. So head over there, and you can find a blog article, and then it will have all these bullet points that'll help you remember everything that I've talked about. You can even send it to somebody if you want to, especially that somebody isn't really a podcast listener. Okay? So that's a great place because I- you probably are like, I'm not going to remember any of this or all these bullet lists. Yep. So head to head over to my blog for that. 

Robyn: So if you think about the bullet list I just gave you about the inner working models of kids with secure attachment, you can probably imagine, then what the inner working model of children with insecure attachment might be, or in what ways they might be different. We're going to explore that more thoroughly next week, the inner working models of kids with experiences of insecure attachment. But I imagine that you can already begin to consider how these inner working models, which you can remember are completely implicit and out of awareness. The inner working model is like the- the colored lenses that we have on that color, how we see everything we don't even know we have them on. Right? These interworking models, of course, have a pretty significant impact on behavior.  If I believe I'm a good kid who sometimes struggles, that changes my behavior from a kid who believes I'm a bad kid. At my core, I'm bad. I have bad behavior, because I'm bad. That greatly impacts children's behaviors then when they're working from these two different kinds of inner working models. So as the series unfolds, we'll be able to see more clearly how behaviors emerge from these different places of attachment. And then we'll be able to eventually see what are some of the things that we could do to start beginning to kind of heal, and integrate, and move towards more security and attachment and more security in these inner working models, right? Because I think we can all agree that an inner working model of ‘I'm a good kid who sometimes struggles and when I do struggle, and there's a relationship repair, we can figure that out’. You know, we can repair that relationship, and our relationships gonna be okay, right? Like that's an inner working model that will take somebody so far in their relational world, as opposed to an inner working model of, ‘I'm a bad kid, and I have bad behaviors simply because I'm bad’. 

Robyn: Okay, So that's where we're going to start next week, we're going to start with looking at insecure anxious attachment, which is sometimes called insecure ambivalent, and then we'll move into insecure avoidant next week. As a reminder, throughout the entire month of June, I'm going to be blogging and podcasting, all about attachment. We started with my interview with Bethany Saltman and then moved into just getting back to basics. What is attachment? What’s secure versus insecure? Why does it matter? And how does attachment develop? And then, of course, ultimately, how do we change it? If you haven't already, hit subscribe to this podcast, make sure you do that now, so that you don't miss any of the installments in this June Deep Dive into attachment. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to connect with me today for caring for kids impacted by trauma. I am so, so, so grateful for you. If you're new here, hit subscribe to the 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, anyone, everyone. The sooner the whole world understands the neurobiology of being relationally socially and behaviorally human, the sooner our kids will live in a world that sees them for who they really are. Completely amazing kids who sometimes struggle. You guys notice, what I'm talking about is shifting the inner working models of everyone so we can see ourselves and our kids as amazing people who sometimes struggle. Thanks for tuning in today. I will see you next time.