As babies, we have attachment experiences from the moment we are born. While this is not the case for everyone, most of us immediately experience being laid across our mothers’ chests right after birth. That heart-to-heart first meeting paves the way for other attachment experiences:
• Being held
• Being fed
• Eye contact
• Being rocked
Babies form positive attachments from all of the above. Likewise, parental interactions may also be negative.
Before babies can talk, they keenly perceive parental body tension and rough movements. They can tell when a parent is irritable, anxious, or scared.
As a result, babies develop either a secure or traumatic attachment to their parents. Of course, we don’t remember them as explicit memories, but as emotional memories and behavioral responses. Even though we experienced them in the earliest days of our lives, they are often related to our feelings, emotions, and behaviors in adulthood.
Early Attachment
The first two years of life are critical for humans because this is when we have attachment experiences.
Babies that have positive early attachment experiences tend to have a greater capacity to tolerate stress as adults than those who did not. Meaning, these adults find it easier to self-soothe and be soothed by others when facing distress.
Likewise, babies that have negative early attachment experiences absorb them, and they become a part of who they will become as adults. This is often evidenced in behaviors like:
• Tensing up as a response to human touch.
• Not being able to make eye contact.
• Not wanting to converse with strangers.
Trauma therapists can tell a lot by a client’s body language. Sitting far away from the therapist, or turning their body away when talking are signs of possible negative early attachment experiences.
Type D Attachment
Babies and children instinctively look for their parents in the face of dangerous situations. For a child whose parents are neglectful or abusive, they are mentally “trapped.” The fear they experience as a result of how their parents treat them causes them to want to be closer to them because they need comfort.
In 1990, Main and Hesse called this Type D attachment or disorganized attachment. In short, a child’s natural source of comfort and safety is also dangerous. It’s easy to see how Type D attachment can evoke anxiety in children that carries over into adulthood. Janina Fisher described it this way in her book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors:
“When the source of danger is the attachment figure, the mind and body must find a way to maintain an attachment bond while simultaneously mobilizing animal defense survival responses to protect the child. These two powerful innate drives (to attach and to defend) each remain highly activated, one drive dominating at times and then the other.”
Trauma victims often struggle with getting close to others. In their minds, getting too close is dangerous, but being too distant seems equally as dangerous. It is not surprising that so many battle relationship problems until their attachment issues from early childhood are addressed and resolved.
Trauma Therapy Can Help
If you struggle with wanting to be close to the people you love but feeling afraid of that closeness at the same time, trauma therapy can help. It may seem as though you are stuck in an endless cycle, but understanding early attachment and how it has impacted you may help you repair damaged relationships and form stronger ones in the future.
If you would like to make an appointment, please contact me.
