Blog - November 17, 2007

The Role of Attachment

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Just as the womb is our home prior to birth, attachments are

our "second womb", the relational home in which we

continue our human development after birth.

Essentially, attachments are our relationships...our physical and emotional connections to others. They are our "womb after the womb" and are literally critical for our survival after birth. Their health and presence also continue to be important in our early years for normal emotional and cognitive development.

Some rather famous research was done in a Russian orphanage after one of the world wars in which scientists were trying to discover why so many babies in orphanages were dying at that time. They were unable to discover any reason until a rather interesting finding came to light.

One premature infant, whose early birth should have put him at severe risk, seemed to thrive as babies around him died. In frustration researchers put a 24-hour watch on this baby to see if they could discover why he did so well. It turns out that he was so tiny that he fit into the pocket of the night cleaning woman who talked and sang to him as she cleaned. This human interaction caused him to live. As a result, babies whose bottles had been laid beside them in their cribs for feeding were picked up and fed by nurses and volunteers. They were talked to, smiled at, played with, and sung to. And they began to live.

Human contact and relationships are necessary for life to proceed normally for all of us. In many ways our attachments provide either a healthy or unhealthy environment in which we either grow or wither.

Trauma interrupts and hinders normal growth, and there are basically two types of trauma that interfere with healthy attachments. The first is neglect. This is a passive, though very destructive, type of trauma that profoundly affects the brain's cognitive and emotional development. The second type of trauma is active abuse, either physical, sexual, or emotional, etc.

What follows is an outline of some of the effects of trauma on attachment and development. It is a compilation of information from recent workshops, as well as other sources and my own thinking.

When attachment is interrupted by trauma it makes one...

• UNWILLING to attach to others (emotional issues)

  • Fear and terror results from trauma, and one is afraid of others
  • One develops destructive core beliefs about themselves, others, and about safety
• UNABLE to attach (biological issues)
  • The neurobiology needed for attachment doesn't develop, and empathy and the ability to understand self and others is impaired, as well as a host of other effects listed below

What this looks like

• UNWILLING to attach to others (emotional issues)

  • First, a defective sense of oneself

    • Confusion about self; a lack of cohesive self (feeling like one type of person one minute, then very differently the next)
    • Negative core beliefs about self or defensive grandiose beliefs (often experienced in alternating swings of mood and thought)
    • Lack of sense of competence socially and in other ways
    • One may feel deadened (not very alive or desirable) or out of control (overaroused)
      • One may have l ittle experience of ''humble power'' relating to others - their impact on others simply by their presence and expression of their personality
    • No sense of strength, worth, likeability; or the opposite - feeling powerful, destructive, and dangerous
      • Seeing the "missing parts" of ones personalities in others, rather than in themselves
    • External focus -- Since the inner self is unexperienced and unexpressed, or badly expressed, and a sense of potency or impact on others isn't experienced and the person feels he or she is unattractive and can't compete, they will focus on their own external appearance, either via bodily appearance (sexual attractiveness) or wealth, etc.
  • Defective sense of others
    • Idealizing, envying others
    • Seeing others as desireable, but unattainable -- or scary and not to be trusted, or both
  • Defective experience of relationships
    • One e xperiences relationships as abandoning, betraying, controlling, and abusive
    • Poor sense of sharing, bonding, community
    • Phobic detachment from others (avoidant personality)
      • Lack of eye contact & energetic contact
    • ...OR tendency towards enmeshment (love addict)
    • Poor boundaries -- too many, too few, or chaotic
    • Unskilled in managing conflict
    • Fear of relationships being insubstantial, suffocating, or impossible to obtain
    • Attachment hunger
  • Dysregulated affect, thought, & behavior
    • Hyper/hypo-arousal (having no energy or being hyper in emotion, behavior, or thinking)
    • Lack of resiliance--tendency to collapse emotionally or act out
    • Poor information processing--distortions in thinking, feeling, behaving
    • Chaotic affect
    • Lack of sense of safety
    • Shame, guilt
    • Rigid or nonexistant spirituality
    • Prone to addiction or rigid/extreme spirituality to manage anxiety/affect
      • Attachment problems are frequent in religious cults and in some religious fundamentalism, including religious communities with extreme boundaries
    • Inability to manage appropriately the need for attention, contact, and caring for others (sexual promiscuity, compulsive behavior, sexual anorexia, codependency)

   

• UNABLE to attach (biological issues)

  • In neurobiological terms

    • This material is rather technichal, so don't worry if you have no understanding of it. I put here for those who have some background in this area.
  • Problems with the right prefrontal cortex, whose healthy development is essential for good relationships
  • Problems with dorsolateral frontal cortex, also implicated in social cognition
  • Problems with the amygdala and hippocampus
    • Amygdala decides when information goes to cortex or directly to action
    • People who live in amygdala-bound "direct" system live in overload (too much stress)
    • Chronic stress damages the hippocampus

  • Problems with right hemisphere (RH) in general

    • RH is devoted to affect regulation
  • Habitual criminals show up to 25% less RH density
  • RH is 1st to develop
  • Right orbitofrontal cortex (ROC) is important in all this
    • Failure of ROC to develop means lack of capacity to inhibit fear & rage
    • Good news is that ROC retains plasticity throughout life more than any other part of cortex

The path of healing

• Therapy
  • Develop core beliefs in worth
  • Gradually increasing positive experiences of adequate performance/competence

• Neurofeedback (NF) - from notes from a workshop by Sebern Fisher, EEG Spectrum
  • Misc Info
    • NF serves attachment by reducing fear & reactivity
    • Attachment disorders can take 300-400 sessions - home training is needed to make financially feasible
    • Right hemisphere memory of early trauma is not accessible to being verbalized. It surfaces through body,  dreams, or sudden recognition.
    • Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personality) - dissociation stops around 60 sessions
  • Protocols
    • For fear - train right frontal
      • Quiets fear in most
      • More exporation of right frontal training is needed in our field
      • People who don't remember dreams go from delta to theta to beta.  Need training in alpha
    • For attachment issues - train rt temporal lobes

     

  • Practical issues
  • We can never be better than our brain - no matter how much we do psychotherapy
  • For some people it is possible to do psychotherapy & NF in 75 min block together
  • Alpha Theta training (a special type of NF) can be helpful for PTSD

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David C. Bissette, Psy.D.        Alexandria, VA       703-705-6161 

© 2007 David C. Bissette, Psy.D.