When there has been a consistent, felt experience of safety and connection, a secure attachment forms, and when this has been missing, an insecure attachment is a result.
As children, we create adaptive strategies to get our needs met. These strategies have often helped us survive when we are young, but they can become problematic as adults.
Take the only child of career-focused adults. It might be that growing up, the only way the child received attention was when playing the piano superbly or doing well in tests. Maybe there was little touch or affirmation. The child pours all their efforts into different achievements to feel loved in that environment. As an adult, that child might find themselves highly competitive at work, with work addiction, and in a relationship with someone who is also highly career-focused, just like their mother and father—in some subconscious way, still trying to get their mother and father’s approval.
Sometimes we might cognitively know our pattern as adults but have little success changing it. Attachment patterns are rooted in the nervous system and can be changed over time. Some of the most powerful work I know of to re-wire the nervous system and work with implicit memory is somatic work.
This is why I am so excited about The Body lab’s upcoming Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate starting on the 30th of January 2022. Click here to read more
