We are all creatures of Attachment and in fact our brains are wired for Attachment because of our evolutionary history or divine endowment of survival in social groups. However, we hardly think the relationships in our life need explanation since they are naturally part of every aspect of our life – unless relationships are going badly. We can feel the powerful emotions of Attachment when our children are difficult to discipline, our partner is unhappy, or extended family members become estranged.
Our closest relationships are emotional relationships because even before we begin to use language, we are connected to the world through our senses. We are becoming equipped as a sensory being before birth and the senses communicate directly with our inner emotional brain. Whomever cares for us in infancy has the opportunity to become our primary caregiver. This caregiver knows us best, is connected to our heart strings, can read our body language and facial expressions and the sounds we make, without having to ask any questions. Supremely lucky are those infants with more than one committed caregiver!
None of us can escape the most basic questions about who we are in relationship to others like; What is a family? Who am I related to? What would my mother say? How does my father accomplish that? Consider this: even when a parent is lost to us because of death, mental illness, or changes in family configuration – our parents are never completely out of our mind’s eye and we wonder about them as a way to understand ourselves. Attachment is central to our developing self-identity.
That’s why we should pay attention to Attachment.
Devon Wolfe
Applied Attachment thinking for schools (and parents too!)
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