A Safe and Secure Attachment Begins with our Parents.
By Susan-Amanda Schratter, MFT
A safe and secure attachment with your parents or other primary caregivers is essential for your emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Such a relationship allows you to embody a healthy sense of self, gives you the ability to regulate or manage emotions and, wonderfully enough, a felt sense that the world is a safe, friendly, supportive, good place to be. Moreover, this becomes the template for future relationships and how you respond to what shows up in your life. Ideally you form a secure attachment with both parents but when not possible, with one caring adult is sufficient.
There are four primary attachment styles:
So, let’s begin. As a human being you are wired for a safe and secure attachment with your parents. You expected it, the mechanisms are built in and you will signal your parents when your needs for nurturing, food, sleep, comfort, stimulation, play, in short, any human need is activated. If your parents respond reasonably well you will feel a safe secure bond with them. If your parents do not respond reasonably well you will adapt and develop a different attachment style in order to maintain a relationship with your parents on whom your very survival depends.
In a safe secure attachment you will find:
A warm positive flow of energy back and forth between you and your parents that generates safety and love. This is known as a “positive enough holding environment.” Disruptions and ruptures occur for sure, but repairs are made to bring your relationship back into this flow of warmth, ease and connection.
Nine Attributes of a Secure Attachment:
Knowing what the key elements for secure attachment can help you create secure attachments with your partner, children, other relatives and friends. If you did not grow up experiencing a secure attachment you can develop one now for the wiring is within you.
One excellent way of bringing a secure attachment into your life where you feel emotionally safe and heard is through counseling. You will find this extremely healing and the effects will spill into your every day life If this is something you would like to explore for yourself please contact me, Susan-Amanda Schratter, MFT. 415. 302-8185. My offices are in Novato and Sebastopol, I am available for Telehealth and phone sessions Some insurances accepted including Kaiser, Medi-Cal (Partnership Health), Blue Sheild/ Blue Cross and Magellan.
By Susan-Amanda Schratter, MFT
A safe and secure attachment with your parents or other primary caregivers is essential for your emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Such a relationship allows you to embody a healthy sense of self, gives you the ability to regulate or manage emotions and, wonderfully enough, a felt sense that the world is a safe, friendly, supportive, good place to be. Moreover, this becomes the template for future relationships and how you respond to what shows up in your life. Ideally you form a secure attachment with both parents but when not possible, with one caring adult is sufficient.
There are four primary attachment styles:
- Secure
- Avoidant
- Anxious/ Ambivalent
- Disorganized
So, let’s begin. As a human being you are wired for a safe and secure attachment with your parents. You expected it, the mechanisms are built in and you will signal your parents when your needs for nurturing, food, sleep, comfort, stimulation, play, in short, any human need is activated. If your parents respond reasonably well you will feel a safe secure bond with them. If your parents do not respond reasonably well you will adapt and develop a different attachment style in order to maintain a relationship with your parents on whom your very survival depends.
In a safe secure attachment you will find:
A warm positive flow of energy back and forth between you and your parents that generates safety and love. This is known as a “positive enough holding environment.” Disruptions and ruptures occur for sure, but repairs are made to bring your relationship back into this flow of warmth, ease and connection.
Nine Attributes of a Secure Attachment:
- Attunement. A lovely word. It makes one think of music and how beautiful it sounds when all its parts, voices, instruments and melody work harmoniously together, one responding in turn to another to create good music. Attunement means your parents are accurately reading your “signal cries” for comfort, warmth, nourishment, play, information, help, fun, soothing, rest, protection, in short, all manner of human needs. They interpret them, albeit sometimes through trial and error correctly and respond in a significantly satisfying. The response is clean, clear, unobtrusive, caring and appropriate. With this you feel known, safe, secure and loved. Moreover, attunement is actually part of an interacting “dialogue” between you and your parent whereby you each positively influence and affect the other.
- Attachment Gaze: This refers to being gazed at lovingly, warmly and delightedly, first by your mother while breastfeeding or bottle feeding (Dads too) and continuing on through childhood and adolescence by both parents. You drink this gaze in. It is calming, reassuring, connecting, affirming. Within your internal world you construct that you live in the hearts and minds of your parents.
- Emotional Regulation: You need your parents help you regulate your feelings so they do not become too intense or overwhelming. Parents help you make sense of feelings, provide a contextual narrative, and when necessary, guide you to take appropriate action. The learning of self-regulation is a long process growing over the course of childhood and adulthood. Well regulated adults make for well regulated children.
- Predictability: You have a consistent experience of your primary caregiver being reasonably predictably emotionally safe as opposed to experiencing a lot of extreme drama and chaos followed by a vacant or minimal response. Difficult feelings are expressed within a healthy range of expression. Additionally, predictable routines and family rituals are in place giving a sense of order, security, continuity and rhythm.
- Touch: Physical touch is essential for babies for without it they will not thrive. As children, teens and adults we do best with loving touch. Affectionate, safe touch communicates volumes. It calms and soothes the nervous system and strengthens the feelings of love, closeness, caring and connection.
- Play: Playfulness and humor, humor not at anyone’s expense, goes a long ways in building a good attachment. Play engages both your heart and mind upending delight, a lightness of being and laughter. One of the best ways to connect and release tension while having fun, play causes a cascade of chemicals to be released in your body that make you feel good inside.
- Vocal Prosody: You are naturally drawn to friendly, warm voices. They signal safety and goodness and keeps you relax and socially engaged. Shrilled, sharp, loud and booming voices sets off your alarm system, causing you to freeze, move away or aggressively forward.
- Trust: Trust is formed when your needs for physical and emotional safety and security are consistently met. In the event of a rupture in your connection, your parents take steps to repair the rupture which serves to deepen trust.
- Repair: Every close relationship is going to have its ruptures, beginning with your parents. This is your first training ground for learning how relationship disruptions are repaired. It is impossible for your parents to be as present and responsive as you want them to be. Inevitably, sometimes at important moments they blow it. They yell, become abrupt, get impatient and say things that are hurtful. When your parents take time to repair a rupture by listening and responding to you with empathy, talking about what happened, apologizing for losing it, the rupture is repaired and your feeling of closeness is restored. This is a major key to building trust in all relationships. The more ruptures are repaired the sturdier is your ground of attachment.
Knowing what the key elements for secure attachment can help you create secure attachments with your partner, children, other relatives and friends. If you did not grow up experiencing a secure attachment you can develop one now for the wiring is within you.
One excellent way of bringing a secure attachment into your life where you feel emotionally safe and heard is through counseling. You will find this extremely healing and the effects will spill into your every day life If this is something you would like to explore for yourself please contact me, Susan-Amanda Schratter, MFT. 415. 302-8185. My offices are in Novato and Sebastopol, I am available for Telehealth and phone sessions Some insurances accepted including Kaiser, Medi-Cal (Partnership Health), Blue Sheild/ Blue Cross and Magellan.
