Through his intensive study of attachment, Bowlby identified four hallmarks of early attachments between mother and child:

Safe Haven: When a child feels threatened or upset, he or she can return to the caregiver for support and soothing

Home Base: The parent, or later the significant other, helps to create a secure, dependable platform from which the child can discover and explore the world.

Proximity: The attachment bond encourages the child to stay near the parent or significant other, which increases a child's chances of survival.

Separation Distress: When the child is separated from the caregiver, she/he reacts with distress and is upset.

Bowlby's theories of attachment and child development have been hugely significant, influencing colleagues including Mary Ainsworth, who developed her "strange situation" assessment model, where a researcher observes a child's reactions when a mother leaves her child alone in an unfamiliar situation, both during separation and also on mother's return.

Ainsworth identified three types of attachment: Secure, anxious-avoidant, and anxious-resistant, later adding a fourth style, insecure-disorganized. Subsequent research conducted with these styles has strongly concluded that early attachment styles help predict patterns of relational behavior in adulthood, and can be mitigated through psychotherapy experiences designed to counteract early attachment problems.

Current attachment research extends in two directions: Interest in the neuroscience of attachment, and exploration of interventions that can help create secure attachment in early life as well as in adult relationships.

Generally speaking, investigators have found that individuals who have been securely attached in childhood tend to have more positive, trusting, long-term relationships. Those who have ambivalent attachment tend toward patterns of frequent breakups because these individuals perceive their partners as distant and unavailable.

On the other hand, people with avoidant attachment styles tend to invest very little emotion in relationships and are unable or unwilling to share feelings with others. They often avoid intimacy through overwork and other behavioral patterns, and more frequently engage in casual sex when compared to those with other attachment styles.

Adults with the third attachment style, disorganized/insecure, often react to others with a mixture of behaviors. This type of confused style is believed to be linked to dysfunctional family life when parents served as sources of both fear and reassurance.

One area where the two threads of attachment (science and therapy) research come together is in understanding the neuroscience of how attachment experiences actually help build the brain itself initially, and how they can help rebuild the brain.

In the first year of life, especially, the baby's brain becomes wired in the same patterns as the mother's. If the baby is lucky enough to experience relatively secure attachment, these advantages become hardwired as a relationship template that later becomes more of a relational reflex than a conscious response. That is, secure responses become automatic.

The good news is that because of what we've learned about the brain's neuroplasticity, or its capacity to change throughout the lifespan due to new experiences, insecure attachment patterns can be changed with a combination of tapping into old patterns and reshaping them with more secure relational experiences in the here and now. This can happen in the context of intimate partnership or friendship, with a psychotherapist, or in secure group situations. So we have to find ways to access the old pattern and almost simultaneously discover something compelling and new. Diane Poole Heller calls this process "constructing corrective experiences to heal earlier wounds" (DARE To Create Healthy Adult Relationships, November 15, 2011 teleseminar with Diane Poole Heller and Maggie Phillips).

There are many ways to create these compelling new current experiences while also tapping into archaic attachment patterns. Experts agree that because early attachment experiences are formed so early in life, and are therefore primitive and nonverbal, it's important to work from the body level up, focusing on body sensation and emotion and then integrating new cognitive beliefs and awareness.

Please join us on Friday, September 14, for the teleseminar with Dr. Laurel Parnell and me to learn what's new about attachment repair from the EMDR perspective. The live event is from 9 am - 10:30 am Pacific on 9/14 (remember, if your schedule is not compatible, your registration includes immediate audio download (permanent) or audio replay so you won't miss any of this dynamic training opportunity). REGISTER NOW!  

If you are new to our teleseminars, learn more about this format. You'll enjoy 60 minutes of quality presentation with 30 minutes of live questions and answers (if you cannot attend live, we invite you to submit your questions and compelling topics in advance! SUBMIT HERE.)

With my best wishes for a smooth transition into early autumn,

Maggie