What Childhood Attachment Means For Adults
We have all blamed our parents for our problems, right?
Finding an easy target to shove off our less loved personality traits might be a quick solution, but it likely doesn’t lead to any change. If it’s your mom’s fault for not teaching you healthy food behaviors, how are you ever going to learn to love your body? Rather than continuing patterns we learned from our caregivers, let’s analyze them and try to grow.
How Childhood Impacts Us Now
We will be discussing how the dynamics of attachment can impact the life you live now, regardless of your age. In our previous article we reviewed the theory behind attachment and its importance. To quickly review, attachment theory suggests the relationship we have with our primary caregiver will influence how we begin to interact with the world through development and how we form relationships with others. If you had a loving, attentive caregiver, you might have felt safe exploring the world and capable of developing healthy relationships. If your caregiver was less available or harmful, you may have felt scared to explore and may have difficulty trusting others.
I want to pause here for a moment. If you have experienced some form of childhood trauma, this does not mean your future is laid out for you. You may not have had control as a child, but you have control now. Our brains and our behaviors are capable of change and evolution.
Let’s look at some research demonstrating the link between childhood and adult behavior. In the late 1990s, Kaiser Permanente completed over 17,000 surveys of members in their Southern California region. These surveys asked a series of questions about their childhood experiences and current health status. Almost two thirds of study participants reported at least one adverse childhood experience. You can read through the survey questions below to determine what your ACE score would be.
The ACE study demonstrated a link between early adversity and poor health outcomes. The higher your ACE score, the higher the likelihood of chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. If you think about it, the logic makes sense.
Growing up in a higher state of stress, means your levels of stress hormones are consistently elevated. Your heart rate is higher, you're more frequently on high alert, you feel less safe more often. Think about it this way: our body has flight, fight, and freeze modes. When these instinctual responses are activated several things happen. Our digestion stops, our breathing speeds up, the heart beats faster, our pupils dilate, and the blood thickens. This physiological response is supposed to occur when we are in danger. Our body is preparing for attack.
The sympathetic nervous system response evolved to protect us from predators. It’s our body’s way of trying to keep us safe. Unfortunately, it has not evolved at the same rate as society. Now it is getting triggered when we almost get into a car accident or our boss gives us a tight deadline. If you are a child growing up in a space where you are often dysregulated (by dysregulated, we mean experiencing a marked fluctuation in mood as well as an increase in the intensity or reactivity of emotions), you might be staying in this elevated response for far too long. This can cause those negative health outcomes mentioned before.
Your Stress Response
Luckily, there are several strategies for changing this response. A popular tool for beginning to gain awareness of your stress response is mindfulness. When you can recognize your stress response being triggered, you can intervene. Begin simply by paying attention to how you react to stress. Does your face redden? Do you feel tightness in your chest or shoulders? Maybe your muscles clench. Notice what happens for you and then pay attention to how often it occurs.
If you want to learn more about how to adjust your stress response, keep an eye on our page. The final segment on attachment will discuss strategies for overcoming long-standing patterns of behavior. If you are looking to learn more about tools like mindfulness and next steps after you’ve identified your stress response, stay tuned.
Examine Your Attachment Style
Let’s circle back to attachment styles. As discussed in our first article on attachment, we mirror behavior. If we didn’t have a roadmap for healthy communication styles, they likely didn’t develop. If you grew up with an unreliable parent, you may feel insecure or jealous in your current relationships. Take a moment to consider how you feel in your relationships today. Do you feel safe? If not, consider how you felt in your first relationship, the one with your mom or whoever you spent the most time with as a child. Do you see any parallels?
Examining attachment and the impact it has on you today can be tough work. If you want someone to go with you on that journey, give us a call. We would be happy to join you.