[E208] Attachment 101

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast where we come together to discuss a healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Thank you guys for joining us today. I'm Tana Ottinger and I'm joined by Jesse Ferris and Becca McKay from the ETC team. And we are going to jump into talking today a little bit about attachment 101 and what that by 101. What we mean by that is if you have been a podcast listener for some time, we've got several other episodes that go kind of deep into attachment. And really today we want to just kind of lay the foundation of like, what is attachment and why do we talk about it so much? Why is it important? And how has it shaped and shifted some of our understanding about ourselves, our families, our kiddos, the other people that are in our lives? And how and why is this idea of attachment so incredibly important to us at Empowered to Connect? So this is not the deepest, deepest dive. It's a touch, it's the highlights, and we hope it'll be a little helpful. We talk a lot about how some of the reason why we all stay in this work is so that we can keep coming back to the fundamentals. Because it's really important sometimes to remember what this whole thing is that we're talking about and why. So let's kick off by talking about when we think about attachment, what do we mean by that? What is it and why is it important? And Jesse, why don't you kind of kick us off a little bit. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Attachment is at its very base level, the relationship between two people. So when we're talking about attachment, it's that bond between a caregiver and a child. Our organization is called Empowered to Connect. And really we are saying we're trying to empower caregivers to attach. Right. This is like the quality of our relationship. This isn't something that a person is born with. It's something that's developed over time through interactions between a parent and child. And I think when I first became a parent, I thought attachment either was or wasn't. I would hear people say, like, we're attached now, like it was a light switch or like an on and off button. That's not what attachment is. It is more about the patterns of a relationship, the patterns of relating and that bond and the quality as well. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Becca, can you kind of walk us through some of the how those patterns get set? Yeah. And yeah, like what, what is what does Jesse mean by patterns? Talk us through that a little bit. [00:02:51] Speaker C: Yeah. When we're talking about attachment and that the fact that it develops over time, that it's not something that we're born with. The reality is when we're, when we're born, we have so many needs that we cannot meet by ourselves. So from the moment of birth, babies, infants are expressing all kinds of needs. They need to be fed, they need to be comforted, they need to be soothed, they need to be interacted with. They need to have fresh diaper and clean clothes. They need all these different things. They need to be comfortable, they need to be well. And so they're expressing those needs all kinds of ways. And the caregiver is either tuning into that baby's cry and responding by meeting that need, or at times they're misunderstanding the cue, misreading it or ignoring it, or not sure what the baby's crying for. They're missing each other. So let's go back for a second. When they meet the need appropriately, right. When they tune in, they understand what their baby needs and they, they meet that need and they provide it. That develops trust between the parent and child. The kiddo relaxes, they're at rest, and they begin to learn, my needs are gonna be met. And that's a pattern that's gonna, that's gonna stick with them. On the flip side, what about when we misread the cues? We don't get it. We're not understanding or we're not able to meet the need. Then instead of going from stressed to relaxed or calm, our kiddo's gonna stay in distress and anxiety. And when they stay in distress and anxiety, they can have some mistrust. I don't know if my caregiver can take care of me. This isn't like a conscious thought. You're like 2 month old. Isn't thinking. I don't know if this person is trustworthy. But it's these internal beliefs and patterns that begin to be formed at a biological and emotional level. And the kiddo's gonna respond a couple different ways. Some are gonna respond with rage. You're not getting it. And I am enraged. The stress hormones are flooding my body. I'm getting super heightened. My heart is racing. I'm red in the face, I'm sweating. They might respond with apathy. They might just shut down, resign themselves to, nobody's coming. No one's going to help me. I'm going to go into a shutdown state. Or they can stay in anxiety. But I'm here. I'm trying to communicate it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know when this happens. It's called a disrupted attachment cycle. And. And over time, if that pattern continues, it's going to affect the. What the kiddo is going to believe about themselves, other people, and the world around them. Here's what I don't want parents to hear. If I misread my baby's cry, I'm ruining their attachment. Okay? This is why it's a pattern babies express. Guys, I'm in the thick of it. So I think I used to say thousands, and I would like to recant and say millions in one day. Babies express millions of needs. Oh, my goodness. It is always something, and I cannot possibly on the first try understand my baby's cry every single time. But over time, when I'm able to tune into them, get to know them, meet their needs the best that I can with. With. With what I have hope. The hope is the. The hope is that that would build secure attachment between me and my child. This isn't. We're talking right now about babies, and I want to mention that this cycle continues throughout your life, but I'm talking about it from infancy just because that's how it's formed. But for many of our listeners, you're parenting kiddos that are not infants anymore. They might have been born into your home. They might have come into your home at different ages and stages, different life experiences. You might have been their primary caregiver, or they may have some other caregivers before they came into your care. When a kiddo is expressing needs as a 5 year old, 15 year old, 25 year old, those needs are expressed through words, through behaviors, through actions, through lots of different things. And we believe at Empower2Connect that caregivers are still called to responsible for reading those cues and meeting those needs. The best that we can over time to keep that pattern going to build that secure pattern of attachment instead of the disrupted pattern of attachment. [00:07:11] Speaker B: Jesse, can you hint on that a little bit? What Becca's talking about there is sometimes what we call the attachment dance. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm thinking about the attachment dance. It takes two people to dance, right? I mean, some of you may not need two people. Some of you just blast that music in your kitchen and break it down, Right? But we're thinking about maybe ballroom dancing. There we go. In this scenario. And when you're ballroom dancing, you've gotta have two people. Um, and so each of those people are Taking their history and their attachment styles, which are born out of those cycles of met or unmet needs that have been established as patterns in early life, into that dance. And you know, it. It affects the way that you believe what you believe about yourself, what you believe about other people. And you're dancing together when you're doing that. Okay, so I'm thinking about, you know, Becca Touc on it. We're at the very foundation of this. It's about needs being expressed and needs being met. And the difference there in that dance is are you going to see the need that is being expressed? Because it is being expressed, it may not be being expressed appropriately in your evaluative opinion. And when I think about the way a teenager expresses their needs, I may not feel as compassionate about it as I would with. With Becca's tin, adorable newborn in her house. Right. A teenager expressing needs is a. Maybe a little bit more annoying to an adult. Maybe there's some disrespect happening. Maybe there's some yelling, maybe there's some passive aggressive talking. You know, it's some surliness or snarkiness. The way children and teenagers and people, humans express their needs is going to vary. But the difference in that dance is are we seeing it and when we're seeing it, are we meeting those needs as a caregiver in that relationship? That's what's happening in the dance. [00:09:24] Speaker B: I remember the first time I saw this. We have an image of the attachment dance and it's got this cycle in the middle and then it has your child and you and dancing together, and it's this beautiful image of relationship. To me, it's a visual expression of that. And when we think about attachment and some of what y'all are explaining, especially if we, if we rewind the clock to those early infant experiences. As an adoptive mom to six babies, I call them babies. Some of them are young adults. I only had the privilege of having one of our kiddos from infancy. The other five came at different ages and stages. So I was left with a conundrum of motherhood about this attachment patterns and cycle because so very much of their time, for many of them was spent. And I wasn't able to either be a part of meeting needs, nor do I have a great idea of what that cycle of pattern was like for them. I didn't get to bear witness to it. I don't know how it went. I don't. I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know. I think I can Tell by their personality if they went to rage, rage, anxiety, or apathy. Because I think I was trying to discover these little beautiful humans and how they were wired. So I want to talk a minute about neuroplasticity, and I don't want anybody to stop listening. Okay. But I want to just hang here for a minute, because this is when we say, like, oh, their belief systems are formed or their bodies are experiencing hormonal surges based on whether they're in a state of stress. These things are real, and they really do impact their brains and biologies and then their future behavior. And I don't want us to wash past that too quickly, because in that understanding is where compassion and insight sprung up for me. And then a bit of hope, actually. So it was this interesting little dance between, oh, no, I've missed so much, really important time. Do I go to hopelessness, or is there hope here? Becca, can you kind of hone in on that a little bit and tell us a little bit about that idea of, like, neuroplasticity and the brain and body being wired and shaped? [00:11:54] Speaker C: Yeah. The human brain is amazing. So it does, from the beginning, look for patterns. Because your brain wants to be efficient. It wants to be as fast as possible at processing everything that's going on around you. So it can feel like our kids or us are stuck in a pattern. But the beautiful thing is, neuroplastic means it can change, it can be reshaped. We can form new neural pathways, and we can form those through. Through relationship interactions, continued experiences. And so the beautiful thing is that Whether you are 5, 15, or 105, you're still able to learn and grow as a human. It is pretty amazing. We can go through major things and we can still have the ability to grow, to heal, to recover, to reform. Think about physical things. You can go through a physical trauma, and you can relearn how to walk and talk. You can go through a medical thing like a stroke. You can relearn how to read and write and things like that. So no matter, you know, we're talking about attachment. But I wanted to toss out a couple other examples to show you. We are capable of immense healing through those experiences and continued relationship. [00:13:16] Speaker A: I do want to add, often when we're teaching or doing a training with caregivers, inevitably there's caregivers that are like, you know, I'm a. I'm an adoptive parent, I'm a foster parent. My child's been placed with me, and they're still exhibiting this rage, this apathy. This anxiety. And I've been meeting their needs. And you know, my next question is going to be, well, when was this child placed with you? And they'll be like four whole months ago. And it's like, yes, and those have been the longest four months of your life. Like, I have so much compassion for that caregiver. And let's remember that that child in infancy and no matter how old they are, had millions of needs expressed. And if there was a cycle of unmet needs, this is what we mean when we talk about complex developmental trauma. This is happening as their brains and bodies and beliefs are develop before they're even aware of it in their little bitty bodies. And so I might have an 11 year old in my house right now that is always worried that I'm going to leave in the middle of the night. And maybe they've been with me for 10 years and not once have I ever left that kid in the middle of the night. But because of those early, early patterns that shaped those beliefs and fears and things that make them angry and things that have caused them to shut down, that's going to carry into patterns. So yes, it can be changed. And it takes a long time sometimes to change these patterns. And so we can bring our, our best compassion to it and our best amount of patience as we, as we work together to dance. [00:15:04] Speaker B: I love that what I, what I'm hearing is there's hope and it takes a long time. Like, I think if we could watch a brain, I've always wished that I could have like a brain under imaging for like 20 years and watch healing happen in real time in the brain. Because I just don't think it happens very quickly. I think that we wish it did, especially in this world of like attachment and connected caregiving and adoption and foster care, that we want to be able to sort of support this healing that's happening. And y'all, it is an investment in the long game. It is an investment in the long game. And that is what y'all are saying. It's not without hope, but it's a measured, appropriate amount of hope. And you only can do so much. Like some of this understanding of those maybe cycles of unmet needs are things your young adults are going to have to discover on their own. They're going to be uncovering some of those things into young adulthood and into mother and fatherhood for themselves. And like, there's only so much we can do, but we can do something. We can show up in relationship. Well, we can do our best not Perfectly. But do our best to attune to the expressed needs of our children. And one of the ways that we frame this and talk about this here at Etc. Is this idea of the wall between us. And what it means is in order for us to do that dance and for us to bring mindfulness and attunement is we have to understand what could be going on in relationship between us and our kiddo. So Jesse, can you kind of explain that? Maybe even give our listeners a little visual picture of how sometimes we think about that wall visually. And can you kind of talk to us a little bit about that wall between us? Sure, that could be there. [00:16:57] Speaker A: And I've got a couple of examples, y'all. So I want you to think about you and your child standing in the same room. And then I want you to think of, you know, let's pretend that you single box delivered to your house in the month of December in preparation for the holidays, stacked between you, right? You know, from your favorite delivery service in store. And each of those boxes represents something from your past or something from your child's past, your histories that become the wall between you. Let me give you maybe two examples. The first one that I can think of is really specific. So we've got these specific part of our story, our history, our experiences that might become a block in that wall. When I learned to swim, how did you guys learn to swim? I took swimming lessons. But I say lessons very loosely because my parents signed me up for lessons at the ymca and at this particular ymca, the way they taught kids, I mean, I don't know. I'm. My only memory of it is as the five or six year old or three or four year old. I don't even know how old I was, but I have this very murky memory of being taught how to SW by standing on the diving board and the adult in the water said, jump, we'll catch you. And then I jumped and they didn't catch me. I went underwater, got a lung full of water, popped up, sputtering. And then they're like, good job, go swim to the end. And I remember like holding on to the side of the pool and pulling myself down to the shallow end and like looking over my shoulder of like, do they, am I, do they see if I'm cheating? That was the way I learned how to swim. So fast forward to my adult life now. Let's, you know, I've got two kids and we are all in a pool together. How do you think that's going to show up in the wall between me and my kids in that pool. No splashing. Don't put water in her face. Don't jump in. Hold on a second. I'm not down there yet. I'm, like, extremely anxious in the water. I don't. I'm not a confident swimmer. I don't feel great going underwater without holding my nose. You know, like, I adapted throughout my. To try and kind of cope with having to be in the water sometimes. But it's not a place where I love to be, and it is a place where my kids love to be. They have received lessons. They are confident swimmers, and they are little fish. They love to be in the water. So that shows up as a box in that wall between us. It can also be something that's maybe a little bit more vague in that wall. So, for example, when I was growing up, I was taught to be independent. That was a big family value in my family. And so what that looked like was I could wake up on a Saturday morning, make my own cereal, watch cartoons for as long as I wanted, and I didn't know where my parent was, and it didn't matter because I was independent and I was taking care of myself. Fast forward to this time with me as a caregiver, and I'm responsible for seeing and meeting needs. And I'm like, you've got it. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Do it yourself. [00:20:13] Speaker A: You're fine. Why do you need me to play with you? You can play on your own. Why do you need me to make the cereal? You can make it. I'm going to teach you now, you know, so I'm bringing that into this dance. And it. Instead of dancing with it, it's becoming an actual fixed block between us. And so as we're talking about these histories, we've got to become aware to actually see that wall so that we can do something about it, move it out of the way in some sort of way so we can actually see the child in front of us instead of seeing what's in the way. [00:20:48] Speaker C: When a kid is securely attached, there's two ways that that looks. It looks like they can go to their caregiver as a safe haven when they're distressed and as a secure base. Like Jesse's saying, we do want our kids to be independent. We want them to be confident and to feel like they can go out and do it. So we all want the same things. We want our kiddos to come to us when they're upset and to feel confident, to step into pre K and to drive off to college and to do these. These big life things, okay? That's what our goal is. I'm making assumptions about you listeners, but I think we all are in the same boat. We want our kids to feel confident and connected to us. How do we cultivate that secure attachment over time? We've said it really simply. Meet needs. See needs, meet needs. Don't let your stuff get in the way. There's a great quote that We Love by Dr. Gordon Neufeld. He's a prominent attachment psychologist. I'm going to read parts of it and paraphrase parts of it. It's from his book hold on to your kids, which is a great book. He has really, really meaningful insights. So he says the key to activating maturation so maturity is to take care of the attachment needs of the child, which are what we've been talking about. To foster independence, we must first invite dependence to help the child separate. We must assume responsibility for keeping the child close. So some parents, you're in the thick of separation anxiety and you just want it to go away. Neufeld is saying, first we keep our kiddos close. That's going to help them separate confidently in the long run. He says we help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he's giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love, but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness. This is so counterintuitive because we've all. Well, I'm. I shouldn't say all you guys. It's coming out of me a lot today, but I think many of us are. A lot of us, most, many, lots of us believe what Jesse's YMCA swimming instructor believed. Throw them in and see how they do. Pop them in the deep end, see if they can. If they can pop up. We believe that when it comes to these tasks that we want our kids to be able to accomplish. Go to sleep, kiddo. I'm going to toss you in your bed and let you be. Go to school, kiddo. I'm going to pop you out of the car and say, get. Get out of here. Go, go, go. You know, go do this, do that. Overcome your fears. Be confident. Neufeld is saying, give an abundance. Give an abundance of closeness. Meet needs abundantly, and that will help your kiddo rest. Be confident and be able to go to school. Jump in the Deep end, fall asleep, all those different things. So it's a really counterintuitive belief. It's something that I would say we at etc. Have really processed a lot, talked about a lot, and have seen to be true in our lives and the lives of the families that we walk alongside. We've really seen this principle kind of come to life. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Can I give an analogy here? I think about it. What's really sticking out to me about Gordon Neufeld's quote is satisfying the need for closeness. When you have a need for food, the way that you satisfy that need is not to deny yourself food. Right. And so in order to go between meals without eating independent of food, you've got to satisfy the nutritional need. And then you can go, you know, separate from the food. Think about closeness and attachment. That way you have to satisfy the child's need for closeness before they can do that brave thing and separate from you. And I think, again, going back to those questions that we talk about and ask ourselves often of like, I've been doing this for years. How long is this kid gonna have to sleep next to my bed? How long is this kid gonna cry when I drop them off at school? We've got to be satisfying that need for closeness. That's the only solution, is drawing them close and giving them and meeting that need. [00:25:13] Speaker B: I would love for us to take a second and maybe talk about the difference between instrumental care and nurturing care. Because I think especially for kiddos, where maybe that circle and cycle of need has been disrupted. I think we can sometimes fall in the trap as caregivers that we're meeting their instrumental needs. But if a kiddo, even from infancy or young adulthood, or is not getting the signal sent about their preciousness, the nurturing care. Can we just talk about that a little bit? Because I think that's in the background of this conversation. Right. Because you can. There's a lot of different ways you can change a baby's diaper. And you're going to send real different messages when you do that. Yeah. You can change their diaper frustrated, or you can change their diaper tenderly. You can, you know, help a kid with a. That just fell and scratched their knee by putting a band aid on it and shooing them away. Or you can give them a little tender nurture. And those send real different messages and meet really different kinds of needs. Becca, do you have particular thoughts about that and how that plays into this attachment? [00:26:33] Speaker C: I do. Particularly because I grew up in Eastern Europe and there was studies done in orphanages at the time. And the belief was if kiddos are fed, if their diapers are changed, if their needs and they were just talking about that instrumental care are met, they're going to be fine. And in the 80s and 90s there was these studies and, and they were confused because babies that were just. There was rows and rows of babies. And I've seen some of those places. So it's pretty bleak. It's pretty hard to see a baby in that state. But the belief was, I'm feeding them, I'm clothing them, they're warm, their diaper is changed, they have what they need. But what happened with those babies is that they grew up with severe, severe challenges when it comes to development, when it comes to relationships, when it comes to brain growth. That's an extreme example. I know that's not maybe where we were gonna go, but I. It resonates deeply with me because it highlights the critical need for babies to be loved on, sang to, talked to, connected with. And that is true. Whether we're talking about attachment with a baby or an older kiddo, or a teenager or a young adult, those relationships are critical. The nurturing, care, being comforted when you're just sad or lonely, not only when you're hungry or thirsty, being comforted when something hurts you. Those things are really, really critical in that secure attachment being being built and developed. And secure attachment is how that brain is going to grow, is how those connections are going to be made. So we cannot overstate. Yeah, you might be meeting all, you know, let's, let's not stick with babies for the whole time. You might be making sure your kid is fed and clothed and at school on time and homework is done and laund done. It takes a lot of time to meet instrumental needs. So many of us are kind of feeling trapped, like it's not easy to meet. Especially those of us that have not just one kid at home, we've got two, four, six kids at home. Like there's a lot of instrumental needs that need to be taken care of. But if we neglect the nurturing care, we're missing a key component of those kiddos needs. [00:28:51] Speaker B: That's right. I think there's a lot of different. I mean, I'm going to say this again, like there's a lot of different ways you can serve dinner. There's a lot of different ways you can answer a question. But our kiddos and I would even say us to each other, like we need to see and sense our preciousness reflected back in the eyes of another Human being. Like we naturally, when we look at a baby, our faces are soft and our intonation is soft and we're providing responsive, nurturing, relational engagement. And there's a dance. We talk about this a bit as a serve and return, right? There's a bid for connection and there's a return for connection. So I just don't want to miss in this conversation. Underneath all of this attachment is the essence of connection. It's the softness, the safeness, the trust between two human beings and how those things are reciprocated. And yes, it's instrumental and it's a whole lot of nurture. It's serve and return relationally. I want to talk really quick and then we're going to get to some of the benefits. But I just want to put a fine point on sometimes when we think about a broken attachment and the way that kiddos, young adults, even grown ups, are working to get their needs met, sometimes we talk about those as mal adaptive strategies. Like that's some language that maybe you've heard. A person is trying to get their needs met in ways that are not needed or helpful for them. I think we kind of want to reclaim that word and be like, well, maybe they are adaptive, maybe they're not maladaptive. What do we mean by that? If a person has had had repeated patterns and cycles of unmet needs, then they're going to figure out how to get needs met in adaptive ways at the baseline. How did I stay alive? Like if we just, if we just go all the way down to there, how did the kiddo who was experiencing significant neglect, who wasn't getting their, you know, food needs met? What is an adaptive strategy? Steal food, right? Eat food like that. That's the most maybe exaggerated example of that. But it plays out in a lot of different ways. And so I think sometimes if we go to this idea of the wall between us, what's happening is you may be parenting or caregiving for a kiddo that is holding on to their adaptive strategies. Even if they're in your home and in relationship with you, they don't need to do it that way. It's their learned pattern of engagement and interaction. And we desperately want them to not need to do that anymore. You don't need to take food without asking. You don't need to lie to get your needs met. You don't have to be passive aggressive. Like you can ask for what you need. You can feel safe enough to negotiate. We long for maybe what we would say to be more positive, helpful interactions. But there are still pulling into those adaptive strategies. So I think it's just important to name that sometimes that kind of thing is what's hitting up when we have those. That wall between us. And it's keeping us from being able to, as you even said, Becca, with that Gordon Neufeld quote, like, it's keeping us from being able to pull them close because their adaptive strategies are pushing us away from them and are keeping us from wanting to be close because they don't feel good to us, or they're offending us in some way, or they're hurting us in some way, or they're exhausting us in some way. But the counterbalance to that is to pull them close. What they actually need is closeness. What they actually need is a replacement behavior for the adaptive strategy. Right. The anecdote to stealing is abundant, not locked cabinets. If you think, if you. If you find yourself, well, they're stealing food from the kitchen, we can have a long conversation about that. It's not stealing if it's in your house. That's a different conversation. Maybe it is if they're stealing it from their siblings. You know what the anecdote is, isn't restriction. It's abundance. That's the essence of what Gordon Neufeld is saying, is how do we support adaptive strategies with abundant nurture and abundant care to meet that deficit of need, need to overcome those adaptive strategies? Look, we can have a different conversation about food hoarding and stealing. It's not as simple as I just made it, but. But there's something there about an unmet need and the way they're expressing that. Do you have anything else to add to that before we move on to the. The benefits of secure attachment? Becca, Jesse, do y'all have some thoughts about that? I know I just brought up a big, huge bomb. Like, this is a big conversation around attachment, but it's important. [00:33:50] Speaker C: I just want to say that it can feel. It can feel a lot of times like the need is a bottomless pit. Like, there's no end to the need. There's never going to be an end to the need. So I just want to name that if you feel like you're in that spot, it's a tough spot to be in. It feels impossible and hard. Take a small step towards abundance. You don't have to, you know, fix it all overnight. Like Jesse keeps reminding us, this is a long, long journey. But it. I just want. Yeah, I just feel like it's important to say for many of us, it feels like that Pit is bottomless. Like, I can't give an abundance. There's never enough attention, food, reassurance, security. Many of us feel that way. Still take steps towards that abundance mindset in what you're offering when you can, when you have the capacity to do that. And over the long haul, it can bring that rest that you both need. [00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I would piggyback on that, Becca. I think what the underlying feeling and thought there is, and I appreciate you bringing it up, is we cannot control, nor do we have the power to meet all of the needs potentially of someone who's experienced significant attachment stress and trauma. So what's mine to do? What's my role? And again, it harks back to what I said early on in the episode, which is, this is something they may have to work out until they're in their adulthood. Right. Like, this isn't totally mine to do or heal or fix or whatever. It's my I'm in relationship. So what's my relational role in the attachment dance? And what's my part to play in the wall between us? And we cannot completely impact somebody else's healing journey around attachment. We are a part, but not the whole. So I appreciate that. Becca. Let's take a second and kind of finish this episode up with a little bit of the hallmarks of secure attachment. And the reason I think it's important for us to talk about this is we've talked about attachment pattern, and we've talked about, like, a broken attachment cycle over time and the hope that's there. And there is hope. If there was not hope for this, we would, like, close shop. I think we'd all be like, oh, well, that was a fun ride with that thing we were doing. And we're all done now. But we know there's hope. We have a part to play in relationship with other people in supporting our own journey towards healing and those that are in our care. Again, a limited role. But let's talk about what are some of the hallmarks of secure attachment so that we can see and understand what it looks like and maybe even some ways that we can foster that in those relationships. Like, what are we after here? We all hit the highlights of some of those. [00:36:58] Speaker A: As we talk about these things, I want to remind us of two things. First of all, it's not just kids. Children, young people who have needs. You have needs, too. We all have needs. And so part of that dance is, you know, as caregivers, we're responsible for meeting needs of our children. Our children aren't responsible for meeting their caregiver's needs. Right? So as the adult, that's something that we're gonna hold. We're gonna hold meeting our own needs and asking for help. We'll talk about that in a second. To meet our needs. And we're also going to help our kids with that too. The other thing I'm thinking about is just I hope that this is opening up the idea that giving care is bigger than you might have thought it is. You were hearing that instrumental care and then that nurturing care, that satisfying that need for. So it is not one or the other, it's both. And that can feel overwhelming. But hopefully it also gives you freedom to kind of see the whole picture when you're thinking about it. So Jude Cassidy was a psychologist that identified four aspects, four hallmarks of secure attachment. And this is kind of the goal. This is what we're going for. We're wanting to look for these things and we're also wanting to encourage them whenever we can. The first would be the ability to give care. If you see your, your little one walking around the house and they're petting that baby doll in the back, that child is giving care to that inanimate object. But they're, they're mirroring what they've experienced, right? That, that is an ability to give care. What about the ability to seek and receive care? We have this thing and Empowered to connect about band aids. We love band aids because what child is not wanting 1 billion band aids? @ Empowered to connect, we encourage caregivers like give them freely. How much do they really cost? Right, guys, we can buy boxes of band aids every week because when we're handing those out freely, it's encouraging our kids to seek and receive care. And sometimes when we're encouraging that care that they're seeking, it's not just for the boo boos on the outside of them, those physical boo boos. Sometimes it's for the emotional boo boos too, right? That kiddo had a hard day, Somebody hurt their feelings or they got left out or they didn't make the play or the team. And we are going to, you know, we're going to look for those times when they are seeking to receive care in that kind of way too. The third way would be the ability to negotiate needs. And let me tell you, as a caregiver, this one can be tough for us because negotiating needs doesn't always hit us the right way, right? But when we think about as adults walking through the world, we want to be able to Negotiate our needs. We as adults have needs. If I have had a cur, you know, like a really busy day and it's just been nuts, I need to be able to go home and decompress. So I'm going to go to the people in my life and be like, I need 30 minutes, guys, and I'm going to negotiate that need that I have. We are wanting our kids to learn the skill. It's actually a sign of secure attachment. So when your kid is asking, I'm having so much fun playing this game. Can I play it just a little longer? That kid is actually negotiating their need. Maybe you might classify it as a want, but let's encourage that negotiation because it's a sign of secure attachment. We're wanting to, we're wanting to work in that way together and relate in that way. The fourth way would be a healthy sense of dependence and independence. So that kid, or even you yourself, is not having to do everything themselves, but they're not having to have you do everything for them. It's that sense of interdependence, that mutual dependence upon each other. They, they can go to you as their secure home base. And then they can, after satisfying that need for closeness, feel free to go explore the world. And it's that pulling in close, going out, pulling in close, that healthy autonomy, the sense of dependence and independence. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Thank you, Jesse. Becca, do you have any closing thoughts for us as we're kind of finishing up our. Our attachment 101. [00:41:43] Speaker C: Attachment is, is formed between a caregiver and a child, but it really informs all of our relationships. So as you think about where you, where you are on your pathway towards being a securely attached adult. Think about your relationship with your kids. Think about what you're offering to them. Think about your relationship with your friends, your peers, your spouse, your colleagues, your loved ones. We have patterns in how we relate to other people, people, and they're very, very deeply connected to our ability to give and receive care, negotiate our needs, and have a healthy sense of dependence and independence. So it comes full circle. It affects everything. And no matter where we are, no matter what age we are, we can walk towards secure attachment. Through our experiences and through our introspection. We can reflect on ourselves. We can see what we're bringing. What, what's the stuff you're bringing to the wall between you and the around you? What's the, what's the patterns that you find yourself resorting to under stress? And how can you take steps to be mindful of those and to, to relate in healthy ways moving forward. Attachment is so important. There's a reason. It's one of our 101s that we wanted to highlight for you guys. And like you said in the beginning, Tana, there's just so much more to say about it. We can't tackle it all in one episode, but hopefully that gave some nuggets, some ideas to chew on and some of those foundational ideas about what attachment is, is. [00:43:16] Speaker B: Thank y'all. I appreciate this conversation today and I hope for those of y'all that are listening that it's helpful for you, or maybe those people that are in your life that you want to maybe share this with so they can understand a little bit more about what's going on up in your house or the way you're choosing to parent. So we invite you on this discovery journey of attachment and how it impacts us and those that we love deeply. So thanks for listening and we'll see you guys on the next episode. [00:43:43] Speaker A: We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you're interested in learning more, head to empoweredtoconnect.org for our library of resources. Thank you to Kyle Wright, who edits and engineers all of our audio, and Tad Jewett, the creator of our music. On behalf of everyone at etc, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the Empowered to Connect podcast. In the meantime, let's hold on to hope together.