Although it is difficult to pin down the prevalence of attachment issues, it is often tied to trauma. In particular, attachment issues usually develop within adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 63.9% of U.S. adults have reported at least one ACEs, and 17.3% have reported four or more ACEs in their life. Indeed, the challenges you experience with attachment can significantly impact your life and well-being. Meanwhile, access to trauma-specific modalities like family services and attachment work is vital to healing attachment trauma.
Through family services and attachment work, you can see how your early experiences have impacted your life. Addressing family services and attachment speaks to the importance of interpersonal relationships. The beliefs and values you hold about yourself, others, and the world are shaped by your relationships and experiences. Through your family, friends, society, and your experiences, who you are is born. You can see the influence of your early years on your beliefs, values, and the traditions you engage in.
Whether it is in how you raise your children or the cultural traditions you celebrate, early relationships shape you. Generally, the influence of your relationships and experiences early in life can have a positive impact on your life. The beliefs and values instilled in you can manifest as family game nights or volunteering during the holidays. However, for many relationship dynamics and interactions can be complicated and even harmful. Thus, understanding attachment and attachment trauma is an important part of healing and recovery. With family services and attachment work, you can uncover how ACEs have impacted your life, health, and relationships.
At The Guest House, we know carrying trauma, especially childhood trauma, is often the root of self-defeating patterns. When you are overwhelmed by the distress of trauma, you are at a greater risk for unhealthy coping strategies. Feeling overwhelmed makes it difficult to process your thoughts and feelings, which can lead to self-medicating to alleviate your symptoms.
Further, we know early adverse experiences often go unwitnessed and unacknowledged. When your trauma goes unaddressed, it can perpetuate self-defeating patterns. Moreover, unaddressed trauma can make it difficult for you to build a fulfilling life and positive relationships. Therefore, we believe understanding the impact of childhood trauma can open the door to awareness and understanding to heal you and your loved ones. As a result, we are committed to providing holistic family services and attachment work to heal the roots of your challenges for long-term recovery.
Yet, you may question how can family services and attachment work help heal challenges in adulthood. Can family services and attachment work help you recover and rebuild or build mutually supportive relationships? Understanding what attachment is and thus attachment trauma is the first step to recognizing its impact on your life.
What Is Attachment and Attachment Trauma?
As the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) notes, attachment is the primary emotional relationship you share with your childhood caregiver. More specifically, as explained by Frontiers in Psychiatry, attachment is a psychobiological principle rooted in the process of development. Attachment is a reflection of the way you develop attachments with others for your social and emotional development. In other words, attachment is the foundation for the relationships you form throughout your life.
The relationships you form with people like your parents, siblings, or guardians are important to early development. Your early attachments are important to your well-being in adulthood because infancy and early childhood are critical stages of development. Early childhood is a critical stage of development because you start to learn foundational skills for functioning. In early childhood, you start to engage in more complex thinking to:
- Solve problems
- Make decisions
- Identify objects
- Learn how to share
- Express your emotions more effectively
- Engage in gross motor skills
- Crawling
- Walking
- Running
- Jumping
- Writing
- Drawing
- Learn to talk and listen
In early development, your brain is malleable. This means that your brain is highly flexible and more easily shaped by your environment and experiences. Moreover, your brain is more flexible in learning and can more readily adapt to necessary behavior changes.
On the other hand, as you age, it becomes more challenging to restructure learned thinking and behavior patterns. The longer you live and think a certain way the more you are reliant on it. In many cases, being malleable in early childhood can be effective for learning and adapting. With healthy attachment relationships, you are more likely to form and engage in positive relationships into adulthood.
However, negative environments and experiences with important attachments can contribute to attachment trauma and thus unhealthy relationships. Therefore, it is through interactions with the people close to you in early childhood that you form different attachment styles. Yet, what are attachment styles? With more insight from family services and attachment work, you can address your specific attachment style and trauma. Listed below are the four attachment styles that can form in early childhood:
Secure Attachment
A healthy form of attachment is referred to as secure attachment. In childhood, being away from your caregiver led to discomfort, whereas being with your caregiver contributed to happiness and other positive feelings. You were easily soothed and sought comfort from your caregiver. Your positive connection to your caregiver was made possible by your caregiver’s response to your needs.
In other words, the primary caregivers in your life were attentive and sensitive to your needs. As a result, your caregivers gave you a secure base from which you could explore the world. In adulthood, secure attachment can manifest as a sense of comfort in yourself and your relationships. Moreover, you feel valued in your relationships and can maintain your sense of identity and independence in your relationships.
Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment
There are a few different forms of insecure attachment, like anxious-ambivalent attachment. In childhood, being separated from your caregiver likely caused severe discomfort and you were unable to self-soothe or look to other adults for comfort. You likely experienced great discomfort around strangers as well. However, being reunited with your primary caregiver did not soothe your distress. You may have rejected your caregiver’s attempts to soothe you, or you expressed anger toward your caregiver even as you sought comfort from them. Or rather than rejecting your caregiver, you may have become clingier.
The contradictory nature of your response to your caregiver’s attempt to comfort is born out of your caregiver’s behavior and actions. Your caregiver was likely inconsistent in their response to your needs. One moment your caregiver would seek to comfort you and the next they offered no comfort at all. A lack of predictability in your caregiver’s behavior led to confusion and distress that left you feeling overwhelmed. In adolescence and adulthood, an anxious-ambivalent attachment can manifest as insecurity in your relationships, fear of exploring the world on your own, and more experiences with negative emotions.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment
An anxious-avoidant attachment style is another form of insecure attachment. In childhood, the absence of your caregiver led to discomfort. However, you were likely unbothered or even comfortable in the presence of strangers. Further, despite feeling discomfort without your primary caregiver, you did not seek comfort from them. You likely did not engage with your caregiver, and you may have ignored or even avoided them.
For example, you likely seemed disconnected or uninterested in being held. Yet, you may have become visibly upset when your caregiver did not hold you. The contradiction in your response to your caregiver is likely due to your caregiver ignoring or rejecting you. Moreover, your caregiver may have even always been physically present in your life and provided necessities like housing and food. However, your caregiver was emotionally unavailable to your needs.
As a result, you learned that you could not rely on your caregiver for comfort. Thus, in adulthood, you may have difficulty sharing your true thoughts or feelings and seeking comfort even in times of need.
Disorganized Attachment
A disorganized attachment style is the least common form of insecure attachment. In childhood, if you were separated from your caregiver, you likely displayed inconsistent behaviors. For example, you may have responded to your caregiver’s absence with anger or was withdrawn. Moreover, being reunited with your caregiver did not result in a return to typical behavior patterns. Rather you may have experienced worry or displayed unusual behaviors like freezing in place or turning in circles when your caregiver came back.
The atypical behavior found in your disorganized attachment likely developed from your caregiver’s behavior and response to your needs. Your primary caregiver’s behavior was likely inconsistent and or left you feeling frightened. Throughout your childhood, your caregiver mostly acted as a source of comfort, fear, and stress. Therefore, you may struggle with conflicting desires in your relationships. For example, you may desire both closeness and distance in your relationships.
Moreover, you likely experience difficulty understanding your feelings, as well as other’s feelings. Thus, in adulthood, disorganized attachment manifests as a fear of intimacy and difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships.
Understanding the different attachment styles highlights how attachment trauma can develop. Moreover, the impact of attachment styles on your life and relationships speaks to attachment trauma as a long-term challenge. Thus, expanding your awareness of attachment trauma’s impact can help you untangle attachment trauma in your life and relationships.
Impact of Attachment Trauma on Well-Being
Attachment trauma is a specific form of developmental trauma that forms from dysfunctional relationships in traumatic experiences. Thus, attachment trauma stems from unhealthy and dysfunctional attachment relationships in those early interpersonal relationships. Through healthy attachment relationships, you learn how to regulate your emotions, form adaptive coping skills, and build mutually supportive relationships. On the other hand, unhealthy attachment relationships impair coping, your ability to trust others, and your sense of safety in the world. Unhealthy attachment relationships can form from both intentional and unintentional harm. When caregivers are unable or choose not to provide consistent safety, comfort, and protection, your ability to function, learn, and grow is impaired.
Listed below are some of the signs and symptoms of attachment trauma and its impact on your relationships:
- Behavioral difficulties, such as difficulties expressing and controlling emotions
- Aggression
- Anger
- Violent reactions
- Withdrawal
- Difficult to soothe or engage in self-soothing
- Physical symptoms
- Difficulty sleeping
- Headaches
- Stomachaches
- Hypersensitive to sounds, smells, lights, and touche
- Mental health symptoms
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Low self-esteem and self-worth
- Feeling intense shame and guilt
- Relationship in adulthood
- Being overly intimate with others
- Difficulty recognizing boundaries
- Expressing an unhealthy devotion to romantic partners
- Seeking constant reassurance from a partner
- Being overly intimate with others
- Risky sexual behavior
- Frequent relationship conflict
- You push people away to avoid getting hurt
- Lack of trust in others
- Unable to form emotional bonds
The impact of attachment trauma on your well-being and relationships showcases the importance of family services and attachment work. With family services and attachment work, you can come to terms with attachment trauma.
Understanding Family Services and Attachment Work
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, building healthy family relationships can help you and your loved ones endure and overcome life stressors. Therefore, your family is often your main source of emotional, physical, and economic support. The importance of your early interpersonal relationships means that family services and attachment work can be invaluable to whole-person recovery. Yet, what are family services and attachment work? Family services and attachment work typically include services like family therapy and group therapy.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) states, family-based counseling is a treatment tool used to understand the family system. Moreover, family therapy is a type of group therapy in which people who care for each other work with a clinician. In family therapy, your clinician will help you and your loved ones discover how to communicate, understand, and support each other. Your clinician will also support you in learning how to work through challenges together and support each other through your individual goals. Through family therapy, you can form deeper connections with your loved ones and be healthier support systems to each other on your recovery journey.
Within family services and attachment work, you can also engage in group therapy without your family to address co-occurring challenges. Although there are many different family therapies you can engage in, the group aspect is similar to group therapy. In group therapy, you work with several peers and one or more clinicians to share and learn from each other’s experiences. Much like family therapy, several different forms of group therapy can be utilized to address co-occurring disorders like substance use and PTSD. Whether you seek family and or group therapy in family services and attachment work, trauma-specific care can support your recovery.
Value of Family Services and Trauma-Specific Care
Understanding family systems for substance and mental health treatment allows the family to explore the impact of attachment trauma on the whole family. Family and group therapy alone can be valuable in addressing external and internal conflict. However, taking a trauma-specific approach further enhances the care family services and attachment work can offer.
Attachment work can provide greater self-awareness and self-understanding of your attachment issues. Thus, together family services and attachment work can foster a sense of safety and support to build a secure base for reflection and reevaluation of your experiences. Through reflection, you learn how to recognize and address past traumas and develop new cognitive and emotional coping skills.
Listed below are some of the ways trauma-specific family and group therapy in family services and attachment work can support recovery:
- Emotional regulation
- Interpersonal problem-solving skills
- Communication skills
- Healthy boundaries
- Quality interactions
- Self-understanding
- Understanding others
With trauma-specific family-based approaches to care, you and your loved ones recognize that every member is an integral part of the larger family system.
Healing Trauma With Family Services and Attachment Work at The Guest House
Your loved ones are an important part of your identity, like your culture, beliefs, and values. Regardless of genetics, your family is the group of people you look to for guidance and support as you navigate life. Thus, social connection is not one-sided as everyone must contribute to building meaningful connections with each other.
At The Guest House, we know having a supportive, engaged, and well-informed family is vital to long-term recovery. While every family is unique and has different experiences and needs, we believe in meeting you and your loved ones where you are on your recovery journey. Whether having your family involved is the right path for you, family services and attachment work can help you dismantle the impact attachment trauma has had on you. With trauma-specific support, you can heal and learn how to build healthy and mutually supportive relationships in your life.
Psychological distress, poor relationships, and substance misuse are often rooted in attachment trauma. Moreover, attachment trauma typically stems from traumatic environments and experiences in early childhood. Greater awareness and understanding of ACEs and attachment styles can support healing. When you understand how your early relationships impact your thinking and behavior patterns, you can start dismantling those unhealthy patterns, foster communication, and build mutually supportive relationships. Therefore, at The Guest House, we are committed to providing trauma-specific family services and attachment work to dismantle the harm of attachment trauma and co-occurring challenges. Call us at (855) 483-7800 to learn how therapies like family and group therapy in family services and attachment work can support long-term recovery for the whole family.