Attachment - Why It Matters
The chapter of the text opens with: “Every time you answer your child’s need for comfort or confidence, you’re building a bond of trust. Every time you show you understand how your child feels and what your child wants, you’re demonstrating the power of a primal connection that all of us are born seeking.”
Our need for connection to other people is hardwired. I distinctly remember some students looking at me like I had five heads as I read this to them. Apparently this is not an often held belief in high school? Welp, back to salesperson mode... "Purchase my attachment theory here, best price in town!". I repeatedly turned into a salesman throughout the course, with an intangible product that only suggests the possibility that when we suffer it is because we are not getting our primal needs met.
The product is the fact that the need for connection is built into our DNA. Kent Hoffman has taught students in other classes that there is a difference between pain and suffering- Pain is inherent as a part of life. Nobody gets a free ride. It is as much a part of life as anything else we experience. Suffering however is being in pain and while knowing we are alone. And, if we are really alone and suffering, we can feel out of control - Unteathered to anything, floating further and further away.
Hopelessness? That's where hopelessness comes from. One student shook his head, and asked "so you're telling me that we ALL need other people?"- I told him that he didn't have to buy what what I was selling part and parcel, though that I hoped that he and the class would simply embrace the possibility that what I'm saying is true. "Just embrace the possibility", I said.
I doubled down. As the book states, and as is held as a cornerstone of of my philosophy, 'self-sufficiency is a myth'. To demonstrate, I showed the students this graphic below (the Circle of Security), where I suggested, "WHAT IF all of a children's behaviors are simply a message?"... a message that is 100% unavoidable because it is ingrained in our DNA. "From cradle to grave" as Bowlby puts it. What if all we need as a young human is a safe base to explore from, and a secure base accessible for comforting connection with others?
What if a child's needs (or even the needs of adults, or high school students for that matter) could be traced, where their behaviors could be mapped as a message of what their needs might be?
So infants, toddlers, and children have an inherent need to explore (we are innately curious), and an inherent need for comforting connection. Students remarked at this notion if they had young siblings, or if they were babysitters. What if behaviors (in children, but also in adults and high school students) are simply messages, I repeated- messages about what needs are or are not being met?
I did not cover any more of the Circle than the safe base and secure haven at this point, but I suggested further that especially with toddlers and children (though adults at times too) their needs can shift over and over and over in the matter of a minute. Quick personal note here, I have a 14 month old at home, my first and only, and at times her shifting need states can spin the room. My daughter is now the center of the universe, and everything else is a centrifuge that spins around her. I spoke throughout this class of my experiences in parenting (good, bad, and ugly), which seemed overall beneficial disclosure.
I asked if anyone had ever experienced a child that wanted to be held, then explore, then wanted to be held, then wanted to explore, then wanted to be held, then wanted to explore... then wanted to explore while being held. Most students had. I shared personal examples.
Children (toddlers and infants too) have shifting needs states. As a first-time parent who observes these constantly shifting needs-states, I see my daughter's needs like a coin being tossed. Just like a coin will flip between heads and tails 50 times before it hits the ground, so too are my daughter's needs to explore or feel connection 50 times in a heartbeat. A child's needs, human needs, can shift in microseconds. And sometimes I feel like I only have a 50/50 shot of calling the need.
And that's okay.
I asked them to consider too, the shifting need-states posited in the book. "For infants it's about eye contact, for toddlers it's about proximity, for teens it's about autonomy". I asked the students if they wanted to live with their parents forever, to which an overwhelming resounding "No" accompanied about 30 shaking heads. Ha!
What if our needs for safety and security were at the root of our well-being? Is it possible that "relationships are the engine and the framework for satisfaction and success in all domains of life" as the book suggests? Who in this class is willing to purchase this preposterous belief? What if the needs of a child just as the needs of a high school student can be hidden in plain sight?
The class was quite intrigued by the concepts, and by my willingness to do soft-shoe tap-dance if that is what would be needed to embrace the possibility. And, whether the students wanted to believe what I or the book stated didn't matter to me, I just hope they had an experience.
'Hidden in plain sight' is a cornerstone concept of the Raising a Secure Child (and Circle of Security), and I returned to this concept on several different occasions. To illustrate the concept I took a page out of Kent's playbook (I've observed him lecturing students previously) and showed images of company logos that have hidden messages/meanings; messages that once seen or understood are not easily forgotten.
Our needs for comforting connection, when met, are resonance. And that resonance is very often hidden in plain sight. But what is 'Hidden in Plain Sight'? What we see, we cannot unsee.
Beats brand headphones has the hidden headphone in the logo. You cannot unsee that now, if you didn't before.
Baskin Robbins ice cream has "31" flavors built in the middle of the logo.
The London Symphony Orchestra logo is a conductor, hidden in plain sight. I love this one.
Bird Love (a coffee shop in Taiwan) has two birds flying making a heart with their wings- again, hidden in plain sight.
Comforting connection is hidden in plain sight, too.
To illustrate, I then showed this music video and asked the students to look for even microseconds of "comforting connection". Their answers were clever, and spot on.
To finish this lecture, as an aside, I wanted to give an overview of how our brains play into our attachments to others. I used Dr Dan Siegel's Triune brain model; The Brain in the Palm of Your Hand. I wanted the students to know about our feeling self, and thinking self, and survival self, and how they interplay. I also wanted to begin the conversation about how our emotions can be overwhelming, even scary, and how cortisol and oxytocin affect us (for this first lecture about the brain, I kept it very simple). This is an example of where I deviated from the text.
Our reptilian brain, where our survival mechanisms of fight or flight are located. This is also near our brain stem which control autonomic functions such as breathing and heart rate.
Our mammalian brain. Our feeling, emotional brain (see the emotions from Disney's Inside Out for reference of the primary emotions we discuss later).
Our Prefrontal Cortex. Our thinking brain. (as Kent Hoffman put it, "the part of our brain that talks to us").
I also briefly described our mirror neuron system, and how this aids in several functions, most importantly feeling-felt, empathy, and in how we try to make sense of our experience.
As Dr. Dan Siegel puts it "We live in the present, with what we know about the past, in anticipation of the future". He describes mirror neurons as "anticipating the next of now... the immediate next". Laying the groundwork for our anticipatory nature as humans, and how me make sense of the world was important to me, but more important because we make sense of our attachments the same way- with what we know about the past.
Intended Takeaways: Believing we are alone is suffering; Behaviors are messages; Resonance is hidden in plain sight; A bit about the brain.
Course Student Feedback:
-"I learned what Shark Music I have and what tendencies I have. These discoveries allow me to find strategies to avoid discomfort, and struggle, and deal with problems better. It also allows me to change to way I see the world, and how I can change myself and inspire others"
-"This class/course provided a safe place to analyze your past thoughts/memories/experiences and realize everyone is the way they are for a reason, and that's okay"
-"I learned that I am mostly safety sensitive and esteem sensitive (and what that even means), and this helped me understand why I'm so hard on myself, and how I've never had many close friends with whom I can be completely honest"
-"[This class] was valuable because I learned about where my own pains, struggles, and insecurities come from, and that this pain is not wrong or bad in any way"
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