Feeling and Dealing
The somatic roots of attachment types
Last time, I introduced attachment theory, first through what I called the “trauma-Insta” lens that a lot of folks have largely seen it through, then with a little of the historical backing from psychology.
But to get out of psychology-land for a minute, I want to share how this whole system of ideas was first taught to me — because it’s never left me. And this lesson, rather than the more traditional psych material, is what has formed the basis for how I work with attachment now, both as a person in relationship and in my work with clients in Somatic Therapy.
An unforgettable lesson
It was, I think, the third module of my second year in the Rubenfeld Synergy training, in January. I remember because I know we were in a hotel, not the cabiny buildings of the Omega Insitute, where we studied in May and October. I remember the conference room we were doing the class in, the chairs in rows, the massage tables off to the side for the next part of the day.
One thing about trauma is that it tends to make powerful, static sense memories around itself. It doesn’t surprise me that I remember where I was, what the rooms were like, so clearly. It’s not that the lesson itself was a traumatic event. But it was a trigger for encountering my own childhood trauma, maybe for the first time at that particular pitch and volume, and as such, the surrounding circumstances remain vivid.
I would say that the lesson itself should have had a content warning, but it was maybe 2010 and we weren’t really doing that yet, not in every space. And the training had already proven to be a difficult and vulnerable place, where many other students were encountering and working through stuff frequently. I heard later on that our particular training cohort was sort of known for it; somehow this group had a lot of trauma in it, we were bringing it to this faculty and to each other, and working with touch and the life of the body reliably brought it out. In some ways the faculty and teaching interns weren’t ready for it; it wasn’t something they’d encountered before, at least not so much all in one place. But for all that, they handled it admirably.
It happened during a break in class, and it didn’t happen only to me; in fact, it took me a little longer to recognize what was happening and get help. The trigger, for that’s what it was, was the beautiful lesson and demo that two of our faculty had presented on attachment theory.
To be clear, I don’t blame them at all for the way so many of us in that training responded. A trauma trigger, a lot of the time, isn’t anyone’s fault. If anything, it was a powerful cue to them that this material goes deep, and that their demonstration was incredibly effective.
The axes of Feeling and Dealing
After a brief introduction of Bowlby and Ainsworth’s work, our teachers, Theresa Petersen-Chu and Joan Brooks, switched focus to the more emotional and somatic sides of attachment between caregivers and children. Rather than using the anxious/avoidant axes, which puts the focus on the infant’s response and honestly rather pathologizes it, they talked in terms of parental attunement. Attuning means responsiveness, mirroring, helping your child feel seen and safe. So the demo showed four versions of what happens when a child gets scared or upset and goes to their parent for help. The axes in this case were called Feeling and Dealing.
A caregiver that’s well attuned with their child and able to soothe and return them to safety most of the time is high in both Feeling and Dealing, meaning they emotionally attune to the child, and they offer a sense of safety and steadiness. This is the secure attachment figure. A child in this situation learns that their emotions are okay and that they pass, that problems are approachable, and that they can generally rely on the adult(s) closest to them.
A low-dealing, high-feeling parent tends to cultivate anxious attachment. This is the parent that freaks out right along with the child when anything goes wrong. They may make the child feel seen, but they don’t do a great job of calming them down or helping them find solutions to problems. They may be a “helicopter parent,” with difficulties letting their child explore and learn independently. The child may learn that they’re right to be scared of everything, and that the world is dangerous and unmanageable, even by adults.
On the other hand, a high-dealing, low-feeling parent may be dismissive of the kid’s concerns, tell them not to cry or that their fears are foolish, and handle whatever the problem is without addressing the emotions. Such a parent might be the type of throw the kid in the pool to teach him to swim. This maps to avoidant attachment, where the child learns not to rely on the caregiver for comfort, and that the safe thing to do is “suck it up and deal.”
The fourth type, not feeling and not dealing, is characteristic of a parent who’s checked out, erratic, or violent. The absence, unreliability, or dangerousness of this kind of parent tends to result in disorganized attachment, where a child may develop any number of survival strategies but is able to trust none of them.
I talk about these dynamics some in an older post, if you want to see some examples of each.
So what messed us up so much?
The trouble came for a bunch of us in that class when the teachers acted out the four different types. I’ll never forget Joan playing the part of the child, happily tossing a pine cone like it was a ball. With years of training in body language and communication, she easily dropped into the character of a young child, without any of the absurd exaggeration adults tend to fall into when they don’t understand children at all. She was just suddenly maybe 5 or 6 years old, playing with a ball in the yard, when she sees something that scares her and runs yelling for her mother.
Theresa, the mother in these sketches, comes outside with a concerned expression, open to the child’s distress but not matching its tone. She lets the child snuggle close and a dialogue something like this follows:
Mom: What is it, sweetie, what happened?
Kid: I was playing outside, and I dropped my ball and it rolled into the bushes, and then I saw a snake come out and it scared me!
Mom: A snake! Oh, that does sound pretty scary! Do you want me to take a look?
Kid: [sniffling a little] Yeah.
Mom: Okay, let’s look together, okay?
Kid: Nooo, I don’t want to go near it!
Mom: That’s okay, you don’t have to, I’ll go look, all right?
Kid: Okay.
[Mom looks, making a show of being careful not to get too close. Seeing nothing, she comes back.]
Mom: I don’t see anything, sweetie.
Kid: But there was a snake, I saw it!
Mom: I believe you! Snakes are pretty afraid of us too, though, so if you saw it come out of that bush it probably went somewhere far away as fast as it could!
Kid: Really?
Mom: Really. I think you’re safe to keep playing out here if you want to. Do you want to?
As a secure caregiver, this is her job right now, and she comes to it naturally from many years of practice and knowledge of her kid. She responds to her child’s distress quickly, keeps her own demeanor calm and comforting while assessing the danger, validates the child’s experience, then helps the child return to safety without — and this is key — shaming the child for being scared at nothing.
So far so good, right? Well, sort of. I felt okay and thought this initial portrayal was sweet, though part of me was already dissociating a little, the way I think I did for a very long time whenever I saw a healthy, loving interaction between a good-enough parent and a distressed child. Then, things started to shift a bit more as Joan and Theresa got into portraying the other parent/child pairings.
Insecure attachment…uh-oh
The telling thing in the subsequent sketches was Joan’s behavior from the start. She didn’t act like the securely attached kid: peacefully, happily playing, then genuinely startled and scared, running for help, and receiving it enough to return to baseline. Instead each subsequent opening of the sketch showed how a child in that type of dynamic has already been affected by it.
With the anxious kid, Joan played with the “ball,” but was less cheerful, appearing a little cautious. Her fear on seeing the snake was higher-key, and wound up as she sought the parent for help. As the high-feeling, low-dealing parent, Theresa raced out, matching Joan’s tone and amplifying it. As the kid tried to tell her what had happened, the mom alternated between focusing on her own fear, getting mad at the kid for doing something dangerous, and letting the kid get increasingly upset. I was swiftly reminded of caregivers in my own life, who could quickly freak out at a kid doing something out of the ordinary, and could rapidly make it about their own feelings, leaving me more frightened than before and worrying I had done something wrong even when I was the one wronged or in danger.
Next came the high-dealing, low-feeling pairing. Joan played again, with a wariness this time. She somehow gave off the kind of toughness I often saw in kids growing up whose parents largely let them fend for themselves. When she called for her mother, it almost seemed like she knew she wouldn’t get a satisfying response, but tried for it anyway. Theresa was eye-roll-y and slow to respond, then came out, hands on hips, projecting a kind of “this better be good” attitude. “I thought I saw something,” Joan said, clearly already anticipating the annoyance and shaming of her fear. I don’t remember the exact exchange, but I remember the feeling I got: the specter of a major figure in my life, whom I feared and adored growing up, and who treated disturbances from her charges with sternness, impatience, and occasionally smacks. “There’s nothing there,” says such a parent, and might add, “Now go play before I give you something to cry about.”
Finally, the not-feeling, not-dealing parent, and the disorganized child. This one tipped me over the edge, not immediately but afterward. Joan played outside as before, but in a sort of listless, aimless way. When she was startled by something, she responded with authentic fear, but then seemed to doubt herself, or the wisdom of asking Mom for help. Theresa, meanwhile, sat in the chair in the “inside” part of the stage, nodding out. Joan came in, calling “Mom,” quietly, uncertainly. She tried to rouse her mother enough to come help her, but also was clearly scared to disturb her, and maybe also not sure there’s a point. Eventually, she goes back outside, numb and defeated, and starts half-heartedly playing again.
And then the class lost their damn minds
I was sitting in front that day, with much of the rest of the class behind me. I remember how, at various points in the demo, different people broke down crying, or even got up and walked out. We got to the end of it and went into a class break, and the faculty and staff were helping the people who had gotten triggered by the deeply affecting demo they’d just seen.
Meanwhile I was fiiiiiine. Sure! Totally fine. Got up, stretched a little, took some notes. Drank some water. I might have used the restroom or something. Thank goodness I didn’t have such deep trauma as these other students, I thought. I sure hope they’re okay.
Ha. Hahahaha.
When we came back together, we were meant to do some kind of practice work in pairs, at the massage tables; I don’t remember what on. I just remember that I picked a table, sat up on it, and then as I sat there felt myself fall into a profound freeze response. I was supposed to get ready to do practice work, but could barely get myself present in the room. I kept drifting off into a kind of spaced-out, dissociative trance. I tried to force myself to move, to start, to do what I was supposed to do next, and most importantly, to not be a burden or a bother. In the midst of recognizing literally all of the types dysfunctional attachment behaviors I’d seen demonstrated by adults in my life as a child, I became unable to proceed.
Feeling like I was about to be disruptive to the class and also fail to do the work I’d been assigned just added to the echoes. Why, I thought, couldn’t I just have had my breakdown at the same time as everyone else, during the break? Was I just copying them and trying for attention? Did I not let myself feel this sooner because I thought I was too cool and different to share in what seemed like a group reaction? (This, by the way, is a perfect example of what my partner calls “getting yourself coming and going,” which might deserve its own post.)
I’m fairly sure I said something like, “I need help,” or “I’m not okay,” and Heather, one of the teaching interns, came over and helped me out with some grounding and holding some space for the feelings that finally emerged. I don’t remember exactly how long it took for my head to stop spinning, for my words to return, for the spell to pass. I just know that it eventually did, with the help of skilled practitioners, and then I had a lot to think about.
From attachment rupture to repair
In many ways, that training was the start of a very long process of healing for me, one I hadn’t fully known I needed. And while the lesson was one that has stayed with me to this day, it would be more than a decade before I recognized anything about how my own attachment system works, or what an “attachment repair” would even mean.
One of the things that people often dislike about the prevalence of attachment talk in the therapy world is that it seems to suggest terrible things for both parents and adult children. For parents, it ratchets up the already insane pressure to be perfect with their children, lest they “screw them up” forever. For grownups now in therapy, it can make them feel like if they missed out on a secure attachment as a child, then something in them must be permanently broken.
Neither of these things is true, for any number of reasons I’ll get into in later posts. And while this isn’t the only solution for healing wounded attachment, attachment repair is possible, and does some surprising things.
As I’ve been writing these first two posts, a number of other posts have spun off into drafts, and I’ll be developing them in an order that makes sense to me. I’d also love to hear any questions you have so far: comments most welcome.