How many times have you heard or thought this?

• You just have to let go of the past

• You can’t let your upbringing effect you

• You need to move on

We seem to have developed this idea that looking at past difficulties or trauma is a weakness. We believe that if our past influences our present we just need push it away. You might have even thought that if you talk about struggling because of past experiences you’re not taking responsibility for yourself. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Today we’ll talk about why difficulties in childhood matter and how our early relationships profoundly influence our adult lives.

It’s All About Attachment

We are all born hardwired to develop a bond or attachment to our early caregivers. We can form an attachment to parents, grandparents, adoptive/foster/step parents, even childcare workers and teachers can play an important role when it comes to attachment. The type of attachment we develop is directly related to how our caregiver responds to our needs, which makes perfect sense from a survival perspective. Babies of all species are vulnerable, many living creatures show strong evidence of child/caregiver attachment. Human babies are especially dependent on adults; we can’t even lift our own head for one to three months, can’t eat solid food until 6 months and don’t walk until nine months to one year, and even then not well enough to escape potential danger. Even after the infant days children need adults to care for them for several more years. Because of this pro-longed dependence having a strong, healthy bond with a caregiver means that a little one is confident that they will be safe. They know they can depend on their adults to meet their needs in a predictable way and therefore their bodies and brains can grow, be healthy and thrive.

When children grow up in circumstances with a lot of adversity, whether that’s abuse, neglect, yelling, harsh punishment, and criticism or chaos then the opposite takes place. Children’s brains send signals that they are not safe, the adults are not dependable or predictable, and the brain and body go into survival mode. When this happens children will look for ways to try to keep themselves safe resulting in:

• Either an overly sensitive OR numbed flight/flight/freeze response

• Becoming overly people pleasing

• Acting out behaviors

• Perfectionism

• Blaming themselves for their parent’s behaviors

• Numbing out from emotions or even their own bodies

Children typically have no choice but to stay in that situation and try to develop some sort of attachment, so they do what it takes to try to cope and get a predictable response from their caregiver.

The Attachment Figure Becomes the Blueprint

You might be saying “okay great, but I’m an adult so why does this matter now? What does this have to do with how I am at work or with my partner or my kids?” Well, for better or worse that early attachment becomes the blueprint for every other relationship, for how we view ourselves and how we relate to certain emotions. Because we are hardwired for attachment, that wiring doesn’t just disappear when we are done with childhood. That’s why you can think of it as a blueprint- we base everything else we experience off of that attachment, especially in moments of stress.

If we had what’s called an “organized attachment” with our early caregivers then we could “feel felt” as phrased by child psychiatrist and attachment researcher Dan Siegel. We learn that our needs matter, we are essentially good, the world is mostly safe and predictable and how to regulate emotions so they don’t run away with us. We can carry that belief through the rest of our lives, allowing us to manage complex relationships and be more resilient in the face of uncertainty. If we experienced what’s called a “disorganized attachment” then that is what we become wired for and all of that adversity we experienced in childhood becomes our blueprint. As you can imagine this can lead to difficulties in relationships, self-worth and ability to cope with life’s challenges in a healthy way. People who experienced a disorganized attachment are more likely to develop mental health symptoms, substance use disorders and even physical health problems. Attachment wounds can become especially apparent when parenting our own children. It's incredibly challenging to parent differently than we were parented if we haven’t made sense of our own past yet. It takes a lot of hard work to change our own blueprint in order to stop passing along the mistakes of our parents to our own children.

Recovery

So it might seem like it makes sense to say “you just can’t let that past stuff get to you.” But the truth is that our brains are built to do just that. The good news is that just like our minds are formed by our early attachment figures, our actual brain structures can also change based on the steps we take now. What we might say instead is that even though you aren’t responsible for what you’re going through you are responsible to solve it anyways. Working through and making sense of the past is a research proven method to change your blueprint, helping you respond to the present instead of reacting to and repeating hurts from the past.

Feel free to reach out for a free 20 minute consult to learn more about what this could mean for you and don’t forget to subscribe below for free monthly tips about coping with and understanding trauma, adversity and parenting.