Welcome to my (Older) Attachment Theory Resources

Below you will find a variety of resources (tools, books, article, writing) about attachment theory.
You are free to use any of it as you as you give proper attribution to the author.
Now dive and dive deep, as the landscape of attachment theory is a rich new territory with much to explore!

Philippe’s Resources

Philippe’s Attachment Theory Part 1 Class Notes

Philippe’s question about a practical guide to secure attachment on facebook.

Other Book Recommendations:

Wired for Love is also good, as well as all of Sue Johnson's books. Stan Tatkin wrote Your Brain on Love and Wired for Love -those books are more geared toward the general public. He is a couple's therapist who is deeply studied in Attachment theory. The thing that most pop psych self-help books are lacking is that there is no discussion of disorganized attachment - which is a particular attachment style characterized by early trauma in childhood- where one or both of your caregivers were dangerous and caused a good deal of fear. This style is very different than anxious or avoidant and helpful to understand. Here's a good list of more clinical attachment/trauma/neuroscience books: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/attachment-neuroscience-trauma

Other Resources on Attachment Theory

Circle of Security International

Some Videos on Attachment Theory

Written Words by Others on Attachment Theory

From Anonymous

The more deep somatic an attachment healing someone does the more capacity they have for secure attachment. Sansar bonding patterns with our mother from zero to to lay the "wiring" foundation of our nervous system for connection for the rest of our lives unless we do deeper somatic and attachment healing, so in most cases and we are using alternate relationship platforms to perpetuate are anxious or avoidant attachment styles. And the rewiring is a healing process towards more capacity for secure relating. For more info & review of the latest neuroscience see Stan Tatkin PhD & Sue Johnson PhD & Peter Cummings MA (Adult Attachment Repair Model) who are in the trenches working "rewiring" and restoring Bethany for secure relating in individuals and couples

From Anthony David Adams

At the core of insecure is toxic shame. Toxic shame drives addiction, and the insecure dynamic is a pattern to avoid intimacy. When we are insecure, we won't really be that attracted to secure people or be able to see them right away because a) they are unfamiliar and b) we will need to face ourselves. So what I suggest is don't avoid the people you are attracted to, but engage, explore and express what you feel with them, and really receive their answers. Continue to allow yourself to be in the pain you are experiencing as it truly is a gift. When you stop avoiding the pain inside of you and instead take full responsibility to transform it into love, then you've become an Adult.

My framework is this:

Our core essence is what is shamed away and we learn to try to control our emotions so as to keep that essence hidden away. The way back to our Essence is our Emotions. It seems we have three paths when it comes to our Emotions 1) Evict, Evade & Erase 2) Endure, Explain, Edit 3) Engage, Explore, Express.

The 3rd path is the one that leads to healing and transformation. When you commit to feeling everything, you will expand your capacity to FEEL and thus to LOVE. You'll become a healing force for people.

The experience really is like facing your own death. This is what is meant by "die before you die" and is at the root of the world wisdom traditions.

You have faith, you are crucified and you are born again. This is a real experience.

Before you heal your toxic shame it seems that everything is basically an object with which we use to repress our Self and also to dull the pain of our self abandonment -- this is true for our creative life and our romantic, family, social life. Once we heal the toxic shame, everything becomes about SHARING that Self, which at it's core is divine love, with everyone.

Embrace your emotions with gratitude, they are calls from the lost warriors of your past, and you become the embodied Warrior and Chief of your tribe, you call them all home and welcome their wisdom.

I'm happy to talk to you 1 on 1 about this if you like, as this work saved my life and my desire is to share these maps and tools (and myself!) far and wide.

From Matt Licata (link to original article)

Early relational experiences are encoded in neural circuitry in the first 18 months of life. Stored as implicit memory, they are inaccessible by ordinary awareness, forming templates through which we engage the world. In a moment of activation, the templates come surging online. Before we realize it, previously sequestered material has flooded our perception.

Our expectations in relationship – whether we can count on others, are worthy of love, will allow another to matter or whether we can take the risk to lead with our vulnerability – are organized in a fragile little nervous system that yearns for connection. The neural pathways are tender and responsive, as we seek attuned, right-brain to right-brain resonance with those around us. We want to feel felt, have our experience held and mirrored, and for pure space in which we can explore unstructured states of being.

While this encoding is deeply embedded, it can be rewired. While it may feel entrenched, it is not as solid as it appears. Even if your early environment was one of empathic failure, developmental trauma, and insecure attachment, it is never too late. The wild realities of neuroplasticity and the courage of the human heart is unstoppable and an erupting force of creativity.

Through new relational experiences – with a lover, a friend, a therapist, a baby; a star, a deer, a mountain, the moon – love is hidden inside the caverns of neural circuitry. It is the substance which forms the neurons and their synapses, lighting up heart-cells in a moment of connection. Each time you attune to another – or to the unmet inner “other” within you – a new world is born.

As long as breath is present, you can update the narrative, recraft your perception and re-envision a new story. You can make new meaning of your life, re-imagine your purpose, and renew your commitment to being here. Slowly, you can revise your circuitry with pathways of holding awareness, flooding it with empathic attunement, presence, and warmth.

No matter what is happening in your life, you can start right now, in this moment. The opportunity for reorganization is always here and wired deep within you. Don’t give up. Love will never give up on you.

THE MYSTERY OF HOLDING

There is an ancient longing wired in us as infants to be seen, to be felt, and to have our surging, somatic-emotional world validated by another. When our subjective experience is empathetically held, contained, and allowed, we come to a natural place of rest. What is love, really, other than fully allowing the other to be who they are, for their experience to be what it is, and to offer the gift of presence to their unique subjectivity? In this sense, I love you = I allow you.

The late Donald Winnicott, a brilliant psychoanalyst from Britain, used the term 'holding environment' to describe the ideal mandala in which growth and development could occur, weaved of the qualities of contact and space. Through making attuned, present-time, somatically-engaged contact with another as they are - and by providing an open, warm sanctuary in which their experience can unfold and illuminate - we become vehicles of love in action.

Simultaneously, by offering the gift of space, we do not interfere with the unfolding of their heart and majestic inner process. We do not pathologize their experience or demand that they be different, change, transform, shift, or 'heal' in order for us to love them. If sadness is there, or fear, or despair, or shame, or depression, or profound grief, we will infuse their inner mandala with validation and presence. We will be there for them, but only if they need us. We will not engulf them with the projections of our own unlived life, nor will we unload upon them our own requirements and agendas, arising out of our own undigested psyches and bodies. Instead, we will seed the intersubjective container with tender space.

While not talked about as much, we can provide this same contact and space to ourselves and come to discover that our nature as awareness itself is in fact the ultimate holding environment. You are always, already resting in the majesty of presence and are always, already held - by the beloved - who is none other than your own miracle nervous system, heart, and somatic brilliance. While we may not always understand our experience - and while it may never fit into our ideas, hopes, dreams, and fantasies about the life we were 'meant to live' - we can come to trust that it is unfolding according to a unique blueprint which is emerging out of the unseen hand of love. We are invited to practice a radical intimacy with our experience, staying close to our ripe bodies and tender hearts, but not so close that we fuse or overly identify with it. Rest in the very middle and stay astonished at what is being birthed out of the unknown in every moment.

For so many I speak with, there is an undercurrent of aggression towards themselves, a subtle movement of self-loathing, unexamined shame and embarrassment, and a very alive (if not conscious) belief that they are flawed and have failed. Each time we exit our present, embodied experience into thinking, interpretation, blame, resentment, and complaint, we turn from the preciousness and the majesty of what we are. In this movement of rejection, we keep alive the archaic belief that our immediate experience is not valid, that it is not workable, that it is not forming the actual particles of the path of healing, exactly as it is. From one perspective, this may be seen as the ultimate act of self abandonment.

Let us all take a pause on this new day, and from a place of love visualize a holding environment for ourselves, where we grant unconditional permission to make intimate and direct contact with all of our vulnerabilities, with our tender bodies and with our raw hearts, with our unprocessed challenges from the past, and with our less-than-awakened thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Let us make the most radical commitment to no longer abandon ourselves, exiting into our conditioned stories and unkind judgments, and inquire with love into the habitual belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. As we open our eyes and our hearts to the always, already present holding environment which is our true nature, we behold the drop of grace which pours through the eyes of everyone we meet, including that unknown precious one that we see when we look in the mirror. And then all that could possibly remain is an unshakeable faith in love’s perfection.

From Dave Jolly

What you're talking about here is an Unconscious Survival Strategy, a stress response pattern, and one that is patterned in early, and has more to do with the person than just attachment style. Because the nervous system of the Avoidant is wired that way, and has been rewarded for being that way, there needs to be a resolution in the unconscious mind, and a better set of alternatives as a survival strategy available to the part of them that uses avoidance as a strategy. One of the issues with early childhood strategies is that while they are useful in particular situations, they usually become *generalized* as an approach to the rest of life-- kind of only having a hammer and seeing everything as nails type view of life. And this generalized response is unconscious, and therefore, on Auto-Pilot. If the Avoidant really sees how this pervasive pattern is costing them more than it's giving them-- in other words, if *they* want to change-- then it can be done. The modalities I know of that could leverage this kind of change are ones that work primarily on the unconscious mind: NLP & Hypnosis. I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones I know of as effective for changing unconscious patterning. But IMO, if they are not ready to change, then no amount of reasoning, reaching the heart, or approaching the change from a conscious mind point of view are going to be effective. You can't change others, you can only influence them to change themselves.

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Avoidants are just one of a few strategies to deal with stress in life-- the "4 F's" of Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. These stress response styles can be changed, but you can't just "take away" a stress response. The nervous system requires it in order to be okay in the world. You can however, expand their skillset of coping mechanisms, reframe the meanings & perceptions that drive triggered states, etc., ...It can be done.

I would begin by understanding the behavior from the 'avoidant' person's point of view. There is an underlying logic to all behavior, and once you 'get it', not only will it make sense, but you'll be able to be with it without being adversarial. With the behavior Specifically, what are the core needs that the person is getting met by this behavior? And then, find out what their rules are to meet those needs. From there, you can find better ways to meet those need explicitly via a win-win agreement, or covertly by simply meeting those needs for the person ina better, healthier way. Give them a better option, make them an offer they can't refuse ;)

And remember that people will meet needs in unhealthy ways if they have to. Needs will be met, by any means necessary!

It's also key to remember that contrary to new age thought, not all of a persons values or needs revolve around love or connection, at least, not directly.

And, person can get a need for say, connection met by conflict, or by deeply intimate love. It depends on the person and the circumstances.

For more on needs, I recommend looking on YouTube for "tony Robbins six human needs". Some very useful powerful information for understanding what drives people

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Yeah, it's a common path for relationships. I feel ya, man. Been there many times. Finding that higher paradigm of cohesion between two often polar approaches to life can be really, really hard. The reality is that every human being has inner conflicts between our OWN needs internally, and then on top of that, we have conflicts between HOW we get our needs met with others! our partners need to make some sense of that & have that make sense inside THEIR world in order for a relationship to work at all. It's a lot to align sometimes.

And perhaps some of this boils down to communication styles too. Maybe you're being explicit in your communication style, but find yourself ending up with partners who prefer a more implicit way of connecting?

For what it's worth, I do think that it's important to speak up for what you want, and identify what ends up feeling dissatisfying to you. It's okay to say 'this is hurtful for me', which is not the same at all as saying 'you are ___

Another way of looking at it is that most of us are living at the level of the *strategy* of how to meet our needs over addressing the needs themselves. So, for an 'avoidant' type person, the need may be for certainty-- control over one's own state or environment in order to feel safe--, or Variety-- ability to shift energy and refresh one's perspective on life by changing scenery--, but 'running away' = a *strategy* to get certainty & variety, and is clearly not the only way to meet those needs.

Interestingly, a clingy & overly-attached person may be trying to meet those same needs of certainty & variety by a very different strategy of deeply attaching to a person. Same needs, very different strategies. Which is why we have to learn what needs the person's behavior may be meeting, and their strategies for meeting those needs and recognizing when they've met them-- because, at the end of the day, if you feel you are trying to meet their needs, but to them their needs are not being met, then the end effect is that their needs are still not met.

I think it's worth mentioning for relationships too that often, people use a need for Significance as a way to get love, which never ever works. But in our culture, we are confused about that. One way to get significance is to show up & then run away over and over. And by doing this, they use the 'hook' of your own desire to make them happy as a weapon against you, to keep you trying and trying and feeling like you're failing and failing, all the while, they are getting their significance needs met. It's super common. And if this rings true, remember that usually, this is an auto-pilot, unconscious strategy. When people try to get significance by taking instead of contributing, they tend to act at their worst.

From Emily Orum

Acknowledging my patterns as a RECOVERING AVOIDANT ATTACHER and how to reframe

Judge harshly what others think, say, or do: I keep an open mind and accept others as they are.
Avoid emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy as a way to maintain distance: I engage in emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy when it is healthy and appropriate for me.
Allow addictions to people, places, and things to distract them from achieving intimacy in relationships: I practice my recovery to develop healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Use indirect or evasive communication to avoid conflict or confrontation: I use direct and straightforward communication to resolve conflicts and deal appropriately with confrontations.
Diminish their capacity to have healthy relationships by declining to use the tools of recovery: When I use the tools of recovery, I am able to develop and maintain healthy relationships of my choosing.
Suppress their feelings or needs to avoid feeling vulnerable: I embrace my own vulnerability by trusting and honoring my feelings and needs.
Pull people toward them, but when others get close, push them away: I welcome close relationships while maintaining healthy boundaries.
Refuse to give up their self-will to avoid surrendering to a power greater than themselves: I believe in and trust a power greater than myself. I willingly surrender my self-will to my Higher Power.
Believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness. (this pattern I have done good work on): I honor my authentic emotions and share them when appropriate.
Withhold expressions of appreciation: I freely engage in expressions of appreciation toward others.

(These are patterns of AVOIDANCE in CODA recovery)

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Attachment Theory: Tools, Articles & Resources