Attachment Theory, the Secure Base, and Its Implications On Our Adult Selves (Part 1 / ?)

It has been many years since John Bowlby first proposed the idea of attachment theory —which developed and grew into a theory that proposed that the attachments and relationship patterns we have later in life are reflections of the original attachment we had with our primary caregiver as an infant.

Since Bowlby, a ton papers and books have been churned out about the subject. Countless studies have been done, including the famous rhesus monkeys study.

We usually visualise attachment styles with the XY axis of view of self and view of others. Do you see yourself as good, worthy of love, or no? Do you see others as trustworthy, loving, safe, or no? And where you fall upon on these two dimensions can reliably place you into different adult attachment types: secure, anxious/ambivalent/preoccupied, avoidant (including fearful and dismissive), and disorganised. There are several different names for those types, but they’re essentially referring to the same patterns.

Studying psychology, attachment theory has always interested me — particularly the idea of a secure base.

Ideally, when we are young, our primary caregiver (does not necessarily have to be a parent), are a secure base, a safe home from which we comfortably explore the outside (sometimes scary) world. We cry when we are separated from them, we are comforted as soon as we are back with them, and with them around, we know we are safe to venture further and further out of the den, so to speak.

However I argue that at least half of people (at least in modern Western, middle class society that I’m familiar with) did not experience a perfectly secure attachment in infanthood.

There are many ways attachment trauma can manifest in childhood. A caregiver may be inconsistent in their providing of love: at times, they are caring and nurturing, other times, they may be angry or distant. A caregiver may be consistently negligent (and this includes emotionally) to a child entirely, ignoring cries for help or comfort. A caregiver may never respond positively at all. A caregiver may abandon or leave the child.

Sometimes, it’s not deliberate, sometimes an unfortunate result of unfortunate circumstance, but nevertheless, they are impactful because an infant doesn’t understand why anything is happening. Maybe you grow up and logically understand why some things happened, but that doesn’t change the fact that when you were 3, 4, you didn’t — and you still carry that child who was scared and had no idea what was going on.

When you’re a baby, love and nurture from a primary caregiver is not only wanted, but needed for survival. In the olden days, a baby without a secure home and caregiver around is a dead one. There is a primal need in us as social creatures to be cared for and to connect with others, and as babies, there is really only one place initially where that can be found — a caregiver.

So, when a caregiver leaves, when a caregiver reacts violently, when a caregiver ignores our pleas entirely, when they’re unpredictable, this isn’t just an inconvenience for a helpless toddler, but a threat upon survival and life itself. It’s no wonder that early childhood trauma can extend far into adolescence and adulthood, even if the memories don’t, simply because they were so impactful to the baby at the time.

I ponder whether or not the formation of our self esteem and ego is an almost perfect extension of how we attached to our caregivers. In most modern models of attachment, one of the dimensions is our view of ourselves. But I posit it goes further than that — it isn’t whether or not you like or don’t like yourself, it is whether you are securely attached to yourself as a secure base from which to form connections to others.

That many symptoms of various mental illnesses such as perpetual emptiness, a consistent lack of identity, terror of abandonment, disillusionment, and more, may sometimes be able to be traced back to attachment theory — of never being able to mirror a loving caregiver to establish your own secure base. A child’s identity is formed at a young age, and is more or less learned through interactions with caregivers and the environment. It makes sense that a disruption of this identity formation period can lead to a weak sense of self and chronic emptiness and disconnect with the self as an adult.

A child’s growing self esteem is a cyclical relationship with their environment growing up. Every behaviour of theirs elicits a response from a caregiver, which impacts the growing sense of self, and so on and so forth. Ideally, if a caregiver is consistently responsive, warm, and caring, a baby begins to build up an internal model of the self, a “looking glass self”, that the self is someone worthy of warmth, care, and love. And it is through this consistent push and pull, reinforcement of values and behaviours and internal beliefs, that a growing child’s self esteem is moulded — that their identity is moulded from. And this is a self esteem and ego that may be so steadfast it remains far into adulthood — at least its foundation does.

On the other hand, a neglectful, abusive, hurtful, distant, or inconsistent caregiver sends a completely different message to a (helpless) child. The child learns that they are not worthy of love and care, and that reaching out will only backfire. They may develop a sense of self that is hurt and self defeating, or a sense of self that is fiercely self isolating and fearful of vulnerability, or a self that lashes out just to survive. And all of this may occur at such a young age, at such an unconscious level, that left unexamined simply live onto adulthood without any conscious recognition.

However, every interaction at a young age is a lesson that is internalised. Just as one example; a caregiver lashes out at one year old you for crying, you learn that your hurt will not be recognised and that expressing yourself will be punished. It’s akin to a form of conditioning — if a baby’s cries is met with anger, creating fear and anxiety, then a baby will not cry out for an adult anymore. They associate reaching out with pain and violence. These lessons, if they are never unlearned, can easily carry well into adulthood.

It may be that self esteem and ego are essentially the secure bases we return to when we are alone. At the end of the day, we only have one self we consistently come back home to each and every time — the self. When we do not have that secure base within ourselves, that’s when problems begin to arise. It’s like coming back to a chaotic or neglectful or violent household every night — except this time, physically, it’s just you yourself, and all of that is carried inside, and not in the environment. If you’re internally treating yourself in the same negative patterns that caregivers might sometimes have (sometimes very unconsciously), the pattern of not feeling safe and comforted, of feeling lost or afraid, is continuously reinforced. You’re continuously parenting yourself — more often than not in the same ways learned from caregivers’ actions and behaviours.

After doing a lot of reading on the above subjects, I think that we can find so many answers in our childhood — though of course, it’s never that simple. There is still a lot to be examined. Recently though, more and more, research is showing that it isn’t just acute trauma from childhood that can have negative impacts on someone growing up. This growing area of interest can be reflected in all the research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the idea of an inner child (associated with the idea of a hurt and traumatised child essentially piloting an adult brain and body), and schema-focused therapy.

It’s not about simply “fixing” self esteem. It’s not about forcing yourself to suddenly snap your fingers and feel good about yourself. It’s about creating a secure attachment to yourself, and to the hurt inner child inside. It’s reconnecting with your younger self and providing that love, nurture, acceptance that may not have always been a given growing up.

I’ll end this with an example that can probably reflect this idea better than my continuous rambling.

Think of that scared child you still carry, and tell them,

You did not deserve what happened to you.

You were just scared and confused, and you did not have the tools to cope with what you were going through. It was not your fault.

I’m so sorry that nobody noticed or helped you.

Even if you did not get that help, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t deserve it.

I forgive you for everything you did, born from desperation and a need for survival. I forgive you for everything.

I see you now, and you are safe now. I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m with you, and you will never be alone again.

I still carry you with me, I always will, but this time, you are safe, and you are unconditionally loved.