(Part 2) Shadow, Trauma or Attachment Wound?

Attachment issues manifest as a different part of the dartboard from shadows and traumas. They are some of the deepest and most difficult material to bring into awareness because they’re developmentally the earliest (typically from womb to 18 months old). They occur before language and before the ego was online so often no memory or obvious felt sense of the body is available for therapeutic use. Subtle skill, depth and connection to beingness is needed in both the client and therapist to fully address attachment issues.

Imagine yourself before your narrative, before your story, before you began to think any thoughts. Imagine the “blank slate” and openness of an infant before the social conditioning of living has occurred. The experience of this period of life is probably still womb-like and oceanic, and there is not yet the recognition of being separate from the outer world. This is prior to the “I” or the “I want” phases of development, before the sense of self has emerged. Even in less than ideal conditions, infants spend a great deal of time being, before any of the demands of later stages of evolution have unfolded.

Secure attachment is correlated with caregiver safety, mirroring and attunement. In best cases, a caregiver mirrors an infant’s “being”, the vast and empty selflessness which proceeds ego development. An infant in its natural state has no agenda, no drive beyond instinctual impulses, and often transmits openness and other essence qualities without boundaries. If a parent is sensitive, awake and developed enough to mirror this quality consistently, the message of “beingness is enough” is recirculated between caregiver and infant.

The infant feels safe, secure, confident and attuned to and this motif is absorbed as an imprint of the self which may influence all higher stages of development. When parental conditioning, including shadows, traumas and attachment issues, interrupt the relational circulation of being, the unspoken coding in these exchanges is that simple beingness is not enough or not OK. In other words, the parent’s subtle fears and agendas, which may have the best of intentions, are substituted for unconditional love.

Because of the research and paradigm articulated above, a common view, when individuals are ready to heal their attachment wounds is: “Because attachment issues happened in relationship, they can only be healed in relationship”. This has some merit but an interesting point of debate emerges. In relationship to who or what?

The interpersonal dimension of healing attachment wounds is undoubtedly important. But there's another dimension. Attachment wounds are often merged with issues of the the early developmental stage of differentiation which- by necessity- is a loss of relationship with Spirit . The sense of being a separate individual is essential to development, one can't remain an oceanic blob forever, but the loss sustained from becoming an ego is often the very angst that drives the spiritual quest to return to wholeness.

Put simply, any preverbal imprints of the "good caregiver" or "bad caregiver" usually lay dormant as unconscious maps for how we "attach" to Spirit as well as our human relationships. As the spiritual journey deepens and the prominence of ego identification is challenged, attachment issues will arise as both human interpersonal issues AND spiritual issues which should not necessarily be therapized! Some of these issues are better worked through one's private relationship with God alone.

So what is good therapy at the attachment level? A more full understanding of "attachment disorders" should include our sustained realization of being that reveals the original narcissistic wound of separation. Through spiritual maturity we become our own mirror, our own romantic relationship inseparable from wholeness. This requires that the counselor has done a good amount of work to heal and clear his or her attachment issues and has the capacity to hold presence with no interference. From a counselor’s perspective, after the regression work is completed, the relationship with a client becomes one of mutuality and collaboration, and a sustained view that there is nothing that truly needs healing because being is sufficient.

There are many good attachment modalities available and I especially recommend the “Attachment Project” of Psychologist and Mahamudra meditation master Daniel P. Brown. He has developed the Three Pillars Model as well as published a textbook, Attachment Disturbance in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair.

A final look at our example from Part 1 of this series:

At this point the client has done a lot of work to release the frozen anger from her body that was tied up in fuzzy memory of her father’s abuse. Her professional life is improving and she is advancing developmentally by feeling a wider range of emotions, and a deeper recognition of the importance of relationships. As she relies more on her relationships, she notices that she’s anxious when her partner goes away for a week to visit family. With her counselor’s assistance she begins to sense the terror she feels when her partner disconnects and she begins to notice a “black hole” of empty space where she feels totally alone, helpless, and “as if I am going to die”. She is not able to communicate what she needs. The counselor leaves behind all technique and allows the session to unfold with minimal interference, expectation or even hope. While assuring her client that she is safe to experience this in the here-and-now, plenty of space is given for her experience and moment to moment attunement to her experiences. The counselor plays a skillful balance of mirroring being to the client while at the same time encouraging her to stay with the black empty space, a state of not knowing, that is holding all of her experience perfectly as it is.