by Jessica Fern
FIGURE 3.1: The nested model of attachment and trauma.
Self Level
The innermost circle represents you: the individual self who has a certain temperament, a one-of-a-kind genetic and epigenetic expression, a specific attachment history and a unique way of experiencing those attachment styles. This circle holds the interior experience of your thoughts and feelings, how you see and identify yourself and how you perceive, interpret and think about others. Here reside all of your skills and abilities, as well as your longings, aversions, hopes and fears. All of the ways that you do or do not take care of yourself reside in this circle, as do your capacities for introspection and reflection, and all the ways you either do or do not feel grounded, secure and safe in your own being.
Relationship Level
This level refers to your one-on-one interpersonal experiences with your parents, family members, close friends, lovers and partners. It holds the quality of interactions that you have had with your attachment figures, how you have been treated and how you have treated others. When we talk about our attachment needs being met or not met by our attachment figures we are referring to this level, and it is what happens at this level that then flows down and transfers to the self level, affecting whether we take on more secure or insecure attachment adaptations. The self level also impacts this level by influencing the ways that we show up in the relational space.
At this level, traumatic experiences such as physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect or intimate partner violence all play a part in our ability to attach. Complex and relational trauma can occur from ongoing harm or abandonment from a primary attachment figure—whether from a parent or from a romantic partner as an adult. When mistreatment and harm occur from a trusted loved one, the effect can be especially damaging to the attachment system, bringing into question whether anyone is safe to be trusted and relied on. Single-incident traumas such as car accidents, medical procedures or a one-time assault may not have originated from this relational level, but they will also impact a person’s ability to securely attach at this level. Regardless of which level our attachment wounds first take place in, our insecure attachment styles can be healed through this relationship level. This can occur by having our needs met from attuned responsive partners or even having reparative experiences with the ones we have been hurt by.
Research and literature on attachment have provided undeniable evidence about how relationships with our parents and lovers shape our attachment style, but the impact of siblings is not as commonly discussed, despite being just as important to our attachment style. In therapy, I’ve seen many clients who identify their interactions with siblings as the source of their attachment wounds. Sometimes this stems from parents who neglect to protect siblings from each other—placing one sibling’s needs over the other’s or practicing outright favoritism—but other times the disruption is directly between the siblings. Attachment ruptures with siblings can occur when there has been overt emotional or verbal abuse, bullying, physical abuse or outright rejection. Disconnection resulting from a large age or personality difference, competitiveness and consistent mis-attuned teasing also show up in the therapy room as attachment disruptions from sibling relationships. These experiences can impact a person’s ability to make meaningful connections with romantic partners as an adult.
Culturally, in the West, we tend to see romantic and parental relationships as superior in influence to others, and studies have shown that adult attachments are mostly directed towards a romantic/sexual partner over adult friendships.31 But our relationships with siblings or close friends can function as some of the most important attachment bonds that we have. For many, a friend or sibling can serve as a primary attachment figure, and when there has been attachment wounding with partners or parents, it is these very connections that can provide the corrective attachment experiences and healing from the attachment disruptions we’ve had with others at the relational level. Friendships that function as a primary attachment can also leave a painful mark on one’s heart and a significant attachment disturbance when there is betrayal, dishonesty, ghosting or drama that ends in the loss of the friendship. Death or loss of a close friend can create massive shock waves in our attachment systems.
Home Level
This next level goes beyond the one-to-one interactions at the relational level and considers the ways in which our family interacted as a whole and how our actual physical home impacted our attachment. This includes the number of people in your home, the type of home culture and place you grew up in, how many generations of family were living in your home, whether you had to go back and forth between your parents’ homes due to separation or divorce and whether or not you even had a home. These factors can all have a supportive or straining influence on your ability to attach and feel safe with the people you live with.
Were you one of eight siblings and felt like there was an abundance of love and attention? Did you always have someone to talk to or play with? Or were you one of eight siblings who competed for food or attention, and your needs easily got lost in the crowd? Were there multiple generations in your home, which might have filled the gaps or created a bridge between you and your parents, or did having a multigenerational home detract from what your parents were able to offer you? Were there sick people in your house? Did you have a blended home with stepparents and stepsiblings? Were you an introvert (self level) living within a family of extroverts, or an artist living with a family of scientists? Were there pets in your home that you bonded with, or pets that you were allergic to? What habits and routines did your family have, and how did they impact your attachment experience? All of these experiences at the home level can influence our sense of belonging and whether or not we feel safe and secure within ourselves, our relationships and in the world.
This level also includes the physical environment, such as whether or not you liked your childhood physical home and bedroom (if you had one) and felt safe there. If the home was too messy or too clean, too quiet or too noisy, or otherwise not well-matched with you, it could potentially create stress and tension in the nervous system, prodding us into survival stress responses. One therapy client of mine was able to connect how her current preoccupied attachment style was related to her experience of moving homes too many times as a child. Her relational-level experience of attachment with her parents was very secure, but moving homes four times in just a few short years created a sense of constant underlying uneasiness in her body due to the repeated loss of friends, school and home. She developed a mental storyline that whenever she got comfortable and started to feel settled in a new place, the rug got ripped from right under her. Consistency of home was very important to her and this uneasiness created from the home level was now impacting her ability to trust that her romantic partner’s affection could be stable and enduring at the relational level, causing her to experience higher levels of attachment anxiety.
Another client reflected on how their experience of living in a rat-infested home contributed to their higher levels of attachment avoidance. Living among rats meant that there were certain closets, drawers, even rooms in their home that they steered clear of to avoid a rat encounter. The only way they felt safe was to withdraw into the few locations in their apartment that were relatively rat-free. In therapy, they came to see how this withdrawal included the minimizing of their desire for connection with their parents and siblings because wanting to be close to others would have required them to go into parts of the house that felt unsafe. As they got older and more social, they felt too embarrassed to have friends over and would often spend more time at friends’ homes to avoid their own. The shame and embarrassment that they experienced at the self level because of their home-level environment contributed to higher levels of attachment avoidance and discomfort with intimacy at the relational level. As this client and I processed through their early attachment experiences at the home level and restored a sense of safety in their nervous system around what it felt lik
e to be in their home now, they were then able to shift into more secure functioning at the self and relationship levels.
Local Culture and Communities Level
Sometimes, stressors, traumas and attachment struggles come from beyond the home, relational or self levels, and instead stem from the culture and communities that we are embedded in. The local culture and community level refers to the places where we spend our time outside of our home, such as work, school, friends’ houses, the gym and clubs, as well as sports venues and religious or spiritual centers. Culture can be rich, complex and contrasting, and we may find ourselves within several different cultures and communities that each have a different set of social rules, ways of relating and expectations for what it means to be an accepted member. People who do not fit into the norms of their communities can experience attachment insecurity and trauma if they feel that being themselves or expressing who they are will cause harm or be dangerous. If we have to conceal and contort who we are, our foundational relationship with our self can get severed and interfere with how we then experience the levels of relationship and home. Unfortunately, many people experience harm or violation by trusted community members, mentors, teachers or clergy. These experiences can leave a lasting mark on how safe someone feels in groups, as well as how worthy someone feels about being able to give and receive love.
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I was fortunate to be invited into the homes of my friends, many of whom were first-generation Americans. The ways my friend’s Cuban mother spoke to, disciplined, cared for and touched her child were vastly different from the ways my Irish American friends were treated by their parents, which were both considerably distinct from the Italian, Russian, Puerto Rican, African American and Greek homes I entered. Some families were affectionate and effusive, others were distant and stoic. Some were physically present and practically consistent, but emotionally hesitant. Looking back, I can see how the ways that each of my friends was parented had a lot to do with the language, culture and religion of their parents, with each culture having different expectations about what it meant to be a parent, what discipline was, how and when you used it, and how a child was supposed to behave. These cultural narratives, which are often implicit and taken for granted, shaped how available, responsive and attuned these parents were to their children’s attachment needs.
Today, the local culture and communities level also includes virtual culture and online communities. We can physically be in our homes but have our minds and hearts somewhere else completely, in the virtual world. In their online course Secure Attachment Parenting in the Digital Age, Diane Poole Heller and Kim John Payne discuss the particular challenges that our current society faces regarding attachment and technology. They highlight the potentially damaging effects that overuse of technology has on both the parent and child’s ability to develop emotional bonds. The addition of screens into our already busy lives can add further strain on important face-to-face connection time between parents and their children.
While use of technology is more and more of a social requirement at even very young ages, for many parents it is also a needed crutch, often due to financial necessity. If all the adults in the home need to work, screen time can become the babysitter or give the parents the break that they need just to make dinner or maintain the bare basics of their home. Even though we are ostensibly more connected than ever through our phones, tablets and other devices, studies have shown32 that, in adults in the US aged 19 to 32, higher social media use can lead to feeling more socially isolated and emotionally disconnected than people with lower social media use. I also see how emotionally overwhelming it can be when the absence of face-to-face contact enables a certain boldness or even meanness from people that they would not necessarily enact in person. Online attacks and rejections of others can cause a great deal of loss and psychological injury. As in all levels, there can be damage and trauma at the local culture and communities level, but there can, of course, also be healing. When someone grows up in a home or town where no one really looks and feels like they do, finding an online community where their voice and experiences are received, honored and even celebrated can be deeply healing to their sense of self and connection.
School culture is another important aspect to this level, since most children spend the majority of their waking hours in the classroom, cafeterias and schoolyard. I once had a client who joked that you should never trust anyone who said they liked their junior high school experience. I later learned that this comment was the sarcastic mask in front of some very painful and traumatic events she experienced in early adolescence. Now in her 40s, this woman had lasting scars from the social hierarchies and mean girl culture at her junior high school. She had experienced overt social rejection and repeated emotional and verbal cruelty from her peers. Coupled with the highly competitive academic culture of her school, the educational and social pressures became too unbearable and thus she attempted to take her life at age 13.
While I was writing this book, my father sent me a newspaper article in which he was interviewed about the sexual assault he experienced from his high school principal over 40 years earlier. In the article, he is quoted as relating the alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness of his adult life as having its origin in the profound shame he experienced from being sexually assaulted at school. When I spoke to him about it, he also added that the years of corporal punishment and the Catholic school culture of overt disapproval further reinforced and solidified his shame. His traumas at this level had a lasting effect on his ability to bond with me as my parent. When I was eight years old, my father went into rehab, but his sobriety did not initially improve our relationship as much as both of us might have anticipated. Although the alcoholism and drug addiction were treated, his trauma, shame and deep-rooted feeling of unworthiness to be loved—even from his own child—remained for decades. My father had a strong desire to be available to me, but the absence of healing from his high school traumas and the ensuing shame left him, in many ways, incapable of bonding, connecting and responding in the nurturing, present and attuned ways that both of us wanted.
How safe we feel on the streets of our neighborhood, whether we have to lock our front door or not, how welcome and embraced we feel from the communities that we encounter and whether the leaders of our various communities are benevolent or unkind are all factors that I see as impacting our sense of safety, security and ability to explore. Traumas that arise from bullying, community violence or school shootings should not be underestimated. But although many different types of attachment traumas can happen at this level, it is also a level that can offer needed healing and attachment repair. The homes of friends, spiritual communities, substance abuse support groups, sports and dance teams or online communities can become our safe havens where we are freer to be ourselves, are understood and are seen and loved for who we are.
Social Level
The next outer dimension in this nested model refers to the larger societal structures and systems that we live in, such as our economic, legal, medical and political systems, as well as our religious institutions. It is at the social level that prejudice and oppression are institutionalized through the laws and power structures that either favor or discriminate against people based on age, race, sex, class, physical ability, sexual orientation and relationship orientation (including monogamy and polyamory). Who is considered legally legitimate or not at a societal level, who has access to health care and education, whether or not you have rights to your children or whether or not you are subject to the institutionalization of birth practices that can interfere with parent-child bonding are all factors that can be traumatizing and attachment-compromising. Additionally, whether or not we are a part of a legally protected class has massive implications for how safe and secure we feel in the world. The sociologist Johan Galtung refers to this as structural violence.33 Distinguished from physical violence (yet often intertwined), structural violence refers to a type of violence that
is often invisible yet intricately built into social structures. People’s lives are complicated, confined or even lost because of heterosexism, classism, racism, ableism and sexism. Structural violence may be less obvious and direct than physical violence, but it is just as impactful and harmful. It creates a disparity between a person’s potential reality—the life they could conceivably live—compared to the limited reality that they find themselves in.
Societal issues including homophobia, racism, sexism and mononormativity do not exist solely at the societal level. They influence and play out in very real and impactful ways, including the neighborhoods and homes we live in, which schools we have access to and what funding they receive, how we approach or avoid others and how we are treated by teachers, taxi drivers or clerks at the grocery store. A black man is likely to have a very different experience of how safe and secure he feels when walking past a police officer than a white woman in the same scenario. In a time when mass shootings are rampant in the US and amid the current political climate, a person of color who practices Islam will likely feel very differently walking into a mosque than a white Catholic person walking into a church. These societal experiences can then trickle all the way down to the self level, where social-level issues become internalized as forms of shame or self-loathing, again hindering one’s ability to bond, attach and connect. Studies have shown that children with socioeconomic risks are more likely to develop disorganized attachment34 and that children are at an increased risk of disorganized attachment when they are in non-maternal care for more than 60 hours a week, due to parental work hours.35
Is it honestly possible to feel safe and secure in a capitalist society that defines our human value based on what we do and how much we make, rather than who we are? Is it honestly possible to feel safe and secure in a society that bombards us with messages asserting (even aggressing) that in order to be secure in our self or with our place in the world we need to acquire more money, more religion, more objects, more products, more body-altering procedures or more property? Society teaches us how to love and who is worthy of love via the media, commercials and through institutionalized practices such as tax benefits for married couples. Relationships are defined as valuable and potential partners are evaluated as worthy based on how much money is spent on dinner, date nights, vacations, diamonds and wedding arrangements. Flipping to the other extreme and thinking that money doesn’t matter or is unimportant in a relationship can also be damaging, since we live in a society where money is a basic requirement for survival. It’s difficult to show up and thrive in relationships when we can’t feed ourselves, pay the bills or afford basic health care.