by Donna Eden
We will once again feature our relationship in discussing how the principles discussed play out, not because it is an ideal model, but because we’ve had to struggle with and work through so many issues and some of them may resonate with you. Anxious or avoidant strategies—pursuing or retreating—are the two basic ways a child can respond when caregivers are not able to meet the child’s needs. For instance, David’s mother tried to breast-feed him but was unable to produce the amount of milk his body required. A determined woman, she kept trying for three weeks, as he approached semistarvation, until the doctor insisted that his diet be supplemented. So David’s earliest formative experiences, about so basic a drive as chronic hunger, were that no matter how much he cried, he was not going to get what he needed. With consistent physical or emotional deprivation, the infant finally stops seeking the caregiver’s attention, dampens internal sensations, and withdraws—avoidant attachment in the making.
For David, this was reinforced because the wisdom of post–World War II child experts was to feed on a schedule and not soothe or reinforce the infant for crying. Family legend has it that Mr. and Mrs. Cohen, an elderly couple who were renting a room in the same Brooklyn tenement where David’s parents were staying during David’s first year, would cry themselves to sleep each night hearing David’s unheeded screams through the thin walls and being powerless to override the child experts of the day and intervene. Children will finally stop screaming and retreat within. Such experiences laid the foundation for David’s attachment style. They combined with his being an only child, and one who had no age-matched playmates in the neighborhood, into the development of a boy who was comfortable spending long periods alone, who tended toward self-soothing rather than sharing his vulnerabilities with others, and who was not at ease in the casual emotional give-and-take that seemed natural to his peers.
He grew up proud of his independence and self-sufficiency. He did not view his style as an avoidant attachment disorder, though his failure to form a lasting partnership despite a number of intense romances during his twenties might have been a clue. He couldn’t understand why his relationships, which usually started with strong passion, would deteriorate into an emotional roller coaster where his partners felt he was not giving them what they needed. It seemed patently obvious to him that their neediness and emotional volatility were what was pushing him away. This initial attraction between a person with an avoidant attachment style and a person with an anxious/clinging style has been characterized in literature as the “anxious-avoidant trap.”14 If an avoidant person with David’s aptitude for the role gets close enough even to a relatively secure partner, however, the partner may still be drawn into this anxious-avoidant dance.
David was thirty when he met Donna. After so many experiences where his paramours became wounded puddles of emotion, and with no inkling of his role in inflicting the wounds, Donna’s independence and self-reliance were very attractive to him. She was the middle child of three. While her older sister was still commanding special attention as the firstborn, their little brother came along, eighteen months after Donna, with some special needs, and Donna was in many ways left to fend for herself. In assuring her young second daughter that she would be fine, though she got relatively little parental attention, Donna’s mother would say to her, “The Lord protects angels and fools. I’m not sure which you are, but I know you are protected.” As you will see in chapter 7, Donna learned self-sufficiency. In her first marriage, her emotionally remote husband would be away for long periods and her self-reliance was all she had for bringing up their young daughters. When we met, we each wanted a lot of space and were happy to give the other a lot of space. But the self-reliance that is an effective way of coping when no one is available can be a liability for forming a lasting intimate relationship. It can also be a bit of a delusion. People identified in scientific studies as being secure in their primary relationships were not only capable of greater intimacy and interdependence, they were more autonomous and independent.15
Being with a partner whose strong self-reliance can trump intimacy has been part of the journey for each of us—sometimes propelling one of us or the other into the anxious/clinging polarity of self-reliance as we have traveled together for well more than three decades toward more secure attachment styles. Attachment style is not rigidly fixed, may shift with the context, and may become more secure over time.16 Our tumultuous ride has transformed us both, so we know what is possible, as well as how challenging the journey can be.
Obviously, however, not all adults have an intimate partner or are in a relationship that is meeting their basic needs for closeness, security, love, and support. Does this mean they drew the short straw and must lead empty, emotionally barren lives? By no means. Some people seem well suited for single life. Particularly if your early attachment experiences provided you with healthy internal models for self-care, you are poised to manage your emotions effectively, to soothe your own sorrows, and to self-validate in the absence of a primary partner. Many single people do indeed find enough of the emotional benefits that might be provided by an intimate relationship to do very well. Nonetheless, there are strong reasons that people who are in fulfilling partnerships tend to live longer, healthier, happier lives than those who are not.17
The Influence of Your Energetic Stress Style on Your Relationship Style
The years have proven that Donna, as a kinesthetic, was more readily capable of intimate connection than digital David, but her self-reliance made her so tolerant of emotional distance that David’s avoidant style set the tone for both of us. Your Energetic Stress Style—visual, kinesthetic, digital, tonal—is an aspect of your inborn temperament that we believe influences your attachment style throughout your life.
It is not hard to understand how your Energetic Stress Style would interact with your attachment history in forming and maintaining your patterns of intimacy. Donna’s kinesthetic orientation countered the early experiences that might have produced a person with a more avoidant attachment style. Although she had a high tolerance for distance based on her early experiences, her kinesthetic nature allowed her to also easily resonate with whatever bids for closeness her parents, and later David, managed to express and meet them there. David’s digital orientation, on the other hand, amplified the early experiences that fed into his avoidant style. Digitals tend to cut off emotionally from themselves and from their partners, so it is a double whammy to be a digital whose early experiences forged an avoidant attachment style. Learning to soothe oneself instead of seeking contact and support (risking feelings of vulnerability and dependence) combines with the digital’s more insular ways of relating—which favor mental retreat over emotional engagement. This is a recipe for a seriously avoidant attachment style.
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
The Interaction of Energetic Stress Style and Attachment Style
As we were trying to convey how the digital stress style can amplify an avoidant attachment style, David bravely ventured, “Okay, Donna, let’s tell the folks what this looks like in me energetically.” Her analysis: “Sometimes you are in a digital bubble. And you show no interest in leaving it to enter my world. If we’re having a difficult time and I’m desperately trying to reach you, that bubble looks like a thick, impenetrable wall. Other times it is just where you go when you are involved in a project. The bubble is not so thick, but it is still not easy to penetrate. And when I do penetrate it, it is like I have disturbed you from a dream, like I have literally burst your bubble. You don’t transition easily from that space to meet my energies. I’ve come to understand that this is your nature and to not take it personally that you are such an automaton. And to appreciate that at so many other times, you are fully and readily present.”
The “motto” that typify each sensory mode (here) provide insight into the way Energetic Stress Style interacts with attachment style. You can see how the kinesthetic’s “I don’t want you to suffer or feel wrong�
�� reinforced “I don’t want to cause trouble” and played into Donna’s allowing David’s avoidant style to set the tone for the relationship. An overlay of the digital style’s “I’m right!” is to not question the role of his or her own behaviors in the lack of intimacy. An overlay of the visual’s “You’re wrong!” is to blame the partner for the difficulties the relationship encounters. Meanwhile, the tonal’s “I’m angry at you for making me feel wrong!” undermines the partner’s efforts toward being close. Tonals whose backgrounds led to an anxious attachment style are dealing with another double whammy, quite different from that of the digital. As tonals, they characteristically read between the lines and, when stressed, negatively distort their partner’s intentions. If they in childhood also developed an anxious attachment style, they will be overly sensitive to tiny nuances in their partner’s mood. With those two filters acting in concert, it is not surprising that they tend to feel emotionally abused and abandoned by their partners. Being aware of the filters you characteristically use when under stress, and those your partner tends to use, will provide a helpful backdrop as you move toward more secure attachment.
What Does All This Mean for Your Relationship?
Does the scientific understanding of attachment mean that in order for you to have emerged from your childhood psychologically unscathed your parents needed to have anticipated your every need, correctly read your every gesture, and soothed your every discomfort? Nature knew better than to set the bar at that level. The concept of the “good-enough” parent recognizes that no one can always interpret a child’s signals correctly, avoid separations, or hit the bull’s-eye with every attempt to soothe.18 A child’s innate programming to thrive is remarkably robust. Doses of adversity and want build self-reliance even as the neural pathways for secure bonding seem to require a somewhat steady accumulation of positive interactions with the caregiver. Children are naturally resilient, so even imperfect parents, as all parents are, are able to raise healthy kids.
Many people, however, didn’t have even minimally “good enough” parenting, or at least there were areas of breakdown, and problems in their adult relationships often trace back to these earlier lapses. Are these patterns indelibly stamped on your psyche? For most people throughout history, the answer was “probably yes.” Attachment style during childhood is likely to shift only if significant external changes occur, such as a divorce, the onset of chronic depression in a parent, or the entry of a different primary caregiver.19 As people develop into adulthood, the tendency is to choose partners and situations that correspond with and reinforce early psychological patterns.20 In this sense, the past predicts the future. What people receive from their parents sets into motion deep patterns they usually bring to their marriages.
The hopeful and encouraging reason for this section of the book is that the possibility of repairing wounds and compensating for damages tracing to fallible parenting and unfavorable circumstances is now open to anyone willing to invest the time and effort. Even in infancy, programs that improved the quality of interaction between a mother and a child who evidenced early attachment problems resulted in more positive mother-child relationships that included significantly less anger, avoidance, and resistance.21 For instance, it is well established that babies who are irritable from birth are less likely to create secure bonds at the end of their first year and are more likely to be anxious than infants who are more tranquil. However, early adjustments in parenting style can yield quick and significant results. In a Dutch study, mothers of babies diagnosed as “highly irritable at birth” were given three counseling sessions of two hours each, when their babies were between six and nine months old. By the time they were one year old, 68 percent of these infants were “securely attached.” Only 28 percent of a matched control group that did not receive this counseling were “securely attached” by age one.22
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
Attunement between Infant and Parent
In one another’s presence, the auras of the infant and the parent grow larger, and another field appears that surrounds the pair, ensconcing them in a cocoonlike energy. This is like a third aura, a property of infant and parent as a unit.
Non-Attunement between Infant and Parent
Depending on the quality of the relationship, the shared energy will differ. In general, the two auras will not overlap. If infant and parent are interacting but in a non-attuned manner, the infant’s aura sucks further into itself and starts disconnecting from the environment. If the parent is angry or exasperated, a forceful energy that is threatening and confusing will move toward the child, sometimes causing the child to energetically retreat but other times literally entering the child. When the adult’s more powerful energy enters the child’s, it creates an energetic bridge for the transmission of beliefs as well as emotions. We are all familiar with how children may take on their parents’ judgments and worldview as their own. This starts in the energies and can grow out non-attunement as well as out of the attunement in which you would expect it.
What occurs in our lives beyond childhood can also have a strong impact on our bonding behavior. Favorable life events, such as successfully moving into the role of parenthood or forming a relationship with a partner whose attachment style is healthy and secure, can help transform an insecure attachment style.23 So can individual psychotherapy, couple counseling, or other efforts that improve a challenging relationship.24 It is never too late.
Attaching by Detaching
We will open our discussion of how to retrieve insecure attachment moments and begin to repair deep patterns with one of the simplest methods possible. If you have avoidant attachment tendencies, stay alert for times that you pull away from your partner and invite your partner to join you in this exercise. If you have anxious attachment tendencies, stay alert for times that you become clinging or controlling and do the exercise. In either case, when you realize you are caught in the attachment habits that do not serve your relationship, this simple wordless exercise can quickly interrupt the pattern, help you find your center, and open a path toward developing a more secure attachment moment with your partner. At such times of opportunity (we know—they don’t feel like opportunities), ask your partner to participate with you. That alone acknowledges your awareness of tendencies in yourself that hurt the relationship and of your intention to overcome them. Your partner will probably find this encouraging in itself and cause for appreciation or at least hope. The exercise begins by coming into yourself and establishing an internal sense of safety. That is, you will, ironically, begin to enhance your capacity for healthy attachment by detaching. Then, as you become centered, you can turn back to your partner to energetically establish a stronger connection:
Coming into Yourself. Sitting directly across from your partner, both of you place your hands on your chest, close your eyes, and keep your focus on your heart for three deep breaths or until you are feeling more calm, safe, and centered.
Softly Reconnecting. When you are both ready, look at your partner’s hands while keeping yours over your chest. Allow yourself to simply be with this connection for three more deep breaths.
The Secure Gentle Gaze. Lift your eyes and meet your partner’s eyes. Feel an energetic bridge between you reconnecting. If this becomes difficult, return to step one and continue through the exercise until you can securely engage one another’s gaze.
Simple as it is, this exercise is powerful. Starting when you are caught in the energy of an old and dysfunctional way of relating, it begins to repattern your nervous system. Each time you do the exercise, you are building a stronger energetic foundation for secure attachment.
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
Deep Breathing
The simple act of taking a deep breath engages a branch of the vagus nerve that slows the cardiovascular and respiratory systems in ways that allow us to relax and be present with one another. Taking a long deep br
eath when stressed not only slows respiratory and cardiovascular processes, it also smooths the movement of energy in the meridians, chakras, and aura. It counteracts the “rigid-alert” energy configuration of distress.
Heart Connection
When you bring your consciousness to your heart, you evoke feelings that are more positive and loving. The energies of these feelings not only travel to your cells, organs, and through your entire body, your heart’s expanded electromagnetic field radiates outwardly and will impact anyone around you.
The Gentle Gaze
When you are open and relaxed and your eyes gently meet your partner’s, the energies connect, but not as a straight line. Rather they look like a soft, hazy suspension bridge between your eyes and your partner’s. As your eyes stay in contact, the energies in this downward curve begin to loop upward, eventually taking on the form of a figure eight between you. This connects you and actually grows stronger for as long as you remain in comfortable eye contact. When the figure-eight energy has grown quite strong, it will continue to connect you even after your attention has shifted from one another.
How Triple Warmer Maintains Your Attachment Style
An energy system identified by ancient Chinese physicians and given a strange name has an invisible but emphatic impact on your attachment style. It is called Triple Warmer.
The infant needs the caregiver’s nurturing and protection in order to survive. The foundational issue for attachment strategies, deeper even than the need for love and affection, is safety. Safety is the domain of Triple Warmer. It is the energy system in your body that is charged with responding to any threat to your survival. The Triple Warmer energy system—invisible yet as real as your cardiovascular or respiratory systems—supports your survival in three basic ways: It governs your immune system; it orchestrates responses to external threat, such as whether to fight or flee; and it maintains habits that are geared toward keeping you out of danger.