Parenting from the Roots Up

Welcome to Resources and Reflections

Resources and Reflections - S2 Episode 1

Hello listeners! As we launch the new Attachment Matters Substack, we will begin to offer posts with Resources and Reflections that follow from our podcast conversations. For now, these posts will be free and available to all subscribers. Over time, they will become premium content for paid subscribers. This first post offers follow up content based on the conversation in Season 2, Episode 1. If it is of value to you, consider signing up as a paid subscriber!

Attachment: The Six Stage Model

Attachment, as defined by Dr. Gordon Neufeld, is the primal drive for the pursuit of and preservation of contact and closeness. While attachment is experienced inside an individual, we can also understand attachment as the space “between” two people - the relationship. In contrast to some of the current cultural discussion focused on “attachment styles,” Dr. Neufeld approaches the capacity for attachment as developmental, a spontaneous process that unfolds and deepens over time. The visual analogy he uses for understanding this is the roots of a plant. The deeper they go, the more secure and developed the attachment can be.

The role of a parent in essence is to provide the conditions for attachment to unfold, to tend the soil that provides the nurturing for the plant. The core of this is a warm and generous invitation for our child to exist in our presence - providing a huge emotional embrace to meet these primal needs for contact and closeness.

Photo by Jacob Buchhave on Unsplash

In Season 1 of Attachment Matters, we laid out Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s six-stage model of attachment. I will share the six stages below, and then provide resources for more in depth study. The six stages are as follows:

The Senses: To Be With

The first stage is attachment through the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. A baby is born into the world with hundreds if not thousands of attachment reflexes - grasping a parent’s finger with a tiny hand, latching to nurse, tracking . This first and most primal drive “to be with” helps a baby to bond with us, and helps us in turn to fall in love with our baby. Attachment at this phase is defined by the pursuit of proximity through the senses - to be in sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.

While this is the beginning stage, attachment at the senses does not go away as we grow up. Thank goodness we still feel the longing “to be with” those who we are attached to throughout our lives! When we see adolescents who cannot be without their phones, texting with friends or on social media, underneath this behavior may be the primal drive to “stay in touch” with those they are attached to.

Sameness: To Be Like

The second stage is attachment through “being like” those we are attached to. This stage is characterized by the drive to preserve closeness through sameness and imitation. As an older baby begins to imitate their parents, this deeper root of attachment begins to allow for the continuity of connection when they cannot “be with” them. Dr. Neufeld argues that even some of the great theorists around speech and language development, later in their lives, came to realize that this was the missing piece to understanding how children learn language. We imitate those to whom we are attached.

Sameness provides the basis for identity, as despite moving through space and time, a sense of being “the same” person is constant. In Season 1, I asked parents to observe their child and see who he or she is driven to be the same as. This may give insight into who your child is seeking proximity or closeness with.

Loyalty and Belonging: To Be On The Side Of

The third stage is attachment through loyalty and belonging. This is a stage where attachment can deepen a bit more, as a child develops a sense of being “a part of” the same family or group (belonging), as well as a sense of being on the same side as those he or she is attached to (loyalty). The drive to possess or be possessed, as well as the drive to “take a side” come to life in this stage. I encourage you not to see these drives as something bad, as I feel our culture often tells us. The drives for belonging and loyalty are beautiful instincts when seen and recognized for what they are - expressions of the need for closeness with others. Issues arise when our capacity for attachment does not go deeper, and we get locked into tribalism.

In understanding loyalty, a key Neufeld construct arises: “coming alongside.” When we enter an adversarial relationship with our child, we are no longer “on their side.” They will instinctively seek closeness with others who they perceive to be on their side, and push us further away. By switching our approach with the goal of “coming alongside” their emotions and experiences, as challenging as this may be, we can take their side and not let the situation divide us.

Significance: To Matter To

While the first three stages of attachment are defined by what we feel towards others, beginning with the fourth stage attachment begins to depend on how we experience what others feel towards us. The fourth stage is all about significance, mattering, being valued, esteemed, or taken into consideration by those to whom we feel attached. By its nature, this stage is much more vulnerable than the previous stages. If we perceive we do not matter, or are not significant, we experience great wounding, and defenses can kick in to protect us from vulnerability that is too much to bear.

The drive to attach through significance and mattering makes up the “reward system” of the brain, and it is what video games and the “like” button on social media feed off of relentlessly. These hits of dopamine simulate mattering and significance, but will never “satiate” this need to feel we are valued by the actual human beings we seek relationship with. Rather than relying on punishment and reward, we can live in a way that shows our children that they matter to us by prioritizing our relationship to them, and offering grace when they have strayed from our values and need it most.

Love: To Give Our Heart

The fifth stage of attachment goes deeper and into more vulnerable territory yet, as we give our hearts to another. As the vulnerability of this stage increases, the more tender it is, and the more wounding we can experience if we are rejected. The capacity to actually feel emotional love, to “give our hearts,” takes time and development, and for a sensitive child, may take even longer than their peers. With my own son, I realized that it did not matter how many times I said “I love you.” As a sensitive child, it was not until I became more playful, taking on a silly alter ego and cradling him in my arms, that his defenses came down enough for my love to “land.” Over time, with space, play, growth and a soft heart, he was able in turn to “give me his heart.”

Dr. Neufeld often shares stories of asking parents, “Has your child given you their heart?” This question can be very difficult to hear, and our defenses kick in to protect us if we fear that the answer is “no.” However, if we can accept and “see” that we do not have our child’s heart, we can then let this guide “what we do.” How can we let down our own defenses enough to soften, and cultivate the conditions for our child to feel safe enough to let down their defenses toward us?

Psychological Intimacy: To Be Known

The sixth and final stage of attachment is the drive for psychological intimacy, or the ability to “be fully known.” This capacity for intimacy, if developed, allows us to share our secrets with another, to share our best and our worst aspects, without fear of a loss of the relationship. In Catholicism, this is embodied in the sacrament of confession - where a person can confess all of their loss and lack, all of the ways they have not lived up to ideals, air all of their dirty laundry, and (ideally) be granted forgiveness. For many people, therapists have now replaced the role of priests, and we seek to bear our secrets in therapy instead of through formal religious practice.

Have you ever experienced sharing a secret with another person who was able to listen, honor what you shared, and love or care for you still? After allowing yourself “to be known” in this way, did you feel not only a sense of relief, but also of closeness? In an ideal world, we can come to share this level of psychological intimacy together with sexual intimacy with our spouse, creating a profound sense of “being known” that is exclusive to that relationship. The capacity “to be known” is the fullest and deepest expression of the development of attachment.

Resources

Neufeld Resources

Roots of Attachment: Six Stages of Relationship: This free 1.5 hour video features Dr. Gordon Neufeld lays out the foundations of understanding attachment itself, as well as detailing his six-stage model in the context of the bigger picture of maturation. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

Attachment Matters Podcast Episodes

StoicMom and I discuss this content in the first two episodes of Season 1. Please see the links to these podcast episodes below.

Episode 2: Playing the Long Game

Episode 3: The Generous Invitation

Thank you!

If you have gotten this far, thank you for reading! I hope this content has been supportive for you. We will see you soon!