Broken Hearts

 I have always enjoyed observing individuals and attempting to discover motivations for different actions. Most importantly, how do psychological forces affect our relationship with God? One of my favorite areas of study is attachment. Attachments formed in infancy will influence every other relationship we have throughout or lifetimes. Profoundly though, I believe people who have experienced attachment trauma, will struggle to make any trusting connection with God.

Attachment trauma occurs when a child is removed from the care of their birth mother and is placed in the care of another person. Trauma may also occur if a parent does not respond in a prompt, caring, sensitive manner to the needs of a baby during its first six months, up to the age of 1 year. Attachment trauma will likely occur as well if a parent is abusive to the child. Abuse may be in the form of neglect, physical, emotional or sexual.

Here are the five criteria needed for an attachment relationship to form:
(Attachments Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy)
1. Proximity

2. The caregiver provides a safe haven

3. The caregiver provides a secure base from which to explore the world

4. Any threat of separation induces fear and anxiety

5. Loss of the caregiver induces grief and sorrow

When attachment trauma occurs, a child learns that the only person who will meet their needs, is themselves. Parents are not to be trusted because they are "lazy" and "only care about themselves." Denise L. Best LMHC shared a story at a training on Attachment Disorders about a child who had been removed from her home and placed in a pre-adoptive home. The family moved to adopt the family, until the last minute when they changed their mind and then packed this child up and took this to another foster family, and left this child there(the child did not know them, and was left there without a familiar face to adjust on their own.) Eventually the new family filed for adoption. However one night close to the finalization of the adoption they went out to eat, and their child stood up, went over to another family and attempted to join them for dinner. When this child's family asked what they were doing, the child said simply "I am choosing my new family." The message coming through loud and clear was that this child didn't trust adults to continue to want them and care for them. Imagining a feeling of love is even more scary, because this will create a feeling of vulnerability, and a child who has attachment trauma will fight to prevent feeling vulnerable again. These scared and hurt little people eventually grow up to form adult attachments and may not have the relationship skills they need to develop healthy relationships.

Dr. Donald Joy Ph.D, has done extensive research on marriage relationships, primarily focusing on the steps of physical bonding that occur as a couple is dating.  The first people in life that we "bond" with of course are our parents, but as everyone knows fathers and mothers have different approaches to connecting with children. Mothers tend to have a very "concrete" approach to mothering. Having carried a child in utero she is often familiar with their individual cycles of wake and sleep, and due to feeding, changing and playing with a child, often has an intimate knowledge of who their child is, preferences and all. Fathers have a more "abstract" approach to fathering, as their first connection with their child might have been feeling him or her kick several months into the pregnancy. Fathering for them didn't really start until they met the baby for the first time at birth. Fathers often get to know their child through experiences, and challenging their child to try new things; a mother is often focused on meeting  the everyday needs of the child. How then do these natural human needs for attachment and bonding impact our ability to create a trusting, saving relationship with God?


Our relationship with God and the church tend to mirror our experiences with our fathers and mothers. Our experience with God will tend to mirror our experience with our fathers (God has always expressed Himself to us as our Father), and church tends to mirror our experiences with our mothers (the church in the Bible is continually referred to as the Bride and expressed to us as female). An individual who has a strong attachment to both of their parents, and trusts what their parents tells them will have an easier time creating an "abstract" faith relationship with God, and will have an easier time relating to church members in a church environment, a "concrete" experience of faith every week. What happens though if you remove a parent from someone's experience? If you lose a father either through death, divorce, or abandonment, the abstract relationship skills will not have been experienced, and so relating to a "father in heaven" will be difficult. If you lose a mother, either through death, divorce, or abandonment, the concrete relationship skills of relating to other people will not have been experienced, so relating to people in a "church body" will be difficult.  Attachment trauma though carries a whole different set of consequences.

Individuals who have experienced attachment trauma struggle to trust anyone other than themselves. If they have lived with their siblings during the time of abuse,  they may also trust their siblings. Adults are often viewed as lazy, bad people who don't care about the needs of children and are not to be trusted. The question was asked at the training on Attachment Trauma "how long does it take a child to heal from attachment trauma?" The social workers of the group suggested 2-5 years, maybe 10 at the most. Foster Parents of the group started with 10 years, and one said "27 years." Our trainer said that "27 years is the most realistic time frame mentioned."  One child who experienced 30 different foster care placements by the time this child was in elementary school, most likely will never heal from that level of trauma.

How do you reach out to someone who has experienced attachment trauma, and is unable to accept love, or compliments for that matter, and is completely distrusting of people they meet? How does a person who experienced attachment trauma develop a trusting, saving relationship with a God that appeared to abandon them to the care of abusive caregivers? It is my personal belief that marriage will continually be attacked, as it provides a safe haven for children, and provides both "abstract" and "concrete" relationship skills for children to experience as a part of their natural development. Fatherhood for the last generation has been under attack, as more and more children have been raised without fathers (my own husband included), the result is that their Father in Heaven is much more difficult to understand. Motherhood, which seemed to be the last safe haven of relationships, in my opinion is under attack as well. Some adults are unable to maintain a relationship at all with individuals in the church body, even though these relationships are much more tangible and desperately sought after. I have seen individuals leave a wake of destroyed relationships through multiple churches, as they seek someone to relate to, all the while completely unable to relate in a healthy manner themselves. These are challenging times to reach out to people in the name of Christ. Much has been done that damage an individuals abilities to relate to God and the body of believers and it will take a compassionate, caring and flexible church body to meet the needs of these individuals. New believers won't become a part of the church in a night, a week, or a month of Bible studies. I believe it will take a generation of caring (individually and as a church body) about an individual, their accomplishments and their relationships, before they will consider taking the steps of belief, and establishing a relationship with the only One who can truly heal their broken hearts.