Being Vulnerable.....accepting the gift of affection.

I have observed in families that I work with an emotional disconnect that I don't remember being so prevalent when I was younger. Yeah, families had problems, but it didn't seem that most made so few attempts to care and show affection for one another. I watch families I work with continue destructive interactions, slowly draining all trust and safety from their interactions, leaving each member emotionally burned and afraid to trust. Attempts to show affection re-buffed, in a manner to ensure the individual offering the affection feels some of the emotional pain the other is feeling. Shame then creates a barrier that becomes almost impenetrable.
I realize now that I have two advantages in my perception of safety and trust that most individuals don't.

1. I have a mother who has a natural knowledge of how to create attachment with her family. As a professional, I thought that I would refer more to other professionals and research in order to help families  I work with attach to each other within the family. Instead I find myself repeating things my Mom told me, because the research shows her methods were effective. Just a couple of things she did include bedtime prayers most nights, reading out loud together, and eye-sight supervision of my siblings and myself almost all the time. When we were teenagers Mom loosened her supervision based on the circumstances.  If we were close friends with another family, and all of us young adults brought out the best in each other, we were allowed to spend unsupervised time with them. The interesting thing, we were never quizzed on what we did. It just wasn't a concern.

2. No divorces occurred within my direct support system, and even in distant support systems during my childhood years. This is practically unheard of. In fact, I was a teenager before anyone I knew, and considered part of my support system, divorced.

The result is I have overwhelmingly positive thoughts and attitudes towards traditional marriage, parenting and family life. I know that if it isn't working now, then re-group, make some changes on how I interact with others, and try again. If that doesn't work, change something else, and try again. These experiences also help me encourage others. I know a positive, fulfilling, gratifying relationship is underneath the pain somewhere. I just don't know what it looks like yet.

The first step in changing a painful relationship I believe is offering and accepting affection. Overcoming the pain and shame that resulted in the relationship becoming conflicted is difficult, and to process through the painful memories together, you will need all of the positive memories possible.
It may look like a hand-picked bouquet of flowers, hugs and kisses, a pat on the back, reading together, a gift, sweet, positive nicknames, or sharing memories of good-times spent together. If you feel emotionally burned and fearful, this will be a scary experience. In that case, I strongly encourage seeking a professional counselor to talk to, because those emotions may be difficult to process and prevent a gratifying relationship from developing.

Picture by Jonathan Guerrero - Lucent Media Group.

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.

I didn't want to disappoint....

My sister and I were having a conversation the other day about children, having worked with families and children in crisis for several years now, its interesting to observe the patterns of behavior that occur from family to family.

One of the most painful observations is that often there appears to be a complete lack of interest in a child, other than how the child makes the parent look to an outsider. Behaviors that occur unchecked, and you know they are unchecked when a parent is oblivious to the child, even though they are fighting, yelling and emotionally out-of -control. When this is brought to the attention of the parents, either its the worker's fault for observing and pointing out the disruptive and destructive behavior, or the parent responds so heavily (with yelling, swatting and loss of privileges) that the child is left incredibly confused. Either way, the child feels completely unconnected emotionally to their parents, that their model for handling conflict becomes ignore authority figures instructions or act in a manner destructive to the relationship, or both. That also leads to this bizarre need to discipline in public. I am actually grateful that the times in public I was corrected for my behavior, my mother always removed me from where friends and other adults could see the correction. An already embarrassing situation, when handled privately, at least allows the child to retain some dignity.

Which leads me back to my conversation with my sister. Both of us, even in times of conflict with our parents felt so strongly attached, and with that attachment, a strong desire to please our parents, that disappointing our parents seemed like the worst action of all.

How do you help a child develop secure attachment; Work on Emotion coaching ( Attachments Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy). Emotion coaching focusing on an awareness of emotions, understanding and validating emotions, guiding a child towards self-awareness of emotions, problem-solving, and setting limits on behavior.

This leads to the dreaded word - consistency. A word I want to remove from my vocabulary due to the ineffectiveness of its usage, and the instant defensiveness it creates in parents. However, consistently catching children doing things right, providing emotion coaching when a child is emotional  and consistently guiding children away from unwanted behavior, towards preferred behavior, will increase the emotional connection between you and your child. Then when the teenage years roll around, they will be buffered by the affection and guidance you have provided all along. An interesting fact, is that even as adults, we are still children of our parents, and even though I have a responsibility to make my own decisions, I usually seek out my parents opinion. Its nice to be friends with my parents.

How to Change your Behavior

With the new year - I am always inspired to try something new - the only exception to that was the end of 2008. My husband and I were 8 weeks away from becoming debt free. All of our energy and focus was directed toward finishing the goal, not starting something new. Here at the start of 2010 - I am once again looking at what I want to change, what I want to be different, how I want to be different after 2010. My reason: I want to improve myself, my family, my future for my husband and our future children. There might be other reasons to change though, such as:

Pain-Motivated Change

Change Created by Being Pulled Toward New Behavior
Change Forced by a Push from Someone Else or by Circumstances
http://www.learningplaceonline.com/therapy/motivates.htm

The hard part of course is making the behavior changes stick. Learning the new skills necessary to make the change, can be just as challenging as actually changing behaviors. Don't be surprised if you feel a sense of loss, even if it is a change for the better. Leaving the familiar, the safe, is always stressful, and choosing stress, when dealing with stress due to environment (i.e. job, family, health, finances) may seem too much to handle.

When dealing with changes expect to experience an increase in the unwanted actions - due to the familiarity of the behavior that is being extinguished. Also continually practice adding positives (toward your goal), to keep busy and help your brain re-organize around a new structure of activity. The new structure, is actually essential to creating change, or you might sink into destructive behavior due to learned helplessness.


Phase of numbing that usually lasts from a few hours to a week and may be interrupted by outbursts of extremely intense distress and/or anger.


Phase of yearning and searching for the lost figure lasting some months or sometimes for years.
Phase of disorganization and despair.
Phase of greater or less degree of organization. - John Bowlby Loss: Sadness and Depression

It may also be helpful to use the Holmes and Rahe stress inventory to recognize stressors you may currently be experiencing.  A score of 300+  gives you a 90% change of developing an illness, having an accident, or "blowing up" (you know, emotional meltdowns, aaack).

http://www.managingpressure.com/downloads/6_Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_inventory.pdf

There are two ways to work around the attachment/loss scenario, and the stress scenario that can impact an individual's ability to succeed. 

1. Educate yourself: Learn everything you can about what you want to become, what has worked for others and how to incorporate them into your life.
2. Find a Mentor: Someone who has gone through the process before, or perhaps never struggled because they were taught, or intuitively knew how to be successful in that area.

My husband and I used the Dave Ramsey plan to get out of debt (www.daveramsey.com), however we wouldn't have gotten that far without a personal connection, friends who are financially successful, who gave us the emotional boost to get started.