Early Childhood Attachments

How They Shape our Adult Relationships

Samantha McLaughlin

Psychotherapist and Counsellor
Perth, Western Australia

This information sheet may be of interest to the following people:

Adult children of alcoholics/drug addicts
Adults who experienced childhood sexual abuse
Mothers with Postnatal Depression
Parents experiencing difficulty bonding to their children
Adults prone to unsatisfactory or abusive relationships
Adults who experienced childhood physical or emotional abuse
Adults who experience childhood abandonment, neglect or loss of a parent
Adults with low self-esteem
Adults with depression
Adults prone to shame

Secure Attachment

The ideal conditions that enable a child to thrive require that they have the close proximity of at least one parent (or care giver) whom is both consistent and sensitive to the child's needs. When a child is raised in an environment that is warm, responsive and dependable, this creates a secure base from which the child can begin to explore their world. When the parent is consistently physically and emotionally available this enables the child to feel securely attached to the parent and the child begins to develop a sense of trust and has positive expectations of other people. It is through this experience of feeling securely attached to the parent that the child develops the capacity to form satisfying relationships with other people in their life.

Insecure Attachment

Many young children have early childhood experiences which are disruptive to the formation of a consistent and loving bond with a parent. For some children the disruption may be a physical one, for example:

Severe illness resulting in long periods of hospitalization
Regular family crises that result in the parent being physically absent.
Work commitments that require the parent to travel regularly
Death of a parent

Sometimes young children are regularly threatened with physical abandonment by a parent and even though physical separation may not actually occur, these regular threats can result in a child feeling insecurely attached to that parent.

For other children the early attachment disruption is a consequence of the parent being emotionally inconsistent or absent, for example:

The parent is alcoholic or addicted to drugs
The parent is emotionally unstable or inconsistent in their care
The parent is depressed or suffers from a mental illness
The parent is self-absorbed and unresponsive to the child's needs
The family is in crisis resulting in the parent being emotionally unavailable
The parent is emotionally, physically or sexually abusive

Insecure Attachment in Adulthood

As adults we instinctively know that our earliest attachments still impact on our current adult relationships with our partners, friends, families and our children. An early experience of insecure attachment may manifest in many ways in our adult lives, for example as an adult you may:

Habitually fear rejection or abandonment in close relationships
Have difficulty trusting and seeking help from other people
Experience low self-esteem and depression
Have distorted or negative self-beliefs
Lack confidence and be prone to shame
Avoid attachment to others altogether to avoid betrayal
Habitually form unsatisfactory or abusive relationships
Have difficulty forming a close relationship with your child

As an adult it is possible to heal the legacy of our unmet early attachment needs. Sometimes it requires the support of a therapist who is respectful of the impact of our childhood attachments and is able to provide a secure base from which to explore them. Ultimately it is through healing our unmet childhood attachment needs that we increase our capacity to trust and love others and create more satisfying relationships in our adult lives.

Becoming Attached	Robert Karen 1994 Oxford University Press
A Secure Base	John Bowlby 1988 Routledge