Secure Attachment in Postpartum & Parenthood

How does a person develop a secure attachment?

-When you had a parent who consistently was emotionally attuned and effectively communicated.

-You had repeated experiences with your parent where you felt connected, understood, and protected.

So, what does this attachment style look like in postpartum and parenthood?

-You value relationships; are able to integrate your past with the present; and you feel like you have made sense of your past and family history.

-You feel able to stay calm in most moments of stress, and can stay present with your child’s emotions.

Attachment is not fixed. You can work towards a secure attachment.

We are not destined to repeat the patterns of our parents or of our past.

Having an understanding of our attachment styles and why they evolved can help us to make the first steps in breaking generational cycles and creating new patterns in your family, moving forward.

If you are ambivalently (anxiously) attached, you most likely have an overactive feeling brain, and an underactive thinking brain. Using language in your thinking brain can help bring calm to your feeling brain.

So, doing self-soothing activities, such as self-talk techniques (putting words to your experience, identifying and reframing negative thoughts), can be helpful in calming anxiety or other big feelings.

If you are avoidantly attached, you most likely have an overactive thinking brain, and an underactive feeling brain (you most likely had to adapt to this in order to escape uncomfortable feelings in your body).

So, doing activities that stimulate your feeling brain - such as guided imagery and yoga - can help you stimulate that side of your brain.

If you have a disorganized attachment, working with a trauma therapist can help you make sense of - and heal from - your past, and give you more of an ability to break those generational cycles, and create healthier and happier family patterns, moving forward.

Regardless of your attachment style, it is possible to heal. There can still be so much hope.