Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and today I am going to talk about attachment.

It's been two years since I did an episode specifically on attachment and attachment sits at the foundation for understanding trauma, story and healing, which is what this podcast is all about.

By way of a brief introduction, let me remind you why attachment is such a big deal.

First, attachment determines your baseline abilities for affect regulation. That's number one, huge.

Number two, attachment is also a measure of developmental trauma. If you are insecurely attached, it is highly likely that you experience developmental trauma growing up.

Third, number three, as a result of one and two, attachment profoundly influences how you relate to the people closest to you, which brings me to the subject of today's podcast, attachment profoundly influences how you relate with God.

So after talking about attachment in general, what I'm going to do is specifically address how your attachment style plays out in your relationship with God.

If attachment is somewhat new to you, I highly recommend going back and listening to podcast episode five titled attachment, what it is and why it matters.

And also check out episode seven titled how your attachment style affects the way you relate to other people.

Okay, if you want a visceral understanding of attachment, go over to YouTube and search for the still face experiment. The still face experiment.

The video is only three minutes long and it shows what happens to a one year old when her mother stops interacting with her.

In other words, the video shows you what happens when the mother moves from an expressive face to a still face. Hence the name still face experiment.

Here's a summary of the still face experiment as the video begins the mother is very engaged with her baby. Although the mother is using small words like, hi, I see you. Yes, et cetera.

The baby cannot understand the mother's words because the baby does not have a developed left hemisphere and therefore does not yet have the capacity to understand language.

In other words, the engagement between mother and baby is almost entirely nonverbal communication.

And so it is a right brain to right brain communication from the mother to the child and from the child back to the mother. It's all nonverbal. But what's being communicated between mother and baby is, I see you.

I love you. I care about you. You matter to me. Through a flurry of nonverbal expressive signals, mother and baby are communicating back and forth.

It's this sense of, I see you. Oh, you're looking over there. Okay, I'll look over in that direction also just like you. Why? Because you matter to me. So I'm responding to you. And we're in sync. That's the sense of the interaction. And the baby is calm, present, engaged, happy.

Now, why? Why is the baby calm and happy? It's because the baby knows that mom is responding to it. This is so important to understand.

It's about responsiveness. In fact, if you recorded a video of mom's face as she is interacting with the baby and then you showed that video to the baby, the baby is not going to be calm and happy.

Even though mom's face is incredibly expressive, the baby is not going to be calm and happy. Why? Because what matters is the synchrony between the mother and the child.

If it's out of sync, then even if mom is smiling in a beat, the child is not going to feel felt seen or responded to. And therefore the baby is not going to be calm or happy or relaxed.

...