The Rope Test: Childhood Survival Styles

Many people struggle with anxiety, relationship patterns, or chronic health conditions without realizing these challenges stem from attachment trauma stored in the body. Attachment isn't just about relationship styles or emotional patterns—it lives in our nervous system, immune system, and cellular biology, creating survival mechanisms that formed before we could even walk.

In this episode, I reveal how attachment trauma begins in utero and shapes three distinct childhood survival styles that show up in your life today. I share my own rocking chair moment with my adopted son Miguel, explaining how that experience led me to discover the three critical elements that create secure or insecure attachment: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. You'll learn about the six types of attachment pain—from "hold me" to "love me"—and discover why people-pleasing, perfectionism, chronic overwhelm, and even autoimmune conditions trace back to these early survival adaptations.

Whether you're a professional working with attachment issues, someone recognizing your own patterns, or a parent wanting to break intergenerational cycles, this episode bridges conventional psychology with nervous system regulation and functional medicine. You'll understand why traditional talk therapy often hits a wall with attachment healing, and what becomes possible when you address the body's stored attachment pain across all three levels: mind, body, and biology.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• [00:00:22] Why attachment trauma lives in your body's cells and immune system, not just your relationship patterns
• [00:05:11] Three critical elements that create secure or insecure attachment: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology
• [00:10:32] Critical Element #1 - Attunement: The trust cycle and co-regulation through eye contact, touch, and need responsiveness
• [00:15:34] The Rope Test: discovering your primary childhood survival style in relationships when survival feels at stake
• [00:18:48] Critical Element #2 - Neurodevelopment: How tummy time and crawling gaps create anxiety, ADHD, and sensory issues
• [00:24:41] Critical Element #3 - Biology: Which neurotransmitters promote connection versus protection in your nervous system
• [00:27:49] Attachment Pain #1 - Hold Me: Early holding needs and global high intensity activation pattern
• [00:30:02] Attachment Pain #2 - Hear Me: When your needs weren't heard and you learned to rescue others while feeling empty
• [00:32:56] Attachment Pain #3 - Support Me: Movement support gaps that create "I can't" default thinking and overwhelm
• [00:35:22] Attachment Pain #4 - See Me & Attachment Pain #5 - Understand Me: Being different and unique, yet feeling drained when people don't understand you
• [00:37:05] Attachment Pain #6 - Love Me: Perfectionism, high inner anxiety, and the fear of being unlovable
• [00:40:35] The repair approach: addressing body, mind, and biology across all six attachment pain types

• Attachment Lives in Your Body, Your Mind: Attachment trauma isn't only about relationship patterns or emotional wounds—it's stored in your nervous system, immune system, digestive system, and cells. Your body holds muscle memory of childhood survival patterns that show up as chronic health conditions, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and perfectionism decades later.
• Three Critical Elements Create Your Attachment Foundation: Attunement (co-regulation through touch and responsiveness), neurodevelopment (movement milestones like crawling), and biology (neurotransmitter balance) all determine whether you developed secure or insecure attachment. Gaps in any one of these elements create attachment pain that requires repair across all three levels.
• The Trust Cycle Builds Nervous System Security: When babies experience the repeated pattern of need-dysregulation-need met-regulation-connection, they develop inborn trust that "when I have a need, I'm going to be okay because they always come." Without enough repetitions of this trust cycle, the body stores the belief that survival depends on protection rather than connection.
• Your Childhood Survival Style Shows Up Today: The Rope Test reveals whether you pull people close, push them away, or feel confused in relationships when your survival feels threatened. These aren't conscious choices—they're stored patterns from how your young self had to survive. Whether pulling close or pushing away, both responses come from protection mode, not connection.
• Six Sequential Attachment Pains Create Distinct Patterns: Hold me (birth to months), hear me (first year), support me (second year), see me (age three), understand me (age four-five), and love me (age six-seven) represent sequential developmental stages. Each creates specific thoughts, feelings, physical symptoms, and coping mechanisms that can be identified and repaired.
• Chronic Illness Traces to Stored Attachment Pain: IBS and autoimmunity connect to "hold me" attachment pain, food issues and emotional eating link to "hear me" attachment pain, and back pain flare-ups and stomach ulcers signal "understand me" attachment insecurity. These aren't random—they're the body's downstream response to unresolved attachment trauma.

"For him, survival meant protecting his heart."

"There's an existential anxiety that is created when you don't know if you really exist."

"You can have had great parents and still have these survival patterns from your childhood.

"Everything that I experience today is filtered through my attachment foundation."

"If I don't change my filter, I will continue to recreate the same pain for the rest of my life."

When my five-year-old adopted son told me he would kill me tomorrow while I held him like a baby, I realized his survival depended on protecting his heart—not connecting. That rocking chair moment launched six years of searching that revealed attachment isn't just psychological, it's biological. Your attachment foundation formed through three critical elements: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. Gaps create six sequential attachment pains that live in your nervous system and show up as chronic health conditions, relationship patterns, and survival responses today. True repair requires addressing all three levels simultaneously—mind, body, and biology—because everything you experience is filtered through your childhood attachment foundation.

• The Biology of Trauma book - Available now everywhere books are sold. Get your copy

• Foundational Journey - If you are ready to create your inner safety and shift your nervous system, join me and my team for this 6 week journey of practical somatic and mind-body inner child practices. Lay your foundation to do the deeper work safely and is the pre-requisite for becoming a Biology of Trauma® professional.

• Episode 69: How Attachment Shapes Our Biology and Behavior with Dr. Aimie Apigian

• Episode 128: How Attachment Trauma Drives Anxiety, Autoimmunity & Chronic Illness

Your host: Dr. Aimie Apigian, double board-certified physician (Preventive/Addiction Medicine) with master's degrees in biochemistry and public health, and author of the national bestselling book "The Biology of Trauma" (foreword by Gabor Maté) that transforms our understanding of how the body experiences and holds trauma. After foster-adopting a child during medical school sparked her journey, she desperately sought for answers that would only continue as she developed chronic health issues. Through her practitioner training, podcast, YouTube channel, and international speaking, she bridges functional medicine, attachment and trauma therapy, facilitating accelerated repair of trauma's impact on the mind, body and biology.

Disclaimer: By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use this podcast as medical, psychological, or mental health advice to treat any medical or psychological condition in yourself or others. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your own physician, therapist, psychiatrist, or other qualified health provider regarding any physical or mental health issues you may be experiencing.

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