3min chapter

The Place We Find Ourselves cover image

5 Attachment: What It Is and Why It Matters So Much

The Place We Find Ourselves

CHAPTER

Attachment, Attunement, and Affect Regulation

When you hear the word attachment, keep these other two words in mind, attunement, and affect regulation. So far, we have largely been talking about these categories as just that categories as constructs. What I want to focus in on right now is that these words hit the ground with neurobiological changes in the brain. profound neurobiological things happen in your brain physically when you are attaching either securely or insecurely to your mother. And so these somewhat abstract concepts of attachments and attunements, they have profound Neurobiological, which is to say physical manifestations in your brain.

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Their excitement is feeding your excitement and your excitement is feeding their excitement. And their enjoyment of something beautiful is is enhancing your enjoyment of the same beauty. And so created in the image of a we and not an I, we find ourselves as creatures who are regulated by one another. And nowhere is this more true than in the first year of your life, first couple years of your life, when your affect is completely dependent on your mother's ability to regulate it. So when you hear the word attachment, keep these other two words in mind, attunement, and affect regulation. So far, we have largely been talking about these categories as just that categories as constructs. So we've been talking about the concept of attachment, the concept of attunement. What I want to focus in on right now is that these words hit the ground with neurobiological changes in the brain. In other words, profound neurobiological things happen in your brain physically when you are attaching either securely or insecurely to your mother. So what happens neurologically when the mother comes through when mom reads the child well, what happens in the child's brain? A number of things. But here are some of the most important number one, descending fibers from the the prefrontal cortex, which is the portion of the brain kind of right at your forehead, descending fibers from that portion of your brain are constructed down to your amygdala, down to your limbic brain. And what these descending networks allow the child to do is to regulate their amygdala, which is the portion of the brain that's responsible for fight flight, to regulate the amygdala to soothe the amygdala when it gets freaked out. So remember when I said if in moments of distress, interpersonal distress, you get dysregulated. That is because your brain lacks strong, thick neural networks between your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. And therefore you have very limited capacity to self regulate. And so these somewhat abstract concepts of attachments and attunements, they have profound neurobiological, which is to say physical manifestations in your brain. And I hope this brings you some measure of compassion for your own self when you find yourself dysregulated and unable to regulate yourself. This is not a matter of willpower.

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