Season 2 Episode 11 - The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation Mindset Neuroscience Podcast

Attachment theory is not a 'theory'.. it's a part of our neurophysiological operating system

Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure. 

It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in turn helps us achieve higher levels of complexity and adaptation to a variety of environments, particularly in the social realm.   Allan Schore states that although traditionally attachment theory was emphasized in the field of behavior and emotion, it is now supported by enough research from neurophysiology that attachment theory can simply be called ‘regulation theory’. 

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Attachment doesn’t mean co-dependency

This may sound counterintuitive, but our attachment to a secure base when we are young actually helps us become more independent.   Knowing we have an emotionally attuned, available and regulated base to return to and turn to in times of distress helps regulate our immature nervous system to tolerate a more expansive array of emotions and situations until our own more sophisticated brain and body architecture can help us do this for ourselves and with a wider variety of people.  

 

 

One of the keys of secure attachment is resonance, attunement and availability. 

The availability and attunement of an attachment figure is important during a wide array of emotional experiences.  Their availability is particularly important during times of an infant’s distress (Neufeld).  

Because of how brains mature over time, the infant or young child does not have access to self-regulating features (Harvard Center on the Developing Child).  It must outsource these to an attachment figure.  This is a non-negotiable of being human.  

This system of attunement and availability during various situations and affective states helps create bonding behaviors between child and attachment figures through a release of oxytocin.

These oxytocin-releasing behavioral and neurochemical bonding mechanisms get disrupted when an attachment figure is:



* physically or mentally ill

* depressed, anxious, addicted

* verbally/emotionally/physically abusive

* threatening or violent

* consumed by other relationships

* geographically distant due to jobs or travel. (Feldman)



 

When an attachment figure is misattuned, unavailable or threatening, the child does not experience micro-behaviors and signa...