Attunement, Attachment, And Healing Through Love

by Marca McCallie 

If we want a garden

We're gonna have to sow the seed

Plant a little happiness

Let the roots run deep

If it's love that we give

Then it's love that we reap

If we want a garden

We're gonna have to sow the seed 

Lori Mckenna / Natalie Nicole Hemby / Brandi Carlile

  Yesterday I watched as my two youngest children were interacting with one another. My youngest was sitting very still on the couch while his sister carefully studied him for her drawing. She focused on his face and how the shadows landed so she could accurately capture him in her art. Sierra worked carefully and excitedly to try and mirror her drawing to his features. When she completed her picture, both of their faces lit up, and they hurried to show the artwork to the rest of the family. As a family, we celebrated this art and displayed it in our house with pride.               

I share this story because I think it has a lot to do with love, connection, and belonging. When people attune to each other, a form of art emerges that can't help but be shared, enjoyed, and displayed. Blaise, my son, was loving when he let his sister "see" him and tune in to him. He trusted that he was not only safe but interesting enough and worthy enough to be a subject of his sister's art. Sierra loved by looking deeply into another and creating a space of curiosity, attention, and responsiveness. This face-to-face, mutual giving and receiving of love produced art that was then freely shared with the rest of the family. The family responded in love by celebrating and displaying this beautiful piece of art that emerged from a love interaction. The initial seed of love was rooted in curiosity and attunement.

The Definition of Attunement

Attunement is "a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal effect and/or resonating response." (Erksine, 1998). It means to be present, and understanding of another's experience.

The 4 S's of Attachment

Dr. Dan Siegel said when we work towards fostering secure attachment in our children, we need to keep in mind the 4 "S" s. Kids (and adults) need to be seen while feeling safe, soothed, and secure.

Being Seen - Being truly seen goes deeper than the eyes. Being seen is to look with curiosity and find the inner person within, understanding their mind and experiences. This is called Mindsight. We desperately want to be seen and known and want to know and see other people as well. We long for this type of authentic connection but often find barriers that connect to our fears instead. Being seen by another changes our insides and gives us the courage to show up more in the world around us.

Feeling Safe - Feeling safe is crucial to love and secure attachment. When we're safe, we can be curious. There is no immediate or perceived threat we need to guard ourselves against. When we're safe, we don't need to put our survival energy toward fight, flight, or freeze, and instead, we can tune in to the human face and human voice. Steven Porges calls this the Social Engagement System, which is crucial to a safe connection.

Being Soothed - Being soothed is how we bring kids and people back into safety. If my child is hurt on the playground and comes to me to be comforted, their pain is doubled if I ignore them. Instead, I would bring her in close and hold her and tend her wound. Being soothed means bringing people in amidst their pain. Holding that pain with compassion, facing their wound, and not ignoring it. Soothing pain is healing, and it builds trusting connections.

Feeling Secure - Being secure is an overall frame of mind that emerges from consistent, reliable attunement where we know what to expect because it's happened so many times before. We know that if there is a missattunement and something goes wrong, we can repair and bring the connection back to safety. Repair is often missing in our dialogues. This hope that mistakes can be repaired gives people the confidence to face hard things and hard conversations because the stakes are not too high anymore. When we can't repair, love is too dangerous, and we can't be truly safe. When we can repair, secure attachment emerges. We can move towards connections and belonging because we know that if we make a mistake, we have a way to make it right again.

The Power of Love

Being seen, safe, soothed, and secure move us towards compassionate, loving connections. Brene Brown said, "love, belonging, connection, and joy are irreducible needs for all of us. We can't give people what we don't have. We have to live love to give love." Radically giving and receiving love is like a renewable energy stream that keeps multiplying with each encounter. Love compels us to bring more people into it.

Also, when we love, we notice all the things that are not love. We see our shadows, and sometimes our attention lands on the shadows with paralyzing hopelessness. The very act of love can often conjure up pain. Belongingness can remind us of the times we were rejected in the past. These pains that love reveals can either move us to avoidance or move us to repair.

When we look at people struggling with addiction, we see pain, and we see all the ways they attempted to avoid their pain or push their pain further away. People struggling with addiction are often not confident that their pain can be soothed by safe connections where they feel seen and secure. Why would they face their problem if there is no hope for repair and healing? The risk is too great.

The Village

When we look around at our community and survey the pain and addiction, we have to ask ourselves, like Gabor Mate states, "Who destroyed our village?" What's happening here that such a large number of people are unloved and cast out? How did this happen and how do we repair it? Part of love is that compassionate anger that bubbles up in us and says, "This is not okay." Bell Hooks said, "Doubling down on love demands that we are brave enough to straddle the tension of staying awake to the struggle in the world and fighting for justice and peace, while also cultivating a love ethic in our own lives.  We can't sacrifice the micro for the macro, or the macro for the micro." How we love ourselves and those closest to us matters, and it also matters how we choose to communally love our village and those cast out of our village. 

One of my favorite Brene Brown quotes says, "People are hard to hate close up. Move in." This is powerful because it puts us on the hook for loving our neighbor and our community. Love faces pain with the hope of repair. We can do this together. We can move close in, truly see each other, and try to soothe the pain. We can bring the security needed to know that mistakes can be repaired, and a sense of belonging can be restored.

This is the gist of addiction treatment. We are bringing people cast aside back into the village with love, compassion, and excitement. When we do that, we can help foster a sense of belonging in parents, who, in turn, bring their family eagerly into the fold. Love keeps multiplying, and all people can benefit from it.

At Sage Home, we want to face the wounds of our village. We want to create connections and repair. We believe love is an action and is transformative. We want to move in close to find those struggling families so that we can bring them into safety, connection, and belongingness.

“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”

— Miller Williams

Erskine, R. G. (1998). Attunement and involvement: Therapeutic responses to relational needs. International Journal of Psychotherapy, 3(3), 235.

 We believe that families should be able to safely stay together while on their addiction healing journey.

You can help us keep families together so that no child has to be separated from their family, and no mother separated from their child.

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