What Is Early Attachment Trauma?

The attachment patterns that people experience as children impact the remainder of their lives in powerful ways. Understanding early childhood attachments to their parents offers essential insights into why people live their lives today the way they do, how they operate in relationships, and how online therapy can help repair the wounds of the past.

Research has shown that our earliest relationships serve as templates for how we imagine the world works and how we expect others to behave. Often, without our awareness or understanding, we are mysteriously drawn to recreate in the present old patterns and dynamics from our past.

For example, if, as a child, a woman experienced an insecure attachment pattern (avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized), she is much more likely to feel unsafe in her closest relationships, especially when it comes to a husband or her children.

It’s almost as if we are programmed to recreate painful or hurtful experiences in our future relationships as a result of an inadequate attachment pattern early in life. The insecure attachment as a young child seems to create an emotional magnet that draws us into a similar dynamic in the future.

3 Ways to Heal from Early Attachment Trauma

1. Create a Coherent Narrative

Attachment research tells us that, to liberate ourselves from the powerful vortex of incomplete or inadequate attachments, we need to face, understand, and feel the full pain of our past. This unpleasant proposition just can’t be avoided. As Dr. Daniel Siegel explained in his book, Mindsight,

“The best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents made sense of those childhood experiences (and reproduced this template with their children).” That is why, to repair and heal our ability to attach and create more inner security later on in life, we must be willing to develop what Siegel calls a “coherent narrative” of our earliest experience.

“It turns out that by simply asking certain kinds of autobiographical questions, we can discover how people have made sense of their past— how their minds have shaped their memories of the past to explain who they are in the present,” wrote Siegel in Mindsight.

“The answers people give to these fundamental questions also reveal how this internal narrative— the story they tell themselves— may be limiting them in the present and may also be causing them to pass down to their children the same painful legacy that marred their early days.”

According to Dr. Siegel, we must bravely face our personal history and absorb the full force of its impact on our lives by understanding the narrative of our past. It is only then that we can alter the course of our lives, the quality of our relationships, and the attachment patterns we bequeath to our children.

2. Choose Relationships with Those with Healthy Attachment

Another method that will create more security is for the one who has suffered attachment trauma to develop a relationship with someone fortunate enough to have a healthier attachment experience. Connecting with such a person long term will build security and slowly transform their own unhealthy reflexive inner dynamic.

This method is useful because the experience of developing a secure attachment, even later in life, will have a powerful impact. The new model of what a relationship can be is no longer abstract but is experiential.

For example, a person who had a parent whose availability was inconsistent and, as a result, was allowed to experience chronic anxiety, will become more secure and less anxious when connecting with someone calm and consistent.

3. How Online Therapy Can Help

A third and invaluable avenue for developing a secure attachment is through therapy, whether it be face-to-face or online therapy. And there is a significant additional benefit that the therapist can provide besides the therapy itself. By healthily interacting with the client, the therapist offers the opportunity to form a secure attachment with him/her, an essential step in the healing process.

Connecting with a therapist who can consistently provide a secure base serves as a corrective emotional experience that can be a critical benefit to someone suffering from attachment trauma. Promoting this inner security can become a catalyst to experiencing life and relationships more fully, and help unlock one’s true self.

However, it isn’t unusual for a client to feel very sensitive and ashamed about experiencing an intense yearning to become close to his/her therapist. The question is, why do these clients, especially those who had difficulties earlier in life, develop such a craving?

More often than not, this craving finds its roots in some attachment trauma. Invariably, when one’s critical emotional needs are bypassed early in life, the child who carries these unmet needs recedes to the background. This “inner child” doesn’t go away but is waiting expectantly for someone to come along and fulfill those needs.

An essential limitation of therapy is that therapy can be very helpful in resolving the feelings that evolve from unmet needs, but cannot fulfill them. This stands directly in conflict with the needs of the “inner child” who is sure that the only real solution is to find an adult to fill those needs. And who is a better choice than the benevolent therapist?

Let’s be clear. The job of the therapist is to help the client, with sensitivity and compassion, understand that the only real solution is to deal with all of the feelings of sadness, disappointment, grief, and anger regarding the unmet emotional needs of the past. Only this will open the door to the real solution, which is healing the “inner child” through self-parenting.

Choosing another person, even an empathetic therapist, to fill the emotional holes of the past will never really work. For some reason, another adult can never adequately remove the pain of the distant past. Soon the client will again feel the hunger pangs for a surrogate parent unfulfilled. Only parenting one’s inner child has been shown to work.

For more information, please contact Global Teletherapy or your local mental health provider.

What is Stuttering?

Stuttering is a speech problem. It occurs when the normal flow of speech is disrupted. A child who stutters will repeat or prolong sounds, syllables, or words. Stuttering is not the same thing as repeating words when learning to speak. Stuttering can wreak havoc on a young child's world, making it challenging to communicate with others.

With the advent of teletherapy, now a speech-language pathologist (SLP) can diagnose stuttering online through a comprehensive evaluation of a child's speech and language abilities. While there is no cure for stuttering, early treatment can prevent stuttering from continuing into adulthood.

When is Stuttering a Problem?

Research shows that for about three-quarters of preschool-age children who stuttered, the stuttering went away by itself without any treatment. However, if a parent notices that a child's stuttering continues longer than three to six months, or if the stuttering began after age 3½, or if someone else in the family stuttered, then it may warrant a teletherapy evaluation.

Another concern that parents should be aware of is that, if the child demonstrates tension or seems to have a negative attitude regarding speaking, this could be a red flag. Self-consciousness may cause the child to react to the stuttering by purposefully blinking her eyes or nodding her head to avoid talking.

What are the Symptoms of Stuttering?

It must be understood at the outset that, because every child develops differently, there are no hard and fast rules. Many times a child's “stuttering” is nothing more than a stage in healthy speech and language development. However, if any of the following symptoms persist for 3 to 6 months, there is a reason for concern that the child has a stuttering problem:

• There is a repetition of either sounds, syllables, or words. A common example of repetition is W-W-W-What.

• Or in the place of repetition, sounds are prolonged, such as SSSSend.

• Sometimes the child will interject fillers such as "um" or "like."

• A child pausing a lot or talking slowly often indicates a problem.

• She may open her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. The speech stops.

• The child may seem nervous or out of breath when talking.

• Tension is revealed by trembling, shaking lips when speaking or fast eye blinking.

• The stuttering increases when the child is under stress or tired.

• Sometimes the child is just too traumatized to talk at all.

What Are The 3 Types of Stuttering?

Developmental Stuttering. The most common type of stuttering in children is developmental. Problems generally become noticeable between the second and fifth birthday. The child's speech and language development isn’t keeping pace with her desire to express herself.

Neurogenic Stuttering. Neurogenic stuttering has nothing to do with the child's development but is instead a direct result of either a stroke or brain injury. The stuttering is an indication that there is deficient communication between the brain and nerves and those muscles responsible for normal speech.

Psychogenic Stuttering. Psychogenic stuttering is more unusual. This type of stuttering can coincide with problems related to thinking or reasoning, or may occur as a result of psychological trauma.

Why Does Stuttering Need to be Treated Early?

Once it is determined that the child has a stuttering problem, it is imperative to treat the stuttering as early as possible. This is because, if the problem is left alone, it will most likely lead to collateral damage such as adverse and hurtful reactions from peers, teachers, or unknowledgeable adults.

Aside from the emotional pain that this will most certainly bring, the stuttering itself is likely to worsen, setting up a vicious cycle where the child will become afraid to talk. Humiliated, the child will look for reasons not to speak, which will cause regression and further complications.

Avoiding situations where it is appropriate to speak sets the stage for long-term problems that may carry into adulthood. These problems could ultimately affect the child's capacity to form healthy relationships or find a meaningful job.

What Causes Stuttering?

While research has yet to discover the exact cause of stuttering, it is widely believed that there is a genetic component. Stuttering seems to be related to problems in the way that a child's brain develops neural pathways for speech and language.

Young children undergo rapid development, which is known as a "language explosion," in their preschool years. These years are the most common time for stuttering to begin. As the young child's vocabulary increases rapidly, the brain's neural networks responsible for speech fail to coordinate correctly, resulting in stuttering.

What Are Some Typical Treatments for Stuttering?

Specific treatment for stuttering depends on several factors, including the child's age, symptoms, the severity of the condition, and overall health. There are a variety of techniques that SLPs, who perform teletherapy, use to teach the child to speak without stuttering, such as learning to breathe while speaking or slowing down the speech. Often, with older children or adults, SLPs work on acceptance of the established stuttering behavior.

A treatment that has gained traction in some circles in recent years is the Lidcombe Program. The Lidcombe Program is an approach which focuses on the SLP and parent praising the child for speaking without stuttering. The objective is to help the child to form new neural pathways that will lead to diminished stuttering.

Recent research has shown that the Lidcombe Program is an effective stuttering treatment for children under 6 years of age. In fact it is 7.5 times more likely to reduce stuttering than natural recovery (Onslow et al., 2012).

How Can a Parent Help?

The most important way that parents can help their children who stutter is to show their acceptance of their child's stuttering and minimize their reaction when the stuttering occurs. Children soak up their parents' attitudes and emotions, which practically guarantees that, if the parent is anxious about the stuttering, the child will be as well.

Aside from keeping the proper mindset, there are other ways parents can help their children control and even minimize stuttering.

1. Resist the temptation to finish your child's words when the child is stuttering.

2. Model speaking slowly, deliberately, comfortably, and in a relaxed manner.

3. Make the time to talk with your child, giving her your undivided attention.

4. When your child is speaking, please don't interrupt.

5. Put your phone down and listen to your child when she speaks.

6. If your child wants to talk about her stutter, talk openly about it.