There are three principles that can help us understand human development. First, we are a species primed for survival. We seek to protect ourselves in moments of danger, stress, and overwhelm. Second, we are a species primed for social connection. Even as children, we intuitively prioritize our attachment with our early caregivers because we know that we depend on them to get our survival needs met. Third, we are a species primed to learn from experience. When we do something that is effective, we are conditioned to do that same thing again and again because we know it works. In short, we are resilient, relational, and adaptive beings.
Taking these three principles into consideration, our relationships with our early caregivers understandably have a significant and lasting impact on us. These relationships or attachments teach us how to relate to ourselves and other people, as well as how to navigate through our world to ensure our survival and success. This article will explore the optimal relational conditions for childhood development and what happens to children who endure attachment trauma. It will further explore how we can heal as adult children, informed by a therapeutic approach called Internal Family Systems.
Attachment styles
When a caregiver provides consistent emotional safety and connection to a child, the child forms a secure attachment with their caregiver. A caregiver assumes responsibility for maintaining their attachment with a child, consistently prioritizing and providing for a child's emotional needs. These children are supported to mature, individuate, and develop an integrated and coherent sense of themselves as separate from others. They show up in the world with a felt sense of calm, presence, compassion, vigor, vitality, curiosity, initiative, creativity, and courage as they explore their world, make intentional choices, and exercise their autonomy. They pursue meaningful goals, feel fulfilled when things work out, can flexibly adapt and recover when things don't, and have the inner resources to ask for help and persist when things are tough.
On the other hand, when a caregiver provides inconsistent (or no) emotional safety and connection to a child, the child forms an insecure attachment with their caregiver. For example, caregivers may be preoccupied with other priorities (i.e., neglectful), demeaning and aggressive (i.e., abusive), inconsistently attentive, or anxiously intrusive and overprotective. In these cases, children have no choice but to assume responsibility for maintaining their attachment with their caregiver and internally adapt to their lack of emotional safety and connection. They endure what we refer to as attachment trauma and become preoccupied with survival as they live in a state of chronic stress. For more on the topic of emotionally immature or unavailable parents, see my article here.
Internal Family Systems & Parts
A theory called Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help us understand what happens when our emotional needs are not met as children and no one is there to help soothe or comfort us back to emotional safety. Here are the basic tenets of the theory:
We are all born with Self-energy. That is, at our core, we all have access to a felt sense of presence, calmness, curiosity, playfulness, connectedness, compassion, creativity, clarity, perspective, courage, and confidence. When we are raised with secure attachments (i.e., emotional safety and connection), we have access to our sense of Self.
Our state of mind (or psyche) is subdivided into multiple parts (or sub personalities) that help us participate in and navigate through our lives. Our parts have emotions and perspectives, taking on roles in our inner system that are fluid, dynamic, and interactive - much like family members in an external family system. As such, our mind can be thought of as an internal family system and we can best be understood when taking our parts and their complex patterns of interactions into consideration.
When our attachment needs are not met, and we are deprived of emotional safety and connection, we get overwhelmed by emotional pain and our stress response gets activated. Our parts instinctively adapt and become forced to take on protective roles in order to help stabilize our inner system and ensure our survival. Keep in mind that all our parts are "good" - they all have unique qualities and help resource and sustain us. There are no bad parts, even though we tend to villainize some of our protective ones.
Let's explore three types of parts that develop in circumstances of overwhelm, such as with attachment trauma. Keep in mind that the more pain we endure, the more complex our inner system becomes.
First, we have Exiles. Our inner system seeks to push down or exile emotional pain that once flooded our inner system with overwhelm (e.g., abandonment, rejection, sadness, shame, guilt, fear, powerlessness, worthlessness, humiliation, and isolation). Exiles threaten the stability of our inner world.
Second, we have Manager Parts. Proactive parts develop that help us manage ourselves in our daily lives to keep our emotional pain exiled and ensure stability in our inner system. There are a variety of roles that manager parts may take on. For example, some parts may become compulsively worried, critical, competitive, hyper independent, and/ or perfectionistic; some parts may prioritize compliance, caregiving, peacekeeping, helping, and/ or fixing; some parts may become guarded, repressed, ambivalent, avoidant, and/ or procrastinate from demands; some parts may become careless, fearless, and/ or reckless.
Third, we have Firefighter Parts. Reactive parts develop that help us extinguish emotional pain whenever our exiled parts get triggered to quickly restore stability in our inner system. These parts react in crisis mode and do not reflect, plan, or consider the consequences of their actions. These parts also tend to get a bad reputation, in spite of their good intentions. There are a variety of roles that firefighter parts may take on. For example, some parts may become reactively aggressive, abusive, addicted, suicidal, dissociative, manic, and/ or withdrawn; some parts may self-harm, binge, purge, overspend, gamble, and/ or hoard.
The deeper our emotional pain, the more extreme our protective parts become and the more they obscure our access to Self-energy. When extreme parts take over our inner system, they act with urgency and compel us to avoid our pain and stay in control. And again, they do this with only good intentions - to protect our inner system from becoming overwhelmed by our exiled emotional pain. Without access to Self-energy, our protective parts work relentlessly for us and feel unacknowledged, unsupported, and unappreciated. Without access to Self-energy, our exiles remain hidden, neglected, and alone. What develops is a fragile and vulnerable fear-driven, shame-avoidant, rigid, and reactive inner system of parts.
When our parts become extreme, our inner system becomes part-led and we become blended with our parts. That is, our parts take charge and we come to identify ourselves through the roles they take on in our system. For example, we come to think of ourselves as perfectionists or angry people. But remember that protective parts are instinctive defence mechanisms and we are not our parts.
When our inner system is rigid and part-led, our minds and bodies will suffer. In a chronic state of survival stress, we lack boundaries, overextend ourselves, neglect our needs, lack a coherent or stable sense of ourselves, and/ or suffer from burnout. We lack insight, presence, fulfillment, meaning, agency, and purpose in our lives - we lose our sense of Self. But all hope is not lost.
Remember that we are born with Self-energy and have what is required within us to heal from our attachment trauma and reorganize our inner system of parts toward Self-leadership. When we learn how to show up for our parts with curious compassion, we can heal from our emotional pain, our parts can be relieved of their protective duties and take on new roles, and we tap into our innate sense of Self - presence, flexibility, ease, patience, perspective, curiosity, vitality, confidence, and connection. In short, the anxiety cycle of fear and avoidance doesn’t end until we learn how to be with our fear and our parts in the spirit of Self-energy. In the words of Robert Frost, “The only way out is through.”
As adult children, we can learn how to be with our parts and heal from our attachment trauma toward an earned secure attachment. We can move from a deprived and scared state of "doing" toward a nourished and safe state of "being." Remember that at our core, we are resilient and adaptive. Where there is a will, there is a way. And you can become the one you depend on for an internal sense of validation, security, and safety. You can create and participate in a life worth living.
How to heal
Internal Family Systems (IFS) provides a roadmap for how we can get to know and connect with our internal family system of parts, access our Self-energy to build trust in our inner system, and heal from attachment trauma toward Self-leadership. Here some pointers (see the references below for more information):
Access Self-energy through mindfulness - hone in on your natural capacity for acceptance, curiosity, and compassion.
Map out your protective parts - reflect on and identify your proactive managers (i.e., what you do on a daily basis to feel in control and safe) and reactive firefighters (i.e., what you do in moments of overwhelm to regain a sense of control and safety).
Acknowledge and appreciate your protective parts - draw from Self-energy to unblend from, be with, and befriend all your parts; acknowledge their concerns or fears for you; appreciate their good intentions and how hard they work in their roles to protect you.
Cultivate Self-trust with your protective parts - when you lean into curious compassion, your parts will begin to trust you; when they trust you, they will show you the exiled pain they work so hard to protect you from.
Witness your pain - draw from Self-energy and hold space to be with your exiled pain and offer a corrective experience where you provide for your inner child's unmet emotional needs.
Unburden your parts - draw from Self-energy and support your parts to release the burdens they carry (e.g., beliefs, feelings, memories, images, sensations).
Invite new qualities into your system - draw from Self-energy and support your parts to take on new roles or qualities in your inner system as they transform out of a state of protection and survival; be patient and allow your parts the power to take the lead.
Experience the transformation - attend to the somatic shifts within your inner system as you release emotions, unburden roles and pain, and transform into a new and liberated sense and state of being.
Intentional being - notice what it's like to be Self-led (e.g., present, aware, flexible, at ease, in charge) with your Self resourcing your parts and your parts resourcing your Self.
Depending on the depth of your emotional pain and access to Self-energy, you may or may not be able to heal on your own. Often times, when we experience deep pain, we can only heal in safe relationships where someone else can lend us the transformative power of their Self-energy. If you are interested in the healing journey described above, you can read the books provided in the references below. If you need additional and professional support, I encourage you to reach out to a therapist who can guide you in your journey toward self-discovery and Self-leadership.
On a last note, remember that your need for help reflects how much pain you have endured and neither your exile(s) nor your protective parts define you as a person. Lean into all the self-compassion you can muster, especially when your self-judgment part takes over. You are doing the best you can. We all need help sometimes. And you are not alone.
- Written by Cynthia Yoo, Registered Psychologist -
References To Learn More About Internal Family Systems & How To Heal
References To Learn More About Emotionally Immature Parents & How To Heal
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