Understanding Attachment and Addiction

Dan Oakes, LPC, M.Ed, CSAT and Dr. Kevin Skinner, LMFT, CSAT-S • Jul 18, 2018

UNDERSTAND THE BRAIN, UNDERSTAND THE ADDICTION

It is not uncommon for someone struggling with addiction to try and control their behaviors, succeed for a while, then slip and feel overwhelmed and hopeless. It’s a cycle many addicts struggle to beat for a long time.

It can take years of cycling through relapses before methods like thought-stopping and willpower become effective. And even then, these methods are usually only effective for a short time and fail to cause long-term change. The addict is left feeling frustrated and defeated after all good intentions fail.

Clearly, establishing recovery and sobriety from addiction is no easy task. It takes more than just understanding an addiction to achieve success. True recovery comes from understanding the brain. Knowing how the brain should function and emotionally regulate helps an addict understand why their brain is different. Knowing how and why an addict’s brain differs from a normal-functioning brain can help the recovery process.

As an addict understands the brain and how it should function, the addict recognizes that addiction is a form of emotional dysregulation. In times of distress or tension, instead of reaching out to others, the addict engages in their addiction - in this case looks at porn, to emotionally regulate the discomfort.

Dr. Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D, writes,

“Our brain is designed to promote relationships. Specific parts of the human brain respond to emotional cues (such as facial expressions, touch, scent) and, more importantly, allow us to get pleasure from positive human interactions. The systems in the brain that mediate pleasure appear to be closely connected to the systems that mediate emotional relationships.”

Relationships don’t just soothe in times of distress. Relationships also provide pleasure and comfort and emotional regulation tends to follow a pattern. In times of distress an individual instinctually reaches out to others, then emotionally attunes to a place of calmness. After calming, the individual attaches to another, usually through physical touch, and stress leaves the body. When the stress disappears, the individual feels emotionally resilient and gains confidence.

THE ATTACHMENT CYCLE

VIDEO: ATTACHMENT COURSE FOUND ON BLOOM (2:16)

Stress: We all experience stress. Stress is normal and a result of living in the world. And stress actually motivates normal behavior and in that sense can be healthy. However sometimes stress becomes overwhelming and unmanageable. Unmanaged stress can turn into tension in the body which becomes emotionally and physically painful due to too many stress hormones in the brain and body. The good news is that the body has an instinctual response when stress becomes unmanageable. The response is to reach out to others.

Reaching out: When a five year-old climbs a tree, he is engaging the stress of the world by exerting himself. But when he falls and scrapes his knee, he instinctually runs to Mom and Dad. We all have this response. When things become difficult, we turn to others for safety and security, sometimes in small ways. We call friends when we have a bad day, we seek affection from our spouse when we feel stress, or we cling to others when scared. This response is part of our genetic code and is instinctual safety refined through connection. Just like buffalo group together when danger is near and flocks of birds fly together during the trek south, we have have a deep instinctual understanding that comes through connection.

Attunement: Once the process of reaching out to others is established, an individual learns to resolve conflict in the context of being with others. The unique process in the interaction between two individuals is called attunement. Attunement is how our implicit and unconscious movements, gestures, tones, body language and eye contact help communicate safety and acceptance between two people.

David Boadella reviewing Alan Shore’s work writes, “Dialogue corresponds to a flow of contact through touch, eye contact, tone of voice and empathic resonance: these contact forms are aspects of good attunement.” (Affect, attachment and attunement: Thoughts inspired in dialogue with the three-volume work of Allan Shore Energy & Character vo1.34 September 2005 reviewed and discussed by David Boadella.)

Attachment: When the little boy is calmed, Mom kisses her son on the forehead. The little boy feels better and has forgotten the pain from just moments ago. He thanks his mom, pushes her aside, and runs out the back door to climb the same tree that inflicted the original pain. He is now emotionally resilient. Reaching out to his mother relieved the stress hormones and he now feels ready to return to the stressful world. The kiss from Mom served as a sign that emotional regulation has been restored. The little boy now feels accepted and capable.

Norman Doidge, in The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science writes, “For children to know and regulate their emotions, and be socially connected, they need to experience this kind of interaction many hundreds of times in the critical period and then have it reinforced later in life.” (227) Emotional resilience: After the attachment process, the little boy is in a state of strong emotional resilience. Emotional resilience makes us feel capable. While we do not consciously connect to

the events previously experienced, this feeling of capability is the emotional result of having been through difficulty and living to tell about it.

Secure base: After experiencing the attachment process again and again, individuals begin to build a memory bank that researchers call the secure base. Confidence is actually the cumulative result of hundreds if not thousands of moments in our lives when the attachment cycle is completed.

THE DAMAGED ATTACHMENT CYCLE

So where does it go wrong? In addiction, sometimes the process of reaching out is damaged or interrupted. There are a few different ways this can happen.

The instinct can be abused or neglected by others. If the little boy falls and scrapes his knee and runs into the house for help but his frustrated father hits him for slamming the door, it will not take long for his instinctual need to reach out to become muted. Or if his parents are not home any time he needs comfort his emotional system will begin to diminish. Or if he is exposed to overly-stimulating chemicals or behaviors such as pornography, his brain may become confused about where it should turn for relief. Compulsive stimulus (object focused v. other focused .... porn v. relationships) produces

excitement and thrill by manipulating brain chemistry. Regardless of the method or reason why the reaching out instinct gets blocked, the brain begins to develop an addictive or compulsive pattern that is a reflection of the original desire for attachment, but it becomes object focused instead of focused on other people.

Isolation: When the reaching out mechanism becomes blocked, an individual will begin to experience isolation. The individual will pull away from others because they see others as somehow unsafe or unpredictable.The little boy who falls out of the tree will hide and cry instead of seeking comfort from his family. These early stages of isolation begin to feel like a perceived preference for the individual but actually evolves into masked emotion, revealing itself as social and or emotional isolation. During this period of isolation, the stress hormones and tension fester and the individual continues to seek relief in a new pattern absent of other people but full of available objects.

Sue Johnson, in Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, writes, “Louise Hawkley, of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, calculates that loneliness raises blood pressure to the point where the risk of heart attack and stroke is doubled.”

Seeking stimulus: When the body seeks stimulus, it attempts to duplicate the attunement of the attachment cycle. However, without other people to attune to, the individual turns to objects. More specifically, objects that stimulate or numb. The individual might start watching too much TV, or eating too much, using drugs or looking at pornography. Before long, the behavior becomes repetitive and compulsive.

Acting out: Once the behavior becomes compulsive, addicts find themselves lost in cycles of binging on pornography, drugs, gambling, or other compulsive behaviors. The behavior works quickly and repeatedly. It also provides the illusion of escape and the presence of pleasure. This pattern is destructively temporary. Once the high is gone and the rush has subsided, the addict is faced with the tension that triggered the initial cycle. No, however, the the tension is made worse with the additional stress of managing and coping with addiction. The brain is overstimulated and major psychological changes are occurring in the brain.

Philip Flores, Ph.D., in Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, writes, “Because of a person’s difficulty maintaining emotional closeness with others, certain vulnerable individuals more likely to substitute a vast array of obsessive-compulsive behaviors (e.g., sex, food, drugs, alcohol, work, gambling, computer games, etc.) that serve as a distraction on the gnawing emptiness and internal discomfort that threatens to overtake them.”

Emotional frailty: Faced with tension and feeling overwhelmed with addiction cycle, the addict feels emotionally frail. The addict becomes irritable and frustrated. The body has rejected the addiction cycle and is attempting to follow the attachment pattern it is designed to use. However the addict is substituting objects for people, so the attachment pattern is flawed. The process erodes the secure base and the addict loses confidence as they continually rely on a compulsive behavior.

Ultimately this process erodes the secure base that develops over time when the attachment system functions effectively. Confidence is lost in the reliance on the compulsive behavior.

Sue Johnson writes,

“When love doesn’t work, we hurt. Indeed, “hurt feelings” is a precisely accurate phrase, according to psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California. Her brain imaging studies show that rejection and exclusion trigger the same circuits in the same part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain.”

REPAIRING THE ATTACHMENT CYCLE

What do I need now? In order to repair the attachment cycle, you must learn or relearn how to attune with others in order to emotionally regulate the tension the addiction produces. You will want to learn how to feel and recognize attachment that comes from a connected emotional experience. This will produce feelings of being calm and internal peace.

If you have been frustrated with your pornography/sex addiction and have worked for years to manage your behavior only to be unsuccessful over and over again, know that there is a path that restores connection, emotional regulation, and eventually self-regulation and sobriety. This path is available through relearning how to attach in healthy ways to others.

Much like a healthy mother-infant relationship, you will want to learn how healthy touch, emotional expression, eye contact, vocal communication, and positive social behavior can heal your attachment wounds. This will enable you to turn to relationships rather than your addiction.

For example, when you learn to share difficulties with others who will value you, you are being vulnerable by expressing your emotions. When you reach out you refute and fight against old cycles of isolation. When you look into the eyes of a loved one and express your love for them, you discover a deep and authentic feeling of love that you may not have experienced earlier in life. Through these actions and more, you will find relief by creating meaningful connections and attunement. As you learn to attune to self and others, your addictive habits will be diminished and you will gain confidence in your ability to recover.

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