We used to believe that babies came into the world unable to think, feel, remember, or communicate.  They were seen as a blank slate, unable to process or store information until they learned to speak.  In fact Freud had been the proponent of such a notion, and he greatly influenced others, including neuroscientists, in their thinking.  Fortunately, some scientists began to question this belief, and with the support of brain assessment technology -such as functional magnetic resonance imagery, they were able to prove that babies do in fact process information and feel feelings.  Other research has shown that babies can store memories of their birth and even of their time in the womb, not in the part of the brain that is used for everyday memory recalling, but in another part of the brain that stores older, unconscious memory, what is known as implicit memory.  And molecular biologist and neuroscientist Candace Pert explains the capacity of the body to retain life memories:  "The body is the unconscious mind! Repressed traumas caused by overwhelming emotion can be stored in a body part, thereafter affecting our ability to feel that part or even move it."


I recently attended a pre- and perinatal conference held in Nelson titled Science Meets Our Heart.  The conference was co-chaired by Myrna Martin of the Kutenai Institute of Integral Therapies and APPPAH, and Kim Adamson of Success by Six.  Much of this conference was about the research done on attachment and the development of babies before, during, and two to three years after birth.  This research proves how our development during this period is affected by our environment and the quality of bonding we experience with our parents.  And although not yet universally incorporated as standard curriculum for university biology, the latest research from a field of biology called epigenetics proves that we are not simply victims of our genetic make up; our physical, emotional, and psychological makeup is determined by the dynamic interaction of our genes and our environment: nature and nurture are partners, with each influencing our development almost equally.   We do have predispositions encoded in our genes; however, the groundbreaking discovery is that whether or not our predispositions manifest in our personality depends on if they are "switched on" by our perception of our environment.  For example, someone may have a predisposition for depression encoded in their genes but never experience it because they grow up in a warm, loving environment.

Healthy, nurturing attachment is the result of parents consistently meeting their baby's needs with loving attention, especially, and most importantly, during pregnancy and the first three years of a baby's life.  All humans share the same needs, and different needs have greater priority for different people and at different times of life.  During pregnancy and the first three years of life, needs that are a priority include safety, security, love, bonding, nurturing, touch, nourishment, rest, harmony, attunement with parents, empathy, to be seen, and sense of power to elicit a response from parents.  The attachment process is simple if not always easy: baby has a need, baby expresses need, parent meets need in attunement with baby, baby calms and need is met.  When this cycle is repeated over and over the baby is continuously connected to a place of security and sense of wholeness, and the baby develops implicit beliefs such as, "I am unconditionally loved just as I am. I matter.  My world is safe. I can trust others. I am supported to thrive."

To be sure, developing healthy attachment does not end after the first three years of life. As Dr. Gordon Neufeld explains in his book Hold On To Your Kids, when infants become children and children become youth, attachment can deteriorate without consistent, present attention from parents.  However, the first stage of life is extra critical because a human brain is only twenty percent developed at birth and a great deal of the brain's development occurs in the first two to three years of life.  The most fundamental influencing factor for this brain development is relationships.  Or, as neuropsychoanalyst Allan Schore writes in his book Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, "The infant brain is designed to be molded by the environment it encounters, mediated primarily via relationships with others."  Dr. Marcy Axness, an adoption expert presenting at the Science Meets Our Hearts conference, explained that the human brain has one hundred billion neurons at birth and it is the experiences with others and with the environment that dictates which synapses live or die.  During his keynote presentation at the conference, Dr. Gabor Maté shared that if you kept a baby in the dark for the first five years of its life, the brain would decide that the synapses for eyesight aren't needed and the child would never again be able to see.  The brain would work to develop the other senses instead.  

Likewise, the brain develops or does not develop the synapses involved in regulating emotions, handling stress, and building relationships based on the feedback and modeling it gets from others and the environment.  When a baby and parent exchange smiles, funny faces, and eye contact, endorphins (nurturing and soothing neurochemicals) fire in the brain reinforcing the neural pathways for that behaviour.  When a baby doesn't get to share this kind of activity with parents, those pathways don't develop. (Later in life, the opiate class of drugs that mimic endorphins can become addictive because they give someone the wonderful sense of nurturing they have always longed for but never experienced.)  We are programmed to survive, and as babies our survival is dependant on parents or caregivers, so the brain helps us survive by adapting to relational feedback.  When the feedback from parents and caregivers is consistent, calm, attuned attention to feelings and needs, as well as engaged and elaborated reflections of joyful affects, babies develop into empathic, cooperative children, youth, and adults, who are more able to feel all their feelings, manage stress and form healthy relationships based on trust.

What about when the cycle of attachment is broken:  baby has a need, baby expresses need, parent responds negatively or not at all, and baby's need is not met.  What does the baby's brain do with experiences of neglect or abuse, or lack of consistent attuned presence in order to survive?  It finds adaptive behaviours to protect the baby. Depending on the severity and amount of abuse, neglect, and lack of attuned presence, and on the nature of the baby, the pain from experiencing consistent negative feedback (or no feedback) can lead to extreme adaptive behaviours designed to push others away; thereby protecting the baby from the pain and the loss of love, and at that vulnerable stage love is linked to survival.  This is why another keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Trout, stressed that what are known as Attachment Disorders are better seen as adaptive behaviours. Dr. Axness put it succinctly with her acronym NORMAL: Natural Organismic Response to Massive Abandonment or Loss.  This is similar to the Compassionate Communication (NVC) perspective: Everything we do is to try and meet a need.  These adaptive behaviours, strategies to meet needs, can be so drastic and challenging for others that they lead to all kinds of diagnoses, and we can lose sight of the needs behind the behaviours.  There is strong evidence to suggest that many mental illnesses, as well as addictions, and many of our psychological and physical health issues can be traced back to early unmet attachment needs.  

Because we are so familiar with blame and right/wrong, good/bad thinking, we may be inclined to use the early attachment research to blame parents for all the problems that their children have.  But, of course, parents are doing the best they know how with their own adaptations to their early unmet needs that have not yet been recognized and addressed, which, as Dr. Axness informed me, "has been shown to be a very important factor in successful parenting."  Dr. Axness stated further that "the latest attachment research has found that the most reliable predictor of a child's secure attachment is whether or not their parent can make clear, coherent sense of his or her own early life, their own early relational histories."  It is exciting for me that pre- and perinatal psychology is beginning to find a foothold in the mainstream consciousness.  The more accepted it becomes, the more we can let go of blaming, start supporting each other to heal, and support babies to thrive in the world.

We are creatures of connection: We came into this world not knowing we were separate from our mother; we walk into a room full of people and immediately, instinctually look for people we know.  And yet, we are afraid of connection at the same time - authentic, open connection.  Very few of us had completely healthy attachment in our early years: conscious conception, peaceful gestation, a birth where our needs were considered and the impact of any emergency procedures consciously processed, and then peaceful, loving, consistent attention to our needs as we transitioned from oneness with our mothers to our own sense of self; our western society has not known how to support healthy attachment.  So we have all felt the pain of being so open, fragile and vulnerable and not having our needs met, which means that we all experience to different degrees the paradox of wanting connection and fearing it at the same time.  Pre- and perinatal psychology offers us a place to explore the roots of this paradox and replant them into rich, nurturing soil.  Many heartfelt thank you's to the organizers of the Science Meets Our Hearts conference organizer and to the presenters, all of whom were transparently passionate about bringing compassion and awareness to those extraordinary leaps of faith known as birth and parenting.         

By Eric Bowers (Special thanks to Dr. Axness for all her support with this article.)

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