Creating Secure Emotional Bonds

Throughout your life, secure bonds provide a foundation to navigate life successfully.

Yet, for many in our society, this is foreign. We haven’t had role models that allow us to see secure connections enacted. 

Many of us have little experience having an accessible, emotionally engaged, and consistently responsive person available.

As a society, we tend toward individualism and isolation. And yet, we know that emotional isolation is toxic.

Even as we forge our partnerships, they often fall short of being ones where we can share our deepest vulnerabilities and feel emotionally secure. Attachment science offers hope that it’s not too late — we can earn secure bonds through reparative experiences.

From cradle to grave

Many qualities that allow babies to thrive are ones we need throughout our lives.

Babies need safety, touch, eye contact, attunement, engagement, responsiveness to needs, soothing of upset emotions, and play — and so do we as adults. We need safe havens that also allow for exploration and growth. 

An embodied certainty of being able to rely on a loved one creates a secure base. From this reliable platform, we can move out into the world, take risks, feel capable and successfully weather the inevitable storms of life.

Are you there for me? Can I count on you?

“Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions, ‘Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you come when I need you, when I call?’ Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner, disconnected, is terrifying.” ~ Sue Johnson

Your nervous system recognizes comfort in responding affirmatively to these critical questions that underly your attachment systems: Are you there for me? Can I count on you? 

When you can feel the ‘yes’ in your bodies to having a reliable, accessible, responsive other, you can shift from a sense of threat and lack of safety to an experience of relaxing into your best selves.

The faulty amygdala alarms in your brain’s threat center are quieted. Experiences of secure connection reshape neural circuits, and signals of safety become available. You can begin to move through the world with greater ease, and your best self becomes accessible to you.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) informs us that three key factors which define the quality and security of the attachment bond are the perceived accessibility, responsiveness, and emotional engagement of a significant other. 

Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the keys to creating a secure bond. Characteristics of accessibility include being “approachable, available, welcoming.” 

We are wired to be acutely sensitive to signs of rejection from those we love. 

Do you experience the green light of your partner making themselves available in moments of great need? Do you, in turn, predictably show up when you are most needed?

Responsiveness

Responsiveness is “the quality of reacting quickly and positively.” When you see your partner as a resource for safety, comfort, reassurance, and joy, you feel them with you -- you are not alone.

Qualities related to responsiveness include showing up with interest, curiosity, kindness, leaning in, and a willingness to open and stretch ourselves and to step into the reality of the other.

Emotional engagement

One definition of emotional engagement is “attuned and enthusiastic involvement” with our feelings and needs. 

Our society supports individual containment of our emotions — but more effective and sustainable is the co-regulation of difficult emotions. You need a relationship where you feel safe enough to share your vulnerability and experience the acceptance of the other.

Understandably, you may be scared of your emotions when you have not had role models or experiences that show you a secure connection. And yet, you do need to be able to speak of your fears and needs and feel heard. 

Emotional engagement can involve being courageous in stepping out of our comfort zone and taking risks, learning what meets the needs of the other.

Our attachment systems can be rewired

Attachment science tells us that regardless of your history, it is possible to have experiences that create new possibilities in how you relate. You can earn a secure bond through reparative experiences.

Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT) has found the key to helping couples to create new possibilities for warm, loving relationships that allow new experiences of safety and closeness.

Take the next step

To explore how to strengthen your partnership, contact me today.