Severe Attachment Trauma Unnoticed By Health Professionals
“ Many doctors and psychologists NOW understand that bonding doesn’t begin at birth, but is a continuum of physiological, psychological, and spiritual events that begin in utero and continue throughout the postnatal bonding period. When this natural evolution is interrupted by a postnatal separation from the biological mother, the resultant experience of abandonment and loss is indelibly imprinted upon the unconscious minds of these children, causing that which I call the “primal wound” N. Verrier
Professional practice with court-involved family conflict surrounding divorce requires competence in five domains of professional psychology, said Dr. Childress. Attachment, Family systems therapy, Personality Disorders, Complex trauma and Neurodevelopment in childhood. Professional competence in the educational curriculum for trauma and complex trauma can be gained, and demonstrated, through the PESI 2-day Continuing Education course from Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps Score. Additional information can be found through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network
It has been four years since the father of my older son has created a very severe form of anorexia of attachment as I have been denied any form of relationship with my son. Countless professionals have been involved in the case, reinforcing the false belief that the father was not the issue, but that my son, with whom I have had no contact for four years is angry at me. High profile professionals, paid an average of $400 an hour, who have worked with the court for many years and who have extensive experience, have all supported the father. My case is a severe case of untreated attachment bond between a mother and a child. Without any contact with me in now four years, it is clear that the cause of the pathology is the father.
The standard of practice for professional competency is to know everything there is to know about the pathology-this is a trauma pathology, complex trauma, persecutory delusion, personality disorder, attachment and family pathology. Fear from micro-traumas shapes the child’s brain development. Fears prevent human’s extension towards empathy. The pathology of a child rejecting a parent is the worst type of attachment pathology possible. Yet, none of the professionals that have been involved in the case have diagnosed the trauma, the trans generational trauma transmitted from the father to our son. Decades of research have shown that childhood experiences interact with our genetics to change the structure and function of the brain. Within the range of normal experiences, this system enables the brain to be modified during development to adapt to various environments and cultures. Experiences with an attachment to the caregiver appear particularly important due to the circuitry within the brain. Children have brain circuitry to ensure attachment to their caregivers. First, attachment ensures the infant remains in the proximity of the caregiver to procure resources for survival and protection. Second, attachment programs the brain for immediate behaviors, as well as behaviors that emerge later in development. This is one of the reasons a child always attaches to the caregiver regardless of the quality of care received, even if the caregiver is abusive and neglectful as it has been observed in foster care when a child is removed from a caregiver. In the case of attachment pathology, the child rejects the parent because of persecutory delusion. Persecutory delusions are a set of delusional conditions in which the affected persons believe they are being persecuted, despite a lack of evidence.
A child rejecting a loving mother, extremely hostile-angry, complete rejection of a parent is the worst type of attachment pathology. What could be worse than that? What? This is an anorexia of attachment. This is a trauma pathology; complex trauma; trans-generational transmission of attachment trauma, mediated by dysfunctional processing of sadness, grief and loss with the favored parent, which in my case is the father. The trauma creates an inhibition of the frontal lobe executive function systems. It is identifiable as a “mental status” symptom of cognitive distortion called an absence of “linear thinking” and an absence of logical thinking as explained by Dr. Childress. Instead, the person displays a type of thinking called:” associational thinking” where thoughts move from one to the next because of the emotional associations of ideas rather than from any logical cohesion. When we are venturing into the domain of cognitive distortions (trauma, unresolved trauma), we are at the level of primitive defenses. The most primitive defense is denial and juxtaposing those logical inconsistencies can get a display of denials. It’s a distorted way of thinking in which the positive or negative attributes of a person or event are neither weighed nor cohesive. It is also called splitting. Splitting allows a person to readily discard things they have assigned as “bad” and to embrace things they consider “good,” even when this is the opposite. The next more primitive defense is projection. That’s where the person takes their own psychological process and “projects” it into the world, and sees the world as essentially a projection of their own internal material.
Growing up, as a result of attachment trauma, the traumatized child becoming an adult might carry beliefs that they are damaged, not lovable, or that they cannot trust anyone. They might have feelings of shame, unworthiness, or helplessness. Perhaps, They feel plagued by anxiety or believe that they don’t belong in this world. Attachment trauma can lead them to withdraw from relationships in order to avoid further rejection or hurt. Or, they might feel overly dependent upon others and fearful of rejection.
“Trauma as a wound that never heals, succeeds in transforming the subsequent world into its own image, secure in its capacity to recreate the experience for time immemorial. It succeeds in passing the experience from one generation to the next. The present is lived as if it were the past. The result is that the next generation is deprived of its sense of social location and its capacity to creatively define itself autonomously from the former…when time becomes distorted as a result of overwhelming events, the natural distance between generations, demarcated by the passing of time and changing experience, becomes obscured (page 176, Prager, J).”
In my case, my son who has lived with his father for four years with denied contact with me, has been mentally and emotionally abused by his father and by multiple professionals for the past few years. What professionals have failed to acknowledge is the sadness, grief, anxiety and loss that my son has experienced by losing his primary caregiver of almost twelve years of his life, his mother. Both anxiety and sadness are metabolized through the attachment networks. The persecutory delusion created on my son by his father has destroyed my son’s attachment bond with me. The attachment system is a primary motivational system of the brain. A disturbance to the attachment bonding between a mother and the child is a pathology in a primary motivational system of the brain, the love and bonding system of the brain; the attachment system. A child rejecting a parent is fundamentally an attachment-related pathology (Childress & Pruter, 2017). The father has psychologically manipulated my son into rejecting me through withdrawal of my love, psychological coercion, guilt induction. “ Psychological control refers to parental behaviors that are intrusive and manipulative of children’s thoughts, feelings, and attachment to parents.” (Barber and Harmon, 2002, p.15). My case is a family system pathology that none of the family therapists involved in our case has been able to diagnose or treat. Anger towards a parent can be very damaging for a child. Children are able to love others in part by how they perceive themselves to be loved by a parent. If a child has a poor relationship with a parent, this could haunt their relationships moving forward as an adult for decades to come.
To summarize, my older son has been triangulated (Bowen, Minuchin, Haley) into our spousal separation through the formation of a cross-generational coalition (Haley, Minuchin) with the father against me, the mother, resulting in a cutoff (Bowen) in family relationship. None of the professionals involved in my case had a written treatment to restore a healthy attachment bond with my son. Without a specific diagnosis, health professionals have neither a treatment, nor a solution. Knowledge exists as Dr. Childress wrote, “ Failure to possess professional-level knowledge regarding the attachment system when assessing, diagnosing, and treating attachment-related pathology would represent practice beyond the boundaries of professional competence in violation of professional standard of practice.”
Regina M. Sullivan. The Neurobiology of Attachment to Nurturing and Abusive Caregivers. Hastling Law J. 2012, Aug; 63(6): 1553–1570.
Pragner, J. Lost Child, Lost Generations: the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma. 2003, Journal of Human Rights.
Dr. Childress: https://drcachildress.org
Barber, B. K. and Harmon, E. L. (2002). Violating the self: Parenting psychological control of children and adolescents. In B. K. Barber (Ed.), Intrusive parenting (pp. 15–52). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Childress & Puter: https://drcachildress.org/custom-page/3-high-road-workshop-pruter/
