Anxiety Therapy : Attachment Theory & Our Brain

Anxiety Therapy

You feel a sense of helplessness that arises when your brain begins to feel like your enemy. How it has the capability of skewing reality into something of your worst fears. How logic becomes hard to hold onto and emotions become more stronger. 

Attachment Theory & Our Brain

Our brains can make us feel countless times like it's its own entity..separate from us..uncontrollable… and not malleable. Some good news is that, our brain in fact is malleable as adults. Whether you are embarking on your own mental health journey through therapy or books or podcasts, increasing one’s understanding on how our brains operate when faced with danger leads us to having more knowledge into its role on how we relate to others.

Dianna Poole Heller touches on this topic very succinctly in her book “The Power of Attachment.” Our brains as children are only capable of capturing implicit memory; these are sensations, pictures, feelings, and colors. As we get older this implicit memory from our early childhood attachment-related experiences, become our “signals” when we are faced with a situation or person that feels unsafe. 

Life experiences around interpersonal relationships as we get older is captured by our hippocampus. A family who is present, playful, protective, and safe, leads to a child who does not hold as many protective/ defensive mechanisms nor lean towards scanning their environment. In comparison, a child who has a family who are emotionally unavailable, unsafe, and detached, hold onto defense mechanisms amplified due to perceived danger.

What is our brain’s job as we get older? To keep us safe. This Protection is created from early experiences of feeling unsafe. Leading into threat responses (our defense mechanisms )feeling amplified to protect us from being hurt again.  These can be observed as automatic responses that are verbal and nonverbal when we perceive danger. That may described by others as “over the top” or “too much.” Identifying these helps in the process of increasing awareness around common patterns of our individual defense mechanisms.

There exists a connection between our brain and how we relate to ourselves and to others. Whether this inspires your curiosity in digging deeper to understand where your relational/attachment wounds are coming from through a book on attachment or begin therapy, you will find that there is a process to break those wounds down, to understand our anxiety that arises, and understand how our brains play a part in it.

Ligia Orellana BIPOC & LGBTQ Affirming Therapist in Los Angeles, CA Specializing in Anxiety and Toxic Relationships.

In therapy, I work with my clients within in this process of understanding their brain, what it is trying to protect them from, and why it exists. Guiding them towards a path to gain control of the missteps their brain makes. If you are ready to target this, you can read more about how I can help here and schedule a free 15 minute phone consultation here.

I wish you good vibes in your healing journey!

Ligia Orellana, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist