Latest / The Sex, Porn & Love Addiction Podcast / Why "Attachment" Is Actually Detachment (The Hidden Psychology)

Transcript

Why "Attachment" Is Actually Detachment (The Hidden Psychology) · The Sex, Porn & Love Addiction Podcast

1:11
SPEAKER_00: Sex porn love addiction is all about self-soothing to manage your emotions.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: It got set up back in the childhood development years.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just not about sex, it's not about porn.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the repeated use to set up the physiology to crave those dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, self-manufactured drugs in the body.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: It's impacting women, men, children aged 10 to 75 across all the age ranges, the sexes, the cultures, the professions.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: It increased exponentially during COVID lockdown and impacting so many lives.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: The Kairos Center has created the first online comprehensive sex porn love addiction.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a video on demand recovery program which you can access from anywhere in the world and begin to see identifiable changes just within six weeks of beginning this weekly program.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Kairos means your appointed time.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it your time to reclaim your life?
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Bring colour back to life without shame.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Click the link below and begin your journey.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: You owe it to yourself and to others.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at a really very important topic right now called attachment.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: What a strange title.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: I find the word attachment to be a misnomer, really.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really describe what's on the can, what's on the label.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I wonder why it's not called detachment because it's exactly the opposite to attachment.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: It's a process typically set up in childhood which causes the infant, developing child to detach, to separate from the main caregiver.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: We use the word caregiver because those significant individuals in our lives at a very early stage are not necessarily a biological mum or a biological dad because many are fostered, adopted, so the main caregiver could be that biological mum, dad, etc.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: And what happens in the dynamics of attachment is the infant learns that it can be quite painful, distressing, traumatic to let their heart go out to that main caregiver because the main caregivers are not, can I use the expression, good enough?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: As that child, that developing infant would like them to be.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not about perfection, it's about the uniqueness of that developing child and what they need, what their brain needs for their development.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: A really clever person called John Bowby, I think back in the 1940s or so, identified this concept of attachment, and it's since been built upon by other individuals like Mary Ainsworth.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Now, the way I view attachment, the way I describe it, because I always say I've got a quite a simple brain and I need it to just understand things in a simplistic way.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: So I seek to break it down for you and see if this helps.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: The way I view attachment is something about parents, caregivers need to be lighthouse for the developing child.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Truly a lighthouse because the developing child is like the ship on the ocean.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Bowby talks about, John Bowlby talks about the first two years of life, those developmental years, the first year, then the second year.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Different changes are happening, and the child needs the caregiver to be consistently there for them, meeting their particular needs.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Now remember, a developing child has some pretty basic needs, really.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: When I'm hungry, I cry.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: When I poo myself, I cry.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: When I'm tired, I cry.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Pre-verbal.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Don't really have language to communicate in, and so the language is to cry, to get attention, to get what the baby the child needs from the adult.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: What happens when the adult is not can I use this expression again, not good enough.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: It's not about perception, it's not even about that's the way the parent did it for child number one or child number three, it's how this child needs life done.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Parents try to do the best that they can be for each child equally often, but one child may need life done in a particular way.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Deficits can happen.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: That feels a little unfair.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So let's just work with the process where certain behaviour patterns, ways of interacting with the child falls below the standard that would be expected for most developing children.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: The lighthouse is not a good enough reference point for the developing child, in that the lighthouse, the parent, one or other or both of them, is not fully emotionally available.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Postnatal depression.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: What about the early stages of birth and delivery and being put in in intensive care?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: What about imprisonment?
8:00
SPEAKER_00: What about long hours of working by one of the parents?
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Something gets in the way of the bonding process.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: The being there for the developing child.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: You see, when the child's needs are not met adequately, I'm hungry, I cry.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired, I want to sleep, I cry.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Poo, nappy, cry.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And the good enough adult does not come to the child's aid soon enough, but delays and delays is not consistent.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: The cry, the more crying, the intense crying can go on and on for the child that turns into a level of intensity that is intolerable, and done often enough, the child begins to learn that that adult is not safe.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And the brain, strange statement, the brain does not like pain.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: The brain's job to get us back into homeostasis equilibrium takes over and gives coping strategies to the brain to say different things can happen.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Let's not rely upon that adult anymore.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: They're not safe, they cause pain.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So a whole lot of contradictions are going on because that is the safe place, that parent, and yet the child is in a dilemma where their needs are not being met good enough.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And the protest of the child is remembered by the brain.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And into adulthood, that protest, that pain, is so remembered that the brain never wants that to be experienced again.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: And has set about setting in place some behavior strategies to manage that pain as if it's still going on or is going to happen again with any person the now adult comes into contact with.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Attachment styles are a big deal.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Knowing your attachment style is a really, really big deal.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Remember I said I would suggest that over 90%, maybe even over 94% of couples that I see have core emotional needs that are not being met as the cause for their conflicts.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: That's a large number.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: In a similar way, I'm saying attachment issues seem to be a big feature in the vast majority of clients that I counsel and see.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we need to give a lot of attention to this thing called attachment or detachment or rejection or loss.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Use whichever of those terms you want because that's how the infant is experiencing life in the early days of development and learns coping strategies to avoid that pain ever happening again when they felt distressed by the not good enough.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Send me a message.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Let's do some work without shame and bring color back to life.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Send the email, send the message to me, Gary McFarlane at the Kairos Center.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: And let's begin to reclaim your quality of life.