Somatic Attachment Therapy

Somatic Attachment therapy is a mind-body approach to helping people who have had difficulties with bonding to their carers in early life, or have experienced relational wounding in their adult relationships. Problems can arise in early life if the main carers have themselves suffered relational trauma, or if their circumstances are difficult, for example in times or war or extreme poverty.

The new baby has a biological need and ability to attach to their carers for nourishment, shelter and protection. The baby also has a biological need for safety, and if the home environment feels unsafe or scary in some way, this activates the infants’ protective responses. These conflicting responses – do I move towards the person, or do I need to move away – are at the heart of the difficulties in adult relationships experienced by many people.

I am pleased to see that Somatic Attachment is a fast-growing field of interest with many courses now being offered. It is an integral part of many Somatic trainings, including Somatic Experiencing™, Polyvagal Theory, NeuroAffective Touch™ and at a fundamental level in Deep Brain Reorienting™. Leading teachers include Diane Poole Heller, Laurence Heller, Aline LaPierre, Rachel Heller and Amir Levine, who have all written excellent books on the subject, and Frank Corrigan who teaches the resolution of early distress based in the neuroscience understanding of attachment biology.

I like to think of attachment styles in a fluid way, as adaptations to our early life experience that helped us to thrive as much as possible under the circumstances we found ourselves in. We also adapt in the close relationships we form as adults, for example the warmth we feel with a favourite friend, the tinge of apprehension when a certain friend or relative visits, or a person whose calls we struggle to find the interest to return. This is all part of being human, and the potential for fluidity in our adult relationships gives hope for changing the imprints of our earlier relational experiences.

Somatic Attachment therapy helps people become aware of the difference in the body-based feelings between unhelpful patterns of relating compared with the pleasant feelings generated by healthy relationships. By working with this interoceptive felt-sense, the capacity for noticing the warm glow of a nurturing connection increases, and resilience develops in the attachment system so that we are less easily triggered into old patterns in relating.

Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning Experience (DARe) was created by Diane Poole Heller and is based on her firm belief that ‘even if our childhood was less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us – and our job is to find out what’s interfering with it and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant.’ I have completed Level 1 of the DARe training and am currently studying Deep Brain Reorienting™ with Dr Frank Corrigan which works with the earliest imprints of difficult attachment relationships, helping to restore the underlying positive feelings and core sense of self.

While attachment wounding can lead to disconnection, with feelings of anxiety or withdrawal in relationships, Somatic Attachment work can help to create more capacity for connection, for warm loving relationships and the awareness of when a relationship is not nurturing you, awareness of somatic boundaries, leading to an increased sense of ease and enjoyment in life.