Through the research I am doing for the Beyond the Trauma Wall book, my insight into the link between addiction and attachment is crystalising. A few years ago, I started to see a deeper root cause already, I would like to take this a bit further now.
While I provided training based on the contents of the book ‘Understanding the Trauma of Children from Institutions. A training manual for case workers‘, I started to realise that the way babies learn to form attachments (and develop the templates in their brain that allow them to form relationships, throughout their life) involves all the same hormones that are involved in addictions. These hormones create feelings of joy and reward, of craving, and of attachment. One day, as I was explaining this process once more, suddenly it clicked for me that essentially, our brain is set up to become addicted to attachment, social interaction, and relationships.
This is an addiction that is of vital importance for our survival. Children do not make it to adulthood if they are not cared for and they are more likely to receive care from someone with whom they have formed a mutual bond. For most of human history, even adults did not stand much of a chance of survival if they were entirely on their own, cut off from their family and tribe. In other words, craving relationships and social interaction is essential to our survival.
Our brains are simultaneously extremely sophisticated and extremely primitive. Being wired to develop an addiction to relationships is a very sophisticated survival strategy. However, when things go wrong in childhood and this life-saving addiction does not form, plan B is primitive: ‘need addiction!’ Through either extreme neglect a baby may be unable to learn to form attachments – does not develop the connections in the brain to form the template for that – or through life-changing traumatic events a baby or young child’s brain may learn that the costs of forming attachments are too high to risk doing so. In other words, the addiction to relationships and social interaction has no opportunity to develop. In this case, it seems the brain stubbornly – and primitively – insists that ‘addiction is necessary for survival!’
The ‘Plan A’ addiction to relationships and social interaction is not just life-saving but actually nurturing. It encourages reciprocal relationships involving mutual care. At the hormonal level, it promotes a base level of the kind of hormones that make us feel good. The alternative addictions that the brain pushes someone without this ‘beneficial addiction’ towards is a poor substitute that can only offer the desired hormonal level for a brief moment. Therefore there is always a need for more and the pursuit of more ravages the person’s life.
Many studies have shown that people who have attachment disorders are at far higher risk of developing addictions than other people. They even have a stronger reaction – a more intense high – to the substances used or the hormones released when addictive behaviour – such as overeating, gambling, sex, compulsive gaming, compulsive shopping etc. – is engaged in.
For any hope of really escaping damaging ‘Plan B’ addiction, the traumatic situation that stood in the way of developing the beneficial addiction to relationships must be faced and processed. Here, the brain shows its primitive side again and enters into a catch-22. The brain recognises that the addictive substance or behaviour is not meeting the basic need of reciprocal social interaction but at the same time, this brain stands in the way of reciprocal attachment by ‘protecting’ the person from the pain of experiencing the emotions of the early trauma that prevented the development of the relationship addiction. This makes the person flee from relationships when they become challenging or too overwhelming, and prioritise their alternative addiction, even though they do actually crave having a meaningful relationship.
Alternative addictions are only a rather imperfect ‘methadone’, while the needed relationship addiction seems out of reach forever.
Addressing underlying trauma and working to develop the brain structures necessary for developing attachments have to be a part of any addiction support, if it is to be effective. Help is needed to move from Plan B to Plan A.
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