in this video, I'm gonna help you understand how your earliest childhood
experiences shape you for your whole entire life and how those experiences
either make you more prone or less prone to addiction if you're new here welcome
to put the shovel down I'm amber Hollingsworth and this channel is all
about helping you understand the psychology of addiction so you can stay
five steps ahead of it you can break free from it so you can live your best
life so if that's something you're interested in consider subscribing okay
everybody we're gonna go really deep today we're gonna go way into the depths
of childhood development and how that relates to addiction and you may be
thinking okay why are we nerding out here because I believe if you can
understand what causes addiction you can understand how to beat addiction because
you see the key to beating addiction is getting out of your emotional mind and
into your thinking mind and this applies to you whether you are the person
struggling with addiction trying to escape it or you are the family member
trying to help someone get out of addiction which is exactly what's about
to happen next in this video now one last thing before we get way deep into
the psychology here even though I'm going to talk about childhood
experiences and attachment and mom and dad and all that kind of stuff related
to attachment and addiction I really really strongly advise you please do not
take this information to say that we are blaming ourselves or we're blaming our
parents and a lot of those factors parents don't even have control over so
this isn't about blame this is about getting logical all right here we go so
in the beginning there was a mom and a dad and they made this little embryo and
once a mom gets pregnant you know I'm gonna go way back to pregnancy here
right conception I know I touch we're going deep now just follow me to talk
about attachment and a lot of people talk about attached
from when the baby's born we're going to get there don't worry about that but
the newest science and research talks about attachment even before a baby is
born and so even at the moment of conception and all throughout that
pregnancy while that baby is developing attachment and bonding is starting even
from those early early early early stages and the reason why this is
important to consider is because to think about whether or not a pregnancy
is wanted or not wanted all of those things are going to impact how
attachment happens how that brain is developing inside that baby that's in
the womb if the mom is under a tremendous amount of stress if the mom
knows they're gonna have to give this baby up for adoption they're not going
to attach to that baby the same way a mother's going to attach to a baby that
wanted the child they're not going to feel supported by a husband and a family
the same way as another mom might and that is going to affect attachment now in
this series we'll have a whole video devoted to adoption and addiction
because that is a whole ginormous subject area in and of itself and we
won't go into that here but I do want you to have an understanding that that
is very relevant so attachment starts when the baby's still in the belly but
it really comes into play as soon as that baby's born so I want you to think
about it when a baby is born they hand that baby almost immediately to the
mother and they want the mom to nurse the baby and you may think well that's
all about getting some food in the baby most people know that some of what's
happening there are a lot of what's happening there is actual attachment
between the mom and the child and the dad and the child and so they usually
tell moms in the hospital or brand-new moms they tell you to take that baby
when you're nursing it they want you to hold it skin the skin so they they want
you to almost either put your shirt down or have it lower something because they
want your skin to touch that baby skin because when that happens it releases
certain brain chemicals particularly one called
oxytocin which is a brain chemical and it starts the bonding now not only
doesn't release that oxytocin but that physical closeness between the baby and
the parent the parents biological physical stuff this happening like
they're breathing in their heart rate and everything else that's going on
inside of them biologically those forces because of the nearness of the child
begin to help regulate the rhythms of the baby emotionally and physiologically
and so you know how little babies cry and they want to be held babies need to
be held because they physically and emotionally need the parent or the
caregiver to help them regulate their biology regulate their emotions now
we're gonna stop right here I'm going to get on one of my big soap boxes so she's
just gonna be a minute so bear with me now I hear this all the time this goes
way back to like dr. Spock who wrote this book about parenting there's a lot
of advice to parents you know way back in the 50s from the book but even now
every day I see this there's a lot of advice to parents about don't pick your
child up when they're crying if you know they're fed and their diapers change
you're just spoiling them okay let's stop you cannot spoil an infant they
can't think in their head like let me just cry and throw a fit right here Mommas
gonna come I'm gonna get what I want that's not happening everything
that goes on with a tiny little baby infant is pretty much like survival its
biological they cry for that nearness because they physically need to be near
you to regulate and it's actually completely the opposite of what most
people think most people think things like well leave the baby in the crib and
let them cry it out because that's how they learn to self-soothe
okay listen very closely that is false babies learn how to self-soothe because
you hold them and your ability to self soothe helps them regulate their own
ability to self soothe it's like a magnetic force like think of it like
your iphone sinking up to the iCloud or your iPad and how it syncs up to your
iPhone it pulls all them pictures over like my
you text go to both like it is happening in the space you cannot see it but it is
a magical force it's very similar to the same way as like women know this going
to get gross here a little bit but women know this if you work with other women long
enough eventually your menstrual cycles all line up it's like the magnetic force
it's pulling those biological rhythms into alignment so this does not just
happen between babies and mamas and daddies this happens between all the
people that you keep very near in your life your biological and emotional
rhythms line up with their biological and emotional rhythms because humans are
not made to live in isolation were created in such a way that forces us to
connect for survival and all of that is part of it now a lot of that emotional
regulation happens in a part of our brain we call the limbic system which is
like the middle part of the brain it's the emotional control center and so the
limbic system of the baby bonds to the limbic system of the parents and the
parents ability to emotionally regulate pretty much determines the child's
ability to emotionally regulate in the best way you can help a child learn how
to regulate their emotions is by physical nearness by staying calm by
helping them learn to manage and soothe those emotions now later on when they're
like toddlers and they get a little bit bigger you can actually put some words
in to help them understand and regulate their emotions so even when they're that
age when they're upset I know sometimes when they're upset it makes us as
parents upset we wanna get mad at them about being upset when once they stop
crying how many of you grew up with parents that said stop crying or I'll
give you something to cry about not the best move from the psychological
biological sciences out there about attachment the best thing is to be able
to get down eye level with the child be calm and if they're in that sort of
verbal state where they're starting to understand language and toddlers
understand language before they can speak language you can reflect to them
what they're feeling and that will help the child learn how to
identify what's going on you can say I see you're really sad because we can't
find your favorite sippy cup you know how kids they get attached to a certain
sippy cup like my son it's like one cup and had to be this certain one cup man
you better not lose it cuz it wasn't gonna be good so they
could be melting down about they can't find their favorite sippy cup and you
may think well that's ridiculous and hey maybe that's not the biggest problem in
the world but the biggest problem world right now that you got is learning how
to help that child emotionally regulate so loving on child and kissing boo-boos
and nurturing on when they're sad or hurt doesn't make wimpy whiny needy
adults it actually makes very strong independent secure adults it's because
it's those really early days like before or five for those attachment rhythms
develop and so now in the next video I'm gonna go over with you the four
different attachment styles we're going to talk about them in detail but before
we get there I really want you to think about things that could happen during
these first early days and few years that could have an impact on attachment
so let's say you have a mother who's married and the dad is in the army
and he gets shipped overseas and now the mom was left alone to care for this
infant child and she's sad and lonely because the dad's away and she's
stressed because she's the only one taking care of this child
what's her emotional regulation like how does that impact the child's emotional
regulation now that's not me saying that's the moms fault I mean things
happen sometimes you know what if the mom is caring for this infant and her own
parent dies and that grief affects the moms ability to emotionally regulate or
the dad something bad happens to the day the dad loses his job and he's this new
parent what's that gonna do to the dads emotional regulation and what's that
gonna do to the dads ability to help this child emotionally regulate there
are so many things not just things that can happen in the child's life but
things that can happen what seems to be in the parents life emotionally which
impacts their own emotions which then impacts the emotions of the child and
when during these early developmental stages
it is particularly important now I do want you to remember everything that I'm
saying to you applies in your adult life too so it's like those people that
you're around as an adult we know this we know if someone we care about that
we're really close to that lives with us or that we work with every day our best
friend when they go through something we go through something you can feel
what they can feel you can feel it in their energy you can feel inside of you
and they're sad you're sad we all have that ability but when we're really young
that thing that's happening there is actually what's like wiring their brain
think about it's like when you build a house and they're wiring it for the
electricity to happen and it's like if the wiring gets wired up a little bit
wrong then things wonky can happen in the house it's like you can go in the
bathroom turn on the light and then the bedroom light comes on so the bathroom
like it's like things can get wired up a little crazy if everything doesn't
happen just right you can even think about extreme cases where you have a
parent who's caring for an infant child who's not in a safe situation who's
being abused a parent that's on drugs has way less of an ability to attune
that's what this is called attunement that's like your limbic system bonding
with their limbic system thing that happens their ability to attune and line
up with that child is much less because they're under the influence of that drug
which is like numbing out all that emotional stuff or distracting them or
distressing them because they have to get the drug or the alcohol or whatever
it is so there are a ton of factors here that are affecting those early childhood
development days I mean it's even stuff like let's say you're like a mom it's a
perfect situation you've been married for several years you wanted this child
you planned out this child you did everything right this child happened
this child comes and then you get this child you just love him but this child
has colic and it cries 24/7 and you haven't had any sleep and this child has been
crying for two months how well do you think that mama is emotionally regulating
if it's me I'm going to be going crazy I had a good friend a while back who had a baby
and that happened to them and even when I went to visit her and the new baby and
I was over there like 30 or 45 minutes I
was oh my word I was stressed out because
like baby cries it's like I don't know what it does inside of you but it's like
it turns your nerves upside down so if something's physically wrong with the
child the child's crying that affects the emotions of the mom which then
affects the emotions our child and you can see that it's a feedback loop and so
those early days that's the beginning of attachment and I know you're thinking
okay amber but like this is all cool like psychological stuff about
attachment moms and baby stuff but how does this come into addiction don't
worry we're gonna get there but I'm gonna give you a little hint most of the
current best research out there about addiction says the addiction comes from
attachment trauma now we're gonna get into that a little later and that
doesn't always necessarily mean that happens somewhere in your early days or
when you were born or in the womb or anything like that I'm just telling you
I just want you to understand how those attachments and bonds work and later on
in this series we're going to talk even more in depth about attachment trauma
and how that opens the window for addiction to get in and ultimately we're
going to talk about how the healing of those attachments and the healing of
relationships is the answer to healing addiction if I haven't totally like
overwhelmed you and nerded you out and you like this stuff and you want more of
it there's a book called a general theory
of love now this book is actually written by two psychiatrist and some of
it has to do with therapy and what actually is happening in therapy but
that book is like super deep into this science that I'm telling you about right
now in fact that's where I first started learning about a lot of this stuff that
I'm telling you right now but it's super interesting stuff and if you want to
learn more about it I'll put a link in the description below in case you want
to read it and learn even more about what we've been talking about now if
you're a binge watcher like me I'm a binge Netflix watcher when I want to
learn someone watch everything read everything consume everything I can get
about something that I want you to watch this video next I'm gonna put it right
up here it's part two in this series where we talk about the actual
attachment styles