people are considered “secure,” which means that the rest of us are “insecure.” What was it, I wondered, that 65 percent of people “had” that the rest of us didn’t? Looking around at the world, I was surprised that the number of insecurely attached people wasn’t higher. After all, I didn’t know a single person who didn’t struggle with self-esteem or feel unsure of himself or herself. “Security” seemed like a myth.
I also learned that securely attached kids do better in school, use drugs less frequently, and engage in less risky behavior. As Alan Sroufe, one of the world’s leading attachment researchers and the co-author of an almost forty-year longitudinal study, writes, “Attachment history itself, while related to a range of teenage outcomes, was most clearly and strongly related to outcomes tapping intimacy and trust issues.” It certainly seemed that I was a poster child for insecurity.
Insecure attachment in adulthood is also linked to a host of problems, from sleep disturbances, depression, and anxiety to a decreased concern with moral injustice and less likelihood of being seen as a natural leader. Insecure adults experience God as a more authoritarian God than “autonomous” adults do. But the biggest subfield of attachment research is concerned, not surprisingly, with adult attachment in romantic relationships. Can we express our needs? Do we believe that they will be met? Securely attached, autonomous adults are more likely to be satisfied in marriage, experience less conflict, and be more resistant to divorce.
While my young life seemed to be a checklist for insecurity, other than my difficulties with motherhood, my adulthood was quite the opposite. I was a great sleeper. I had been an activist, and sometimes even a leader. I had a strong, positive religious practice and moral compass. Yes, my early relationships had been tumultuous, which I had come to accept was likely due to some kind of neglect or even abuse I had yet to really understand. But I’m happily married now.
Where did that leave me?
As I was cataloging my own life in terms of attachment, I was also watching Azalea extra carefully, looking for signs of security and insecurity. And then I learned about something so basic, I couldn’t believe it could be studied.
“Mentalization” is a Victorian term for the “effort the mind makes.” Today, researchers define mentalization as “the ability to understand actions by other people and oneself in terms of thoughts, feelings, wishes, and desires…In essence, mentalizing is seeing ourselves from the outside and others from the inside.” This ability to mentalize comes directly out of the experience of being seen by—mirrored by—a sensitive other in infancy. We internalize that sensitive other’s gaze and reflect it back. Back and forth, back and forth—the ability to see ourselves in another, and another in ourselves, is the gift of a loving relationship.
When we mentalize, we are recognizing that we have a mind, and that we are more than just our thoughts and feelings. This helps us recognize that others are more than their thoughts and feelings, too, which leads to empathy and the ability to imagine another’s point of view.
It’s like this: At the base of all attachment behavior is Bowlby’s belief that, because babies can’t handle their own fear, sadness, wet-diaper-ness, hunger, and the like, they need someone to handle it for them. This process begins with “co-regulation,” meaning that the caregiver, through loving attention, helps the baby manage its difficult feelings. Parent and child regulate together. In the end, however, a solid dose of co-regulation ends with “the establishment of the self as the main executive agency of security-based strategies.” In other words, children who are effectively soothed by their caregivers eventually learn how to do it for themselves, and then for others. But we need to be met in our dependence before we can be independent.
This was what Mary Ainsworth was seeing in Uganda with the babies at their homes—the ones who checked back in with their mothers the most were better able to venture away from them. Even Sears got this right when he wrote, “Studies have shown that infants who develop a secure attachment with their mothers during the first year are better able to tolerate separation from them when they are older,” the line that struck me when I first read it. They