Attachment "disorders"

How is it that a baby who wanted and needed to attach ends up with a diagnosis of attachment "disorder" as an adult? We really need to stop describing trauma as a disorder and a mental illness.

Babies are not ambivalent, avoidant, insecure or disorganised by nature, it is lack of nurture that causes them to develop this way.

A baby can't attach to a moving, neglectful or abusive target. By moving I mean someone who isn't emotionally available. Emotional abuse and neglect doesn't get half the credence and weight they deserve. In addition, there is always emotional abuse alongside physical and sexual abuse.

However, there are always exceptions to every rule. There are some parents who, despite their own traumas, have made some sense of them, they might still have some unresolved issues (don't we all?), but they own them and take responsibility for working on them. They are not projecting their unlived life onto their child.

I don't believe the saying that you can't give what you never got, you can. You can break the cycle and love your baby the way you weren't loved.

We are not survival of the fittest. We are survival of the nurtured ~ Louis Cozolino