Attachment - With Sarah Mizuguchi

How do we create healthy boundaries in our relationships, especially when we are so attached to the ones we love? In this deeply personal episode, Sarah shares with Erika her struggles with attachment to her children, particularly her 17-year-old son, who is moving into his next flight of life as a young adult. Sarah opens up about her challenges and her relationship with her eldest son as he prepares to leave home and go to college. Listen as Erika meets her concerns with compassion and care and shares the concepts of attachment theory and valuable techniques to help her adjust to this new phase in their life. 

What is 'Attachment'?

Attachment refers to a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person. In a clinical setting, the term is used to describe "a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings” (Bowlby, 1997). In particular, attachment theory highlights the importance of a child's emotional bond with their primary caregivers, and the impact this has later on in life to form lasting healthy relationships.

Attachment-based therapy is an approach to therapy that specifically targets those thoughts, feelings, communications, behaviors, and interpersonal exchanges that patients have learned either to suppress and avoid or to amplify and overemphasize because of early attachment experiences.

Discussed in this episode: 

• British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist. He described attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Bowlby was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers. 
• The light spectrum attachment visual tool discussed in the episode was created by Sue Marriott and Ann Kelley  and discussed on their podcast Therapist Uncensored  to help people learn how to gain awareness of their state of security or insecurity on the attachment continuum. 
• Wayne Dyer Quote: “Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing”.  
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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