She was barely three when her parents took her on a long road trip. She was excited, an inquisitive kid, and always ready to play. It was one more opportunity for her. She did not realize that this one implied the separation from everything she knew. A big move for her and her mother from north to south, a different language, a foreign city, an environment of novelty that would go beyond her nascent sense of safety. But for the moment she was with both parents, enjoying the ride and staying in a hotel of the Turkish period, liking the food and attention of others.
Strange place
It all changed the next day when she was taken to a place where other children her age stayed while their parents were at work. Suddenly, she was amongst strangers, frightened out of her mind because her parents had left. Her lifeline disappeared in a split second. The alarm bell began ringing very loudly in her brain. She was in a state of panic and on the lookout for someone to hang on to, to help her out and save her from the catastrophic feeling of being surrounded by danger. In this state of dread, she saw an older woman who looked like her grandmother, who took care of her and with whom she often spent time. Not losing an instant, she ran towards her and grasped her hand while crying in distress. Her survival instincts needed something to calm her down. She didn’t let go of the hand of a person who in her mind was the closest to representing a lifebuoy, thrown in the water to a drowning victim. When her parents came back, it was almost like waiting for Godot, the eternity of suffering and misery. She ran to her mother, salvation at last, grabbing her leg, unwilling to let go. Going back to the hotel was torturous. She was screaming and kicking her mother all the way. Anger and fear, blended together, the despair of separation in full display. It was her attempt to recapture the person she was attached to, born out of fear of loss.
Attachment theory
The foregoing is a description of the traumatic event that happened to the real person, my daughter Iva, when her mother got a job in a remote city, away from all familiar faces and places. But let’s move now from this real-life portrayal of the emotional bond between the child and the mother and the extreme reaction to its rupture. Let’s try to capture the universal elements in the above narrative. The best place to start is John Bowlby and his attachment theory. Bowlby interpreted the children's responses to caregivers as biologically programmed behavior. He claimed that in the course of evolution, for the purpose of survival, primates developed mechanisms to ensure physical proximity between parents and their offspring. He referred to this propensity to closeness the attachment behavior, hence the name of his theory. He considered it to be of primary importance for humans due to the very long period of caregiving necessary for the survival of the offspring. Human infants can survive only if an adult is willing to provide protection and care. The caregiving brain is activated in the presence of an infant through built-in mechanisms designed for empathy and social bonding. The psychological correlate in an infant is a strong feeling of safety and security. This is based on the intuitive “feeling felt” knowing that the attachment figure (caregiver) is available, attentive, and responsive as though saying to the infant, “I notice you. I feel for you. I act to help you.”
Separation
Physical separation from the caregiver serves as a natural cue to potential danger and elicits distress behavior in a child that is aimed at reestablishing contact with the caregiver. The attachment system is activated and separation anxiety ensues as a mental representation of this mobilization. The child's anger and other behaviors of distress at the reunion with a caregiver are frequently present with the purpose to discourage the attachment figure from leaving again.
While Bowlby spent most of his career focusing on the importance of proximity to primary attachment figures, his writing clearly points to necessary, “healthy” separations as a preparation for independence. Initially, infants require adults to aid in modulating their emotional arousal. But over the course of development, emotions become more and more self-regulated, especially in the case of secure attachment. The presence of the attachment figure becomes an inner experience, an implicit (unconscious) memory, a symbolic representation embedded in the inner space of the mind, a “prediction model” from past experiences that informs the future.
There were a number of brief separations that Iva experienced early on because her parents had to work or attend college. The longest separation from me, her father, occurred between the ages of three and five when she lived with her mother in a remote city. The longest separation from her mother took place when she was five. At the time, her mother went to America to explore every option available to leave the country in which we did not see our future. She had the intention of staying a few months but ended up there for a year. During her absence, Iva developed stronger bonds of attachment with me, her grandparents, and her uncle. She was growing up surrounded by love, which allowed her to explore the world with curiosity and playfulness.
Repetition compulsion
But I still wonder how these early life experiences impacted her capacity to regulate negative emotional states, such as separation anxiety. I keep thinking about Freud's concept repetition compulsion expressed through his statement that we are forced to repeat what we don’t remember. He didn’t apply the word programming, indoctrination, core beliefs, and some others, that have become commonly used nowadays to describe the automatic “acting out” of the “input” we received in the first five years of our life. It is the crucial learning, the transgenerational transfer of knowledge necessary for survival that enables the human mind to serve as a “pattern-oriented instrument”, especially what to expect of those with whom we are in close contact. Our mind doesn’t like uncertainty. It needs to know what is coming, so it forms a “working model” about others and "seeks" the opportunity to recreate it again and again through the involuntary process uncovered by Freud. The shadow of the past that emerges from the darkness of our mind has a long reach. The unavoidable Freud was the first to point that out, so elegantly, when he revealed what he called “transference neurosis” manifested during psychoanalytic therapy as a projection of feelings from the primary attachment figures on the therapist.
Immigration
But let’s go back to Iva one more time to find her when she was eight years old. The final "test" of her “secure mind” was immigration to America. The excitement was surrounding her. She was part and parcel of this “field of dreams”, the expression of the desire for a radical change in the course of life. She was ready for it. The intense and lengthy process finally ended after three years of anticipation, frustration, removal of barriers, and many other forgotten events unfolding. Yes, Iva was prepared and eager. No fear of flying over the Atlantic Ocean. No regrets about leaving her beloved cat in the hands of the landlord’s daughter. No tears for family members, friends, home, and anything else left behind. She spread her wings far and wide. She was with her parents who were overjoyed with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was for her too. After her arrival in the "new land" at the beginning of summer, the newness of everything, she encountered with curiosity and happiness. There was support and better living arrangements. The feel-good chemicals flooded her body.
Ultimately though, the reality of the necessary adjustments she needed to make created a nostalgia for the familiar. In her new surroundings in Fargo, North Dakota, she was lonely, sad, and isolated. She lacked what she had left behind in Pančevo, Serbia. Due to emotional learning caused by previous experiences of separation, she often became homesick when away from her parents. But her sunshine nature carried her forward. And her cats. One of them in particular. Minnie became her best friend. She spoke in a confessional style to her and felt understood. But deep-down Iva felt like a new kid on the block, and for a good reason. She had often moved from the familiar and had entered a new uncharted territory. Sometimes not by choice when she was younger, and on other occasions, because of her adventurous spirit. It was her strength and her liability. It has enriched her life and inspired her to develop social and other adaptive skills. But even today, she becomes emotive, elated or in tears with the comings and goings.
Acceptance of feelings
In our most recent encounter, she became tearful when the thought of leaving entered her mind. I replied to her tears and tried to cheer her up by saying, "No crying allowed." She immediately reacted by telling me that it was important for her to acknowledge her feelings and express them rather than suppress them. By allowing herself to feel the feelings in advance, she has learned to cope better when the real separation takes place. She's accepted her emotions as they come instead of denying them. This enabled her to further build her artistic and personal sensitivity and empathy toward self and others. Her separation anxiety and anger have disappeared to be replaced by the depth and variety of feelings and life experiences.
Iva reminded me of the importance of mindful orientation toward all mental experiences as they are unfolding. Staying present in the moment without trying to avoid or deny what is happening is the advanced skill in dealing with anxiety and destress. It is in fact its antithesis of orientation to what was or will be. When we acknowledge and accept thought, feeling, and sensation rather than trying to somehow control it, we enter through the doors of the teachings of wisdom. The less we resist the unpleasant experience now, the easier it is to tolerate it later. We successfully elevate ourselves from the immersion into the doom and gloom of suffering, victimization, and helplessness, to the high ground of witnessing and the awakened state of consciousness with a greater sense of connection with ourselves, with the other, and with the world. We earn the right to hold, regulate, and fully experience emotion. We nurture a non-defensive willingness to engage emotionally, and to make meaning of feelings and internal experiences without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. In this way, we conquer the major forms of separation distress such as the avoidance (repression, squelching) and anxiety (grasping, obsessing), and enter the flow of life with openness, compassion, and confidence.
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