How Our Attachment Wounds Impact Our Relationship With God
"Trust is built one marked experience of care after another"
Did you know that the neural pathways for relationship are developed in the first three years of a person’s life? This is the heart of what’s called attachment theory and affects our relationship with ourselves, others, and God.
In this week’s Faith & Feeling’s episode, I’m so honored to welcome Summer Joy Gross. Summer is a spiritual director, Anglican priest, and writer who weaves neuroscience, attachment theory, and spiritual practices to help us root ourselves in God’s presence and nearness.
In our conversation, Summer walks us through each of the 4 attachment styles, showing us how our earliest experiences of love shape the way that we’ve come to experience God. We talk about the attachment wounds of each style, and how the Spirit actively pursues our healing in these places. Summer also guides us through a beautiful attachment practice in real-time. I hope you’ll listen in:
Or listen to the episode on Spotify or YouTube.
I recently finished reading Summer’s book The Emmanuel Promise. It’s a beautiful exploration of attachment that I’ve been reflecting so much. Here’s a quote from her book that has stayed with me:
“We do not come to our relationship with God, empty and open. Scripture was not our first teacher. We have preconceived ideas of what love looks like based on thousands of sensory experiences with our caregivers of love given or love withheld. We may have memorized Scriptures that gave us the correct information, but long before we could grasp the answers, the answers had grasped us. The story of love had already been written.”
In a similar way — and just like in any other relationship — we need thousands of experiences of God’s love to feel an embodied sense of safety and security with Him. Until we know that God is present, attentive, and turned towards us, we won’t believe He’s available for attachment.
What surfaces in you when you reflect on this quote? What are some words that you might use to describe the early story of love that your body holds?
Journeying together,
Taylor Joy