From the moment we are born, we learn to think and feel through the relationship with our caregiver. The way this figure responds to our needs, accurately perceives what we feel, soothes us, and helps us understand what is happening to us, shapes the way we will later relate to others and to ourselves. This is what psychology refers to as the attachment system—or more simply, the way we relate to others and seek closeness and security in our relationships.
As Albert Ciccone notes, at the beginning of life we cannot think on our own, and therefore we need someone else to think for us. In this way, we learn to think and symbolize—cognitively and emotionally—with the help of another. We need someone to “lend” us their thoughts and feelings, to name our experience, and to give it meaning and coherence. For example, when a baby cries and the mother or caregiver holds them and helps them make sense of what they feel—linking the crying to an emotion (e.g., fear, hunger, pain)—the child, through repeated experiences like this, gradually learns to recognize and regulate their emotions.
Unfortunately, our caregivers are not always available for various reasons—such as parental depression or grief—which can affect the caregiver’s emotional presence toward the child. When this occurs, the way the child is taken care of does not adequately meet their needs. As a result, the process through which the child learns to regulate their emotions and make sense of their experiences is hindered or remains underdeveloped.
Thus, instead of the child’s anxiety, fear, and other difficult emotions being reduced through adult care and regulation, they remain unattended, impacting the sense of security that is formed in their relationships. The repetition of these experiences is recorded in what is called implicit memory—a form of memory that operates physically and emotionally, without conscious recall.
Before the age of 2–3, the ability to consciously and verbally store experiences has not yet fully developed, as the explicit memory system and the hippocampus gradually mature during the preschool years. From birth, however, implicit memory functions, allowing us to record sensations, emotions, and interaction patterns automatically and unconsciously, remaining active throughout life. This is why certain sensations or emotions associated with memories can suddenly overwhelm us without conscious awareness of those experiences.
Therefore, an infant will not consciously remember how they were fed or soothed; however, these early experiences are “encoded” in the body and emotional system as patterns of relationship and regulation. For example, if the caregiver who fed me as a baby tended to provide either excessive or insufficient amounts of food, this experience may have been recorded in the body as an early caregiving experience, which may later influence—without conscious awareness—the way I relate to food or self-care in general.
Consequently, certain adult behaviors related to excess or lack in self-care may have their roots in these early, nonverbal, and bodily imprinted relational experiences. Attachment theory seeks to explain how we form these internal models of relationships (attachment patterns), with the ultimate goal—as John Bowlby wrote—of creating a secure base from which we can explore the world.
References:
Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. New York: Basic Books.
Ciccone, A., & Lhopital, M. (2022). Birth to Psychic Life (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003178347
Schore, A. N. (2019). Right Brain Psychotherapy. New York: Norton.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Stern, D. N. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books.
