TRANSFORMING INTIMACY (ATTACHMENT, PART 2)

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ATTACHMENT

TRANSFORMING INTIMACY

“…LOVE…THE PERFECT BOND OF UNITY….” (Colossians 3:14).

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ENHANCES ATTACHMENT

Because of the infant’s powerful, God-given attachment abilities; attachment of some kind must take place. Attachment produces oxytocin and oxytocin makes you “feel good” both emotionally and physically. It also helps you make a much needed attachment, bond, or connection of some kind through the social environment.

Satan will use the infant’s need for attachment (love) to gather disciples for himself. He will fulfill the infant’s “need” by causing him or her to “depend” and eventually “desire” his worldly offerings of attachment. Satan knows humanity has a POWERFUL need to attach to LOVE, which is God and he wants to kill, steal, and destroy any chance of that bond taking place.  “… for God is love…” (1 John 4:8 KJV) and “ …the thief cometh….to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…” (John 10:10 KJV)

When an infant “stimulates a response” and the caregiver doesn’t respond, Satan will influence one of the following ongoing experiences: neglect, lack of affection, no comfort, no attention, no consistent care, no holding or rocking, no stories, no talking or reading, no playing, ongoing abuse, or impatience. All these activities raise cortisol levels in the infant and they learn to ignore their emotional need for love. However, some of the physical needs such as eating and aspects of dressing, though not affection, may be in place.

Infants are hardwired with attachment abilities and cognitive research has concluded them to be competent and capable beings, even as babies. Thus babies find a way, with or without, the proper assistance from caregiver(s) to survive the “lack of caregiver attachment.” The infant is left unprotected, without love or attachment, and Satan will influence him or her any way he pleases.

In addition, if proper human attachment never takes place the infant grows up to experience ill-health, both emotionally and physically and have multiple behavior issues. In addition, they normally do not form lasting intimate relationships.

These babies probably learned early on to self-soothe, not from a healthy, supported, guided way, but from an unhealthy, neglected, and misguided way.  Satan will take advantage of this vulnerable state of being and will influence attachment through the evil side of oxytocin and social interchange.

 Satan will eventually lure the unprotected infants to raise oxytocin levels that cause pairing or attaching with sex or drugs and alcohol, or food or something else; to the point things, not people, become essential instead of love.

People will attach to something  and some attachments are not obviously bad per se, but they may not be spirituality profitable or edifying either (1 Corinthians 10:23). Socially acceptable attachments can be work, exercise, shopping, caffeine, computer games, watching television, food, or body image; just to name a few.

All these activities offer some level of so-called social involvement and most likely will raise oxytocin, making you “feel good” while doing it and therefore, encourage you to repeat the behavior.  Some of these behaviors become "addicted" in an individual’s quest to “feel good” from the thing or activity in which they have attached themselves. Addiction, of any kind, is now believed to be a dysfunctional attachment problem.

When attached to things or objects the “feel good” moment doesn’t last. The longer we are attached to a thing or object, the more it demands and the less it satisfies.

Attachment problem

For instance, I became attached to sweets (candy), and over time I had to eat more and more to “feel good” and it satisfied me less and less while destroying my health at the same time. I became twice my original weight and was so attached I couldn’t let it go. I became dependent on sweets first and then sweets became, I thought, essential for my survival. I couldn’t imagine living without sweets and life looked bleak at the thought of giving sweets up.

What made me give sweets up is when I realized I was more dependent on sweets to satisfy my need to attach than to God and I couldn’t stop. At the time, that was the one thing I couldn’t do through Christ who strengthens me. Mainly because I didn’t want to and I didn’t really believe I could after so many failed attempts to give sweets up.  

Socially acceptable attachment, such as the one I had are easier to continue, because so many others have a similar problems. God had to seriously intervene to help me break the unhealthy attachment.

HEALTHY HUMAN ATTACHMENT

In the healthy, mutual interchange, between infant and caregiver(s), the emotional and physical bonding takes place at the same time and oxytocin is released abundantly through the various bonding behaviors.

When healthy human attachment takes place, it provides the infant with ample opportunity to become intimate with significant others and eventually with God. Without it, intimacy can become an attachment to a much beloved object or idol (an idol can also be a particular kind of person you believe meets a specific need).

An unhealthy attachment makes you “feel good” and can consume a great deal of your time. Everything I did and everywhere I went I made sure I had my sweets or knew how to get them. As long as I had my sweets I could deal with anything in life. Sweets made me feel safe and secure and I kept them close by at all times. 
Whenever I consumed them I always made sure I had enough and didn’t run out until I was satisfied. It was the taste of the sweets that gave me much pleasure. And no matter what I went through or the trouble I faced, sweets made me feel better. My attachment to sweets was all consuming and deeply prevailing until it had mastery over me.

INTERNAL MAGNET

Without healthy human attachments, the hardwired God-given attachment abilities will still demand and seek an attachment.  The need to attach is like a internal magnet. The sad thing about my attachment to sweets is that in my intimate, social environment I had no human to safely bond with, but the NEED to attach had to be satisfied.

The interference of Satan in the attachment process is solely for the purpose of killing, stealing and destroying all opportunities for loving bonds and connections between people and to get an individual to attach to something that offers only the illusion of love/care.

For instance, illicit sex, releases ocytocin, which makes you “feel good” and creates an illusion of love or attachment. Whenever we attach to something or someone, without love, it is a “false” bond or connection and intimacy will be elusive at best. Especially, since sex is ONLY physical and with the release of oxytocin one can believe its emotional too, since it made them, momentarily, "FEEL good."

There are many people who feel they are close to another person and yet experience deep loneliness. Closeness is a nearness to another person, being “One Spirit” is an undivided wholeness to God. People accept many different levels of intimacy, some close and some distance, but if that is all they’ve ever known they have nothing better to compare it with. Dysfunctional attachment is better than no attachment at all, even if its lonely most times.

God offers an intimacy many of us have never known and aren’t even aware we should pray about. If God is not your standard for lovingly attaching to others, it’s not real love, but to you it may be. How ever we learned to attach to a particular thing or type of person is what we have come to believe is love and what we have come to believe is love is now essential to our survival.

God is more intimate with you than you are with yourself, but he uses this intimate knowledge to love each one of us in the deepest manner and in order to supply our every need. Some believers are still running and chasing and looking for that “One” intimate attachment and have not found it yet. God is what you are looking for, so when you do find an intimate attachment you will truly know how to bond and connect with him or her.

THE ETERNAL CAREGIVER

No matter how old you are or how long it’s been since you’ve had a real human attachment, or if you never had one at all; God wants, desires, and is your new loving caregiver. He wants you to experience and try out your restored, God-given attachment abilities on him. God is always in close proximity to you, you will feel safe since he is always your refuge, you are secure in his everlasting love, and God is always with you.

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         EXCERPT FROM THE  CHAPTER 

"ATTACHMENT" FROM 

BOOK "TRANSFORMING INTIMACY

BY PENSACOLA H JEFFERSON
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