The Fireball of Grief

How was your relationship with your parents? According to a report published by the London-based institute Sutton Trust, about 40% of children born in 2001 show signs of insecure attachment. Insecure attachment is some sort of rift in a child's sense of feeling safe, seen, and cared for by their caregiver. Insecure attachment does not necessarily mean an absence of love; it's more about uncertainty over the constant supply of love and care. Researchers Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn (2009) found similar rates of insecure attachment in adults when they looked at measures of adult attachment over the previous 25 years. The fact that rates of insecure attachment hold steady suggest that insecure attachment gets passed on from generation to generation. If you sense that you might fall into the half of the population that grew up with insecure attachment, I would like to propose one insight that might help you avoid passing it on to your children.

As children, we are biologically wired to form an attachment with our caregivers. Infants cry, toddlers tantrum, and older children use language to ask for help. Every step of the way, we are saying to the people charged with our care: "Help, I'm new to this world and there is so much inside me and out in the world I don't understand. Help me cope. Help me soothe." If that help is not readily forthcoming, children begin to devise theories as to why this help is not there and how to extract the proper care from adults in their lives. I say extract, because they have no choice at that point; they need the care because their life depends on it.

Theories about why care is not available often spring from the premise that there is a better version of the parent that they currently have, just behind the façade, that's waiting to come out. The reality that the parent in front of the child is as they are – lacking in the skills needed to provide care the child needs and simply not up to the task – is too terrifying for a child to come to terms with. This is reinforced by the fact that adults generally hold all the power and all the answers in a household. How can this all-knowing person be fallible? Don't they know all and see all, including what I truly need? Children then develop a wish for an imaginary parent who is capable of providing the care they deeply crave, and then devise theories around why their real-life parent is holding out on fulfilling this need.

One common reason children come up with is that their caregivers can shape up and do better, but they are holding out because they being mean and wish to deprive the child. It's kind of like a parent refusing to serve ice cream that the child knows is in the freezer. The child does not understand why this bigger, stronger adult who is perfectly capable of reaching the bowls on the top shelf and scooping out the ice cream just refuses – it's right there! Likewise, the child becomes angry and sullen that something they really want is not being given; moreover, they believe that the parent is actually capable of providing the care they need, just as they are capable of serving them ice cream.

Another common reason children devise is that they are doing something wrong – if they just "listened" more, or understood how to behave or stay out of the way, etc., then they would be able to reveal the magically better parent hiding just behind the shell of their current caregiver. The child senses that he or she has not quite "figured out" what, exactly, the parent wants, or they sense they're somehow lack the competence needed to elicit the proper care. This can results in people-pleasing and idealizing the caregiver as someone the child has to please.

Both theories give a child a sense of control over evoking a different parent to come forth by hook (pleasing) or by crook (blame and anger) – one who will provide the kind of care they deeply crave. The problem? Their parents are likely in that exact space; they were children who tried and failed to extract care and positive regard from their caregivers. Since they never got the care, they don't have much of it to give out. It's like repeatedly dunking a bucket into an empty well.

When these children grow up and become parents themselves, they continue this cycle by carrying these theories over to adulthood, except now, in an effort to secure the care they never got from their parents, they transfer those theories to their children. If they felt the need to prove how smart they were in an effort to get their parents to see their goodness and magically reveal that secret, good parent inside, they might try to one-up their child. If they had to suppress certain emotions to manage their own parent's outbursts, they might abandon their child during tantrums. They continue to be stuck in the delusion that people must act in a particular way, and that THEY must act in a particular way, for them to find a place of security. This is why blaming and shaming an insecure parent into "shaping up" will not work. They are stuck in the delusion that rigidly adhering to their behaviors is the path to their eventual salvation; abandoning those behaviors is psychologically terrifying.

That terror is precisely the point here. It's the terror of being abandoned by one's parent – the absolute terror of being unlovable and discardable. Young humans cannot physically survive without their caregivers, so ultimately the terror is for one's life, value, and existence. That's as deep as you can possibly go in terms of childhood terror.

Where does that leave us? The terror points to a solution for breaking the cycle: give up the delusion that there there was anything you could have done differently to be loved an cared for by your parents. Slowly let go of the beliefs and behaviors of how you "must" be in the vain hope that one day you might shape yourself into someone worthy of love. Go through the heartbreaking grief that there was never a better parent waiting around the corner; they were simply not up for the task. Grieve for the childhood you wished for but that was never coming. Not because you were unworthy, but because there were circumstances way out of your control. There were simply not enough bricks to build the house you wanted.

It's a little like looking for your keys on the counter – you're sure you put them there – only to find the keys in your pocket. They were never where you imagined they were. They were never there.

The fireball of grief is what comes when you realize that the parent you share an insecure attachment with was simply a child in an adult body – a child desperately trying to cope with the heartbreak of never getting the care they longed for. This was best they could do.

The fireball of grief is at first the mourning for the parent that was not there for you in the way you wished for. After a while, this can be followed by empathetic grief for that parent, over the care they never had. Perhaps, over time, that grief can even extend to generations further back. The ones that passed the pain down...pain back from wars and hardships faced long ago.

Making sense of this pain means that we're not asking our children to fix it. We come to own it, and we take on the lifelong task of building within ourselves with the care we needed all along. It's a journey that our children can witness and come to learn what it means for humans to have resilience. It takes just one generation to begin reversing many generations worth of turmoil.

The process is not easy nor fast, but it's important for halting the cycle of broken caregiving bonds. The most supportive way through this process is with the help of a qualified psychologist or counselor. If this is not currently within your plan, here are some resources to begin the journey on your own:

Cover Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

References:

Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2009). The first 10,000 Adult Attachment Interviews: distributions of adult attachment representations in clinical and non-clinical groups. Attachment & Human Development, 11(3), 223–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730902814762

Barth, F. D. (2009). Frozen in Time: Idealization and Parent-Blaming in the Therapeutic Process. Clinical Social Work Journal, 38(3), 331–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-009-0237-x