Episode 146: How Attachment Affects Us For Life: 6 Childhood Pains and How to Repair
- Nov 28, 2025
- 15 min read
Updated: Feb 20
Many people struggle with anxiety, relationship patterns, or chronic health conditions without realizing these challenges stem from attachment trauma stored in the body. Attachment isn't just about relationship styles or emotional patterns—it lives in our nervous system, immune system, and cellular biology, creating survival mechanisms that formed before we could even walk.
In this episode, I reveal how attachment trauma begins in utero and shapes three distinct childhood survival styles that show up in your life today. I share my own rocking chair moment with my adopted son Miguel, explaining how that experience led me to discover the three critical elements that create secure or insecure attachment: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. You'll learn about the six types of attachment pain—from "hold me" to "love me"—and discover why people-pleasing, perfectionism, chronic overwhelm, and even autoimmune conditions trace back to these early survival adaptations.
Whether you're a professional working with attachment issues, someone recognizing your own patterns, or a parent wanting to break intergenerational cycles, this episode bridges conventional psychology with nervous system regulation and functional medicine. You'll understand why traditional talk therapy often hits a wall with attachment healing, and what becomes possible when you address the body's stored attachment pain across all three levels: mind, body, and biology.
In this episode you'll learn:
[00:00:22] Why attachment trauma lives in your body's cells and immune system, not just your relationship patterns
[00:05:11] Three critical elements that create secure or insecure attachment: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology
[00:10:32] Critical Element 1 - Attunement: The trust cycle and co-regulation through eye contact, touch, and need responsiveness
[00:15:34] The Rope Test: discovering your primary childhood survival style in relationships when survival feels at stake
[00:18:48] Critical Element 2 - Neurodevelopment: How tummy time and crawling gaps create anxiety, ADHD, and sensory issues
[00:24:41] Critical Element 3 - Biology: Which neurotransmitters promote connection versus protection in your nervous system
[00:27:49] Attachment Pain 1 - Hold Me: Early holding needs and global high intensity activation pattern
[00:30:02] Attachment Pain 2 - Hear Me: When your needs weren't heard and you learned to rescue others while feeling empty
[00:32:56] Attachment Pain 3 - Support Me: Movement support gaps that create "I can't" default thinking and overwhelm
[00:35:22] Attachment Pain 4 - See Me & Attachment Pain #5 - Understand Me: Being different and unique, yet feeling drained when people don't understand you
[00:37:05] Attachment Pain 6 - Love Me: Perfectionism, high inner anxiety, and the fear of being unlovable
[00:40:35] The repair approach: addressing body, mind, and biology across all six attachment pain types
Main Takeaways:
Attachment Lives in Your Body, Your Mind: Attachment trauma isn't only about relationship patterns or emotional wounds—it's stored in your nervous system, immune system, digestive system, and cells. Your body holds muscle memory of childhood survival patterns that show up as chronic health conditions, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and perfectionism decades later.
Three Critical Elements Create Your Attachment Foundation: Attunement (co-regulation through touch and responsiveness), neurodevelopment (movement milestones like crawling), and biology (neurotransmitter balance) all determine whether you developed secure or insecure attachment. Gaps in any one of these elements create attachment pain that requires repair across all three levels.
The Trust Cycle Builds Nervous System Security: When babies experience the repeated pattern of need-dysregulation-need met-regulation-connection, they develop inborn trust that "when I have a need, I'm going to be okay because they always come." Without enough repetitions of this trust cycle, the body stores the belief that survival depends on protection rather than connection.
Your Childhood Survival Style Shows Up Today: The Rope Test reveals whether you pull people close, push them away, or feel confused in relationships when your survival feels threatened. These aren't conscious choices—they're stored patterns from how your young self had to survive. Whether pulling close or pushing away, both responses come from protection mode, not connection.
Six Sequential Attachment Pains Create Distinct Patterns: Hold me (birth to months), hear me (first year), support me (second year), see me (age three), understand me (age four-five), and love me (age six-seven) represent sequential developmental stages. Each creates specific thoughts, feelings, physical symptoms, and coping mechanisms that can be identified and repaired.
Chronic Illness Traces to Stored Attachment Pain: IBS and autoimmunity connect to "hold me" attachment pain, food issues and emotional eating link to "hear me" attachment pain, and back pain flare-ups and stomach ulcers signal "understand me" attachment insecurity. These aren't random—they're the body's downstream response to unresolved attachment trauma.
Notable Quotes:
“For him, survival meant protecting his heart."
"There's an existential anxiety that is created when you don't know if you really exist."
"You can have had great parents and still have these survival patterns from your childhood.
"Everything that I experience today is filtered through my attachment foundation.”
“If I don't change my filter, I will continue to recreate the same pain for the rest of my life."
Episode Takeaway:
When my five-year-old adopted son told me he would kill me tomorrow while I held him like a baby, I realized his survival depended on protecting his heart—not connecting. That rocking chair moment launched six years of searching that revealed attachment isn't just psychological, it's biological. Your attachment foundation formed through three critical elements: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. Gaps create six sequential attachment pains that live in your nervous system and show up as chronic health conditions, relationship patterns, and survival responses today. True repair requires addressing all three levels simultaneously—mind, body, and biology—because everything you experience is filtered through your childhood attachment foundation.
Resources/Guides:
The Biology of Trauma book - Available now everywhere books are sold. Get your copy
Foundational Journey - If you are ready to create your inner safety and shift your nervous system, join me and my team for this 6 week journey of practical somatic and mind-body inner child practices. Lay your foundation to do the deeper work safely and is the pre-requisite for becoming a Biology of Trauma® professional.
Related Episodes:
Your host: Dr. Aimie Apigian, double board-certified physician (Preventive/Addiction Medicine) with master's degrees in biochemistry and public health, and author of the national bestselling book "The Biology of Trauma" (foreword by Gabor Maté) that transforms our understanding of how the body experiences and holds trauma. After foster-adopting a child during medical school sparked her journey, she desperately sought for answers that would only continue as she developed chronic health issues. Through her practitioner training, podcast, YouTube channel, and international speaking, she bridges functional medicine, attachment and trauma therapy, facilitating accelerated repair of trauma's impact on the mind, body and biology.
Childhood Attachment Trauma and Nervous System Patterns: The 3 Hidden Survival Styles That Show Up in Your Body Today
"Protection and connection—they're opposites. And when we can notice that we're living in protection mode, protecting our heart, then we can know my body's holding some attachment pain." - Dr. Aimie Apigian
When my five-year-old adopted son looked into my eyes and calmly told me he would kill me tomorrow, my heart shattered. But in that rocking chair moment, I realized something profound: his survival depended on protecting his heart, not connecting. That single moment launched six years of searching that revealed attachment trauma isn't just psychological—it lives in your nervous system, immune system, and cells.
Most of us learned that attachment describes relationship patterns or emotional styles. What we didn't learn is that attachment pain from childhood creates physical survival patterns stored in your body that show up decades later as chronic anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, IBS, autoimmune conditions, and relationship struggles.
Attachment formation begins in utero and shapes three distinct childhood survival styles through gaps in attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. These early survival adaptations become the filter through which you experience everything in life today.
Why Attachment Trauma Lives in Your Body, Not Just Your Mind
Attachment trauma represents stored survival patterns in your nervous system, immune system, and cells—not just emotional wounds. These patterns formed before you could walk or talk.
You can recognize attachment pain through specific patterns. Maybe you're always on guard, living in protection mode rather than connection. Perhaps you give endlessly while feeling empty inside. You might struggle with people-pleasing or perfectionism. Or maybe you feel chronically overwhelmed where even small tasks feel too hard.
You can have had great parents and still carry these survival patterns. Attachment trauma doesn't only come from abuse or neglect. It forms from subtle disconnections—a parent physically present but emotionally distant or busy. Brief separations, hospitalizations, or even stress your mother experienced while pregnant can create attachment pain.
Attachment issues resist traditional talk therapy because they live in your body. Most approaches focus only on changing thoughts or behaviors, missing how these patterns persist in your nervous system biology.
The Three Critical Elements That Create Secure or Insecure Attachment
Attachment formation depends on three pillars working together: attunement, neurodevelopment, and biology. Gaps in any single element create attachment pain requiring repair across all three levels.
Critical Element #1: Attunement Through Co-Regulation
Attunement means co-regulation—two beings regulating together through eye contact, touch, and responsiveness to needs. Babies need co-regulation for survival. We're born before our nervous system fully develops, requiring our caregiver's more mature nervous system to help us regulate.
Co-regulation happens through the trust cycle that repeats thousands of times. You have a need as a baby. The unfulfilled need creates dysregulation—internal unrest with faster heartbeat and sweating approaching a survival threat. You cry. Your caregiver comes and meets your need with cuddles, eye contact, rocking, and containment. You settle into regulation and experience authentic connection: "I can trust you. When I have a need, I'm going to be okay because you always come."
This repeated pattern builds inborn trust. When this cycle happens reliably, you develop secure attachment. When this cycle has gaps—unreliable caregivers, stressed parents, chronic dysregulation—you develop insecure attachment patterns stored in your body.
The Rope Test: Discovering Your Childhood Survival Style
Imagine holding one end of a rope while I hold the other. The rope represents our relationship. What would you naturally do?
Pull me closer? Drop the rope? Feel confused, unable to decide?
These responses reveal your stored survival pattern. When life gets hard enough that your survival feels at stake, your attachment patterns activate. Pulling close or pushing away—both responses come from protection mode, not connection.
Critical Element #2: Neurodevelopment Through Movement
Neurodevelopment refers to movement milestones—crawling, walking, and their timing. Research shows that walking earlier correlates with less emotional resilience, contrary to popular belief.
The longer you stay on the floor using coordinated movement, the better your brain develops. Tummy time develops the pons region of your brainstem, which helps you feel your body—hunger, thirst, temperature, fatigue.
Many adults never really feel hunger or notice temperature changes. This often traces back to insufficient tummy time creating pons gaps. If you can't feel your body, an existential anxiety develops because you don't know you really exist.
Hands-and-knees crawling develops your midbrain, which connects to your sensory system. If you have sensory issues as an adult—sounds too loud, lights too bright, textures bothersome—you likely have a midbrain gap. Your sensory system constantly communicates danger even when everything is safe.
Critical Element #3: Biology and the Neurochemistry of Connection
Three key neurochemicals orchestrate attachment: oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin.
Oxytocin helps an infant's brain form neural pathways identifying "this person is my safe person." Dopamine creates the feeling that connection is delightful and worth pursuing. Serotonin makes you easier to connect with and happier with connection.
If you have decreased activity of these neurochemicals—from genetics, birth trauma, premature birth, or colic—you don't receive messages of safety and deservingness through interactions. Your biology makes connection harder regardless of how attuned your caregivers were.
Too much of other neurotransmitters creates protection biology. High glutamate happens with undermethylation or brain inflammation. Excess adrenaline occurs with copper imbalance. Both make connecting difficult.
Whether this represented your biology as a child or your current biology, the same repair is needed.
The Six Types of Attachment Pain: From "Hold Me" to "Love Me"
Attachment pain happens sequentially through childhood development. Each stage creates specific thought patterns, physical symptoms, and coping mechanisms.
Attachment Pain #1: Hold Me
This develops from birth through the first weeks if you weren't held enough. Your body stores this as the deepest layer of insecurity.
Thoughts include: "I always have my guard up. It's not safe to relax. I feel all alone. My head is my safe place."
Physical conditions include IBS with pain, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation. Autoimmunity and fibromyalgia also connect here. Your nervous system becomes extremely reactive—going from zero to ninety in less than a second.
Attachment Pain #2: Hear Me
This develops throughout the first year when cries for help go unanswered. You learned you couldn't add problems to their list. You abandoned yourself to prevent them from abandoning you.
Thoughts include: "I give and rescue others, yet I feel empty inside. I want my needs met but don't want to say them."
People with this pain tend to have food issues—filling the emptiness or numbing to avoid needs. Relationships become transactional—meeting others' needs expecting them not to abandon you.
Attachment Pain #3: Support Me
This emerges in the second year when toddlers need movement support. Without it, you move through adult life not feeling supported. Your default thinking stays stuck on "I can't."
One way to identify this: notice your body's response to back support. When you place a pillow behind your back, does your body melt into it? This might indicate you've had few experiences feeling supported.
Attachment Pain #4: See Me
Around age three, children need to be truly seen through eye contact, time, and attunement. When this need isn't met, "see me" attachment pain develops.
Attachment Pain #5: Understand Me
This develops around ages four and five when children need to be recognized as unique individuals. When you don't feel understood, chronic disconnection develops.
Thoughts include: "If people really knew me, they wouldn't like me. I people-please and apologize. People drain me when they don't understand me."
Physical conditions include episodes of back pain, neck pain, colitis, stomach ulcers, and high blood pressure. When I realized this pattern, everything changed. I stopped focusing on the pain and focused on the message: "What's going on making me feel insecure?" The pain was just a downstream symptom.
Attachment Pain #6: Love Me
This develops around ages six and seven. You need to be loved for who you are, not who caregivers want you to be.
Thoughts include: "I feel unlovable. I have to be perfect to have a chance at love. I'm my own slave driver. I'm afraid to open my heart because I know I'm unlovable."
This looks like constantly doing to earn love, high inner anxiety despite appearing calm, perfectionism and obsession with productivity.
The Three-Level Approach to Attachment Repair
True attachment healing requires working with your body, mind, and biology simultaneously.
Body Level: Each attachment pain requires specific somatic bodywork. Neurodevelopmental movements reorganize affected neural pathways. Tummy crawling reorganizes pons gaps. Hands-and-knees crawling reorganizes midbrain gaps. Back support practices recreate the feeling of "I have support."
Mind Level: Each attachment pain creates specific thought patterns requiring targeted parts work. The perfectionist part that pushes relentlessly. The people-pleasing part that abandons your needs. These parts aren't the problem—they're adaptations that helped you survive. Repair involves understanding their protective function.
Biology Level: Low serotonin, dopamine, and GABA make connection difficult. Biological repair includes assessing neurotransmitters, addressing brain inflammation, healing gut imbalances, supporting mitochondrial function, and balancing hormones.
How Attachment Pain Creates Chronic Health Conditions
The body holds attachment pain at the cellular level. These stored adaptations show up as physical health problems following predictable patterns.
IBS and autoimmunity connect to "hold me" attachment pain. Food issues and emotional eating link to "hear me" pain. Chronic overwhelm and "I can't" from "support me" pain affect your entire stress response. Back pain flare-ups, stomach ulcers, and high blood pressure signal "understand me" insecurity. Perfectionism driving exhaustion and autoimmune conditions connect to "love me" pain.
Understanding these connections transforms your relationship with symptoms. They're not failures to fight. They're information about attachment pain needing attention.
Everything You Experience Filters Through Your Attachment Foundation
Your attachment template formed before conscious memory and created the filter through which you experience all of life. This filter calibrates your nervous system's assessment of both safety and capacity.
When early experiences taught you connection brings regulation, you developed a template that perceives challenges as manageable. When early experiences taught you help isn't reliable, you developed a template associating challenges with overwhelm and connection with danger.
This filter affects how you perceive stress, whether you reach out or isolate, which nervous system state activates, your capacity to regulate, how your immune system responds, and which health conditions develop.
If you don't change your filter, you continue recreating the same pain throughout life.
Where to Start: Three Days of Nervous System Tracking
You don't need a crisis to benefit from addressing attachment pain. You can start where you are right now.
Notice your "normal." What does your typical day feel like? Chronic tension? Shallow breathing? Racing thoughts? Exhaustion requiring caffeine? This is information about your nervous system state.
Ask: "When did I last feel truly at ease in my body?" Not just relaxed on vacation, but genuinely safe and present in ordinary moments. Your answer reveals how long you've been operating in dysregulation.
The Three-Day Tracking Practice
Track your nervous system every hour while awake for three days. Each hour, notice: Am I in calm aliveness (present, breathing fully, at ease)? Activation (tense, worried, hypervigilant)? Or shutdown (numb, disconnected, exhausted)?
Don't judge. Just observe patterns. This reveals patterns invisible to conscious awareness.
One Simple Practice to Begin
Start with the heart hold. Place your hand over your heart and take three full breaths. Notice what happens.
Does it feel calming? Uncomfortable? Triggering? Your response gives information. If it feels good, your nervous system is receiving co-regulation. If it feels uncomfortable, this might be a new sensation for a nervous system that learned connection isn't safe.
Morning Sunlight for Nervous System Support
Get morning sunlight within 30 minutes of waking for 10-15 minutes. This supports your circadian rhythm, provides red light therapy for mitochondria, and signals safety to your nervous system.
Your Body Already Knows How to Heal
Your body possesses innate healing intelligence. Your role isn't to force healing or fight your body. Your role is to remove blocks to innate healing capacity, provide supportive conditions, and build nervous system regulation.
Think about surgical incisions. The surgeon doesn't heal the wound—they create conditions where the body heals itself. Your healing works the same way.
Remove what blocks your innate healing capacity. Provide conditions that support your body's intelligence. Address the biology creating stuck points. Build capacity through nervous system regulation.
Your nervous system has been trying to protect you. Your symptoms have been trying to communicate. Your body has been keeping score to show you what needs attention.
Your Next Step: From Survival to Connection
You don't need all the answers. You don't need to do everything perfectly. You just need to start where you are—noticing patterns, supporting your nervous system, removing blocks, and building capacity.
That rocking chair moment with my son taught me that survival and connection are opposites. He needed to protect his heart to survive. Many of us learned the same pattern and carry it still.
The difference between surviving and thriving. Between managing symptoms and creating health. Between living in protection and living in connection.
Your attachment foundation created your filter for experiencing life. When you repair attachment at all three levels—mind, body, and biology—everything changes. Not just your relationships, but your physical health, your capacity for stress, your experience of daily life.
You can change your filter. You can create new patterns. Your body can learn that connection is safe, that support is available, that you're worthy of love simply for existing.
Start with three days of noticing. Start with one hand on your heart. Start with morning sunlight. Start where you are, because that's the only place any of us can begin.
The repair is possible. Your body is waiting for you to provide the conditions it needs to finally feel safe enough to heal.
Helpful Research
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. Basic Books. John Bowlby's groundbreaking work from World War II orphanage studies demonstrated that babies who weren't touched died, establishing the survival necessity of co-regulation. This research validates why the "hold me" attachment pain—when infants aren't held enough in those first critical weeks—creates the deepest layer of attachment insecurity that lives in the body. Bowlby's work proves attachment isn't just psychological but biological survival.
Field, T. (1998). "Maternal depression effects on infants and early interventions." Preventive Medicine, 27(2), 200-203. By two months of age, infants of mothers experiencing postpartum depression show measurable differences in behavior—increased fussiness and decreased physical activity. This demonstrates how attunement gaps through caregiver dysregulation affect infant neurology even before conscious memory forms, validating why you can have had "good" parents but still carry attachment pain if your caregiver was chronically stressed, distracted, or struggling with their own dysregulation during your infancy.
This Episode Is For:
✓ People with anxiety and relationship struggles
✓ Anyone with chronic health conditions unexplained
✓ Professionals working with attachment issues
✓ Parents wanting to break intergenerational cycles
✓ Those recognizing people-pleasing or perfectionism patterns
✓ Anyone interested in attachment theory and biology
✓ Practitioners whose clients hit walls with talk therapy
✓ People ready for comprehensive attachment healing
What You'll Learn
Listen to Dr. Aimie share the rocking chair moment with Miguel who said he would kill her tomorrow, revealing survival meant protecting his heart. Learn how attachment trauma lives in your body's cells and immune system. The three critical elements creating secure or insecure attachment foundation. The Rope Test revealing whether you pull close, push away, or feel confused. Six sequential attachment pains from birth through age seven creating patterns. How chronic illness traces to stored attachment pain in specific ways. Why you can have great parents and still have survival patterns. How everything you experience today is filtered through your attachment foundation. And why true repair requires addressing all three levels simultaneously.
Attachment is biological—six pains live in your nervous system affecting you today.
Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information shared reflects my clinical expertise and research, but every person's biology and healing journey is unique. Always consult with qualified healthcare providers before making changes to your treatment plan or starting new interventions. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact emergency services or a crisis helpline immediately.
Join the Conversation
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What resonated with you? What questions came up?
Please keep comments respectful and supportive. This is a community of people committed to healing. We welcome diverse perspectives and honest questions, but we don't tolerate personal attacks, spam, or content that could harm others on their healing journey.
Comments