Diane Poole Heller, PhD, is an established expert in the field of Adult Attachment Theory, the Somatic Experiencing® method of trauma resolution, and a synthesis of integrative healing methods. She is a trainer and presenter who offers workshops and educational materials on trauma, attachment models and their dynamics in childhood and adult relationships, and other topics.

How do we emerge from incredible loss, fear, and powerlessness to regain empowerment and resiliency? I discussed their meta-analytic data on internalising and externalising behaviours to highlight the danger of reducing complex findings to the idea that all types of insecure attachment always predict abnormal development. Their meta-analysis showed that resistant and disorganised insecure attachment did not predict internalising behaviours, thus supporting my point. The authors themselves described their gender-specific finding in relation to disorganised attachment in this way: “Remarkably, in the samples with females only the association between disorganized attachment and externalizing behaviors was significantly different from the samples with only boys or with mixed gender, and in fact, the relation was negative; that is, disorganized attachment was associated with less externalizing behavior” (Fearon et al., 2010, p. 445). Their paper states that there were six effect sizes from single sex studies on a total of 702 girls. She began her work with Dr. Peter Levine, founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment, now the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, and the Somatic Experiencing method of trauma resolution. As a senior faculty member for the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, she teaches work based on Dr. Levine’s model in the US and worldwide, including Denmark, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, and Australia. In closing, we note that Professor Meins has made several good points, but missed an opportunity to urge the field to widen its perspective and examine the evidence offered by research based on other attachment approaches, such as the DMM. Since it is true that all of us have some complication with healthy attachment, I am thrilled to be introducing you to this book. I have been fortunate in knowing its author, Dr. Heller, for several decades. Diane was one of my brightest students, and someone whom I continue to admire and cherish greatly. Her qualities of warmth, energy, caring, and insight have benefited thousands of her clients and students over the years. Her gifts and wisdom are ever-present throughout The Power of Attachment, a book that will provide you with an accessible yet exemplary framework for identifying your own unique, sometimes complex attachment struggles, delivered with Diane’s wit and breezy, unpretentious tone. The included exercises will certainly help you rediscover your true, embodied self, and will guide you to renegotiate your own obstacles to connections with others.

Now more than ever, the critical importance of parent–child attachment is being emphasised. The Department for Health explicitly aims to promote secure attachment through the health visiting service and its Healthy Child Programme. Andrea Leadsom’s prime ministerial campaign raised the profile of attachment even further, so much so that she was criticised for ‘ going on about attachment theory’ in the leadership hustings. How traumatic events can break our vital connections—and how to restore love, wholeness, and resiliency in your life.

I’ve also started thinking of trauma in terms of connection. The theme of broken connection has come up in my work repeatedly over the years: broken connection to our body; broken connection to our sense of self; broken connection to others, especially those we love; broken connection to feeling centered or grounded on the planet; broken connection to God, Source, Life Force, well-being, or however we might describe or relate to our inherent sense of spirituality, openhearted awareness, and beingness. This theme has been so prominent in my work that broken connection and trauma have become almost synonymous to me. Groh, A.M., Fearon, R.M.P., Van IJzendoorn, M.H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., & Roisman, G.I. (in press). Attachment in the Early Life Course: Meta-Analytic Evidence for its Role in Socio-Emotional Development. Child Development Perspectives. Which is to say that my youngest two have definitely had a better ride than my older ones — as loved as they also are and always have been. What is Attachment Psychology? How do we reclaim our birthright to feel grounded and centered, to feel connection and compassion, to have access to all the facets of our humanness and our spiritual nature? Insecure attachment is being pathologised and vilified. It is not abnormal – at least 39 per cent of us are insecurely attached. Different types of attachment simply reflect the kind of individual differences you’d expect to see in any aspect of children’s early development. People are perfectly happy with variation in toddlers’ height, weight and ability to walk and talk, but don’t want variation in attachment relationships. Secure attachment is wrongly being set up as a benchmark for all toddlers to attain.Attachment researchers know the complexities of attempting to predict later development from infant–caregiver attachment. Unfortunately, policy makers and many people intervening in families’ lives do not. Correspondence I’ve received from clinicians in the UK and beyond shows that it is worryingly commonplace for people to believe that secure or insecure attachment in the second year of life respectively predict optimal or aberrant development for the rest of the child’s life. I’m sure van IJzendoorn and colleagues will agree that this is incorrect. They described my article as “scathing” and “hardly a disaster for attachment theory”. Vetere and colleagues believe I was pointing out the inadequacy of the most accepted model of infant–parent attachment. Both groups have missed the point – I wasn’t criticising attachment theory or rubbishing the ABCD model; I was criticising the ways in which people misuse the scientific evidence.

My older children (now 20 and 16, but 13 and 9 respectively when I discovered the above), had until then been raised traditionally, based on the advice of my mother and grandmother. They had their own beds, slept in separate rooms, were left to cry for short periods (sleep training), were exclusively breastfed for only a short time, and were put in childcare early on to allow me to work and study. According to Attachment theory, the attachment bond between an infant and their caregiver is a crucial component of the child’s development and shapes their behaviour in relationships throughout their life.

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If trauma is the foe, then attachment to self and others would be the inner task of the hero. It describes where the hero comes from, and also commands a path that must be taken. Heroes aren’t born, they are cultivated through meeting adversity. The most compelling heroes of ancient lore are the ones who suffer great disappointments and loss. They aren’t ready for the task at hand. They fail at first. They change. They prove themselves to others and to themselves. They earn the support of friends and allies. They persevere. They find their own mastery. They triumph. The emphasis arises because of a belief that secure attachment predicts ‘successful’ development in the child. Public Health England’s posters launched earlier this year tell us that ‘a loving, secure and reliable relationship with a parent or carer’ is important in areas ranging from ‘emotional wellbeing’ to ‘brain development’. And this optimal development isn’t merely short-term – we’re told that being securely attached as a baby helps ensure that you’ll form secure attachment relationships decades later when you come to have children of your own. In contrast, insecure attachment is believed to put the child on course for no end of trouble: physical ill health, delinquency, mental illness, substance abuse, poor job prospects, criminality. Graham Allen MP’s 2011 reports calling for early intervention even claimed that early insecure attachment was linked to more risky driving behaviours. It is a book for therapists who work with attachment issues with their clients. It is equally for those of us beginning new relationships, for those wanting to enrich long-term relationships, and for those of us who are ending relationships—and learning and healing from those endings. I am excited for you to begin this engaging journey. May we all heroically overcome our foes and bring wholeness, prosperity, and purpose to civilization, as well as to the Civilization of the Self. Within every person, there exists the weight and opportunity of a hero’s journey. I believe this, and have seen it validated thousands of times in my forty-five years of clinical experience. Many of our life’s decisions are fueled by our ability to hold (or not hold) ourselves to this wholly unique vision of who we each strive to be. Verhage, M.L., Schuengel, C., Madigan, S., Fearon, R.M., Oosterman, M., Cassiba, R., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., van IJzendoorn, M.H. (2016). Narrowing the transmission gap: A systhesis of three decades of research on intergenerational transmission of attachment. Psychological Bulletin 142 (4), 337-366. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000038