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In this video, I'm going to help you understand how your earliest childhood experiences shape you for your whole entire life, and how those experiences either make you more prone or less prone to addiction. If you're new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this channel is all about helping you understand the psychology of addiction. So you can stay five steps ahead of it, you can break free from it, so you can live your best life. So if that's something you're interested in, consider subscribing. Okay, everybody, we're gonna go really deep today. We're gonna go way into the depths of childhood development and how that relates to addiction. And you may be thinking, okay, Amber, why are we nerding out here? Because I believe if you can understand what causes addiction, you can understand how to beat addiction. Because you see, the key to beating addiction is getting out of your emotional mind and into your thinking mind. And this applies to you, whether you are the person struggling with addiction trying to escape it, or you are the family member trying to help someone get out of addiction, which is exactly what's about to happen next in this video. Now, one last thing before we get way deep into the psychology here. Even though I'm going to talk about childhood experiences and attachment and mom and dad and all that kind of stuff related to attachment and addiction, I really, really strongly advise you, please do not take this information to say that we are blaming ourselves or we're blaming our parents. And a lot of those factors parents don't even have control over. So this isn't about blame. This is about getting logical. Alright, here we go. So in the beginning, there was a mom and a dad and they made this little embryo. And once a mom gets pregnant, you know, I'm gonna go way back to pregnancy here, right? Conception. I know. I told you we're going deep now. Just follow me to talk about attachment. And a lot of people talk about attachment from when the baby's born. And we're gonna get there, don't worry about that. But the newest science and research talks about attachment even before a baby is born. And so even at the moment of conception, and all throughout that pregnancy while that baby is developing attachment and bonding is starting, even from those early, early, early, early stages. And the reason why this is important to consider is because to think about whether or not a pregnancy is wanted or not wanted, all of those things are going to impact how attachment happens, how that brain is developing inside that baby that's in the womb. If the mom, tremendous amount of stress. If the mom knows they're going to have to give this baby up for adoption, they're not going to attach to that baby the same way a mother is going to attach to a baby that wanted the child. They're not going to feel supported by a husband and a family the same way as another mom might. And that is going to affect attachment. Now, in this series, we'll have a whole video devoted to adoption and addiction, because that is a whole ginormous subject area in and of itself, and we won't go into that here, but I do want you to have an understanding that that is very relevant. So attachment starts when the baby's still in the belly, but it really comes into play as soon as that baby's born. So I want you to think about it. When a baby is born, they hand that baby almost immediately to the mother, and they want the mom to nurse the baby. And you may think, well, that's all about getting some food in the baby. Most people know that some of what's happening there or a lot of what's happening there is actual attachment between the and the child and the dad and the child. And so they usually tell moms in the hospital or brand new moms, they tell you to take that baby when you're nursing it, they want you to hold it skin to skin. So they. They want you to almost either pull your shirt down or have it low or something, because they want your skin to touch that baby skin. Because when that happens, it releases certain brain chemicals, particularly one called oxytocin, which is a brain chemical, and it starts the bonding. Now, not only does it release that oxytoci, but that physical closeness between the baby and the parent, the parents, biological, physical stuff that's happening, like their breathing and their heart rate and everything else that's going on inside of them biologically, those forces, because of the nearness of the child, begin to help regulate the rhythms of the baby emotionally and physiologically. And so you know how little babies cry and they want to be held. Babies need to be held because they physically and emotionally need the parent or the caregiver to help them regulate their biology, regulate their emotions. Now, we're going to stop right here. I'm going to get on one of my big soapboxes. So it's just going to be a minute. So bear with me now. I hear this all the time. This goes way back to, like, Dr. Spock, who wrote this book about parenting. There's a lot of advice to parents, you know, way back in the 50s from the book. But even now, every day I see this. There's a lot of advice to parents about don't pick your child up when they're crying. If you know they're fed and their diapers change, you're just spoiling them. Okay, let's stop. You cannot spoil an infant. They can't think in their head, like, let me just cry. They'll fit right here and mama's gonna come, I'm get what I want. That's not happening. Everything that goes on with a tiny little baby infant is pretty much like survival. It's biological. They cry for that nearness because they physically need to be near you to regulate. And it's actually completely the opposite of what most people think. Most people think things like, well, leave the baby in the crib and let them cry it out because that's how they learn to self soothe. Okay, listen very closely. That is false. Babies learn how to self soothe because you hold them and your ability to self soothe and helps them regulate their own ability to self soothe. It's like a magnetic force. Like, think of it like your iPhone syncing up to the icloud or your iPad and how it syncs up to your iPhone. It pulls all them pictures over like magic or your text. Go to both. Like, it is happening in the space. You cannot see it, but it is a magical force. It's very similar to the same way as like, women know this, getting yours here a little bit, but women know this. If you work with other women long enough, eventually your menstrual cycles all line up. It's like the magnetic force, it's pulling those biological rhythms into alignment. So this does not just happen between babies and mamas and daddies. This happens between all the people that you keep very near in your life. Your biological and emotional rhythms line up with their biological and emotional rhythms. Because humans are not made to live in isolation, we're created in such a way that forces us to connect for survival. And all of that is part of it. Now, a lot of that emotional regulation happens in a part of our brain we call the limbic system, which is like the middle part of the brain. It's the emotional control center. And so the limbic system of the baby bonds to the limbic system of the parents and the parents. Ability to emotionally regulate pretty much determines the child's ability to emotionally regulate. And the best way you can help a child learn how to regulate their emotions is by physical nearness, by staying calm, by helping them learn to manage and soothe those emotions. Now, later on, when they're like toddlers and they get a little bit bigger, you can actually put some words in to help them understand and regulate their emotions. So even when they're that age, when they're upse, I know sometimes when they're upset, it makes us as parents upset, and we want to get mad at them about being upset. We want to say, stop crying. How many of you grew up with parents that said stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about? Not the best move from the psychological biological sciences out there about attachment. The best thing is to be able to get down eye level with the child, be calm. And if they're in that sort of verbal state where they're starting to understand language and toddlers understand language, before they can speak language, you can reflect to them what they're feeling, and that will help the child learn how to identify what's going on. You can say, I see you're really sad because we can't find your favorite sippy cup. You know how kids, they get attached to a certain sippy cup like my son, it's like one cup and had to be this certain one cup, and man, you better not lose it because it wasn't gonna be good. So they could be melting down about they can't find their favorite sippy cup. And you may think, well, that's ridiculous. And hey, maybe that's not the biggest problem in the world, but the biggest problem in the world right now that you got is learning how to help that child emotionally regul. So loving on a child and kissing boo boos and nurturing them when they're sad or hurt doesn't make wimpy, whiny, needy adults. It actually makes very strong, independent, secure adults. It's because it's those really early days, like before five, where those attachment rhythms develop. And so now in the next video, I'm going to go over with you the four different attachment styles and we're going to talk about them in detail. But before we get there, I really want you to think about things that could happen during these first early days and few years that could have an impact on attachment. So let's say you have a mother who's married and the dad is in the army and he gets shipped overseas. And now the mom is left alone to care for this infant child. And she's sad and lonely because the dad's away and she's stressed because she's the only one taking care of this child. What's her emotional Regulation. Like, how does that impact the child's emotional regulation? Now, that's not me saying that's the mom's fault. I mean, things happen sometimes. You know, what if the mom is caring for this infant and her own parent dies and that grief affects the mom's ability to emotionally regulate or the dad, something bad happens to the dad, the dad loses his job and he's this new parent, what's that going to do to the dad's emotional regulation? And what's that going to do to the dad's ability to help this child emotionally regulate? There are so many things, not just things that can happen in the child's life, but things that can happen. What seems to be in the parent's life emotionally, which impacts their own emotions, which then impacts the emotions of the child. And when it happens during these early developmental stages, it is particularly important. Now, I do want you to remember everything that I'm saying to you applies in your adult life too. So it's like those people that you're around as an adult, we know this. We know if someone we care about that we're really close to that lives with us or that we work with every day, or our best friend. When they go through something, we go through something. You can feel what they can feel. You can feel it in their energy. You can feel inside of you and their side, your side. We all have that ability. But when we're really young, that thing that's happening there is actually what's like wiring their brain. Think about it. It's like when you build a house and they're wiring it for the electricity to happen. And it's like if the wiring gets wired up a little bit wrong, then things wonky can happen in the house. So it's like you can go in the bathroom, turn on the light, and then the bedroom light comes on instead of the bathroom light. It's like things can get wired up a little crazy if everything doesn't happen just right. You can even think about extreme cases where you have a parent who's caring for an infant child who's not in a safe situation, who's being abused. A parent that's on drugs has way less of an ability to attune. That's what this is called, attunement. This like your limbic system bonding with their limbic system thing that happens. Their ability to attune and line up with that child is much less because they're under the influence of that drug, which is like numbing out all that emotional stuff or Distracting them or distressing them because they have to get the drug or the alcohol or whatever it is. So there are a ton of factors here that are affecting those early childhood development days. I mean, it's even stuff like, let's say you're like a mom. It's a perfect situation. You've been married for several years. You wanted this child. You planned out this child. You did everything to make this child happen. This child comes, and then you get this child, and you just love him. And. But this child has colic, and it cries 24 7. And you hadn't had no sleep, and this child has been crying for two months. How well do you think that mama is emotionally regulating? If it's me, I'm big, going crazy. I had a good friend a while back who had a baby, and that happened to them. And even when I went to visit her and the new baby and I was over there, like, 30 or 45 minutes, I was like, oh, my word. I was stressed out because, like, baby cries. It's like. I don't know what it does inside of you, but it's like it turns your nerves upside down. So if something's physically wrong with the child and the child's crying, that affects the emotions of the mom, which then affects the emotions of the child. And you can see that it's a feedback loop. And so those early days, that's the beginning of attachment. And I know you're thinking, okay, Amber, but, like, this is all cool, like, psychological stuff about attachment, moms and baby stuff. But how does this come into addiction? Don't worry. We're gonna get there. But I'm gonna give you a little hint. Most of the current, best research out there about addiction says that addiction comes from attachment trauma. Now, we're gonna get into that a little later. And that doesn't always necessarily mean that happens somewhere in your early days or when he was born or in the womb or anything like that. I'm just telling you. I just want you to understand how those attachments and bonds work. And later on in this series, we're going to talk even more in depth about attachment trauma and how that opens the window for addiction to get in. And ultimately, we're going to talk about how the healing of those attachments and the healing of relationships is the answer to healing addiction. If I haven't totally, like, overwhelmed you and nerded you out and you like this stuff and you want more of it, there's a book called A General Theory of Love. Now, this book is actually written by two psychiatrists, and some of it has to do with therapy and what actually is happening in therapy. But that book is like super deep into this science that I'm telling you about right now. In fact, that's where I first started learning about a lot of this stuff that I'm telling you right now. But it's super interesting stuff. And if you want to learn more about it, I'll put a link in the description below in case you want to read it and learn even more about what we've been talking about. Now, if you're a binge watcher like me, I'm a binge Netflix watcher. When I want to learn something, watch everything, read everything, consume everything I can get about something, something, then I want you to watch this video. Next, I'm going to put it right up here. It's part two in this series where we talk about the actual attachment styles.