My daughter was about 14 at the time. She was “in a state”, upset about something, sitting on her bed in her bedroom. I was trying to help her and I was failing miserably. I was getting progressively more frustrated as each of my brilliant and wise suggestions was rebuffed. Finally I had reached my limit. I threw my hands in the air and said, “Fine! I am done!” and walked (or rather stormed) out of her bedroom. As I was walking down the hallway I heard my daughter’s voice call after me, “Daddy, don’t give up on me so easily!”

Those words stopped me in my tracks. I went back into her room, took a deep breath, and said, “You are right. I am not giving up on you. But I am really frustrated because you are not letting any of my help be helpful. I feel like I am doing all of the work, and this is about your life. I am going to go downstairs. I am going to get a drink of water and a snack, calm down, and come back to continue this conversation. But I want you to think about how you can let some of my help be helpful.” She agreed, I got my snack, we resumed the conversation, and with a few false starts and dead ends we were slowly able to make progress and come to some resolution. Another parenting crisis navigated.

Giving up on her was not what I wanted to do, but that is exactly what my words, my actions, and my body language communicated in the moment. It was as if I was saying, “It is my job as your father to fix your problems. You are making my job very difficult and I feel like I am failing as a father. In order to not feel like this, I am pushing you away and emotionally distancing myself from you. I am leaving you to your own resources. You are on your own.”

This is not what I intended to communicate and I am thankful that my daughter called me on it. But so often in our frustration these ”abandoning words” fall out of our mouths and we wound those we love. We say things like, “I am so done with this.” “This is not what I signed up for.” And we are surprised when our loved ones react poorly to our words. From an attachment perspective, a “loss of attachment alarm” goes off in our loved one, saying “Maybe this is the last straw, maybe this is what will finally push him over the edge and he will not want to be involved with me anymore. He will leave me alone in my problems and I will have to solve them on my own.”

At a reflective, conscious level my second response was more accurate. I had no intention of abandoning her or abdicating my responsibility for her as my daughter. In retrospect I can see that at some level I may have been trying to startle her into common sense, but the result could have been disastrous if those words, spoken in the heat of the moment, had been allowed to stand unchallenged.

When the foundational attachment question, “Are you there for me?” is answered with a solid “YES,” the relationship, whether parent/child, husband/wife, or friend/friend is solid and can withstand a lot of turmoil. If the answer is “NO” (or if the answer leaves room for doubt), the relationship feels fragile and the participants feel threatened and insecure. They often react accordingly.

As we move through the challenges of the fall please allow me to encourage you to:
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1. Be supremely careful, when upset, not to let words fall out of your mouth that threaten attachment security. The thoughts may pop into your brain, but do not let them out. If they do fall out of your mouth, it is essential to ask for them back and repair the attachment breach.
2. Speak attachment affirming words frequently (“I am here for you.” “We will figure this out together.” “I am not going anywhere.”)
3. Never, never, never, ever try to “motivate” your loved one by directly threatening the attachment bond through your words (“I will divorce you if…”, “If you don’t straighten up I will put you in a foster home…”, "I'm done trying to relate to you...") or your actions (silent treatment, cutting off relationship). This never makes things better and usually makes things worse because your loved one thinks, “How can I trust you to work this out with me if you already have one foot out of the door?”

The attachment-threatening words and fears may come into your awareness, but battle them. Fight for love and attachment and assume that God is at work in both of you “to will and to do according to his good pleasure” (Phil. 2: 13) even when He seems to be taking his own sweet time.

Blessings,

Gene

I love dogs, and dogs typically love me. Maybe it is because I give them so much attention, but they tend to find me very interesting.

In my reading the past few years about attachment and neurology, the hormone oxytocin keeps popping up. This morning, as I was petting my dog, Keeva, I wondered again: do dogs produce oxytocin?

Oxytocin is a hormone/neurotransmitter (technically a nonapeptide) produced in the brain (thalamus area), then transported to the pituitary gland where it is secreted. Originally identified in 1906, oxytocin was found to facilitate childbirth and breastfeeding, however, in the past few years oxytocin’s role in relationships has been studied more intensely.

Oxytocin is variously called the hug hormone, the cuddle chemical, and the moral molecule. In humans, researchers have found that cuddling with a significant other stimulates increased production of oxytocin resulting in higher feelings of closeness, empathy, and trust. Giving subjects a shot of oxytocin in their noses resulted in more generosity with money and more compassion in conflict. Oxytocin has been implicated in mother-child bonding as well as pair bonding in adults. New treatments using oxytocin are being explored for treating the social deficits for individuals on the autism spectrum.

Oxytocin not only seems to result from nurturing and bonding behavior, but alsointensifies feelings of connectedness and bonding. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, oxytocin production also calms the amygdala—the threat detector, the first alarm center of the brain. This explains in part why, when we are scared, the first person we want to talk to is our primary attachment figure. When we receive the desired response from the loved one, we feel calmer.

So what about dogs? Do dogs produce oxytocin?

A report last year in the magazine Science found that simply gazing into each other’s eyes produced higher levels of oxytocin in both dogs and their owners. They also found that dosing the dogs with oxytocin intranasally resulted in longer gazing, more oxytocin production, and more reported feelings of connectedness and bondedness in the humans.

This is something I have suspected for a while, that when I love on Keeva, I increase both her levels of oxytocin and mine and I strengthen the trust, bond, and connection between us. The more I love on her, the more she trusts and loves on me.

But more importantly, how do we use this information to strengthen people relationships?

The attachment folks tell us over and over about the need to focus on attachment behaviors—specifically eye contact, attachment touch, attachment voice, and leave-taking & rejoining rituals—all activities that stimulate oxytocin production.

1. Eye Contact: If you watch couples in love, close friends talking, or mothers and babies, you will see them making intense and prolonged eye contact, like the dogs in the Science study. Sadly, as our children (and our marriages) get older we often make less eye contact, and sometimes only in conflict. A practical suggestion is to spend one on one time with your spouse, child, or friend face to face, focusing on making extensive eye contact while listening, with and without words.

2. Attachment Touch: This includes non-sexual caresses, gentle touches on the shoulder as you pass, hugs, kisses, unnecessary touch throughout the day, every day that says, “I see you, I hear you, I know you are there, I love you, I am committed to you”. Pet your kids, your spouse, and your friends as much as you pet your dog.

3. Attachment Voice: Ever notice that when you talk to your dog or your baby you use a special tone of voice? It is not necessarily baby talk, but is a way of speaking that is distinctly different. Usually it is a higher tone, more musical and expressive, maybe including nonsense sounds, nicknames, etc. Try using an adaptation of this voice with your loved ones. If they ask what you are doing, tell them you are trying something new to help them to feel how important they are to you.

4. Leave-taking/Rejoining Rituals: Whenever you leave your loved ones, whether for shorter or longer periods of time, it is vital that you say, “Good-bye” with intentionality, attention, and presence. When you come back together it is also vital to do so intentionally, with attention, and presence. Often in the busyness of life we neglect leave-taking and rejoining rituals, and do subtle damage to our relationships. When you say “Goodbye” and “Hello again” intentionally, you are communicating, “I see you, I hear you, you matter to me, I love you, and I am committed to you”. When you neglect such expressions, you subtly communicate the opposite, “you are invisible to me, you don’t matter, I don’t have time for you, and I am not committed to you.” You may not be intending to communicate these things, but they come across non-verbally. In this same vein pay particular attention to bed-time rituals. Marriage researcher, Stan Tatkin, is famous for stating that everyone, child and adult,needs to be put to bed at night.

As you begin working on these behaviors, notice the emotions that come up. It is likely the feelings will be positive. Enjoy them, prolong them, sit with them, and let them seep deeply into you. But you may find some negative emotions mixed in with the positive feelings: do you sense anger, resentment, hopelessness, fear, or worthlessness? These feelings may be markers of unresolved hurts in you or the relationship and they block your full enjoyment of the lovely effects of oxytocin. Take note of negative feelings and journal and pray to identify and begin resolving them. Once resolved you will be able to delight in the fruits of all of the hard work that you have put into your relationships.

And do not neglect Fido! We all need as much oxytocin as we can get.

Blessings,

Gene