I have a lot to write about attachment but I keep getting lost in it and losing what I have written. Guess I have a few attachment issues.

That primary attachment is so important... an infant has an absolute need to form an attachment with a caregiver for its very survival. The drive to attach to a caregiving other is one of the most primal urges a human being can have. For an infant, no attachment equals death.

The human infant will strive to form an attachment at all costs. If the caregiver is loving, kind and responsive to the infants needs, all is well. The infant and caregiver bond, the caregiver supports and guides the infant throughout development, and the infant develops a blueprint of human relationships being safe and caring. This blueprint becomes its "master copy" for all other relationships from then on.

That human infant is driven to seek an attachment to others even when the caregiver is not so great. Different patterns of caregiver response - NOT infant response - will result in the infant adapting a different strategy for getting as many of its basic needs met as is possible with the caregiver/s that it has. Whatever strategy the infant develops in its unique circumstances will determine the "blueprint" it uses thereafter for relationships with others.

That first attachment is crucial to all the human relationships that come after it.

We did not experience a loving responsive caregiver. One was distant and uninterested and the other was extremely and violently abusive. This system learned to rely on the self system and not others. Although we have a mothering alter we struggle very much to navigate attachment with our children. We experience the connection as acted rather than felt. No doubt that has had a serious impact on their own blueprints for relationships.

We avoid relationships as much as we can, and experience great distress when we cannot avoid them.

Safety is found in aloneness.

We did recognize early on in life that "home" was not safe and we would be wise to leave there as soon as was possible. We used many different strategies to make that happen faster.

Yes somehow attachment is stronger as we are still very separate from parts of self that DID attach to the abusers. We have successfully dissociated from them. I think there is danger in that. Parts of self that did attach are still very much attached to the abusers, they still interact with them.

Attachment is survival. It is embedded in our DNA.

Attachment is very much a loaded topic for us.

Sorry for the detached ramble.