Estimated reading time: 16 minutes
What My Great Aunt Mabel Taught Me About Secure Attachment
This morning, I woke from a dream about my Great Aunt Mabel. For a moment, I could almost smell the familiar, slightly stale air of her apartment and feel the quiet steadiness of being near her. It may seem like an unlikely place to begin a story about healing attachment wounds in adults, but much of what I understand about secure attachment began with her.
She was 103 when she died. She never married or had children, and she spent most of her life living alone. If we measured a life only by titles, milestones or public achievements, hers might be easy to overlook.
But when I think about the people who shaped me, she is one of the first who comes to mind.
She did not change my life through profound advice. She changed it through ordinary moments.
She drove a seafoam-green Oldsmobile with soft seats that seemed sturdier than anything made today. She made tiny sandwiches for church lunches. Well into her eighties, she planned a trip to the hardware store for a new rubber tip for her cane, walking slowly enough that I could kick stones beside her.
She showed me how to work the matted hair out of my hairbrush. She checked whether my fingernails needed trimming. She served peas that had wrinkled from sitting a little too long on the stove. She let me stumble through songs on her old piano, then sat down and revealed the quiet skill held in her own hands.
None of it appeared extraordinary at the time.
What stayed with me was the way she noticed me.
Even when her eyes grew cloudy, she would hold my face and touch my arms as though she were taking in how much I had grown. Her trousers were always pressed, and her blouses carried the faint scent of lavender. She listened more than she spoke. Her attention seemed to say, without requiring words: I see you. You are welcome here.
As a child, I did not have language for what happened in her presence. I only knew that I felt calmer, safer and more like myself.
Years later, after studying attachment, trauma, the nervous system and psychotherapy, I came to understand that Aunt Mabel offered something every human being needs: the experience of being with someone steady enough that we do not have to work so hard to belong.
The Question That Followed Me Into My Career
For much of my life, a question has been quietly following me:
Why do some people seem able to settle into themselves, while others spend years searching for a sense of safety they cannot quite name?
I first met that question professionally in a maternity ward.
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent seven years working as an obstetrical nurse. I later became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and volunteered as a La Leche League Leader because I believed deeply in supporting families through the enormous transition into parenthood.
At first, I thought my work was primarily about helping babies latch, teaching positioning and helping parents feel more confident. Over time, I began noticing something underneath the practical questions.
Some parents loved their babies deeply and still found it difficult to settle into the moment. They questioned themselves constantly. They apologized before asking for help. Their shoulders remained tense while they tried to learn the subtle language of a brand-new person.
Sometimes I would gently help a mother reposition her hand, lower her shoulders or notice that she had been holding her breath. She might look surprised, as though nobody had invited her to notice her own body in a very long time.
Feeding difficulties were rarely just physical. They could become tangled with pain, exhaustion, grief, shame and the fear of already failing someone they loved more than anything. Around many new parents, there was no village—only partners working long hours, relatives who criticized more than they supported, and families expected to navigate one of life’s greatest transitions largely on their own.
Looking back, I was not only watching parents learn how to feed their babies. I was watching nervous systems search for enough safety to learn.
It is also important to say this clearly: a particular feeding method does not create secure attachment. Attachment grows through many repeated experiences of warmth, responsiveness and repair. The developing science of “serve and return” relationships reminds us that children are shaped by ordinary back-and-forth moments in which a caring adult notices and responds—not by parental perfection.
Again and again, I found myself wondering: How do we help someone co-regulate a tiny nervous system if they have rarely felt supported in their own?
Becoming a Mother Deepened My Understanding of Attachment
In the middle of this work, I became a mother—four times.
I was drawn to attachment parenting because I wanted to understand how children develop safety, trust and connection. Watching my own children turned those ideas into something living and immediate.
Their need for closeness did not seem manipulative or excessive. It seemed human. Children are meant to reach for connection; that is what an attachment system is designed to do.
Parenting four children also taught me that attunement is not a formula. Every child has a different temperament, nervous system and way of communicating what they need. No parent responds perfectly in every moment. What matters is our willingness to keep noticing, remain curious, repair disconnection and return to the relationship.
Over time, I learned something equally important: secure attachment does not require a parent to disappear.
Like many caregivers, I could become so focused on being responsive, present and available that I lost track of my own needs. Eventually, I began to understand that sustainable caregiving must make room for the caregiver, too.
The deepest lesson of motherhood was not how to become a perfect parent. It was how to remain in relationship with both my children and myself—to offer them a mother who could love deeply while becoming increasingly connected to her own mind, body, emotions, boundaries and relationships.
Perhaps that is part of what secure attachment offers a family: not endless availability or self-sacrifice, but a relationship sturdy enough for everyone within it to exist.
What Attachment Theory Gave Me Language For
The work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth helped give language to something I had already witnessed in families and felt in Aunt Mabel’s presence.
Human beings are born dependent on relationship. When a caregiver is sufficiently available, responsive and protective, a child can gradually develop a secure base: an inner expectation that it is safe to explore and possible to return for comfort.
Children do not learn this through a single perfect moment. They learn it through thousands of ordinary ones—a cry noticed, a frightened face softened toward, a misunderstanding repaired, a need taken seriously.
Modern research continues to support an association between caregiver sensitivity and child attachment security. At the same time, sensitivity is not the only influence. Temperament, caregiver well-being, culture, family resources, community support, systemic stress and many other factors shape the environment in which attachment develops.
That nuance matters. Attachment theory is not a tool for assigning simple labels or blaming parents. It is a way of becoming curious about how we learned to seek safety, preserve connection and protect ourselves when relationships felt uncertain.
When comfort is generally available, we may learn:
- My needs can be expressed.
- Other people can respond without controlling or abandoning me.
- I can explore and still remain connected.
- Conflict does not automatically mean the relationship is over.
- I can depend on others without losing myself.
When care is inconsistent, frightening, intrusive or unavailable—or when childhood emotional neglect leaves important feelings without a response—children adapt. Some become highly attentive to the moods of others. Some minimize their needs. Some become fiercely self-reliant. Some learn to perform, please or perfect themselves in the hope of preserving connection.
These are not signs of a defective child. They are intelligent attempts to remain as safe and connected as possible within a particular environment.
If you would like a fuller explanation of anxious, avoidant, disorganized and secure patterns, you can read our guide to understanding attachment styles in adult relationships.
How Attachment Wounds Can Show Up in Adults
“Attachment wound” is not a formal mental-health diagnosis. It is a compassionate way of describing relational experiences that affected how safe it feels to need, trust, depend on or remain connected to another person.
Attachment wounds in adults can sometimes appear as:
- monitoring other people’s moods and feeling responsible for restoring harmony
- people-pleasing or overfunctioning to prevent rejection
- hiding needs until they become impossible to ignore
- difficulty receiving care, even while offering it freely to others
- perfectionism or harsh self-criticism
- fearing conflict, distance or abandonment
- withdrawing when closeness or emotion feels overwhelming
- feeling safest when no one can depend on you—or when everyone does
- losing touch with your own preferences inside important relationships
These experiences do not automatically mean that someone has trauma, and no single pattern proves the presence of an attachment wound. Similar struggles can arise from anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, chronic stress, grief, present-day relationships or many other influences. A thoughtful therapist considers the whole person rather than forcing every experience into one explanation.
Readers wondering whether their reactions may be trauma-related may find our overview of unresolved trauma symptoms in adults helpful.
Still, attachment can be an important part of the picture. Research has found meaningful connections between attachment and the ways adults regulate emotion, while also recognizing that these relationships are complex rather than deterministic. You can explore the research review on adult attachment and emotion regulation or read more about how childhood trauma can affect adults.
For many people, the most painful part is not the protective pattern itself. It is the shame that grows around it.
Why am I like this? Why can’t I relax? Why do I care so much? Why do I pull away from what I want?
A trauma-informed approach offers a different question:
What might this response have been trying to protect?
That shift does not excuse harmful behaviour, and it does not suggest that every difficulty comes from trauma. It simply creates enough compassion to understand the pattern clearly. Our article on trauma-informed care for adults explores this perspective in greater depth.
Healing Attachment Wounds in Adults
Healing attachment wounds does not require becoming completely independent or never feeling activated in a relationship. It is not about achieving a flawless “secure” identity.
Healing often looks quieter than that.
It may mean noticing fear without allowing it to make every decision. Naming a need before resentment builds around it. Receiving care without immediately trying to repay it. Staying present during a manageable disagreement. Recognizing when closeness is nourishing and when self-abandonment is being mistaken for love.
It can also mean learning that security has room for both connection and autonomy. You can need people and still belong to yourself.
Begin With Safety, Not Pressure
Healing is not helped by forcing someone to revisit painful experiences before they have enough stability, choice and support. Safety includes a respectful therapeutic relationship, clear boundaries, present-day resources and the ability to slow down.
This is one reason I do not view regulation or stabilization as a delay before the “real work.” Learning to notice the body, remain in the present and experience choice is part of the real work.
Understanding how the nervous system responds to safety and stress can also help reduce shame around reactions that once seemed confusing or automatic.
Become Curious About the Strategies That Protected You
Many adults spend years trying to eliminate the parts of themselves they dislike: the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the inner critic, the one who stays busy, or the one who withdraws before anyone can get too close.
Internal Family Systems therapy offers a gentler framework. Instead of treating these parts as enemies, we become curious about the roles they learned to play and what they fear might happen if they stopped. Our article explaining how IFS works explores this compassionate understanding of parts and Self in greater depth.
Often, the part that appears controlling is afraid. The part that never rests may believe worth has to be earned. The part that needs no one may remember what it was like when depending on others led to disappointment.
Understanding does not mean letting every protective response run our lives. It creates a relationship with those responses so that new choices become possible.
Rebuild a Relationship With Your Own Needs
For people who learned to measure safety through caring for others, reconnecting with the self can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. This pattern can become especially visible during periods of exhaustion, when recognizing and recovering from burnout requires us to make room for needs we may be accustomed to postponing.
Healing may begin with simple questions:
- What am I feeling right now?
- What happens in my body when I am about to say yes but want to say no?
- What do I need, even if nobody else agrees?
- Am I offering care freely, or trying to secure the relationship?
- Can I allow another person to support me without becoming responsible for their comfort?
This is not selfishness. It is self-attunement.
For me, healing has not meant loving my children, my family or my work less. It has meant understanding that I also belong within the circle of people I care for. My needs are not interruptions. Rest is not something I must earn. Receiving support is as human as offering it.
Practise Security in Real Relationships
Insight matters, but attachment is relational. New experiences of honesty, responsiveness, boundaries and repair help us discover that connection can work differently from what we once knew.
Psychotherapy can become one place to practise this. A systematic review found that attachment security may increase and attachment anxiety may decrease over the course of therapy, while appropriately noting that more controlled research is needed. That is a hopeful finding, offered without pretending that change is quick or guaranteed. You can read the systematic review of attachment change during psychotherapy.
Healing also happens in friendships, partnerships, families, supportive communities and the relationship we build with ourselves. A safe relationship does not demand constant agreement. It allows room for two people, honest limits and repair when connection is strained.
What Aunt Mabel Taught Me About Secure Attachment
For years, I believed Aunt Mabel affected me so deeply because she cared for everyone around her. As I have grown older, I think it was not only that she cared. It was how she cared.
She did not seem consumed by proving her goodness. She was not rushing to rescue me or shape me into someone else. She was simply present.
She noticed my fingernails, the tangled hair in my brush and the songs I stumbled through on her piano. She walked slowly enough for me to remain beside her. She offered attention without making me perform for it.
I think she had become at home within herself.
That does not mean her life was easy. She knew loneliness, loss and hard work. Yet she maintained friendships, served her community, laughed, played the piano and created a life spacious enough to include both herself and other people.
She loved generously without disappearing.
Perhaps this is one of the deepest expressions of secure attachment: not simply being close to others, but remaining connected to ourselves while we love them.
For a long time, I believed love meant giving more, trying harder and making sure everyone else was okay before I rested. Eventually, I began to understand that love built on self-abandonment cannot create lasting safety. If my well-being depends entirely on everyone around me being comfortable, there is no room left for a full relationship—only a role I must continue performing.
Children do not need caregivers who never become tired, frustrated or misattuned. They need caregivers who can notice, take responsibility, repair and return. Perhaps what changes generations is not perfect parenting, but a parent who is becoming more attuned to both their child and themselves.
When we listen to our own needs with the compassion we offer others, we teach something powerful:
Caring for yourself and caring for other people were never meant to be opposing loyalties.
Healing Is Not Becoming Someone New
The more I study attachment, developmental science, trauma and psychotherapy, the more I return to a simple truth: human beings flourish in relationships safe enough for them to become more fully themselves.
Our earliest relationships influence us, but they do not write every chapter. The patterns we carry make sense in the context in which they developed, and they are capable of changing through awareness, support, practice and new relational experiences.
Healing is not becoming a person who never needs anyone. It is not learning to suppress your tenderness or care less deeply.
It is becoming sturdy enough to remain with yourself while staying connected to the people you love.
Perhaps that is why I dreamed of Aunt Mabel.
She did not change the world in ways history books would record. She offered steadiness without control, kindness without performance and attention without requiring me to earn it.
She helped one child feel seen.
And sometimes, that is how a life changes: not through one extraordinary moment, but through thousands of ordinary moments in which another person experiences our presence as a place of rest.
That is the kind of person I hope to keep becoming.
And perhaps that is what healing has been inviting us toward all along: not perfection, and not endless self-sacrifice, but the quiet confidence that we can love deeply without abandoning ourselves.
Frequently Asked Questions About Attachment Wounds
An attachment wound is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a term often used to describe a relational experience that affected a person’s sense of safety, trust, worth or connection. It may arise through chronic patterns of misattunement or through a specific rupture, loss or betrayal. The meaning and impact of the experience matter more than fitting it into a label.
They may appear as fear of abandonment, difficulty trusting, people-pleasing, hyper-independence, perfectionism, emotional withdrawal, discomfort receiving care or losing touch with yourself in close relationships. These patterns can have many causes, so they are best understood in the context of the whole person.
Yes, attachment patterns can change. Healing often develops gradually through self-understanding, emotional regulation, boundaries, supportive relationships and, for some people, attachment-focused or trauma-informed therapy. Change does not require erasing the past; it means the past has less power to organize the present.
No. Insecure attachment and trauma can overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Not every person with an insecure attachment pattern has experienced trauma, and not every trauma response is caused by attachment. Avoiding overly simple explanations protects both accuracy and compassion.
Secure attachment does not mean never feeling afraid or needing reassurance. It generally includes a growing ability to express needs, tolerate appropriate closeness and independence, work through conflict, receive support, respect boundaries and remain connected to yourself within relationships.
A Gentle Invitation
If you recognize yourself in these patterns, you do not have to diagnose yourself or unravel your whole history alone. A compassionate therapist can help you understand what shaped you, strengthen your connection with yourself and practise new ways of relating at a pace that respects your nervous system.
If you are considering support but are unsure where to begin, our guide to finding a trauma therapist in Ontario explains what to look for and what questions you can ask.
You can learn more about my attachment- and trauma-informed approach as a Registered Nurse Psychotherapist or explore trauma therapy in Ontario through Attuned Therapy + Wellness.
This article is educational and is not a substitute for individualized mental-health care or medical advice.
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