"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
- Romans 5:6-8 (emphasis added is mine)
Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) is complex and controversial. While I'm not a credentialed specialist, I have personal experience having lived with what's often referred to as, RAD, Attachment Disorganization, or complex trauma. If you want a reference to a credentialed specialist, click
here,
here, here, or
here. Pick one or all.
As for my own merited credentials, I was a twin baby, relinquished as a newborn in Korea at an orphanage in 1980 that experienced a hospitalization, two foster homes, and being separated from my twin, then reunited with her on an airplane ride overseas when we meet our adoptive parents in the airport, who looked nothing like any of the previous caretakers I'd been with - all within just the first 11 months of my life. To the average/typical person who isn't familiar with attachment and trauma, it doesn't look like much is going on here. But to the person who is well informed and educated regarding attachment, brain development, neurobiology and trauma issues - it's a shitload. On top of this, I have never formed a secure-attachment with any caregiver as a child or adolescent.
I can personally identify with this particular diagnosis and several of the symptoms associated with it that are covered by the above diagnoses/names referenced. I haven't spent years studying attachment/trauma issues in the world of academia, I've been too busy living with it. I'm now gaining awareness and consciously observing many articles/books written on these subjects as a part of my own journey of healing and recovery, with the backdrop of my own personal experiences.
There's also a very prevalent component present in my life, which the people who get to know me well can attest to - I am deeply analytical in regards to spirituality/theology and psychology/human behavior. I'm completely fascinated with these overlapping arenas, while at the same time, trying to put the fragmented pieces together, consisting of my own self.
My latest thought-provoking analysis (as of this morning) is that after sin entered into creation via a crafty serpent's deception portraying God as unsafe to fully trust (read Genesis 3), a primal attachment trauma/disruption (spiritual death) occurred at the spiritual level, which has impacted all other levels that humans encapsulate (the physical, mental and emotional spaces).
We were created to be deeply connected and dependent on our spiritual parent/caretaker or attachment figure, which is God. We were created to fully depend and trust Him to provide for all of our needs. He's willing and capable of doing this for us. He's set up creation to provide for our needs in a way where we experience peace and enjoyment of having our needs provided for by Him, through His creation. The deception which consists of God being unsafe, was insidiously crafted by Satan. Humanity now experiences an attachment wound that was first experienced on the spiritual level. From the moment the first humans pursued God's role as Judge instead of trusting Him to play that role, they believed judgment was the solution to the problem.
Adam and Eve were fully accepted and loved as they were. They didn't need to improve themselves by eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to become more "godly". Now, humanity is addicted to this, and the addiction to judgement is otherwise called sin, which leads to shame, which disrupts the flow of a profoundly felt-sense of intimacy and connection (attachment) between God and mankind.
Humanity gravitates to many alternative "caregivers" to provide for our needs, which lead to pain, emptiness, anxiety and disillusion - much like addictive drugs - because they are pseudo life sources...not the real deal.
The problem with mankind, is that mankind believes there is a problem with mankind, and therefore must make improvement on themselves to fix these "problems", when there wasn't any problem with mankind in the first place.
"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good...." - Genesis 1:31
When a child who has experienced attachment disruption(s) or other trauma(s) which took place where the child's relationship and involvement with their attachment figures (caretakers) didn't repair or help the child to process the experience in a way that disarms shame - another trauma takes place. We now have a second layer of trauma.
This is the context, in my current understanding, where "Reactive Attachment Disorder" is conceived.
Humanity's babies are now born to be dependent on
humans to provide for their needs. Humans who are broken and wounded, and struggle to remain attached/connected on a moment by moment basis, to their safe Creator, due to believing the same thing Adam and Eve did about God - that trusting Him isn't in my best interests. This is a condition which has attachment disorganization stemming from its origins - in the garden of Eden.
But then -
Jesus enters into creation...God incarnate.
A divine intervention took place in history, to recover humanity and all the pain and anguish done while acting out of its Reactive Attachment Disorder state, on a spiritual level. Jesus is how God intervened on humanity's attachment disruption, that started off with a deception of God being unsafe (putting faith in a lie), sin took place from acting out the faith that God wasn't trustworthy, and then shame ensues because the action/choice was based on believing a lie about God, and about ourselves. The lie about God is that He cannot fully be trusted, and the lie about ourselves is that we need to meet our own needs outside of depending on God
because He's not trustworthy.
Returning back to the child who has a history of trauma and/or attachment disruption(s)..there is, thankfully a solution. It isn't an easy one. It's isn't a cheap one. No, there is tremendous sacrifice involved. That sacrifice often requires a savior, which is the adult-caretaker who is willing to go to
great lengths of pain to move a mountain, in order to build a secure-attachment to the child who desperately needs it, but fights and/or resists to receive what is
desperately needed.
The adult-caretaker is setup to fail by the child, this is classical reactive attachment disorder, as I'm understanding it. The child is terrified to receive what's needed most (felt-sense of love and connection), because either it was once experienced and lost, or it was experienced ambivalently/inconsistently, or never experienced at all after birth.
Regardless of the exact etiology, I'm becoming convinced that it's not necessarily what events took place, but the pervasive shame that was installed/downloaded through these early traumatic experiences, in the subconscious areas of the developing brain. Shame became hard-wired into the child's brain, through neglect, abandonment and/or abuse in the child's earliest years.
The parallel I'm trying to contrast here is between the
child who has carefully been diagnosed with RAD or experienced complex trauma/attachment disorganization, with
all of the human race, spiritually speaking.
The adult caregiver who takes up the role which includes building a secure-attachment to this child, is similar to what Jesus did for us.
Us as in, mankind, not exclusively traumatized children. We didn't set him up to easily love and embrace us with His love. We resisted it, and wanted to be independent, self-sufficient, or dependent on
other people or things...other than God. Yet, Jesus still entered into our broken world, as a vulnerable baby, and did the only thing that was possible to restore a secure-attachment between mankind and our Creator - He gave His life on the cross. He did that for us. He was fighting to embrace us with His outrageous love, giving us what we
desperately needed, but experienced tenacious resistance from mankind to the point of him getting nailed and crucified on a cross, as a condemned criminal to the secular world, but (even worse) as a blasphemer to the religious world...He did this for us. He was killed by people trying to "protect" God's holiness (that's essentially what blasphemy is).
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:6-8
