When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

Psychologist John Bowlby’s seminal work on attachment postulated that attachment of infants to their caregiver(s) is an evolutionary process that plays a vital role in the wellbeing of children. Mary Ainsworth, who worked alongside Bowlby, conducted the Strange Situation Test, whereby children were left alone in an unfamiliar environment and then reunited with their primary caregiver. The researchers noticed three attachment styles in the infants: secure, avoidant, and ambivalent.

Available and responsive caregivers create secure attachment in children; securely attached children will seek their parent(s) for reassurance when in a strange place and will be soothed by their presence. On the other hand, consistently unavailable or unattuned parents (parents who are not attentive to or aware of the physical or emotional needs of their child) will create children who are avoidantly or ambivalently attached; these children do not reliably seek their parents for comfort—they either avoid them, seem indifferent to their presence, or are unable to be soothed by them—as their parents have not reliably provided care in a way that the infant can perceive.

Harry Harlow built on Bowlby’s attachment research in his famous experiment on infant Rhesus monkeys who were separated from their mothers. The infants were housed with two wire monkeys; one held a milk bottle, and the other was covered with soft cloth. The infant monkeys spent the majority of their time with the soft monkey, suggesting that parents play an important role in providing comfort and a feeling of safety, rather than just providing the necessities for life, even in primates.

Children who have a secure relationship with a reliable caregiver tend to perform more strongly on a number of indicators of wellbeing both as children and adults. They tend to have higher self-esteem, perform better in school, have more successful social relationships, and have lower incidences of anxiety and depression (Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Attachment Theory?” Very Well Mind, 2023).

Maté extends this widely acknowledged attachment theory to consider the implications in terms of disease in adults. He elaborates on the importance of secure attachment by suggesting that children who could not rely on their parents for comfort and unconditional love repress their feelings, emotional expressions, and needs in order to avoid the rejection of their caregiver. Eventually, feelings and concerns are often repressed even from the awareness of the individual, causing them to engage in lifestyles and relationships that negatively affect their mental and physical health and wellbeing.

Chronic physiological stress is the result of repression, according to Maté, which leaves one susceptible to disease and illness. Through this model, Maté stresses that attentive and attuned parental love is imperative in ensuring the wellbeing of children throughout their lives. He further suggests an intergenerational inheritance of trauma, anxiety, and repression, which can create familial ill-health in the descendants of traumatized individuals.