Episode 387 - Michael John Cusick, "Exploring Sacred Attachment: Seen, Soothed, Safe, and Secure"

Welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today's conversation, Michael is joined by AJ Denson as they dive into the foundational building blocks of healthy relationships and spiritual well-being—the "Four S's" of attachment: seen, soothed, safe, and secure.

Picking up from their previous conversation on Attachment Neuroscience and the Trinity, Michael unpacks how the story of God is ultimately a story of profound attachment, beginning with the indivisible unity of the Trinity itself. The discussion explores how these four components of attachment shape not only our childhood experiences but also our spiritual lives and adult relationships.

Together, they reflect on what it means to be truly seen and delighted in, drawing parallels between the secure love a child needs and the way God knows and loves us deeply. With honest stories, cultural insights, and a grounding in Scripture, this episode offers hope for healing and restoration, even in the places where attachment may have been broken.

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome back to Restoring the Soul. It's Michael John Cusick, and I'm here with AJ Denson. Good to be back. It's so fun to have conversations with you about this. Last time we kind of went into the weeds and off the rails from the topic we initially said we were gonna talk about, but as we talked about attachment, I felt the need to talk about the fact that the story of God is attachment, that the heart of the Trinity is attachment, that it's connectedness, that's an indivisible unity. For folks that missed that episode, I think it was called something like Attachment Neuroscience and the Trinity, because we couldn't think of a better name. And today we're going to jump into the 4 S's, which was our intention in the last episode. So let's, let's talk about the 4 S's. I mean, just as kind of a segue, the Lord, the Trinity, perfect example of perfect attachment. Now we're moving into 4 S's of attachment with people and relationships around us. So walk us through it. What are the 4 S's, Michael? The 4 S's are seen, soothed, safe, and secure. And once again, I'm going to give just a little bit of backdrop and hopefully not digress too much, but these are the 4 components of attachment that if these 4 S's are in place in a relatively sufficient amount, then a secure attachment will develop. And that secure attachment is a sense that, as I say in the book, that love has me. From the infant to the parent or caregiver, that love is that person that's attuning to them. Spiritually speaking, love has me is a sense that the Trinitarian God revealed in Jesus— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— but if we want to know what that Trinity looks like, Jesus himself said in John 15 that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So the goal is secure attachment with every infant. But if that infant has not been seen, if they've not been soothed, if they've not been safe, then that secure attachment is either not going to fall into place and that child won't be able to regulate in their infant dependent state. They're gonna tend to be either anxious or avoidant in getting their needs met. We'll talk about that in another episode. But there's two ingredients that that really go into this attachment. And I wanna state this as kind of the big lens before we get into the small lens of seen, soothed, safe, and secure. The big lens is that for attachment to occur, the infant needs— and we all need from womb to tomb— we need attunement and trust. Attunement is this idea of being seen, and that is that the parent is attentive, dialed in, sees the child, not just sees them physically with their eyes and that there's this little baby in a crib or this child in a playpen, but that they see who they actually are. That attunement is that sense of being present to the child in the present moment for who they actually are. And of course, this presumes that the parent The caregiver can be present within themselves and is bringing that presence to the infant. I quote this in the book Sacred Attachment, but my colleague just down the hall at Restoring the Soul, Brian Becker, and dear friend, he defines intimacy as all of me welcomes all of you and all of you welcomes all of me. And even though that parent-child relationship wouldn't— typically be addressed as intimacy, there's that sense where the parent is saying to the child in unspoken terms, "All of me, the parent, can welcome all of you. Your crying, your waking up in the middle of the night needing to be fed, your stinky diaper." Now, of course, when a baby's crying, that can overstimulate our hearing. I know that personally. Stinky diapers, you, you sometimes just have to turn your head away. Waking up in the middle of the night, you're tired and all you wanna do is go back to sleep. And yet there's a sense that in the middle of whatever is happening in me, that I can be present to my own dysregulation, to my own struggle, distress, et cetera, and bring that presence to the infant and wherever they're at. That's the essence of attunement. Now we could go into much greater definition, and I wanna do an episode on this as well, that attunement has a lot of verbal— but also, uh, nonverbal aspects to it. That if a parent comes to the infant and their face is either flat and sad, or if they are anxious and their face is looking like they're angry, somehow that infant can read that through what we call neuroception. Not a cognitive structure of this is an angry face, but the neurons that are there, that infant picks that up. So attunement then allows trust to develop. So attunement plus trust equals attachment. And as we'll talk about, these four S's are really the basis of trust. That if, uh, the child is not seen, if they're not soothed, if they're not safe, and they don't develop a sense of security, they won't be able to trust. And here's the problem with that. The problem is that we then bring that not being able to trust in an embodied sense into our relationships, and we develop survival strategies in our relationships then to get our needs met, to be seen, soothe, safe, secure, to receive attention, affection, affirmation, acceptance, significance, uh, satisfaction, and ultimately a sense of security. We develop survival strategies to get those needs met, and it doesn't actually require trust in those senses. And again, there's generally two

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in an anxious, striving, restless, clinging way, what we call anxious attachment, or in a way where I'm pulling back because I'm not going to get my needs met. And rather than come with expectation and then experience disappointment, I'll just disengage and stay back. So trust plus attunement equals attachment. And, you know, to take this from the theoretical to the personal, and I've talked about this for a couple of decades now, but in my story, with all the things that happened to me that never should have happened, and then the things that should have happened and didn't happen, what I call wounds of presence and wounds of absence, this has been my lifelong struggle. And so I'm a 61-year-old man. I've been a Christian for over 40 years. I've been a therapist for over 32 years. And there are still parts of me that struggle to trust because of fear, because of my own anxiety. So I just wanna say all that is the introduction to the 4 S's of seen, soothed, safe, secure before we jump in. Yeah, I love that. Um, going back, as we're still kind of clarifying the basics, is there a world—'cause you mentioned that there's attunement and trust and that forms attachment. Is there a world where attunement and trust, you could have one without the other, or are both required? I believe that both are required. Uh, I imagine that somewhere there's a world in which virtually, you know, any combination of these could happen. There's always just this dynamic of each individual based on our temperament, genetics, and certainly our environment has, uh, different capacities for resilience. So you can have different children in a family. And of course, uh, marriage and family therapists will say that every child that's added to the family actually becomes a whole new family system. So I'm the youngest of 5, and each of my siblings has very different issues from me and responded very differently to our home environment. Uh, one quick example of that is that as the youngest, my dad, uh, was sober for 5 years when I was born, uh, or shortly after I was born. And then in second grade, when I was in second grade and my siblings were 10 years beyond that, he started drinking again. But he disappeared for 2 weeks and then got treatment and was sober for 46 years. So my sibling's experience of alcoholism is very, very, very different from my experience of alcoholism, even though we both grew up in an alcoholic family, and that led to very different outcomes. So I would suggest that even among my siblings, that there's, uh, very likely different attachment styles there. But generally speaking, attunement allows for trust, and that trust is really the essence of the attachment. I'm trusting And I have this physiological, neurological capacity, apparatus, mechanism that's developed inside of me on an embodied level that allows me to entrust myself to others with a sense that generally care, love, attention, getting my needs met will be there. I always think of it as a giant exhale, a sense of, ah, And as a dad, I remember, uh, you know, from the earliest weeks of being with both of my kids, they would become distressed for various reasons and, and whimper. And I won't do it here, but then there would eventually be this sense of holding them, compressing them, singing to them, talking in a quiet, higher voice. There would be this sense of, ah, and they would just relax. And that's a picture of secure attachment. I wanna go to Psalm 131, and you've heard me talk about this before at the men's weekend, but this is kind of a life verse for me. And in Psalm 131, we see this picture of this kind of secure attachment where, where the psalmist is saying, God, my eyes are not haughty, my heart is not proud. I don't concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed myself. I've quieted my ambitions, and I am like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child, I am content. And then the last verse says, Israel, put your hope in God. I would suggest that the only way that we can have a resilient, sustained sense of hope is if there's something in us that's calm, that's quiet and not striving, that has actually received the nourishment and nurturing that we needed as an infant all the way into adulthood. This idea of from womb to tomb, and therefore we can have a sense of contentment. And like Paul say, um, you know, I can be content in all circumstances. That's not just an idea that we memorize Paul's scripture of I can be content in all circumstances. And on the count of 3, we try to be that way. 'cause I, I've never been able to manufacture that. Instead, it's a deep embodied experience of calm, quiet, content. Yeah, that's incredible. So with that being said, you have an incredible illustration of the 4 S's when you explain it. You've— I've heard you explain it, but walk us through kind of the 4 S's, those stages, and how we get from seen, safe, soothe, to secure, and what that can look like practically. Yeah, you bet. So seen, and I'm gonna say this just because if people are listening, the scene might not click. This is not S-C-E-N-E like a movie scene or a scene from a play. This is S-E-E-N. And of course, you know, we use this a lot. I see on social media people saying, oh, well, this person didn't see me and I don't feel seen. And part of why that language is there, even though like so many words today, it's become overused and tired. This is where the parent or caregiver— and I'm using that word caregiver because in our world today, many children were raised in daycare or with caregivers that were not their parents. Um, but I'm generally referring to the parent. If I use the word caregiver, that's why I'm using that. Um, and my own daughter who was, uh, we adopted from China for a year, She was attended by— we got to meet some of the caregivers and they were very loving, attentive, committed people, but an insufficient number of them. This, this is all about, um, the parent saying in their mind, so to speak, they're not saying this to the child, but seen is, I get you. I'm going to go through each of these with the little phrase, soothed. Is the parent saying, I've got you. Safe is the parent saying, I've got this. And then secure is the parent saying, love has you, my love has you, my presence has you. So now let me go through these one by one. So for the child who is seen, they will grow up through their life into being an adult that senses that they were attuned to and their needs were attuned to. And as I go through this list, I'm not gonna give examples of the opposite in every sense, but families who very— starting at the very beginning, had a model of parenting, for example, that put the child in a place of distress. And when our son was born, I'm not gonna mention the name of the book, listeners of this generation will probably know the book, But when our son was born in 1998, there was a popular book around that talked about the way to raise a child where it can be a family-centered and a parent-centered family, as opposed to that child becoming a child-centered family, which I agree with, by the way. You can have a parent and family-centered family without it being around the child. But the teaching at that time was that you just let babies cry and cry and cry. Until they finally stop. And I remember I was in a small group and there were different parents and we were kind of arguing about this and, and one mother saying, "It just breaks my heart to stand there, you know, one, two, three hours and the baby is crying." And now we know through attachment theory and neuroscience that that actually had the potential to damage the child's attachment structure. And my— My opinion on this is that there were well-intentioned but misguided people that were teaching that material and that it was really, hey, our life is not going to revolve around this child. But part of child raising is that for a period of time, your life does need to revolve around the child. And there's going to be long nights interrupted, uh, by a crying baby and when they're not sleeping. And that's just part of the deal. So when the infant's needs are not attuned to, when they are left to themselves, it breaks down this sense of predictability and trust that I have this sensory need. I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm in pain, I have an uncomfortable diaper. Someone is going to come and attend to me. Second big category under the sense of being seen is that the adult will be able to look back on their story and sense that they were accepted and known for who they actually were, that they felt understood regardless of their behavior. Now, of course, what does it mean that an infant is understood for who they are until that infant develops more of a sense of self and individuality as they start to crawl, as they start to walk, as they start to either finger paint or pull the dog's tail, or growing older, uh, do dance or art or sports. That parent says, "Who you are, your particular interests and sense of unique self is not something that I have to manipulate for my own end." And in terms of behavior, not just interests, that, um, if that child is a strong-willed child, if you will, or if they're a compliant child, that the parent is grounded and present and healthy enough in themselves that they can welcome who that child is. Another one of these under seen is that, uh, that there was a sense of, uh, being delighted in by the caregivers, that I am seen and that's a good thing. I have some, uh, friends that were missionaries and they told me this wonderful story of their son who was, I think, 3 years old or 4 years old, and they were in the coach seats flying, uh, from America back to the country on another continent that they were. And somehow this little 3 or 4-year-old wandered up into first class, went through the curtain, and the mom started to panic. And, uh, everybody on the plane was apparently awake, you know, they were preparing for their meal or something. And he, he came to the curtain facing the back of the plane, and he pulled back the curtain and he said,"Here I am, everybody!" And that is such a picture. Such a picture of the freedom of a child who understands that it's good to be seen. And most of us grow up, especially if we're not seen, or if we've been seen in a way where it's unfavorable. Oh, you're a boy and you like to dance? Or you're a boy and you like to do art? Or you're a boy and you don't like to do sports? I guess you're a fill in the blank. You're just a little girl, that kind of thing. So this, this deep need to be seen. I love how John Eldredge described part of the parenting role years ago. He said that the, the role of the parent is primarily to unveil the child's glory. And I've never forgot that because, you know, so much of our parenting is— God forbid we, we go with this idea that came out you know, 40 years ago in a lot of Christian parenting, and that is that the goal is to break the child's will. And we're seeing the fruit of that today with a lot of rigidity and a lot of, uh, deconstruction that results in walking away from the faith. I don't want any part of that because that becomes the embodied reality. If a parent's goal is to break the child's will, then that person is either going to become rigid and resist and push back against rules and regulations, or they're going to falsely become compliant and defer out of their sense of who they really are. The next one— and there's just two more of these around being seen— is that, that the child was given time and attention, which communicates value. You know, I grew up in an age where, uh, my dad worked one and a half, at times two full-time jobs, and he was exhausted. And in some ways, as I aged, he was around for sports and things like that. But I remember as a younger, uh, person sometimes walking in and he was just lost in the newspaper. And that sense of— that was his time and didn't look up. And God bless him, you know, he had raised 5 kids. But that sense of, I'm lost in the newspaper— today it might be that I'm lost or giving my attention to social media, and the kid is over here tugging on the sleeve saying, "Dad, dad, dad," or "Mom, mom, mom." And so when an adult who goes to work, makes money, has, uh, an infinite number of hours in the day and the week— when we shift our attention and give that time and attention to the child, it actually communicates, "I have value. I have a sense of importance." So the final one here is that the thoughts the feelings and the struggles of the child, that those are welcome. So in many homes, and I've seen this a lot in Christian homes, there's certain struggles we're not gonna talk about. There's certain feelings that we're not gonna talk about. Just recently talking to someone who grew up in a, in a, a hyper-spiritual family, and anytime there were tears, it was like, stop crying, don't cry, just, just trust the Lord for the joy of the Lord. There's no need to cry. You know, we're, we're happy clappy. All of this sense of being seen lays a foundation for the child to experience soothing. If they're seen, then they can experience soothing. I'm going to stop there. I'll let you respond or make comments. Yeah, I would love to jump in on that. Uh, as first incredible— uh, detail of seen, S-E-E-N, um, for the first S. Something that popped out to me that I'd love for you to address is that you mentioned a lot of, um, what we thought we knew about parenting, letting the child cry out, what we know now. And I get to see a lot of parents maybe feeling some shame, maybe feeling just, you know, oh man, like, I really tried. And what would you say to that parent that might be beating themselves up when they had all the good intention in the world, but, um, are like, man, I just didn't know. Yeah, thank you so much. Because, uh, you know, I— A, I want to talk about, um, the hope in all of this. Secondly, I appreciate your compassion and just thinking about that. So first of all, the Lord knows our hearts. And for a parent that took the time to read a book like that book that was popular when my son was born, our firstborn, Uh, that actually shows a level of care and concern that I would like to think as the parent lives out that concern and care, yes, there might be this wound there in the person's nervous system, but the beautiful news and the whole reason we're talking about this is that attachment can be healed. In the secular, uh, conversation, we call it earned attachment. I don't like that term because it implies that somehow I am, uh, as an adult working in a way where I'm earning love. Instead, I, I, I think Chuck DeGroat is the one that first introduced this to me. And I like the word received attachment, that as an adult, I can open my heart in ways that are vulnerable and potentially risky and learn both in my nervous system in my body, in my mind, and in my emotions that I can trust, that I can be attuned to. Now, if we just put our head down and live out our adaptive survival strategy of, I'm just gonna avoid intimacy, or I'm gonna control to make sure the intimacy always there, then it's gonna be hard to have this received secure attachment. But change can actually happen. Um, but I'd like to think that those parents went on to become attuned parents in other ways. And, um, so there's, there's really hope there. And this is, as people hear this information, I'd want to say two things. First, about 60%, according to the clinical research, only 60% of people in the United States have a secure attachment. That's the data from laboratories and science. Most therapists— and of course we can be biased because we have the people with the problems and the issues in our office— but I believe, as do many of my colleagues, that especially in our culture today where we have digital natives, where people have grown up on social media, where, uh, there's far less face-to-face connection, that, that number is decreasing. And I'm, I'm guessing it's sub-50% right now in a world, uh, that is as mad as it is. And in some ways, our, our world and us, as John Eldredge says, being disciples of the internet, that's kind of teaching us and discipling us how to live. It's wiring our nervous system where less and less we have to turn to another person to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure. And we just get louder and louder on social media. And we can be soothed and our soothing— I'm sorry, that we can be seen. And our soothing comes when people agree with us. And when they don't agree with us, we're dysregulated and we're in distress. And often we find a sense of safety when we have a community of like-minded people that agree with us and therefore kind of validate who we are. And so, um, all bets are off in terms of the, the current couple of generations that have been raised on social media. I feel like you could do a whole podcast just on the social media aspect of attachment. Just— yeah, just that one. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, you know, that was awesome. I think we have so much we can go off of with scene. Maybe we can come back in another episode and hit, uh, some more S's and go into detail on those because it's just— it's so valuable going into detail and fully exploring what one of these S's of attachment can look like. Yeah, I just want to end with this, AJ. Um, I want to go to two passages in scripture. Um, please do, because this relates to your question as well about what do you say to the parent who may be thinking, I screwed my kid up, you know, and they're they're forever marred and wounded by this. Well, here's the beautiful thing. We believe as followers of Jesus that we are seen, soothed, safe, and secure in him and with him and by him. And so the first thing I would say is in Jeremiah chapter 1, there's this beautiful, beautiful statement of God through the prophet Jeremiah. And he says, "Before I formed you, I knew you." and I set you apart. And I'd like to think that poetically speaking, God is not just saying, before I formed you, I knew that you would be born, but that God has a dream in God's imagination. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, somewhere before time began, had a dream and an imagination for an AJ, for what you would be like, for what your temperament would be. And I like to think about how my wife and I Before, um, we ever had a child, we dreamt about Christmas mornings because we both had an image and family photos of us, you know, at 2, 3, 4, 5 in our little footie PJs Christmas morning opening packages, birthday cakes, party hats, first report cards, going to soccer games, you know, all of those things, whether it ever materialized in that particular way. That's the dream, and that's the imagination before the child is even here. And there's a sense of what will that child become? What will they be like? That's what's happening in Jeremiah chapter 1 when God says, "Before I even formed you, before the sperm and the egg came together, I knew you." So there's this deep, deep sense that we are seen from the God who knows us deeply. Then I would take people to Psalm 139, a stunning, staggering psalm that talks through basically the first 13 verses, and it says, God, you know when I sit and when I rise, before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely. Where can I go from your spirit? And then the famous verse that says, For you knit me together in my mother's womb and created my inmost being, and I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. And that inmost being is repeated a lot through scripture— Psalm 103, John 7, Ephesians

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16— about being rooted and established in our, quote, inmost being in his love. And that inmost being is our true self that God created in Michael— and in you, dear listener, God created a true self that before he formed you, he actually knew that. And his passion is to watch that develop and grow. But more than that, to the degree that that has been marred or broken— I think of an acorn that's been crushed— that God still wants to develop this oak tree with a, with roots that go deep into the soil of his love. With a trunk that grows up strong, with branches that spread out so the birds of the air can come and make their home there and nest, and beautiful green flourishing leaves dropping acorns everywhere. That's the goal, is created us knowing us and seeing us and seeing in us in our every moment, and then creating us to then be able to be generative and to give to others. The last thing I'd say is that there might be listeners here, and I know that I just said 5 minutes ago that the last thing I would say, but this is the last, last thing. The final, final, the final, final, final. There's probably listeners just like myself in the past and sometimes now who are going, this is not good news because if I'm seen, boy, that's not good. If I'm seen and God knows my thoughts, if I'm seen and God knows what I've done in secret that nobody else knows, if God knows what happened to me way back when and I've never told another human being about that, then God will surely be disgusted with me. God will be disappointed with me. God will be frustrated with me. As one of my friends who's a financial guru said, I've always felt like I was never a good return on God's investment. So here's the words that I wanna say to you, and, and I would pray that the listener could, could somehow take these in by faith, hoping against hope that maybe it's true. And that is, no matter what your thoughts are, no matter what you've done in the past, no matter what happened to you in the past, Even if you did that this morning, the God that looks like Jesus wants to come closer and closer and closer to you because he sees you and he doesn't see the wounding. He doesn't see the sin. He doesn't see how you've mishandled your pain. He sees your heart that before he formed you, he knew you, and his eyes light up, his eyes sparkle. There's a smile on his face. And if it's wounding or trauma or heartbreak, then that smile is there and holds at the same time a sorrow for what has been done to us. So this God that looks like Jesus is a God of complete presence, never forsaking, never abandoning, and a presence of complete tenderness and mercy and compassion. Therefore, just like the parent needs to delight in the child for who they actually are, not who the parent wants them to be, our God revealed in Jesus is the God that delights in us, not for who we should be, not for who we will be, but for who we actually are. And that is the good news.