Episode 388 - Michael John Cusick, "Exploring Sacred Attachment: Parenting, Healing, and Connection"

Welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast with Michael John Cusick. In this episode, Michael and AJ Denson dive deeper into the transformative concepts from Michael’s book, Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting Divine Love. Picking up where they left off, the conversation centers on the “Four S’s” of attachment—Seen, Soothed, Safe, and Secure—and explores how these elements shape our spiritual and relational lives.

Together, they reflect on the nuances of secure and insecure attachment, the power of rupture and repair in relationships, and how even well-intentioned parents and caregivers can struggle to meet these needs. Michael brings personal stories and practical insights, offering hope for healing attachment wounds, whether through new relational patterns or divine love.

The episode also tackles the complex reality that attachment styles are not fixed but evolve with our circumstances and emotional states. Through compassionate storytelling and relatable examples, the hosts unravel what it means to be “soothed”—the crucial experience of knowing someone has “got you” in moments of distress, vulnerability, and everyday life.

Transcript

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Hi everybody, welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast. I'm Michael John Cusick, and here today again with AJ Denson. Hello. Hello. Yeah, great to be with you again. You're in Texas, I'm in Colorado, and through the miracle of the interweb, we are having another great conversation. The last time we met, we were going to knock out all 4 S's in one podcast, but we keep going deep into the conversation. And so of these 4 S's

from my book, Sacred Attachment: 0:29

Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting Divine Love, we talked about seen. And this is where the parent or caregiver communicates to the child, I get you. I get you. Soothed is where the parent or caregiver communicates, I've got you. I'm curious, as you heard the last conversation and the one before that, that I think we labeled Attachment, neuroscience, and the Trinity. And that was a little bit off the rails from our original topic as well. What's been stirring in you around this material? There's so much. The thing that really stirred me in our previous episode for sure was definitely the heart for the parent that gave their best. And I think we touched on that super well. Definitely a lot of my brain thinks very logistically and just how, you know, are there rules that apply to all this different stuff? So for For me, as we're talking about the 4 S's and previously I'd asked, does attunement and trust coincide or can you have one without the other? How does that also relate to the 4 S's? Do you have, can you have 3 of the 4 and still have some form of secure attachment? Do you need all 4 to have that? What does that kind of look like? Well, first of all, there are 4 S's, but one of the misnomers is that seen, soothed, safe, and secure equals a secure attachment. Actually, it's seen, soothed, and safe equals a secure attachment. So the fourth S is actually kind of what should happen that they follow in sequence. So if you're not seen, you're not going to be soothed. And if you're not soothed, you're not going to feel safe. And if you don't feel seen, soothed, and safe, you will not develop a secure attachment in most instances. The other phrase, you know, back in the 1967 '80s and into the '90s to some degree, we use this term, "a good enough mother," in quotes. And I don't like the phrase because it can be pejorative to mothers. But I also think that there's this sense that what they were trying to say is you don't have to be a perfect parent. You don't have to be a perfect caregiver. Back to this question about parents who were doing their best, this principle that we speak about again and again this cycle of rupture and repair, rupture and repair. That parent who might have had an approach to parenting in early infancy where they just let their babies cry it out, or where they somehow minimized the baby's emotional needs and level of emotional, physical contact and that kind of attunement, that we could consider that a rupture. And the repair for that could be that after that infant went through a stage where they were sleeping through the night, or later on, that parent could be attuned to smaller ruptures and repair. And that's going to go a long way. But again, there's no perfect parent. There's also no accurate measure of looking at what percentage of secure attachment a person has, right? So, right, there's a disorganized attachment style. Which is that you have an avoidant aspect and where you have an anxious aspect and where in some ways you have no construct whatsoever for knowing how to get your needs met. And that can look a lot like complex trauma, early developmental trauma, and other issues like that that present in counseling. You know, if a person has COVID or anemia, low iron in their blood, they can take a blood test and say, your level is exactly this. But the terms that we use are in relative amounts. And there are people that have an insecure attachment who have other strengths and capacities, like compassion, like feeling deeply, like the ability to attune to others, that if those things are in place, it might be easier for them to have a received secure attachment. The good news in all of this is if there was rupture in early parenting, that can be repaired in that relationship. And then secondly, there's hope and healing for insecure attachment through attunement to God and others. And for us as Christians, I just, you know, this was the whole point of the book. We're escaping spiritual exhaustion by trusting divine love, not by striving, not by doing more for God, not by somehow trying to obey more. It's by trusting love. That's true in the spiritual realm with God. It's true on the human level as well. Yeah, I think you bring up, as you're talking through that, brought two questions to mind for me. The first one being, can you go in and out of secure and insecure attachment? Like you're secure for one season of your life and then you're starting to not feel those 4 S's and now you're living in insecure attachment. So that's question number 1. And question number 2 that kind of tags onto that is that, are there certain, so for example, if I am seen and I am soothed, but I do not feel safe, does that typically breed a certain type of insecure attachment rather than I feel seen, but I do not feel soothed or safe? Does that breed a different type of insecure attachment? Well, first of all, you're forgetting that I'm an old man and that remembering the first question after I read that second question, I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to go back. Okay. But I'll do my best to remember it. Yeah. I think your first question was, am I now or have I ever been a member of the Communist Party? Yeah. Yeah. That was, yeah. I really want you to just blow that up on the podcast. No, first question, we'll just take it one at a time is, Can you go in and out of secure attachment or insecure attachment? So for a season you feel you're getting your 4 S's, you feel secure. In another season, you're not getting those 4 S's, so maybe you're insecure. Yeah, that's a great question. And it speaks again to the relativity of this. You know, when, when somebody says I took an attachment style quiz and here's my attachment style. It's not as fixed as we think it is. So first of all, I referred to earlier the disorganized attachment. And depending on what theorist you talk about, there's secure attachment and then 3 insecure attachment styles. And this is not going to be an episode on attachment styles, but I do want to answer your question. There's avoidant, There's anxious, and then some theorists will speak about disorganized attachment. Others will use the word ambivalent. There are differences between the two of those, but the ambivalent is they can have an anxious attachment, controlling, clinging, striving to get that other person to show up and to give them the love they need. Or in the avoidant, it's the opposite of checking out, dismissing, shutting down. That ambivalent is a good description for many people. I like to think about a fifth attachment style, and that is you have secure, uh, and then you have avoidant, anxious, disorganized, and ambivalent, because disorganized and ambivalent are not exactly the same thing. My understanding of the ambivalent is that I'm going back and forth. So there's times where I'm, uh, in the anxious, times where I'm avoidant. So that's important to say because that can look like Well, I must have been secure and now I'm not. I think that a true secure attachment is fixed inside of a person. The biblical phrase or metaphor

can be understood through Ephesians 3: 8:42

16, where Paul is talking in chapters 1 and 2 about all this good stuff that is true in our relationship with God. And then he says, here's my prayer for you. My prayer is that you would be rooted and established in your inmost being in love. And people can't see this, but in my office against my wall, just adjacent to me, is a, oh, probably 5 by 3 piece of artwork where it's simply roots that come from the top of the artwork going down about 3.5 feet. And it's multidimensional. And it's because I have an obsession with this idea of roots and being rooted. People have probably heard me quote Simone Weil, the French existential philosopher, who said, "The most important yet least recognized need of the soul is to be rooted." And so rooted is that picture in love of a secure attachment. When the wind blows, when the storms come, that that tree, the plant, is rooted and it's going to hold. If you will. Now, having said that, to your question, a person can have a trauma response. See, we can have trauma in our past. We can have abuse. We can have attachment wounds, which are the wounds of absence versus the wounds of presence of things that happen to us. And we can become triggered, dysregulated, activated in the present. And that will make me feel very insecure. And so I tend to have an ambivalent attachment style. And I would say that in the past, I had more of a disorganized attachment style. And now I see myself going between anxious and avoidant. And what I have begun to do is to track my, not just my emotional state, but what's happening in my body, what's happening somatically. And when I go to an avoidant attachment style, it's usually that something's activated in me and my body and my nervous system begins to shut down, going into hypoarousal. When I get anxious, something's activated and triggered in me, almost always relationally, that goes into hyperarousal and into a fight or flight. So there is a massive correlation between what's happening in a person's nervous system at any given time and where they would present on the attachment quiz. And that's another thing I would just say is that people can put a lot of stock in these quizzes. There are more robust and well-researched attachment tests that you can take. But if you just take typically a one-page online app assessment about what's your attachment style, you have to be aware that what's going on in you on that day, your level of stress, whether you're feeling connected to your partner, if you have one or not, that's all going to affect how one feels about that and where a person lands on that quiz. That's fascinating. I, the thing that stood out to me the most was that your attachment style is so relative to the moment. I just did not know that. So that's fascinating to me. Yeah. So to tag on the second question, which perfectly coincides where you were going. Yeah. Let's hold off on that question because I really want to answer that in a very deep, rich way. And I think your question, honestly, is at least one, if not two episodes, in terms of how that plays out. So let's, let's go back to soothed. And then after we get through these four S's, what I'd like to do is to have a conversation. We talked about this at another time to see how these attachment styles play out in different ways with different mental health disorders. Different ways of handling stress and all those kinds of ways. Oh man. Yeah. So I guess, you know, if you're watching this, you just have to keep watching. Just keep coming back every week. You will get there. That's right. And next, next episode, there's free balloons and hot dogs for the kids. Yes. Oh yeah. For everybody. So, well then let's, let's dive into Soothe and the second S that you, I mean, I know you've got just perfect examples of that. So I'll just— I'll let you go, Michael. So again, I know this is repetition, but seen is where the parent or caregiver says, I get you. With soothed, there's a shift, and it's where the parent or caregiver communicates verbally and nonverbally, I've got you. And this is where the child experienced this, but it's where the adult in therapy is saying, I sensed that my parents were available and responsive. Those are two very, very, very big words, available and responsive. And right away, I want to say that there are parents who, by virtue of being a single parent, by virtue of health issues with one or both parents, by virtue of socioeconomic realities and any other number of issues, There are some parents that through no fault of their own, not through negligence, not through maliciousness or a lack of love, they're not able to be available and responsive. So I just want to say that at the beginning. And yet we all need the availability of a parent or caregiver and that responsiveness. I have been guilty of this myself. When my kids were little and before iPhones existed, they would come in with Julianne from grocery shopping or something, and I was in graduate school and I'd be on my computer checking email and just lost on the computer. And I didn't look up and say, hey guys, welcome home, 'cause the little office was right there. But it grieves me to see in so many different situations, typically young parents, I presume it could be a grandparent or a great-great parent, parent as well, who their kids are at the park where I walk with my wife and my dogs, and the kids are playing on the monkey bars or the jungle gym or crawling around in the gravel with a ball, and the parents are just lost on their phone. And this is not criticism, but it's to say that I know how easy it is to be obsessed or lost in your phone and social media. But that's the context of availability. Maybe if Junior fell and hit his head, the parent would put their phone down and hopefully turn and be very responsive. But it's that availability that in the soothing of being available and responsive that they're also seeing. And this is just this idea that seen leads to being soothed, which leads to safe, which leads to security. The responsive is a sense that if mom and dad are home and they hear the baby cry, there's not just this sense of, oh, they'll be okay, but it's the sense of going, attending, checking in. There doesn't need to be each and every time a sense of going and picking the baby up or that child. Sometimes I remember when our kids were little as well, and I've seen this with many other children and friends' children, where as the child gets older, they'll fall and they'll initially be terrified and they'll kind of freeze. And then they look over at the parent and they see that the parent is making eye contact as if to say, you're okay. And then the child does one of two things. They cry because they feel the safety to cry with that gaze of their parents. And there's this sense of without the cognitive construct on a sensory level, then the parent can come and soothe them. And that's fascinating that the engagement and that sense of, I see you and I'm here, I'm available and I'm responsive in terms of seeing you, that can actually allow the person, the child, to feel the freedom to cry. And this is important because without that eye contact, if that child is alone, they may learn very quickly, I can't cry because no one's coming for me. And this gets to the heart of the issue. This is the phrase that I've heard our friend Curt Thompson say so many times. That we all come into the world looking for someone looking for us. And that when there's no one looking for us, we come into the world and we grow with this sense of no one's coming for me in my need. For the infant, it's hunger, it's they're cold or they're hot, they might be sick, whatever's going on. No one's coming for me. And on a sensory level, I'm just here alone. And that's not a belief that they understand because they don't have language, but it becomes encoded and imprinted into them on an embodied level. So this responsiveness and availability is so important. That is really the foundation of being soothed. The next one is that the child experienced comfort and care when distressed ill, sick, or in pain. And this was something that my mom did beautifully. And people that have listened to this podcast know that I've had— my mom passed away in 2000, so she's been gone 26 years, which it's hard to believe that it's been that quick. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday. But there were a number of years where I was estranged from my mom. My mom was part of my abuse. I've done a lot of work around that. I've forgiven her. I can bless her. I can be grateful for the mother that she was. And one of the things that she did that she was amazing at— she worked in a doctor's office. And when I was sick, when I was hospitalized, when I was 16 years old for 4 weeks in the Cleveland Clinic with mysterious ghost pains, which later were known to be pelvic inflammatory disorder from abuse. My mom would get me help. Some would argue that this isn't necessarily a good thing, but every doctor appointment we would go to, she would always take me out for a treat. And she just was wired as a helper to be very proactive. And because she worked in the medical world, she always was able, despite the fact that we didn't have a lot of money, she was very resourceful in that way. So I knew that if there was something that was physically wrong that I could get my needs met. Now, guess what happened? I became a bit of a hypochondriac. And what I mean by that is that every little ache and pain from about 7th grade through probably 12th grade when I graduated high school, I would begin to think— like in 7th grade, I remember, I literally have memories of me sitting in school and feeling these aches and pains. That were actually trauma that was, as we call it, somatized. Soma is the Latin word for body. Somatization is when our trauma doesn't have an outlet and when we can't articulate it and process it, and so it gets turned into our body. And I had these mysterious pains through my legs, my pelvic area, and at times it was disabling. And I didn't tell anybody about it for a long time because I was so ashamed about it. Because it was in my pelvic area. And then when I couldn't tolerate it any longer, I thought I was dying. I thought that it was some worst-case scenario. And then I would literally fantasize as a 7th, 8th grader about all the attention that I would get. And it wasn't this conscious thing that I was doing. It was just a part of my survival strategy for how my abuse played out. So I'm not saying, parents, withhold your comfort and care, or else your kids are going to become hypochondriacs and think that there's constant problems there. But there was such a deficit of me being seen, soothed, safe, and secure that in the one place of being attended to when I was sick, there was something in me that then sought to get my needs met by creating hypothetical catastrophic situations so that mom would then engage with me. So a little bit of a sidetrack, but maybe that'll be helpful for someone listening. Absolutely. As you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, there's seen is feels like the acknowledgment of like, hey, I acknowledge you. And soothing is kind of lingering in that moment and being there. How would one go about soothing someone else? When they themselves might be in a dysregulated place, or they, maybe in their words, don't have much capacity to be able to soothe? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think there's a lot of really great parents who are exhausted, in part because we have these artificial definitions of what it means to be a good parent. We're exhausted because we're driving our kids around the country or flying around the country. And we have 5 children and we're doing sports every weekend and all day long. And there's some ways, I think, where there's a beautiful sense of engagement with that. And in some ways, there's an overparenting that we're simply exhausted and we don't have that capacity to soothe. Oftentimes it's our own trauma, our own unhealedness that gets played out. It's very common for parents, and this happened to me when my son turned 4, is that when my son turned 4, I began to experience the trauma and to remember the trauma from when I was 4 years old. And so that's not the case with everybody, but having moments where you're on your last nerve or where your kids push your buttons, that's a very, very common thing. And this will sound cliché, but that's where it's so important to take care of ourselves. To step away, to breathe, to do tapping, to go outside, to get fresh air, to move, to throw your child if they're old enough in one of those jog strollers and go through the neighborhood and to walk briskly and just to know that they'll be okay as they're there. To reach out and to ask for help. And I know that that help is not always available. To call a friend, a family member, to talk to your spouse and say, I need a break. Again, that's not always possible, but to know that when the parent is not soothed and they're somehow spilling over out of that activation in their body, that that's a rupture and that repair will go a long, long, long way. I've sat with so many people, AJ, in my counseling office with their head in their hands saying, you know, here's how I blew up at my kid and I've ruined them forever and they're going to be in therapy in the future. And I'm like, well, if they're in therapy in the future, that's probably a good thing. But rest assured, you've not ruined your child. There was a rupture. And without me even having to guide them through it, there's just a natural instinct of what that repair looks like. To be humble, to be present, to be calm, to be quiet on the inside, and then move toward that child basically putting words age-appropriate about what happened, apologizing, and then re-engaging in a way where there's some kind of attunement to what's happening in that child. Were you scared? Were you sad? It's okay to talk to mommy or daddy about those kinds of things. So great question. That also segues into the next, if you will, component of being soothed, where the parent says, I've got you. And this is the one that in my mind is the most important. That's where the child experiences that their vulnerability and their dependence is welcomed. You know, there's a way in which even an 18-year-old or a teenager living at home is still incredibly vulnerable and dependent on their parents. And I'm not talking about financially, but emotionally, even though so many indications are I'm not dependent and I'm becoming independent and I'm going to push those boundaries and I'm not going to be vulnerable because you ask me how my day was and I say fine, and I go up to my room or I bury myself in my screen. That's why it's so important for parents to pursue at a deeper level. Here's what I mean for the young child, that their vulnerability is welcomed. So Junior is driving or riding his big wheel up and down the driveway. And I remember as a kid, the big wheel, you know, three-wheeled plastic bike had this little handbrake on it, and we would ride as fast as we could down our driveway. And then you pull the handbrake and you wipe out and you basically, you know, leave skid marks on the cement. But one time, I remember I remember seeing a neighbor child when I was an adult do this with a three-wheeled bike, and they rolled over and they got scraped up pretty bad. And this was one of those things like, hey, this might require a trip to the emergency room. And the parent's response was, don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about. Now, that's a really obvious one, but right there, the child's vulnerability, distress, and need for medical attention, even if it's Bactine and a Band-Aid, but this was something bigger than that, that communicates your vulnerability, your, if you will, neediness is okay. And my job as the parent, as the grownup, is to make sure that when you're in distress, when you're hurting, when you're injured, that I am coming for you. That I've got you and we're going to get you whatever you need. Other aspects of dependence are that children can feel, even in a family, alone when there is fighting and conflict going on. And children need, in order to feel soothed, they need to not just hope that the conflict goes away. If parents are yelling, screaming, or even having a conversation where there might be tension there, the children need to see in the rupture between the parents repair. And so the lack of repair can lead to a sense in that child where they feel this tension, their body is activated. And I've worked with literally countless men and women that talk about how either their parents fought all the time in front of the children, or their parents never fought and they would go off into the bedroom to have their conversations. The problem with that is that if they never fight, then the child never gets to see rupture and repair. So the repair is the key thing. And then that reconnection, not to say that the conflict and the distress doesn't have a significant impact on that child. But the parent can come back and be a sense of soothing and be a sense of, I wasn't here for you. We weren't— I wasn't aware of how this was affecting you. We're going to work so that that never happens again. But here, let me hold you. That kind of thing. So that vulnerability and dependence is something that as children get older, parents almost with kind of this stoic mentality, And oftentimes in Christian circles, there's this sense of as you grow up, you need to become less like a baby. You know, we use that term all the time. Don't be a baby. I remember on the wrestling team in high school, which was my primary sport, you know, somebody would get hit, their head would be knocked or something. And there was kind of this expectation. And this was in the '70s and '80s of don't be a baby, get back there. And do it. Why do we use that term baby? It's because the baby is vulnerable and dependent, but so is the teenager, and actually so is the adult. So I used this term last time. It's from Sue Johnson, the late, late, great psychologist that is responsible for bringing the mental health world emotionally focused couples therapy. And she's the one who said that regarding attachment, it's not just 0 to 4. And certain years in childhood, but our attachment needs to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure are from womb to tomb. And so couples that are listening, if you're experiencing a lot of distress and conflict in your relationship, you may need tools and things like that. But oftentimes there's something about our own attachment needs of being seen, soothed, safe, and secure that are getting activated in our relationship.. And all the communication tools and skills in the world won't help with that until that person learns how to be grounded and present within themselves. Hey, the last part about this, AJ, and I'm kind of moving quickly here because I know that we're coming to the close of the podcast, but I just want to really close the loop on this idea of being soothed. This is a big part of soothing. So we've talked about, about the things that are needed, and especially in the midst of distress, the comfort and care, vulnerability and dependence are welcome, but physical and emotional affection are a big part of being soothed. I'll never forget, years ago, I heard the story about Brennan Manning. Brennan Manning, the late, great ex-Catholic priest who wrote about the love of God and the relentless tenderness of Jesus. And he shared the story about how He would meet with his spiritual director quarterly, and they would meet somewhere on a beach. I don't know if it was in Corpus Christi, Texas, or in Florida, but they would meet up at a beach and they would park in different places. And their ritual quarterly was to walk toward each other like a mile apart. And as Brennan would get closer to his elderly spiritual director, this spiritual director, I don't know if he was in his 70s or 80s, he would jump up and down and he would begin to flap his hands up and down like a child on Christmas morning saying, yay, yay, yay. And Brennan Kennan would talk about how this pure, raw, uninhibited affection would move him so deeply, and that that was a picture of what he never got growing up. He had a cold, distant, critical, overly religious mother. It was also a picture of how God feels about us, that when we walk in the room, God lights up. That when you walk in the room and today's Monday and I'm going to see you on Wednesday as we gather together in Colorado for our 21st men's intensive weekend. When you walk in the room, I'm going to light up because I haven't seen you since, I don't think, since last spring. And it's nice to see you face to face here. But that's what a child needs. They need not just, you know, the parent to tousle the child's hair, not just for the father to say you're beautiful, not just for the the father to wrestle with the son on the floor, but an emotional affection that says, I am glad you're here. And the fact that you exist in my life brings me joy. That's an affection that really is the icing on the cake of being soothed, where the parent or caregiver communicates, I've got you, man. We could just keep talking all day about this. Yeah. So let's continue in the next conversation. We'll pick up safe of the scene, soothe, safe, and secure. And we'll see what we can unpack next time. Let's do it.