Attachment Styles And Attunement

Julie Peters tunes into how our earliest life lessons can cause us ongoing hardship.

- By Julie Peters

When we are hurt, when we are feeling lost, when we feel isolated and depressed, something is missing. Something big. Something old. For some of us, it’s been missing our whole lives.

The way we often describe this need is that we want to feel seen and heard. We want to be acknowledged for who we really are, to be held by a person who can look into our eyes and understand us. It’s the feeling of being got, of being felt by someone who cares about us depthlessly.

When we are lonely, we aren’t just craving company. Loneliness has been a major theme this last year, with many of us grappling with it more than we ever have before. We’ve missed dinner parties, meeting friends for coffee, going to the neighborhood hole in the wall. But loneliness isn’t about being in a crowd. I’ve had some of my loneliest moments at a party I’m throwing, filled with people who are supposed to be my friends. Loneliness is a call from the heart to be seen and loved in that sacred space where you can be your whole self, with truth. Loneliness is a craving for attunement.

The word attunement is often used in the context of attachment theory, a psychological concept that explores how we form relationships and manage stress within them.

When a parent is attuned to a child, she is feeling