It’s now acknowledged within mainstream psychology that attachment begins at birth. The cutting edge field of Somatic Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology (SPPP) finds that attachment begins way before birth, a wisdom that is not yet in the mainstream thinking and consciousness about babies and relationships.
We are conscious, sentient beings long before birth and we can benefit a great deal from loving, welcoming contact and secure attachment from the very beginning of life. Some parents have a connection with their baby before conception, seeing visions of them, or having dreams of their physical characteristics, and receiving communications. A two-way relationship is possible between parents and their incoming soul/baby. Siblings can be especially tuned in to their incoming siblings and may show a sense of knowing about their unborn sibling that’s accurate, or give you messages from him/her.
There are four attachment styles commonly spoken of within mainstream psychology: Secure, Insecure-Anxious-Avoidant, Insecure-Anxious-Ambivalent, and Disorganized. These attachment styles have not been applied to the prenatal developmental period by mainstream psychology. The cutting edge information shared here takes us back before birth to the true beginnings of attachment imprinting. We are forming our prenatal attachment imprinting whilst we are in a dynamic developmental process throughout our journey into life; here I will share just four areas that are formative during the prenatal period:
- Preconception – leaving Source, relationships with companions, family field
- Conception – beginning of embodiment – our soul coming into a physical body
- Implantation & Discovery – attaching to the womb/mother, discovery and general womb dynamics
- Ancestral Imprints – trans-generational imprints
1. Pre-Conception:
Many have experienced an existence elsewhere before they came here to this life from Source, Light, Heaven, God, Divine Home, etc. I call that place Source. Some people feel reluctant, or coerced, when they leave Source to come here. This can affect their attachment dynamics because they feel that they did not fully choose to come, and that can create ambivalence about being here in a body. This dynamic can contribute to an ambivalent attachment style in which the person’s energy is turning back towards Source instead of fully moving forward into their new life.
My felt sense of Source, which is very hard to put into words, is one of being surrounded by love, permeated inside and out by love, and that I was love. Even people who really want to come here can feel homesick for Source. How we leave Source, and whether we wanted to come here or not, has a deep bearing on how we attach. Your ability to be fully present is affected by your pre-conception to conception dynamics/transition because this is a powerful and foundational phase in our embodiment dynamics. The level of presence you can achieve determines the quality of connection and relationship you will be able to have with yourself, and therefore with others.
If you experienced trauma when leaving Source, or coming into the field of your parents, or your conception, this can affect your ability to fully attach. Trauma and overwhelm often interfere with quality of connection, how much you can receive from your parents and other loved ones, and your ability to be present.
2. Conception
The Encyclopedia Britannica (source Wikipedia) says: “Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and birth of a sentient creature (generally a human) who is the material manifestation of an entity, god or force whose original nature is immaterial (as in not yet embodied).”
At conception your discarnate Soul/energy body joins with your mothers egg and your fathers sperm thus joining energy and matter; this is the beginning of your embodiment journey. There is a lot going on at conception – you meet your ancestral lines, your parent’s energy, relationship and sexuality, feel the family field, enter into the physical realm, and begin to grow your own body. It is an epic and very significant juncture in our journey.
Our soul begins its embodiment journey in a tangible way at conception. We know everything about our parents and the family we are entering. We will learn much about attachment and connection through how our parents show us their way of doing it both individually and together. What level of intimacy and connection do they have? How does it feel between them? Is it safe to connect, etc – we learn much about this from experiencing our family and many of the attachment patterns are passed down from previous generations in parents who have not looked at their ancestral imprinting before conceiving their own children.
3. Implantation & Discovery:
Our task as we arrive in the womb is to implant into the womb lining. Conception happens in the fallopian tube about seven days after conception. Our cells are busy dividing as we travel down the fallopian tube and tumble into the great cavern of our mother’s womb. Then we have to choose and navigate to a site where we can burrow into our mother’s womb lining. It’ imperative that we attach or we won’t make it. This nest site will be where your placenta will grow. We root into our mothers body at a time when we are in the early stages of growing our own body, our cells, organs and psyche.
Our perception of the womb environment forms part of our attachment imprinting. E.g. my mother’s womb was a toxic, a great deal of it covered in a black tar-like substance making it challenging to find a place that was free of toxicity. I was not welcome and I felt unsafe. Our mother’s state of being, whether we are wanted and welcomed or not, and whether it was healthy or toxic, all affect how we perceive the world, people and relationships. Is it safe, is it scary, are we able to feel secure and welcome? What are information are we picking up and absorbing about our parents attachment style?
Once implanted our attachment dynamics continue to be influenced by our parents, particularly by our mother’s relationship with her partner, our experience of our connection to her, and her feelings towards her unborn baby.
Discovery is the point when one or both of our parents discovers that we’re here. How they respond to this news will affect how we feel about them, and about being here, relationships and going out into the world. Am I wanted, unwanted, safe, is this a good place, do I have to work at it to stay alive/survive? How wanted we feel in our deepest core self does affect our attachment dynamics, e.g. we may feel insecure if we were unwanted and feel anxious if our partner doesn’t continually reassure us.
4. Ancestral
Trans-generational attachment dynamics are part of our attachment ‘style’. As energy/Soul we come towards our conception, enter the family field of our parents, siblings and others as we get closer, feel their relationship, and our ancestral lines. Much is passed down unconsciously from parent to child, and attachment dynamics are a big part of our inheritance, unless our parents were able to heal their ancestral attachment imprints before conceiving their own children. If your parents healed their attachment issues so that they could have more true choice in their parenting, you were lucky! True choice is having the internal freedom not to relate to others and life out of your trauma, imprinting or wounding.
Many of us, in an unconscious reaction against what we did or did not receive from our parents, will swing the pendulum to the opposite end of the attachment style spectrum. E.g. parents who are insecurely/avoidant attached can become overly hands-on in an effort to create something different than what they received from their parents. Because this impulse comes out their own lack and imprinting it presents as suffocating parenting with unhealthy boundaries. It may look very different than what they received, but it’s a response arising out of their original attachment deficit. In this sense the parenting is arising out of their trauma/deficit. Even so, I want to appreciate parents who try to do it differently, are motivated to change their ancestral imprinting and who want to have more choice about what they’re passing on to their kids. We can heal our attachment dynamics and wounding with support, and create new internal resources such as the ability to be present, regulated, centered, and grounded. Trained practitioners can help, and sometimes our life partner can help us to heal and change our attachment style.
After conception we continue to learn about ancestral dynamics at womb school. We absorb them from the way that our parents interact with each other and on cellular, energetic and somatic levels. Healthy attachment is made possible by parents who, if they didn’t have a secure attachment themselves, are willing to look inside at their own imprinting, build new resources, and make changes from the inside out.
To practice conscious early parenting before or during pregnancy exploring ancestral imprints is a must. Observe a generation or two back to see the patterns. It can help to get support from another as it’s often hard to see our own family’s imprints, they seem so familiar! – or even ‘normal’ to us.
Conclusion:
We don’t become a person when we’re born; we have already had a world of experience and life before our birth. Our experiences in the womb have a huge impact both on how our birth goes, and on how we perceive our birth. Our perception will be colored by all of our previous experiences. There is growing acknowledgement of birth trauma, but think about this – birth only lasts a couple days at the most – we’re in the womb for 9-10 months absorbing everything around us! We are learning how to survive and growing our body; learning more about life than at any other time. Everything that happens to us in the womb is imprinted into our Soul Body at a pre-verbal level and has a profound influence on our lives and on our ability to connect and have fulfilling relationships.
© 2016 Karen Melton
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