As you love yourself: Attachment and Community

The command to love others as you love yourself seems straightforward until you realize how much you struggle with accepting and loving yourself. Can we really love others while we struggle like this? Discover here some ways the fallen world has affected our souls and fresh perspectives to go deeper with God while seeing the connection between childhood, attachment style, and fellowship with God.

Do we see ourselves through broken mirrors?

We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves. But what is to be done if we cannot love ourselves? If we constantly live under a cloud of self-condemnation, guilt, shame, or distrust of others, our capacity to love others will be compromised. The truth is, until you come to love yourself, esteeming yourself to be worthy of love, care, compassion, mercy, and grace, you will be unable to extend those attributes to others as God would have you reach out. You cannot give what you do not have, and if you don’t see yourself as God sees you, you are going to have a challenging time surfacing those attributes in your relationships.

Implicit Memories

I cannot claim to have a comprehensive understanding of how our souls are created, shaped, and set, but I’ve seen enough in myself and others to know that many of the things we esteem to be true about ourselves is scripted in our minds and set firm during our early years of life. If we have a weed growing in the garden of our souls, more likely than not the roots that sustain the plant are found in our developmental years. Sometimes things happen to us later in life that are easier to name, label, and handle, but things get tricky with the wounds of our youth. The term “implicit memory” provides me a term that we can use to reference this problem. Implicit memories are memories that are emotionally based that lack objective analysis. When we are young, we lack the vocabulary to name, label, and skillfully handle problems. The formative years are emotionally experienced, and we rely on others to help us emotionally regulate, identify how we are feeling, express those feelings in healthy ways, and curate an image of ourselves and others that sets the trajectory of how our interactions with others will unfold for the rest of our lives.

Reflection: How do you feel about yourself at a deep level? About others? Do you find your self talk to be uplifting or demeaning?

Does the idea of deep, intimate community intimidate you or excite you?

Healthy people provide a mirror with which we can see ourselves clearly: worthy of love, beautiful, wonderful to behold, fun to be with, accepted, loved, capable, an image bearer of God Himself. Unhealthy people provide us with a broken mirror that warp our views of ourselves and others. Either way, at this young, formative age, we come to understand ourselves by the mirror, whether it is broken or whole. The way we have been trained to see ourselves and others shapes the attitude we enter community. There is no way that can be overstated. Am I worthy to be loved? Am I permitted to take up emotional space? Do I have intrinsic value that cannot be stripped away? Are others trustworthy? Are they going to harm me? Will they help me? Are they able/capable of helping me? When we have had long experiences with whole mirrors, we can identify a broken mirror and look past the shards to see the bits and pieces of goodness, beauty and truth in ourselves and others. But for half the population, who have insecure attachment styles, a broken mirror is familiar. Goodness, truth and beauty within ourselves and others is difficult to ascertain. It is our normal.

An implicit memory is one where we experience an event emotionally, exclusively as the fullness of reality. It is subconscious. An explicit memory is one where the facts as well as the personal experience can be recalled. It is conscious. In our early youth, we lack the cognitive capacity and tools to navigate the experience maturely and objectively. Feelings are the way we enter the world and experience the world. In infancy and early youth, implicit memory reigns and helps to form our attachment style.

Reflection: Do you know your attachment style? There are many free online tests available to help you explore your attachment style. These tests will help you to understand how you interact with others and can be a great launch point to deeper self understanding, forgiveness/ repentance, and drawing nearer to God.

Broken Attachment

As adults, sometimes we need to go back to that younger version of ourselves, carrying the tool belt of experience and maturity, and walk our younger selves through an experience that didn’t deliver us to a space that edified our souls. We are our own therapist in this sense, and admittedly, it is much, much easier if you have Jesus walking with you to the construction site. He is the Redeemer of our souls, the Repairer of the Breach in our spirit. We were created by Him who created the heavens and the earth, He who knit us together in our mother’s womb and knew our days before even one of them came to pass. He is the Expert on these matters.

These implicit memories I referenced are sometimes the strongholds in our heart that the enemy maintains to prevent us from experiencing the fullness of God and the fullness of new life. Stated another way, the effects of sin mar our soul; time and darkness obscure the wounds and we are left feeling like there is a problem but unable to name it, find it, uproot it; like we are trying to lay hold of a mirage or capture a cloud. We need The Truth, Light, and Way revealed to us. We need help.

Reflection: Do you have a nagging sense that something is amiss? Do you tell yourself that you are just a loner? That you "just don't like people?" That everyone will let you down and they cannot be trusted?

In terms of attachment style and community, I suspect many of us are crippled by this problem of implicit memories. When we are young, if we are surrounded by healthy, loving caregivers, we learn that we are loveable, acceptable, and worthy to be known – even in our faults. We have healthy mirrors. Mature, kind people help us to understand what we are feeling and how to express those feelings so we can find our needs met through others, these being love, acceptance, security, understanding, purpose, and significance. These healthy relationships carry us through to maturity, where we discover our needs met perfectly in Christ. While there are exceptional youths who find the truth that Christ is the perfect Provider, most of our children rely on our faith and dependence on Jesus to model for them how to depend on the Divine. When we say “make their faith their own” during the years of transitioning to adulthood, I suspect this is what we mean. They are riding without the training wheels and looking back to those who modeled a solid faith as a reference point for their self-assessment of their progress.

Reflection: Did you have good role models growing up? Do you have deep seated bitterness, resentment, or anger toward a caregiver?

Unfortunately, around half the population does not have a secure attachment style. I take this to imply that half of us did not have a childhood experience that taught us to rely on Jesus and community like God’s ideal would provide. It seems to also imply that half of us are still struggling to make those connections in healthy ways, offering others and ourselves broken mirrors.  

Here’s another way of stating it:

• Healthy mirrors result in secure attachment, where I learn I am seen, safe, secure.

• Broken mirrors result in insecure attachment, where I am not seen, safe, secure because either I’m not okay (good, safe, worthy) or you are not okay (good, safe, worthy)

Whether our perception fault lies with our understanding our ourselves or with others, we are disabled from loving others as ourselves with this obstacle remaining in our way.

Matthew 6:22 NKJV  22 “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Matthew 6:22 NLT 22 “Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. 23 But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

Until we have a healthy perception of the world, ourselves, and each other, our estimation of the world will be skewed and we will lack the ability to see objectively. We need to have our perceptions healed so we can be healthy.

When we are young, we rely on our caregivers to help us to see ourselves as good. Let me state that again. We relied on our caregivers to teach us that we are inherently good and image bearers of the Most High God. If our needs encountered frustration, lack of experience, or a lack of resources, this greatly influenced our understanding of how we interact with our needs. When we were young, if our cries of hunger were frequently met with frustration or anger, the implicit memory formed will be emotions and feelings of unworthiness, being unlovable, being a burden, insecurity, distrust, or even fear of the feelings of hunger itself. The need for sustenance, a basic need, accrues a skewed perception because of experience. In this example of hunger at a young age while being dependent on others, the child lacks the tools to understand and recognize the caregiver is tired, ill equipped, overcommitted, or distracted. Instead, the implicit memory, buried in our subconscious, tells us we are not okay (good, safe, worthy) or others are not okay (good, safe, worthy). Because it is subconscious, there is no objective observation that reasons out the truth and facts of the matter. That is, it is a feeling free of logic. It isn't right or wrong, it is just a feeling. However, it lies hidden in our souls, sometimes directing and steering our interactions with others for our entire lives. This is the fallout of a broken world and the effects of sin. This is a stronghold.

Then and Now

Stepping back and observing from a 10,000 foot view, how many times has our experience of community impacted by these implicit memories? Memories where we learned we were a burden, that others cannot be trusted, that we are not good, we cannot do anything right, others cannot do anything right. The list can go on and on. The devil of it all is that we never recognize that they are implicit memories; part of our subconscious. They formed our perception of ourselves and others decades ago and continue to throw shade on our current experiences. Our perception is held in darkness – we don’t know what we don’t know! We so desperately need the Light Jesus offers us so we can understand ourselves better, accept the healing He offers, and step into the divine purposes God has established for us: that we would be His image bearers, revealing His goodness to the powers of eternity, each of us orbiting the Father in intimate, close relationship with Him and with each other.

As we welcome and receive the light Jesus offers us, we begin to understand that there are very few people we can legitimately blame. The more light we receive, the more we understand how sin and redemption work. We behold the beauty of the truth that Jesus came to set the captives free. He is the whole, Holy Mirror, the original Image Bearer, the image of the invisible God.

Colossians 1:15-16 NKJV 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.

The broken experiences we received were the products of the unfortunate experience others received. It is the trajectory of humanity since the fall in the Garden of Eden. There was no messenger who brought our predecessors greater fullness of the Good News: you were shaped by broken people and a broken world but there is One who can reshape you because you were created for Him. We realize that in our predecessors' lives, there was no wiser, kinder soul who brought them the next level of freedom from the shame and guilt that plagued their mind and bent their will. We are enabled to come to this conclusion because we recognize we ourselves don’t know what we don’t know and have operated under guilt and shame ourselves. When we see ourselves, we can see others. When we hit our growth ceiling, we need community to lift our lid. That is the operative power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in His people and the heavenly call upward, to our higher selves: the new man.

Reflection: If you have individuals from youth that caused you to have a negative self image, how can you imagine what caused them to behave that way? What sin harmed them to perpetuate sin?

The Unapproachable Light

In Christ, we are carried and transported past the impossible threshold of guilt to God’s love, where even though all things are exposed, there is no condemnation for us and others.

1 Timothy 6:16 NKJV 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.

Hebrews 4:13 NKJV 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

Ephesians 3:11-12 NKJV  ….Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him

Hebrews 4:16 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

When we experience the acceptance of Jesus in the His glaringly bright light where nothing can hide and He sees all of us, we can begin a deeper acceptance of others. When we feel loved by God while we simultaneously observe the dark spots in our souls we didn’t even know were there, we experience a deeper love of others. God deeply loves and accepts us while at the same time observing all our problems, shortcomings, and garbage. It is all because of the blood of Jesus. I think one of the major hang-ups we have in accepting the power of the blood of Jesus is that we are esteeming blood from our own perspective. From God’s perspective, His beloved Son has ushered us into His throne room through His blood. Without Jesus’ as our guide, clothed in His crimson righteousness, we would be promptly expelled from the throne room, blown to smithereens by the powerful presence of God, who is Himself unapproachable.

Finding An Audience In The Light

While I stand naked and exposed in His light, I can accept myself in the face of my brokenness because He and I see my shadows, yet He doesn’t condemn me for them. He handles me gently and mercifully. That’s not to say He doesn’t call me to repentance, but what I am referring to is the lack of shame we can experience in coming to our King. Sometimes it is our inability to gaze at our own sinfulness that compels us to hide from the King. He is looking for us, but our shame drives us to the shadows.

Genesis 3:9-10 NKJV 9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

We recognize that while we are redeemed, we struggle against the effects of sin in our lives. Experiencing the mercy of God, sensing His compassion for how sin marred my soul yet extending His view of me to be blameless, calls me toward my higher self, my newly created self in Christ. My heart cries out because I have felt and experienced the objective truth: there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1 NLT

And because I have experienced His deep level of welcoming acceptance, I realize His beauty is for everyone in my circle.

1 John 1:7 NLT  7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

I have felt His long, unwavering gaze upon me while in the mercilessly revealing light. The gaze that doesn’t stop looking at me while observing my deep flaws, my shame, my weak love for Him. The gaze that implies deep desire and jealous love for me. The gaze that pierces all that I am and still submits the ridiculously high bid for my soul: His life.  I have heard Him call me, draw out and surface the new creation in me. My experience with Him equips me to call out and surface the new creation in others, regardless of the mirror they hold or the mirror I hold, which frees me from the bondage of perfection/adequacy/enoughness to allow Him to work through me. I can trust others to be His voice that calls to my deep and leads me upward, even though they struggle like I do against the powers of sin and the flesh. We can unwaveringly gaze upon each other because we have been gazed upon. There is no condemnation here.

Prayer: Father, thank You for loving me. Give me the grace to behold and gaze upon the shame Your Son Jesus endured so that I can endure my own shame while under Your loving gaze. Uproot all the secret places in my soul that keep me from fellowshipping with You and Your followers. Give me eyes to find and gaze upon the wounding moments of my past, that by gazing upon them with You in Your light, I may find healing and the capacity to hold space for others' wounds. Give me ears to hear Your upward call to the new creation I am, and ears to hear from others when they call out the new creation in me when I cannot see or lay hold of it. Give me a voice that is directed and anointed by the Holy Spirit to call out and speak forth the new creation in others that they may be edified, Your Kingdom come, and Your Name be glorified. Amen.