Ep 60: [Bonus] Politicians aren’t Our Parents: What Disorganized Attachment Teaches Us about this Moment

Where do we go from here? What do we do? Who do we vote for? My dear co-conspirators, if these questions have been keeping you up at night because the U.S. election is quickly approaching while injustice continues in Gaza, Congo, Sudan, and other places, this bonus episode- Politicians aren’t Our Parents- is for you. Yes, we are going to vote. And I believe we must also invest in community-based movements.

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

In this episode, you and I will explore the both-and of voting and organizing in your community through the lens of disorganized attachment. Then, we’ll unpack what disorganized attachment can teach us about ways to get organized in this moment of uncertainty. And if you have history of child abuse and neglect, I care deeply about you. This episode doesn’t go into details or examples about abuse and neglect; just defining what disorganized attachment is in relation to our political organizing. At any rate, if or when your body sounds the alarm and moves to protect you, please pause the episode and take care of your body in ways that feel right to you.  If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started. 

It’s very human to want a single answer to the question “what do I do?” A single answer to the problems of our multi-issued world might get us a little closer to certainty. And a little certainty might give us an illusion of comfort. After all the times you and I have been rage crying in the shower, numbing out and plugging back into direct action, it’s no surprise we need this coping mechanism, this semblance of certainty, this sense of control to get through the day and love the little humans in our care. The stakes are high and everything around us seems uncertain. We want to do what’s in our power to move closer to equity, liberation, and healing. 

But the thing is when we’re not centered (you know, from being stretched too thin surviving under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy while trying to raise our future generations intentionally), this need for certainty might make us want to put all of our eggs in one basket. And sometimes that basket is voting and hoping that the politicians will save us…even though deep down you know that’s not the case. It has never been the case. How’s that tracking for you? 

If some of your social identities are historically excluded, you already know that institutions and people with power aren’t the best ones to keep you safe. The police aren’t protecting you; they’re protecting the oppressive status quo. The manager isn’t protecting you; they’re protecting the company’s best interests and profit margins. You get the idea. It’s our neighbors, movement elders, youths, and co-conspirators on the ground and in the trenches who are the ones who will organize and mobilize to keep us safe. 

Yet, as a culture, many of us have been indoctrinated to see those with power… from the police to politicians… as our protectors, like how a child neurobiologically expects their parents to protect them. According to attachment theory, we’re hardwired this way. If your parent is protecting you and meeting your needs most of the time, you develop what’s called a secure attachment. You walk into the room feeling secure about your worth because you know that the world and other people are safe-ish. You can securely connect with them, ask for help, and receive help when you need to because those who raised you offered this type of support to you imperfectly but consistently enough when you were little. You don’t feel the survival need to anxiously cling onto others for fear that they’ll abandon you or to actively avoid others for fear that they’ll hurt you. For more information and references on attachment (but politicized and decolonized), please check out the episode shop[‘‘

w note for the link to Ep 39: Attachment Basics to Know Before Re-Parenting Your Inner Child. 

But if your parent is both a protector and perpetrator of harm, you develop what’s called a disorganized attachment. It’s disorganized because your two biological drives are at odds with each other. On one hand, as a child you want to connect with your parents. On the other hand, you want to avoid them because they’re also a source of danger. You’re stuck in the freeze response because the part of you that wants to connect is telling you to move toward your caregivers. And the part of you that wants to protect you from harm is telling you to move away from your caregivers. To say it another way, when those who are supposed to be safe are also a source of fear, when they’re supposed to protect you but they also hurt you, you live in a fear-induced survival mode and you live in a severe distress…whether these people are your parents or politicians. 

Still with me? Please take a moment to recenter your body if you need to. Ahhh.

To connect the dots back to politics, do you remember when President Biden declared that Covid was over back in September of 2022?  As he declared the pandemic over, quote “The U.S. is still reporting close to 60,000 cases and 400 deaths each day. Millions are struggling with long COVID; by some estimates, this often debilitating condition is keeping 4 million adults out of work.” End quote, according to Michelle A. Williams, dean of the faculty of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. For some of us, this might’ve been the moment when the illusion that those in power, in this case a political party, would protect us and keep us safe, was dispelled. For most of us, it might’ve been another eye roll moment, reminding us that those in power can’t be relied on to look out for our safety. The same push and pull of disorganized attachment is at play here: we want to move toward those with power in the hope that they’ll protect us. At the same time, we want to move away from them to avoid being harmed. 

Another example is the police. When we see harm happen on the streets or in the home, our societal conditioning might make calling the police our first instinct… a move toward those with power so they can protect us. But many of us know that they’re not protecting everybody and not serving everyone’s safety.

Finally, what about the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris? A big part of me wants to see the first Black, South Asian, female president so badly, hoping that when this person with these social identities is in power, I will be safer. But besides her social identities and past accomplishments, what are her policies again? I know she’s emphasizing that she’s neither Trump, nor Biden. Amazing. But what are her policies? Will my tax dollars still go to fund politically sanctioned mass murder? I feel that disorganized attachment push-pull again, feeling pulled towards someone who ought to protect me but also wanting to move away to protect myself from danger. How’s that landing for you?

So where does that leave us? In disorganized attachment, one key intervention, among many, many interventions (because disorganized attachment is the most complex one)… One key intervention is for adults to cultivate the sense of safety they didn’t get as children with other people aka their chosen families, or with the land, nature, animals, ancestors, and spirits. To say it another way, instead of fantasizing that if we change who we are enough, those who raised us would offer the care and connection we yearned for, we reclaim our power, take the eggs out of that basket and put them in other baskets like the chosen family basket. We divest from those who have power over us (in this case our parents who aren’t our source of safety) and reinvest in those who will power-with with us (in this case, our chosen family and co-conspirators). And it’s worth overstating the obvious here that I’m making this healing work sound so simple. You already know that it’s the work of a lifetime to build a chosen family of those who you trust, those who see you, those who can disagree and engage in conflicts with you and then repair, those who you can safely set boundaries with and so on. 

And this intervention is nothing new in social justice organizing. By all means, go vote. But don’t count on powerful political leaders to disrupt the status quo that benefit them. Instead, we divest from institutions that prioritize profit over people’s health and reinvest in community-based care. For example, the People’s CDC, which is a volunteer-run cooperative team who provide scientific and reliable information on Covid safety, care, and advocacy. Or, the Covid Action Map which shows places around the world where you can access masks and even air purifiers for free. I’ll link them in the episode show notes. 

Similarly, we can divest from or defund the police to invest in community-based care that practices non-carceral crisis response as an alternative to calling the police. For example, an organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called Care-Based Safety offers support on the phone for situations like conflict de-escalation, noise complaints, and wellness checks for neighbors. Another organization called Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART) can quote “directly deploy HEART responders for EMERGENCY calls, including for those with mental illness and/or substance use disorders in public spaces as well as domestic spaces (within people’s homes).” End quote. And by the way, their responders are neither social workers nor clinicians. Rather, they are trained community members. And there are so many organizations and hotlines that you can choose from as a solid alternative to calling the police. I’ll link these organizations and hotlines in the episode show notes for you. We have such abundance of options to unlearn and undo state violence. 

So, my dear co-conspirator, because politicians are not our parents, which community-based mutual aid networks or collectives in your neighborhood would you like to mobilize with and invest in? What chosen family can you turn to for true safety when powerful institutions fail to keep you safe?

Thank you so much for reclaiming your power back and cultivating safety with those who want to power-with with you. 

Before I go, if you’ve been wanting to work with me on getting unstuck from yelling, controlling, or people pleasing in parenting, on reparenting your inner child, on breaking generational cycles, and caring for your nervous system, all rooted in decolonized mental health and political analysis, I’d love to invite you to join the Fall cohort of our online social justice parenting program. We meet on Zoom 7 Wednesday evenings from Oct 2nd to Nov 13th . Your tuition also includes a year-long membership where you continue your practice with me and our program graduates live every month. Please check out the other bonuses and pricing tiers at comebacktocare.com/learn. 

Alright, our next Season is going to run from October to December and the theme is (drum roll please) how to apologize to our little humans. If you have questions about this topic you’d like me to address or stories to share, please feel free to email me at nat@comebacktocare.com.

If you’ve been enjoying our podcast, please consider supporting our heart-centered work by leaving a review and rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or by joining our Patreon. You can find all the details at comebacktocare.com/support. These actions really, truly help sustain our work in powerful ways. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.