Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

089: Our Attachment Wounds and God's Promise (with Summer Joy Gross)

• Season 6 • Episode 89

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Emmanuel—God with us. We have heard this promise of God’s presence. But might our attachment wounds skew, distort, or hinder us from embracing this reality? Do we live as slaves to our attachment strategies rather than as beloved children of God? And how can we learn to do something different in our spiritual lives?

Summer Joy Gross is an Anglican priest, retreat leader, and spiritual director whose work is guided by the belief that our stories can be transformed by God's invitation to make his love our home base. She is associate faculty of spiritual formation and the art of spiritual direction at the Healing Care Ministries' spiritual direction school. She is the host of The Presence Podcast and lives in North Georgia with her husband, their three teenagers.

Summer has just written a book called, The Emmanuel Promise: Discovering the Security of a Life Held by God.

You can find more about Summer here: https://www.athirstforgod.com/
And the Presence Project here: https://www.athirstforgod.com/the-presence-project/

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[00:00:15] Geoff: Immanuel, God with us. We have heard this promise of God's presence probably as Christians for a long time, but maybe our attachment wounds have skewed, distorted, or hindered us from embracing this reality. Do we live as slaves to our attachment strategies or rather as God's beloved children? And how can we learn to do something different?

Different in our spiritual lives. That's what we're talking about today. This is the attaching to God podcast, where we are exploring a neuroscience informed spiritual formation. And our guest today is Summer Joy Gross, who is an Anglican priest, a retreat leader and spiritual director whose work is guided by the belief that our stories can be transformed by God's invitation into his love.

And she's also the associate faculty of spiritual formation and the art of spiritual direction at the. Healing care ministries. And I think we're going to hear a little bit more about that. And then she hosts also the presence podcast and lives in North Georgia with her husband and their three teenagers.

So that's a pretty busy life. Thank you for being on the show summer.

[00:01:18] Summer Joy Gross: It's such a privilege. I've been following you and your wife and reading some of your stuff and I'm just, it's always such a gift, such a strong resonance. So it's just a joy to get to talk with you today.

[00:01:34] Geoff: Yeah, I came across I don't know your site or some stuff. People probably just recommended you to me a little bit. I was like, Oh, she's doing a lot of really interesting kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden I got this invitation to have you on the podcast because you're writing your, you wrote a new book.

It just came out. It's called the Emmanuel promise, discovering the security of a life held by God. And inside that is a lot of attachment conversation, which we're a big fan of here, of course. So can you tell us how you got into combining attachment theory and relationship with God and spirituality?

How'd you come across that? How did you start making those connections?

[00:02:11] Summer Joy Gross: was one of the most biggest aha moments of my life. So about 12 years ago, I had been doing some healing care groups in our local parish. We went back to healing care ministries to, to learn from them again. And Anne, Dr. Anne Halley was teaching on attachment theory. Teaching us how to do attachment interviews in order to help us to discern people's wounds and the way it was creating a barrier to relationship with God.

So that was about 12 years ago, and It's such a huge aha moment for me and honestly for my mom as well. My mom was doing this training around the same time and we started just taking in every book everything that we could find about this one subject and At the same time as I knew there was something deep within my story that resonated with it, it wasn't just purely about other people's stories and wanting to help other people come to healing, but because of my own attachment story which, Goodness, I'm so grateful for the gift of writing this book because I was able to dig super deep into my own attachment story.

But yeah, this understanding of our attachment style Creating our neural pathways that every other relationship travels down in fact, even our relationship with God was just a huge aha moment and really the first steps to a lot of deep healing in my own life.

[00:04:06] Geoff: Yeah, Sid and I have been on a similar journey where it's been given language to what you said, some of the blockages. Could you say really quick, what is an attachment wound? Like when you use that language and maybe that's you don't have enough time in 30 minutes, but what's an attachment wound?

What is that? 

[00:04:24] Summer Joy Gross: Are some moments in our attachment in which a person was not able to attune to us. So our attachment caregiver was not able to attune to us with our our inner life and gave us the idea that that we were on our own. That we either had to like beg that person to stay in the room, to beg them to keep their attention on us, or we began to believe that we were on our own and self reliant, that we were the only ones there to take care of ourselves. So there was either a hope that, man, if we yelled long enough, or if we had a large enough emotional reaction, maybe they'd tune in

They'd care for us the way we needed to be cared for. Or we lost hope and we began to believe that we were on our own and we had to provide for ourselves.

[00:05:38] Geoff: Yeah, that's great. I like that phrase of begging for attention and those two responses that you mentioned become. Larger attachment styles, one where you hyper activated in your attachment system, you're always, you said, we're begging. You're always like making exclamation marks all over the place.

Or you deactivate your attachment system and you're just like, I'll just figure this out on my own. I'll just play in the corner. I'll just get good grades and do my own thing or something like that. What were as you were looking into the attachment styles And things, what was it that was standing out to you and helping explain your own spiritual journey or your own kind of attachment to history?

[00:06:16] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. So I have the unfortunate. response of fawn or people pleasing to a moment of fearing that I'm going to be rejected. And I have some performance as well, but for me, people pleasing is a strong trauma response in fact, to feeling like I need to see if I can keep that person's love and attention.

That actually created, because That precious beloved person of mine, caregiver of mine, would often be so overwhelmed by me that he would often turn away. So shame became my resting emotion.

[00:07:07] Geoff: So how did that then roll into kind of your attachment or non attachment to God? How do you think that some of those kind of and would that be? Like, would you categorize that as more of an anxious attachment then for yourself or would you be somewhere

[00:07:23] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah, definitely anxious attachment. Definitely an anxious attachment and there was just always an ache or a hollowness. A feeling that I wasn't being loved enough, even when someone was pouring out towards me. I had a hard time holding that and receiving it and trusting that it would be there tomorrow.

As that kind of moves into my relationship with God, I realized how much I was begging for his attention and not really believing that my needs were were something that would invite relationship. I thought I had to weigh my needs on a scale to try to see if is this one strong enough that I can bring this into the presence of God?

And I was always afraid that my sin was going to be a reason that he would turn away and walk out the door, and then I would have to beg him to return with perfect performance. Or saying the right thing, some type of formula. I didn't really realize that the grace of God meant he was always in the room.

[00:08:45] Geoff: Which is the title of your book and which, calling God Emmanuel in early chapters of Matthew, I think is just so profound and, a lot of times the churches misses that for sure. So What I was hearing is that. Your childhood upbringing that made you, and you didn't use this word, but hypervigilant toward relationships also applied toward your relationship with God I always need to be paying attention to whether I have done something to push God away or whether God is upset with me and I need to, and I'm assuming that this creates all sorts of internal anxiety, right?

Rather than resting in the promise that God is always with us. That, God delights to be with us, in fact. So then what were all right we'll talk, I'll ask, how did you. And others that you've been working with start moving away from that. But let's talk about the goal really quick, or what does like a secure attachment with God or with others look like what are the factors that are involved there?

[00:09:41] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. So one of the things that we learn about a earned secure attachment that a child might receive from a parent is that they had thousands of interactions of loving care. Through the senses, through a warm voice, through cuddling through a, through milk, through eyes of connection and delight.

So through the senses receiving the gift of an earned secure attachment, but it takes thousands of times. And then what we see in a three year old. who has a secure attachment is that they're able to go out and explore and adventure and have a sense of safety and they begin to feel the love of the caregiver even when they're out of the room.

[00:10:45] Geoff: so they carry in a sense that that secure presence with them. They have this ingrained kind of neural response to the world of Oh, I'm safe. And if whenever I don't feel safe in this moment, I know where to go to become safe. I, I seek proximity to the one who can help. Yeah. So then how did that start shifting or how did you start shifting your view of God toward that? How do people get an earned secure attachment with God? If maybe they have an insecure attachment where they either think God is dismissive. We haven't talked so much about the avoidant kind of.

Attachment style, where God is distant, judgmental just follow the rules and everything would be okay. We don't really need to be buddies. Is the more of the dismissive or avoid an attachment. But whether it's those two kinds of areas how do people slowly march toward an earned secure attachment with God?

[00:11:37] Summer Joy Gross: I I don't think I've gone

[00:11:39] Geoff: the big question,

[00:11:40] Summer Joy Gross: is the

[00:11:42] Geoff: that

[00:11:42] Summer Joy Gross: question, right?

[00:11:43] Geoff: think, this would be great.

[00:11:45] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. No, it is the big question, but there is a sense of The Immanuel saying come over and over come to me and you will receive rest Come to me and you will receive bread strength So just an invitation to come at all times so In my work as a spiritual director in and putting on what's called healing care groups through healing care ministries, I started recognizing people experiencing what Paul Talks about of being rooted and established in the love of God so that they were able to have such a sense of comfort and peace and love so that when they went into spaces of trauma, they knew that as long as Jesus was with them. That they were going to be safe there 

[00:12:50] Geoff: that's what's so powerful. To about the gift of the Holy Spirit, we're in one sense, it feels Oh Jesus is leaving. It's the Ascension like he's gone. And he says, Oh, no, but I have to go so that the spirit might come so that all people might have that intimacy of experiencing God's God's gift to the one thing to that stood out.

And I don't know how much you do with like Ignatian spirituality, but the, through the senses that the children, even pre verbally are experiencing, this attachment relationship through the senses. And I just Ignatius of Loyola will talk about meditating on scripture through the senses.

And so he has all these, I'm sure this, all these kind of practices what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you smelling? What are you touching when you're thinking of the Bible stories, rather than just, cause I'm more of a cognitive avoidant attached person.

So I love the ideas and I love the words, but just that idea of yeah, meditating on scripture with your senses is so powerful. And I think that's so change it for us. And you talk a little bit about that for some of the practices for Lectio Divina which we can get back to in just a second.

[00:13:49] Summer Joy Gross: but I agree the Ignatian imaginative prayer even back that first day with Anne Halley 12 years ago, she used an Ignatian spiritual practice of Jesus blessing the children and inviting us to. To stand in line as a pre verbal or whatever age with our caregiver coming before Jesus and receiving his love, his delight, his attention, his connection, eye to eye, and Even from that moment, there was a sense of, Oh, this is what I've been looking for

[00:14:31] Geoff: Were there just a lot of people just crumpled in puddles after that? Yeah, I'm sure.

[00:14:40] Summer Joy Gross: there's just this recognition that we have a whole lot of information about Jesus. But until we have those moments that are highly sensory, where we can receive the gaze of Our Emmanuel, that, that begins to shift something in a really strong way.

[00:15:05] Geoff: Yeah. Oh, I love that. We were just in Chicago last weekend. We heard Jim Wilder, who, talks about all this stuff too. And he was talking about becoming children in order to enter the kingdom of God, and that's interpreted a lot of different ways. He was just basically saying that just means you're having an earned secure attachment with God.

You are now becoming attached to the true, heavenly father beyond all of your attachment wounds, and it's not just, A one time thing that fixes everything because like a child, we have to grow and develop throughout the process, the spiritual formation process. But yeah, I just loved that.

So I really want to get into the practices when we want to be practical, but you said this thing about attachment interviews in order to find attachment wounds. I've never heard of anything like that. Could you, can you talk about that? What would an attachment interview be, or what would you be doing there?

[00:15:54] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. So

[00:15:55] Geoff: like inventories and quizzes and stuff to figure out what your attachment, but I've never heard of an interview.

[00:16:01] Summer Joy Gross: yeah, Dr. Anne Hallye was just way ahead of her time and she just invited us to ask questions about people's experience of love about their original family, their original experience with their caregiver but also. When did they first feel the love of God? And that kind of gives us a little bit of an understanding of where that person is, how deep their connection to the love of God is.

And if it's not there, it gives us good information, right? To be able to say, Oh, Okay. So this is where we're starting. And that's just as much a gift as getting a lot of information.

[00:16:51] Geoff: more story based, which I know you're very into. I love that. Maybe I'll reach out to Anne and have her in and she can talk about these attachment interviews. That sounds so interesting. In the first half of your book, you talk, you lay a foundation for kind of attachments and how that works in our lives, how the ups and downs not exactly the theory, but then you shift to the practice, what are the practices of this urn secure attachment? And you go through some, common kind of spiritual practices that people might know about like you, Davina and others. But could you like, just pick one or two that you found really to be important for your life or just particularly impactful for some of the people you work with?

[00:17:29] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. I think I would talk about Ignatian imaginative prayer for sure. But since we've talked about that a little bit and how you enter into a scripture through the senses and then you encounter the living Christ and connect with him in that space. It's exactly how you are. You're not putting on your Sunday best.

You're coming with all of the emotions of your daily life, in fact, into that story. So that particular practice has been really powerful for me. Jim Wilder's practice that he Lopnow of Emanuel Journaling has been one of the. Most important ones for me personally, because it began to tear down shame and invite me into the compassion of Christ.

And I had to experience that compassion almost daily until I could internalize it for myself.

[00:18:38] Geoff: That's great. Could you give a quick run down? I know it's like a manual prayer is amazing and it's a, it's like a big long practice, but what, could you just explain it really quick and then why it was impactful for you?

[00:18:50] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. So Emanuel Journaling Asang Shimlapna was really the one who developed it. And she was connected with Dallas Willard and Dallas Willard's wife, Jane Willard, as well as Jim Wilder. And she start, she was studying marriage and family therapy at Fuller and started realizing that the practices The process of attunement.

I see you. I hear you. I care about your story. I'm concerned about you. And I long to be with you and I can do something about your pain. So she started realizing that was exactly what what God said to Moses in the burning bush. I saw my people's Suffering. I'm hearing their cries. She just went through each one of these and started wondering what if we created a journaling practice that enabled people to bring their story.

to God in the present moment and receive his attunement, his compassion at the place of our deepest need. And that particular journaling practice has just been absolutely transforming.

[00:20:14] Geoff: Oh, that's great. Sid practices that regularly. Me as a, as more of a avoiding person. That one's harder to get into. Cause it takes so much relational effort, at least for me. Could you talk about breath prayer also and how that could be like an attachment practice to help us to develop a secure attachment with God?

[00:20:37] Summer Joy Gross: Interested in is what happens when our nervous system is quieted. in the presence of God. And when we experience that kind of coming back to home base and that sense of comfort and calm and peace, even in our body, that begins to build a, an attachment. So I just invite people to use Lectio Divina first to listen for a phrase that is So clearly, either something that they want to push away because it feels like hey, that's for someone else, or I don't really need that, or they feel like a cat laying in a sunbeam for the first time. It unlocks something embodied within them. They can feel it in an embodied way. And so I invite them to take that particular kind of what's at the core of that Lectio Divina phrase and personalize it to the Lord. I was a chaplain at Duke Medical Center and that's where I learned centering prayer and learned breath prayer, right there, and was invited by the the other chaplains to use Psalm 23 to help people to to do a breath prayer.

The Lord It is my shepherd. And just giving people a chance just to breathe with breathing in the Lord and breathing out is my shepherd. Now for a lot of us, because we're using the word my, it's already personalized, but we can personalize it even further and saying you. You are my shepherd. And at that moment, we begin to see the Lord's face shining on us because we sense that he's turned towards us.

We're not just talking about God in the informational language. The Lord is my shepherd somewhere out there. We're saying, you are my shepherd. are my shepherd. And so it gives us the opportunity to recognize that his face is turned towards us.

[00:23:09] Geoff: You met. I love that. Thank you. And I have lots of questions. I could nerd out on all those things, but you write right at the beginning of that chapter, the attachment principle, as you say, when we marry scripture or a prayer phrase with our breath, we experienced being quieted in God's love. Could you explain that just a little bit more is there something particular about that?

Our breath or our bodies or is that connecting to the senses or how do you walk some of your clients or how do you keep like that or thinking about it or experiencing it?

[00:23:42] Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. So there's different types of breath prayer, right? There's centering prayer, which is a much longer process of 20 minutes or something like that. For some of us, we start with four minutes and that's about as much as we can do at a time, but it's still a gift. But what's interesting is that when we Extend our exhale and we have a deep breath four or five times in a row.

It flips the switch on our nervous system so that we're in the parasympathetic state. and not the sympathetic. So the sympathetic is rearing to go. We're all amped up, but when we have those deep breaths four or five times in a row the flip is switched so that we're able to come into a place of peace and calm and wholeness.

And when we can do that, recognizing that this is the gift that God always wants to give us, to invite us into his embrace, just like Isaiah 40, 11 the Lord as the shepherd invites us close into his arms and close to his heart. So that gives us an experience, the ability to just rest. there close to his heart. So I just find this kind of science absolutely fascinating because God created our brains. He created our nervous systems. He understands how it is that our body works with our vagus nerve and all of that. So it's so lovely to think that all of this was created for communion with God.

[00:25:33] Geoff: Yeah, I love that. And I say this over and over probably every podcast, just the more I learned about the neuroscience and the Vegas nerve and the breathing and the, shifting from like connection protection and the connection is sometimes what it's called, it's just the Bible, and the spirit of God was already teaching his people there's all the time already.

And as you were talking, I was just thinking of the, cause Sid and I, we're always trying to think of attachment as, cause they talk about like secure attachment, but which is true. Like you want to be secure, but I also think of it as like integrated attachment or balanced attachment in the sense that some of us can be.

Too far into our emotions are too far into our bodies are too wound up in the social emotional information of our world. People pleasing, as you said about yourself, fine. And then others of us that'd be more of the anxious attachment. Others of us more on the avoidant attachment are very much in our heads, pretty much in the words and logical orders and rules, rules over relationships, rule good rules, make relationships, okay. Whatever. And but our work is often to integrate. And so that what I was hearing in that breath prayer that you were describing is it's an integrative practice because you're pulling from cognitive information, right? This is a line of scripture. This is truth about God or ourselves and our relationship.

But then it's also the deep. The deep breathing that's working on our nervous system. Usually deep breathing also gets into your body also. So this is integrating our bodies and our brains, cause I think a lot of times, so I was raised this way is, the church would say, Hey, you don't want to just have head knowledge.

You got to have heart knowledge. But they never told you how to integrate them. They're just like one day it'll just happen. And it's what I really appreciate, not just about The attachment stuff. But the neuroscience and the things you're talking about is no, there, there actually are ways to integrate your head and your heart.

And we just need to practice them, which is what the second part of your book is about. And then that integration will happen. We don't just want to be heart people. Actually. That's not how scripture speaks of us. So that's not how Jesus disciples people, the word became flesh and it's the word and the truth is important as well as our bodies.

And so I was just, I'm just, Trying to just highlight just that one practice. So thank you so much for bringing that up. Sorry for that big, long rant. Did that 

[00:27:47] Summer Joy Gross: No, I'm with you. I'm right with you. I totally agree. We need to understand the Word of God. We need Bible study. We need to understand his character because until we understand his character, sometimes we can't receive the goodness of God through a lot of these practices. So honestly, a lot of the people that are Reading or in my group called The Presence Project, there are people that have been discipled for decades.

They have all kinds of beautiful knowledge, and their heart, just like John Wesley, is strangely warmed as we have those moments in Scripture, and we get these A ha moments with the Lord. So I know that it happens in those spaces, too. I just know that the Lord desires so much to give us a relationship where we can be comforted in His presence, where instead of running to our different coping mechanisms in order to be comforted, we know how.

to come into his presence and receive his kindness, his tenderness, his love, that he has infinite capacity to sit with us in our places of pain.

[00:29:13] Geoff: Yeah. Just to wrap up about that, the integration pieces, you mentioned something about object permanence in chapter eight, spiritual object permanence. And I don't hear a lot of people like talking about that. That comes from childhood developments and understanding that when your Leave the room.

They didn't like cease to exist or your siblings or your toys, things like that. So that's like a developmental marker for children. But what does this have to do with our spiritual development? Like why was that important for you to emphasize? 

[00:29:43] Summer Joy Gross: Every single morning that I woke up, I felt like I had to re establish the truth that God was present. And I had not been abandoned. So my original way of thinking is that I'm the matchstick girl. That I am on my own, that I have to fend for myself. And so to begin to believe that as Dr.

Sue Johnson says that our attachment caregiver is attentive or available at all times. And able to attune to us, that we begin to, we need to have those moments of believing that God is present at all times. Otherwise we live as those orphans in the world.

[00:30:42] Geoff: Yeah, that's so great. And that's part of the training of your mind, in Romans 12 verse, is it two or three, that you're renewed in your mind. But then the verse right before that says that we're supposed to make a living sacrifice in our bodies, right? So this is where our bodies and our minds, like all these things fit together.

So, where can people find you? Could you just talk really quick about your book again? And then where can people find you or keep track of your work?

[00:31:08] Summer Joy Gross: The book has been really fun in that I believe that it is a really good resource for people to do with other folks. I think it is a great small group resource or book club resource, that type of thing, that as we hear other people experiencing God's Connection with them, his comfort towards them, his love towards them, that ends up shifting our understanding of who God is at the same time.

So I just really encourage people to do this in community. But the, and I've tried to make it as practical as possible even creating a website at, on summerjoygross. com that at the end of every chapter, people can connect to Lexi Udovinas or a journaling practice. And that can help people to to do this work and just push play.

Whether they're pushing play by themselves or they're pushing play with a group. So I just fully believe that the Lord's looking for open doors, that he just loves it when we slow down. When we sit in this presence, when we begin to hold out our hands and expectation that he just can't wait to burst through the doors into into our presence.

So anyways, it's been a joy to me to create as many practical resources as possible. I'm on Instagram as. At Rev Summer Joy, but my favorite place is the presence project, which is on Patreon, patreon. com slash the presence project. And I do two retreats a month. Like tomorrow, we're going to be talking about neuroplasticity and different ways in order to receive to get our brains ready to receive this secure attachment.

[00:33:17] Geoff: Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. So that's summerjoygross. com as well as the presence project. Those will be in the show notes. So everyone can do that. I can check it out and follow you. The book again is the Emmanuel promise, discovering the security of a life held by God. Thank you so much for being on.

And we'd probably love to have you on again as we continue having this adventure of Receiving God's secure attachment to us. This is the thing that I always want to emphasize to people is we're, we can become attached to God because God is already attached to us. And just remembering and resting in that truth.

So thank you so much for the work that you've been doing.

[00:33:55] Summer Joy Gross: It's such a privilege. And again, as I said, there's just, I love listening to whatever you're doing because there's so much resonance there. And it's, yeah, such strong, such a strong feast. So thank you for this

[00:34:11] Geoff: As a sneak peek, and maybe we'll shoot it out to you when it's done, but a year from now, we'll be releasing a book of our own on attachments and and spiritual life. So maybe we'll get your input on that at some point too. Thank you. Thank you all for listening and thank you for being on Summer.

[00:34:25] Summer Joy Gross: Such a privilege. Thank you, Geoff.