Sponsored: This article is made possible by The Elijah Institute, supporting quality and engaging Catholic content.
There’s a quiet moment that happens sometimes in prayer. It’s that pause when the words dry up and what’s left is something simpler: a reaching out. We may not even know what we’re reaching for, only that we need Someone.
Psychologists have a name for that reaching: attachment behavior — the human drive to seek closeness, safety, and reassurance from someone we trust. It’s the instinct that makes a child run to her father after scraping her knee or a friend call someone they love when grief hits hard. But it’s also at the heart of our spiritual lives.
According to attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth and expanded in later research, our earliest relationships with caregivers shape the patterns of connection that follow us into adulthood. The secure, anxious,avoidant, and fearful avoidant ways we bond with others don’t disappear when we start praying. They often reappear in how we relate to God, particularly during dark and desolate times.
That’s what Pehr Granqvist and Lee Kirkpatrick explore in “Attachment and Religious Representations and Behavior” from The Handbook of Attachment. Their work invites us to see that the God we love is also the God we attach to. Grace often works through the same relational pathways that once taught us how to love, fear, trust, or withdraw.
Continue reading