ATTACHMENT, IDENTITY, AND SPIRITUAL HEALING: A WESTERN ORTHODOX APPROACH TO PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY

Forgiven, by Thomas Blackshear, Showing the Risen Christ Embracing the True Self, Sinful and Rebellious, Participating in Christ’s Crucifixion, But Beloved and Excepted by Divine Grace

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

THE WOUND OF ATTACHMENT AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

Pastoral care in the Orthodox tradition does not begin with a diagnosis of neurosis, such as Sigmund Freud or Karl Jung would describe, but with the recognition of the imago Dei. The human person is created in the image and likeness of God, made for communion with Him and with others. Yet in our fallen state, our capacity for healthy, functional relationships is distorted. From infancy, we form patterns of attachment - ways of connecting and protecting ourselves based on the consistency or inconsistency of love we receive. These patterns shape how we relate not only to others, but also to God and to His Church. 

Attachment theory, while a modern psychological insight, echoes deep patristic intuitions about the nature of our human brokenness. Secure attachment reflects a capacity for trust, vulnerability, and mutuality - hallmarks of healthy communion, stemming from the ability of others to sacrifice for us and our ability to sacrifice for others. Insecure attachment styles - anxious, avoidant, disorganized - manifest as distortions of these capacities, a desire to hide, take advantage, or avoid inconvenience, suffering, hard work or sacrifice. These styles arise when early caregivers are absent, inconsistent, overbearing, or frightening. Children internalize these experiences, not only as emotional wounds, but as narratives: “I am unlovable,” “Others will abandon me,” or “I must earn affection or stay distant to be safe.” We are spiritually like an onion, always growing new layers, but never obliterating or transforming our internal childhood - it stays with us throughout life as an indelible memory, blessed or cursed by the actions and activities of our parents, grandparents, teachers and friends, informing everything that we do. We can only grow and change in proportion to our ability to understand and compensate for these internal layers of experience, bearing ourselves to God and allowing Him to touch our most intimate and protected parts, coming into contact with God’s transformative grace through the power of His sacraments. 

In adulthood, internalized negative narratives become our main spiritual obstacles. We project our broken human experiences onto God, doubting His constancy, mercy, or love. God becomes a surrogate for our functional or dysfunctional parental relationships, and especially reflected in our relationship with our mortal fathers. Based on fatherly rejection, the child becomes anxious - The anxious soul fears divine rejection. Based on an abusive father, the child becomes avoidant - The avoidant soul recoils from intimacy with Christ. Based on inconsistency and selfishness of an uncaring father, a child becomes disorganized - The disorganized soul swings between clinging and despair, unable to hold a stable vision of God or self. The relationships we have with our mothers and fathers inform our spiritual state for the rest of our lives, and it takes great maturity to see it and work through it to gain greater insights into the self and our misunderstood and misapplied identities. 

DEMONIC DECEPTION AND THE FALSE SELF

These malformed internal scripts are not merely psychological. They can also be demonic. The enemy of our souls sows lies about the character of God and the nature of our being through inter-generational dysfunction. He whispers distortions of Scripture, through justification of sins or fundamentalist fears, offers temptations masked as compensations, and accuses the brethren and creates division. Wherever Christ is, there is unity and communion. Wherever Satan is present, there is division and confusion. What begins as trauma becomes a battleground, as the demons war over our soul and control us through curses received and lies believed. We wear masks of control, performance, self-protection, or manipulation - not unlike Adam’s fig leaves - fleeing from God rather than walking with Him in the cool of the day. Much of our excellence and competence is done as compensation and projection, and many of the good works we do are wrongly motivated, showing that we have not begun to truly love God, but are merely trying to gain affirmation and love from others, forgetting that God already loves and accepts us as His precious children. 

The Fathers of the Church, particularly St. Maximos the Confessor, speak of the passions as misdirected energies - good natural desires that are twisted by sin and fear into “passions” that propagate themselves as negative reactions in others. An attachment wound becomes a passion when we compulsively seek from others what only God can give: security, worth, identity, and love. In this way, the therapeutic journey is also an ascetical one, a journey of rejecting our false selves and false identities, fasting from the opinions of others, and focusing in prayer on what God has to say to us, through Scripture and the Sacraments of the Church. 

IDENTITY IN CHRIST: THE TRUE NARRATIVE

Healing begins not with self-analysis but with the revelation of our true identity in Christ. In Baptism, we are clothed with Him. In the Eucharist, we are united with Him. We are not defined by our parents, our childhood wounds, all of our failed relationships, or our interior scripts, but by our adoption into the household of God. “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9). This is not a simple psychological affirmation or positive manifestation, but an ontological truth: we are “in Christ,” and nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:39). We are all in Him, in the mystery of the Incarnation, He took all of us up into Himself, and we have already experienced the powerful love of God in the gift of life and the calling of the Holy Spirit. 

Yet this identity must be received with humility and gratitude, not merely proclaimed. It requires a “metanoia” - a change of mind and heart, a deep commitment to a new idea, new faith, and new practice, rooted in grace and practiced in discipline. Only in complete humility and repentance can we receive the free gift of God’s grace and experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. 

THERAPEUTIC RECOVERY AND SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

The Church is not merely a hospital for the soul but the very Body of Christ through which healing is offered. To move from wounded attachment to restored communion, from a false self to a true self, we must engage both spiritually and therapeutically, seeing sin as a disease and repentance as the cure. This process includes:

1. The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This ancient invocation quiets the fragmented mind from whence all of our broken self-doubt, desire for affirmation, and lashing out against others in comparison and anger comes from, and centers the heart in humble receptivity to Christ’s salvific work. For the anxiously attached, it soothes panic; for the avoidant, it beckons to closeness; for the disorganized, it stabilizes the storm. Christ, Himself, the God-Man, is the cure to all of our dysfunction. The key is to have less of us and more of Him. 

2. Liturgical Fasting: By fasting, we learn to surrender control and depend on God's provision for our lives. We are not in control. Belief that we are able to control, to plan, to manipulate, always getting what we want, is an illusion and a demonic goal. Magic is the use of sacrifice to control and manipulate the world by the human will. Sacraments are the receiving of sacrifice to experience the transformation of the world by God’s will. Fasting disrupts the compulsions and appetites often rooted in attachment wounds, constantly welling up within from our brokenness. Fasting empties us and allows us to be receptive to the filling of the Spirit, just as repentance allows us to reject evil and make space to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It creates space for prayer and introspection, and teaches us to hunger rightly - for God, not for the illusions that mask our pain, but by the “Sincere milk of the World.” 

3. Confession and Repentance: In sacramental confession, we unmask the false self and bring it into the light. The false self has much power, and furiously rejects this process, manifesting in extremely strong and strange ways. We speak truth about our fears, our sins, our mistrust, and we receive not judgment, but absolution from God. But, this fallen self fights and screams, unbalancing us and trying to hurt us and destroy us. Sometimes this is demonic, but most of the time, it is self-sabotage that stems from the false self trying to survive our confession, repentance, and transformation by the new habits of penance. The healing power of Christ works through the priesthood by identifying these lies and false identities, questioning them and bringing them to light, and then patiently working through the process of catharsis and growth as the penitent constantly repents and takes the Holy Sacraments - a re-parenting of the soul by the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

4. Therapeutic Reflection: Under pastoral or clinical guidance, naming the roots of our attachment wounds allows us to disarm their power. We must speak, out loud, what are sins, negative self dialogue, and constant failings truly are. This gives us insight, but is not salvation by itself. Many secular people can honestly state their problems. Honesty and speaking clearly about our dysfunction prepares the way for grace, but we must receive the sacramental work of God in the Church in order to complete this process. A good therapist, like a good spiritual father, helps us hear the true voice of God over the din of lies, but only the priest can apply the balm of salvation, which is the Holy Eucharist. 

5. The Daily Office and Sacramental Life: Regular prayer and participation in the Divine Liturgy place us rhythmically in the presence of God and His people, making us open, accountable, interactive, and communally oriented. Stability and repetition rewire the soul toward secure attachment - not to an idealized parent or cult-like leader, but to the living God, who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The goal is maturity and stability, independence and freedom, not codependency and fear. This is why we teach that our practice of penance and communion is not linked to any one person or parish, but is in the Church as a whole. 

PRACTICAL APPLICATION: SECURE ATTACHMENT IN CHRIST

The goal is not merely to change behavior, but to become who we truly are in the Lord Jesus Christ. This means allowing the love of God to touch the deepest, most frightened, most defended parts of ourselves, the parts that we don’t want anyone else to know exists. We must renounce the lie that we are abandoned, unworthy, or forgotten. The generational curses of our sinful, struggling parents and grandparents. We must say with David: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Psalm 27:10).

Pastorally, this requires deep patience, gentleness, and consistency. Priests cannot demand or threaten. They cannot lead through the worldly categories of power, prestige, or worldly incentives. Many in our parishes come with attachment trauma and multiple generations of dysfunctional relationships. The Church must be a space of re-attachment - where constancy, compassion, and truth are practiced in community by telling the truth, refusing to manipulate, and living in uncompelled freedom and genuine love for one another. Then the parish becomes a healing home, the altar a place of renewal, and the liturgy a sanctified rhythm that reorients disordered affections and helps us as we struggle towards holiness and reject our false selves and demonic projections. 

Through prayer, fasting, confession, and the sacramental life, the wounded child within each of us is invited into the arms of the loving and all-compassionate Heavenly Father. We are no longer orphans, but sons and daughters. The distorted narratives of our inner dialogue lose their power, and the truth sets us free to be who God created us to be - shining in the Image and Likeness of Christ Jesus! 

A COLLECT FOR HEALING OF THE WOUNDED HEART

O merciful Father, who knowest the hearts of Thy children and beholdest the secret wounds therein: heal us, we beseech Thee, of all disordered affections, false identities, and fearful attachments; that, by Thy Holy Spirit, we may be renewed in the likeness of Thy Son, and find our rest in Thee alone. Grant us grace to walk in the way of repentance, to pray without ceasing, to fast with holy purpose, and to confess with contrite hearts; that being made whole by Thy mercy, we may love Thee with pure hearts fervently, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.