Video: Dan Allender on the Importance of Attachment

Last week, we shared the first of two videos that feature Dr. Dan Allender and promote the vision and mission of Kristy’s House, an Indianapolis-based organization devoted to freeing those enslaved by the bonds of prostitution and commercialized sexual exploitation. Kristy’s House is an intensive mentoring and discipleship ministry that focuses its work through three core categories: relationship, story, and trauma.

Engaging stories of past harm in others requires us to look at the ways in which they were denied the attunement and care of a secure attachment early in life. Amazingly, in work that involves so much pain, there is tremendous hope. In the video below, Dan shares what attachment theory and neuroscience research are teaching us about the human capacity to heal from trauma.

“It’s such a lovely piece of news that the brain has sufficient plasticity that when we have significant loss in our early life, we’re not bound to that. We’re not in a position where we can say once harmed, always harmed. It’s such good news to know that a solid, secure attachment in adult life will actually change some of the significant harm of the insecure attachment as a child.”

Kristy’s House has raised a team of well-trained mentors, many with their own stories of trauma and abuse, to come alongside women who have been sexually exploited and offer a relationship that points to a new kind of life. That work reflects one of the core truths that informs our mission at The Allender Center: a secure relationship with an attuned other who can speak truth and goodness into our lives has the power to subvert even decades-old messages of harm.

“One of the things that a good mentor brings is a relationship that, sustained over time, is able to develop trust, attunement, containment, is able to handle conflict, and able to restore brokenness. That will change not only the heart of the person but amazingly, it literally rewires the brain.”

Working with survivors of trauma and abuse is at the core of our work at The Allender Center, so we love the work that Kristy’s House is doing to help offer hope and healing. You can learn more about their mission here.