Attachment Theory: Understanding the Process of Attachment in Coping with Loss and Grief

Understanding the history and early experience of people going through a grieving process is an essential part of assisting them in this process. This involves the recognition that, for all of us, the way we cope with loss, separation and trauma that may occur in later life is inextricably bound with our attachment relationships with key caregivers in our infancy and early childhood. Thus people attribute different meanings to their experience based not only what has occurred in the present, but based also on what has occurred in the past.

Understanding the process of attachment in human development provides important insight into understanding attachment across the life cycle. It is also a useful model of understanding that can be integrated with other approaches and  applied in a wide range of settings.