Bonding is the term used to describe the dynamic of merging underlying needs to behaviors, which will then be the driving force behind every decision one makes for their entire life. That need will become disguised, re-shaped, re-directed as we gain tools, knowledge, and power. The child will pass out of the bonding stage as she gets more sophisticated and in some cases more detached from her authentic self.
Bonding is the glue used by infants to survive. They will attach themselves to anyone, anything that will feed them, and hold them to their warm bodies. They will not and cannot discriminate one source from another until they gradually get older. If their only source of nourishment is an angry, rejecting parent, they will still seek out that parent...they NEED that bottle, that bowl of cereal, that warm body to be next to. That NEED will become the currency of compromise for our entire life if we do not harness it; it will take us down paths of darkness into tunnels of fear, turbines of confusion, hailstorms of pain. When we get the occasional window of clarity, we will ask ourselves "what am I doing...what was I thinking, how do I get out of this mess...?" Then we fall back into the sinkhole of despair.
Then we have yet another birthday, and ask ourselves, "where am I going, why aren't I having any joy?" We then look around us and all we can see are challenges, problems, conflicts, and feel overwhelmed. Where do we go to get the tools to help us dig ourselves out of this ditch?
The irony is, we have all the answers right inside of ourselves. We just need permission and a crowbar to get at them.
If you take the perspective that we are all energy in the forms of bodies...some of us are dogs, some rabbits, some are people. And, that we are on a journey...with our own individual mission statement, it then changes the way we look at ourselves, each other, and the events that shape us, for better or for worse.