Sound, Development & the Messy Business of Attachment

Before I ever sat in a room talking about attachment theory, I worked in residential children’s homes. Real ones. With alarms, incident reports, night shifts, and young people whose nervous systems were permanently set to high alert. That experience has shaped how I read theory now, with curiosity, appreciation… and a healthy dose of scepticism.

Alongside this, I’ve spent years working with sound healing, where regulation, resonance and non-verbal attunement are central. So when I started engaging more deeply with developmental theory and music therapy literature, I didn’t feel like I was learning something entirely new. It felt more like being given language for things I already knew in my bones, and occasionally being irritated by ideas that sound good on paper but wobble when they meet real life.

Sound as relationship, not technique

Reading Pavlicevic’s Dynamic Interplay in Clinical Improvisation resonated deeply with me, particularly her focus on intention. In sound healing, intention is everything. It shapes not just what is sounded, but how it lands emotionally and energetically. Pavlicevic’s writing reinforced something I strongly believe: music is not something we do to people, it’s something we co-create.

Improvisation, in this sense, isn’t random or chaotic. It’s a relational act. A meeting point between two inner worlds through sound. And crucially, it requires presence before technique. I came into training keen to learn what to do. Pavlicevic reminded me that who we are, how we listen, and how we regulate ourselves matters far more than having the “right” intervention up our sleeve.

Intimacy, attunement… and boundaries

Pavlicevic’s references to the mother–infant relationship are beautiful, and also slightly uncomfortable, if I’m honest. The idea of musical interaction mirroring early non-verbal attunement makes sense developmentally. Sound, rhythm, timing and tone are how humans first connect.

But it also raises questions about boundaries. In both music therapy and sound healing, the space can feel deeply intimate. That intimacy can be reparative, and it can also become blurry if it’s not held carefully. My background in residential care has made me very alert to this. Attunement does not mean fusion. Empathy does not mean rescuing. Presence does not mean over-identifying.

Therapeutic sound work needs clarity as much as warmth. Without it, things slide quickly from relational into unsafe.

Therapy as a dance

Trevarthen and Malloch’s work on communicative musicality helped me understand therapy as a dance, not a metaphorical flourish, but a literal description of what’s happening. Humans are born with an impulse to share rhythm, movement and emotional timing. We regulate one another through synchrony long before language arrives.

In therapy, this shows up everywhere: pacing, pauses, breath, gesture, timing. Music becomes the great equaliser. It bypasses verbal ability, cognitive capacity and social polish, and meets people exactly where they are. That’s not “using music” that’s relating musically.

And this matters deeply for developmental trauma, where language often fails but rhythm doesn’t.

What behaviour really tells us

Reading Graham Music’s work reinforced something I’ve seen repeatedly in residential settings: it’s not what a young person says that matters most, it’s how they communicate. Coherence, emotional regulation, fragmentation, rhythm – these tell you far more about someone’s internal world than the story itself.

In music-based work, this is even clearer. A fragmented rhythm, rigid repetition or chaotic sound often mirrors internal experience. This isn’t pathology, it’s communication. For many traumatised children and adults, music becomes a way of thinking in action, long before reflective language is possible.

Music’s emphasis on reflective capacity (or mentalisation) really landed for me. In my experience, what separates resilience from overwhelm isn’t intelligence or insight, it’s the ability to notice, reflect and regulate with another person. And that’s something sound can scaffold gently, without forcing verbal processing before the nervous system is ready.

Attachment theory: where I agree… and where I don’t

I appreciated Music’s statement that “there is no such thing as an unhealthy attachment” – theoretically. Yes, attachment patterns are adaptive responses to early environments. Children organise themselves around what keeps them safe. But here’s where my lived experience pushes back.

In the care system, I have seen attachments that are actively dangerous: trauma bonds, grooming, exploitative relationships, and intense over-attachments to staff that collapse boundaries and increase risk. These patterns may have begun as survival strategies, but I struggle to call them “healthy” when they undermine safety, autonomy and wellbeing.

So while I agree that attachment strategies are understandable, I think we need to be careful not to sanitise them. Therapy and sound-based work in particular must hold compassion and containment. Clear boundaries are not anti-relational; they are what make repair possible.

Development begins before birth (and it’s noisy)

Music’s exploration of temperament and prenatal development resonated strongly with NHS training I’ve had around regulation and fetal neurodevelopment. The womb is a sound environment. Stress hormones, unpredictability, chaos: these shape the nervous system before a child ever meets the world.

When we talk about regulation difficulties, sensory sensitivity or behavioural overwhelm, we’re often talking about very early experiences of rhythm and safety. Sound healing works directly at this level, not cognitively, but biologically. Rhythm, frequency and vibration meet the body where words can’t.

It really does take a village

Music’s reflections on culture and caregiving struck a chord. Modern Western life is fragmented. Children are often raised in isolation compared to ancestral or communal contexts, where regulation was shared across many adults.

Music-making has always been communal. Rhythm, ritual and shared sound are ancient regulatory practices. Group sound, chanting, drumming, singing: these are not wellness trends, they’re human technologies for survival and connection. Music therapy and sound healing both tap into this ancestral template. They remind us that regulation is relational, and healing rarely happens alone.

So what does this mean for sound healing?

For me, all of this reinforces one core belief: the relationship is the intervention. Not the instrument. Not the frequency. Not the clever technique. Sound becomes therapeutic when it’s held within attunement, intention, boundaries and care. Developmental trauma doesn’t need fixing – it needs re-patterning through safe, rhythmic, relational experiences. Sound offers that possibility. Quietly. Powerfully. And often far more honestly than words ever could.

And yes – it’s messy. But so is being human.