Your earliest relationships- the ones with your parents and caregivers shape your abilities and expectations for relationship throughout your life. It is through these relationships that we learn our value and survival skills. We learn what is safe. We learn what not to do, to avoid fear. We learn what we have to do to earn connection from our parents, and all of this forms the template for how we show up in all relationships. It serves as a model for navigating life and relationships, well into adulthood.
Our attachment patterns do not define us. Instead, they are there to provide a framework to understand our behaviour and our inner world. They are the to-and-fro dynamic in all relationships that indicate the health of a relationship on a continuum from secure to insecure. We are not forever stuck in an attachment style and can heal in a secure relationship, re-learning what it means to experience attunement, comfort and independence. Attachment styles also define differing degrees of emotional security in relationships and learning about them helps us to better understand ourselves and our experiences in relationships.
Attachment styles help us better understand:
Intimacy
Conflict
Communication (understanding your needs and your partners needs)
Expectations in a relationship
Secure Attachment is Always the Goal
Healthy, secure relationships teach us how to regulate our nervous system through healthy, consistent responses. We also learn that we are worthy of love and that we can weather any storm of emotion.
The important thing to remember is that NO ONE has a perfect childhood. When conflict or uncomfortable feelings came up, we learned from our parents, as they learned from theirs, how to respond; did we have to shrink ourselves to avoid conflict? were we punished for our feelings? Did we learn that conflict meant danger?
If you grew up with a secure emotional bond, your parents were consistent in their responses to your needs. Your caregiver’s behaviour allowed you to feel safe and confident and they accepted you just as you were. If ever they left, they would return as expected, and you trusted that they would return.
Secure Patterns Show Up In These Ways:
As a child, you learned that if you became upset, you felt seen. Your caregiver made your relationship a safe place to process any distress or big emotions until things returned to normal. If ever they had to leave you, you trusted that they would return and could be easily comforted by them.
As an adult, it is easy for you to build relationships with others. You feel good in your relationships and are comfortable with closeness and independence. You can tolerate your own emotions and know that even when you’re experiencing pain, it will pass.
When we do not have the experience of an attuned, emotionally responsive, supportive caregiver, we develop coping strategies to deal with what it feels like to go without these things. Our ways of coping and trying to get our needs met are considered either avoidant, anxious or disorganized.
Avoidant Attachment Patterns
Do you feel closer to others when you are away from them (distance makes the heart grow fonder)?
Do you distance yourself in conflict?
Your childhood may have included a primary caregiver who may have distanced themselves from your needs, encouraging your independence, even when you were not ready for that. Often times, this parent would not have comforted you in times when you would have experiences big feelings. You may have grown up learning not to express your feelings or needs.
As a adult, you may notice that even in emotional situations, your inclination is to not respond. As well, it feels better for you to keep some distance from your partner, in order to meet your own needs and you may be often accused of ‘not caring’.
Anxious Attachment Patterns
When you’re in conflict with a loved one, do you feel easily overwhelmed or get consumed with worry?
If your partner says they need a break, does this freak you out and you need reassurance to know everything in the relationship is okay?
Do you often find yourself questioning your partner’s love?
Your childhood may have included a primary caregiver who at times, responded well to your need, and at other times, was not there to give you what you needed.They may have responded to you in critical or hurtful ways. You may have grown up feeling misunderstood.
As an adult, you may find that you need a lot of reassurance in a relationship. You may be generally anxious, especially when alone.
Disorganized Attachment Patterns
Do you crave emotional intimacy but also know it feels better to be on your own so that you won’t get hurt?
Your childhood included a primary caregiver that was frightening or never there. you may have longed for closeness but also feared it. A primary caregiver was primarily not there for you. As adults who have lived through the disorganization of their caregiver are survivors. They have learned ways to keep themselves safe in all relationships in their life and do their best trying to deal with a nervous system that is often dysregulation, experiencing stress and on high alert.
When we go without having healthy responses to our own distress, we internalize fear. Our brain makes every attempt to keep us safe, and we can get stuck in a heightened state of stress and dysregulation. Thus, without a safe place to resolve distress in a secure relationship, unresolved distressed at any age can lead to us making every attempt to numb and disconnect from a nervous system that is always in a state of alarm (substance use, self-harm, other attempts to numb).
Again, the important thing to remember is that we heal in relationship. Even if we didn't have a secure attachment to our caregivers we are still able to change and grow in new relationships as adults. Relationships are how we heal.
If you are feeling like any piece of this really resonates with you, and you wonder how to move forward in making sense of your relationships, seeking professional help from a an attachment and trauma trained Therapist can help.
Get connected to Carmella now if you are wondering if therapy can help you.
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