Have you ever thought about how you romantically connect, or behave in your relationships? Or have you ever wondered why you always keep choosing the wrong person, or why you keep getting caught in a relationship that never seems to work for you?
More than you know, the way parents interact with their children during their formative years largely affects the attachment style they form. Their relationship will form a blueprint for the child’s future relationships. Children whose parents are emotionally unavailable, intrusive, and/or punitive often grow up building defense mechanisms in an attempt to feel secure, limit emotional distress and pain. In other words, they develop an Insecure Attachment style that will continually affect their relationships
Adults with an Insecure Attachment style may usually enjoy being with their partners, but a part of them remains emotionally distant, always on guard, and the most common trait of them all – unable to express their real thoughts and emotions. When faced with an unwanted event or emotion, Insecurely attached persons tend to skip processing emotions, suppress these emotions instead, or resort to their built defense and comfort strategies.
There are different Insecure Attachment Styles, but they also have several things in common. But what does an Insecure Attachment Style look like?
“I’m better off alone./ I have to protect myself.”
“I need to make sure he’s not cheating on me.”
“Nobody can really understand me.”
“He’s abusive, but he’s not really bad. I can change him.”
“What if he leaves me if he doesn’t like who I really am?”
“Commitments only cause problems.”
The great news is that you can change! It is very possible to shift from having an Insecure Attachment to earning a Secure Attachment style.
One of the best ways to do this is by writing a coherent narrative – trying to make sense of the things that impacted your life, like trauma. Not only does it help you make sense of how you live your life today, it can also help you recover. If doing a coherent narrative seems like much of a task to you, you can always ask help from a counsellor.