Attachment Theory and Your Relationships
How to Live Life on Life's Terms
[I invite you to sit back, relax and take in the extraordinary information that our Guest Blogger, Human Behaviour and Social Change Expert, Kristy Riggal, has written.]
Relationships have evolved a lot since the 50’s and 60’s. Divorce rates are skyrocketing, as is the epidemic of anxiety and depression. I have dedicated the better part of the last 7 years + of my life to understand the why, through field research and my education. Here is a morsel of what I know to be true and factual.
Did you know the first 10 years of your childhood development set you up for your adulthood and how you show up in your adult relationships? There are actually 5 peak waves that shape and mould you before the age of 18/19 years of age.
The child brain doesn’t fully develop and is largely ‘unconscious’ until around the age of 8-10 and continues to develop into your 20’s. Those first 10 years are crucial, as a child relies solely on the conscious parent to ‘teach them how to live life on life’s terms’.
It teaches you how to relate to people in adulthood, readying you for ‘consciousness’. Unless your parent is still ‘unconscious’ due to their own childhood wounds. Stuck in a perpetual cycle of what I call an adult child parenting a child. This is detrimental to childhood development and your adult relationships.
Below is an example of what I would call an extreme form of an unconscious parent/child dynamic.
A 45-year-old man, admitted for overdose due to a narcotics addiction. He would often call his weary mother crying “Mummy they’re being mean to me.” He was clearly in a lot of emotional pain. Addiction (a broader subject) is bred primarily from emotional trauma, often within those first 10 years.
His mother’s response? Nothing. She didn’t come to see him, probably because of frustration.
However, I could intuitively see, the relationship between this man and his mother was clearly disconnected. The behaviour outwardly was really a mere symptom of unhealed emotional trauma and pain.
The parent/child dynamic often breeds rejection and abandonment wounds when the below specific things happen.
How a rejection wound manifests itself in adulthood
Men and women who have had disconnected, avoidant, anxious and depressed caregivers will often in adulthood unconsciously seek disconnected, avoidant anxious partners. To reinforce the childhood belief “I’m not loveable”, “I’m unworthy of being loved in a healthy way, I don’t know how to receive love in a healthy way”, “please keep proving to me that I am unlovable and unworthy of healthy loving connections, this is how I stay connected to my primary caregivers’ emotional pain, I want to fix it for them so they can love me the way I need.”
“I don’t deserve,” is the common inner belief system along with a world of unmet desires and needs.
The convex of the rejection wound is the Abandonment Wound.
How an abandonment wound manifests itself in adulthood
Abandonment wounds often occur when the primary caregiver is not as freely available to the child. Ie. Death of a parent, divorce, mum going to work full time, Dad ‘never being around’. Often leading to one or both of the parents reeling in guilt and over-compensating by over giving through outward sources. Cotton-wooling the child and giving everything to the child they didn’t have. “Here, this is how I will show my love to you.” Toys, holidays, things, excessive availability.
The belief system then becomes for the child, “I deserve everything” and entitlement. You have taught me I MUST be loved in this way and if you don’t, my outward behaviour will show you exactly how deeply unhappy I really am. Domestic violence can often occur when a person has a deep abandonment wound.
There is a real difference in protecting your child and over protecting. Teaching healthy boundaries is SO crucial in early life as is balance into guided independence, to make mistakes and/or deal with tough situations like death, divorce, house fire, death of a pet.
Holding space for a child is crucial in their development. But suffocating them or under nurturing does them a disservice in learning about themselves.
The wound of betrayal = need for control
The wound of humiliation = need to comply with the pack and to ‘fit in’
The wound of injustice = becoming socially and environmentally rigid in the way you act, behave and appear to the world. This is to help reduce the betrayal and humiliation wounds.
Intergenerational emotional trauma exists on a micro and macro trauma level. Unhealed emotional trauma has been medically proven to cause addiction and a plethora of other health issues. Yet the brain CAN heal and so can you and your relationships. It first starts with understanding yourself and your own needs, knowing how to ask for them to be met and trusting your needs can and will be met in adulthood. You just need the safe space to learn and lean into it with the right kinds of support systems to re-find your voice.
Delving into your childhood is not a slaying or blaming contest, it is merely a fact-finding mission to understand why you are the way you are in life and in relationships. When you understand yourself on a deeper level you can then have compassion for others on a deeper level and your relationships will flourish.
You can find more of Kristy's work at the following links:
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