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CALMER CREATURE
Learning to Calm the Creature inside all of us
Attachments and Relationships
Here is a big section, but we are going to break it down. First let me direct you to some real experts in this area. Sue Johnson has a lot of cool YouTube snippets on relationships and attachments in adulthood. She wrote a wonderful book and created an awesome therapy. Google it. Okay, that’s done. Now let’s take a peek at how attachment stuff impacts us. Most of this is drawn from Bowen and Sue Johnson’s concepts.
ATTACHMENT BOILED DOWN
DO YOU SEE ME, DO YOU HEAR ME, DO I MATTER. If it's a yes, it's a pretty decent attachment.
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​The antithesis of this is BETRAYAL, REJECTION, ABANDONMENT and DEVALUATION. So those are the four things you feel when attachment is NOT good.
Let’s put this to the real world. When we feel heard and validated, even if someone disagrees with us, but we still feel like they really heard and understood us, the attachment remains solid. We matter and know that.
When we are valued, seen and heard in childhood we tend to seek relationships that do the same thing in adulthood.
When healthy attachments are not made in childhood we can develop insecure attachments, both in childhood and adulthood. Below are the common attachment styles.
Anxious attachment can be conceptualized as someone who wants to be in a relationship but fears abandonment. They may stay in longer than is healthy due to fear of being without a relationship or jump from one relationship to another.
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Avoidant is a person who is emotionally distant within the relationship and the detachment can be felt. The distance can come through criticism, humor, double-bind communication and many other tactics.
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Anxious-avoidant is chaotic and often involves sabotage and can even turn violent. These attachment styles tend to ‘blow up’ a lot of relationships with distrust and accusations.
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Secure relationships tend to have differentiated partners that can join or be separate, meet needs of self and partner, have boundaries and are aware of needs of partner, have compromise and assertion and are not overly reactive to fears of rejection.
When we go into relationships, be it friendships or partnerships, we can find that we are a bit more reactive to things that hit our soft spots from our developmental and attachment issues.
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Let’s say, for example, I was the kid that was left at the soccer field, a lot. When I grow up I am probably going to be more sensitive to betrayal and abandonment. Two things happen when you are repeatedly forgotten at the soccer field. First, you learn that when someone says they will do something, their word does not mean much, this is betrayal. Secondly, you feel abandoned. So when my partner says they will be home at 5 but gets home at 5:30 due to traffic I may be a bit more reactive to it than necessary due to my past.
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Understanding my attachment wounds and being able to communicate these well with my partner and understanding my partner’s will assist us both in communicating in a more healthy manner.
Fighting over socks on the floor (it's never about the socks).
A lot of couple arguments are not about what they are about. Sort out that sentence for a minute. They are about topics that are not really the issue. Sometimes mid argument you even lose track over what you are arguing about.
Most arguments really can be boiled down to if we feel seen, heard and valued or do we feel rejected, betrayed, abandoned or devalued.
For example, I spent my day off cleaning the house and you came home and threw your socks in the middle of the front room, which really means, that is devaluing all the work I did today.
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The biggest one that gets most couples is the abandonment cycle where one partner feels a bit dejected and in the early stages of abandonment. Not knowing the words to put to this, they speak out but it is heard as criticism by the other partner, who in turn withdraw more due to feeling criticized.
This obviously increases the feeling of loneliness and abandonment causing the partner to be louder about feeling alone and abandoned, causing the other partner to avoid more and withdraw more. This cycle gets deeper and deeper until full avoidance feels like full abandonment which leads to full desperate crying out for connection which feels like full criticism.
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This is just one sample. I encourage you and your partner to see if you two have a cycle that you get stuck in and if so, try to recognize it and call out the cycle when it starts next time instead of going down the path.