insecure attachment

Moving into softness

March 26, 2020 By gwynn

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~Sharon Salzberg,Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Attachment is a unifying principle that reaches from the biological depths of our being to its furthest spiritual reaches. ~Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? ~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

As we adjust to our “new normal” and social distancing, many of us staying “safe at home”, our anxiety may be running rampant. As we are either in close quarters with those we normally live with or are alone because that is our normal, we may find ourselves feeling frustrated and our attachment wounds being activated.

This can have us turning to all kinds of unhelpful or even harmful behaviors. Behaviors that we developed at a young age that were meant to either keep us alive, or are meant to try and get our attachment needs met (in perhaps a very backwards sort of way).

We may find ourselves picking fights.

Pushing people away.

Feeling “clingy” and demanding.

Allowing (untrue, harmful, and hurtful) narratives about others or about ourselves to run rampant in our heads.

Falling back into ultimately harmful relationships (and remember, a relationship doesn’t need to be outright abusive for it to be harmful, any relationship that keeps us stuck in repeating hurtful patterns and cycle and doesn’t encourage our healing and growth, is harmful).

Our anxiety may be over the top.

Our fear of abandonment may be going wild.

So much is happening in our minds and bodies right now as we move through this unprecedented and totally unknown space.

We can find ourselves becoming rigid.

Hard.

Immovable.

Ultimately stuck, stagnant, repeating patterns and cycles that hurt us and others.

Now is the time for us to slow down.

To find ways to calm our systems, take a half step (or more) back, and to consider situations from a more rational place.

A time to examine if the reaction we are having is based in an old trauma, the present situation, or some combination of the two.

A time to consider how our past pain and hurts are impacting us in the present.

A time to find new, helpful ways, of soothing our systems. Of managing our overwhelm.

A time to shift into softness.

To connect to compassion, for ourselves and others.

To find ways to be more vulnerable, with people who are safe enough.

To explore our own wants, our needs, our desires, for our relationships, for our world, for our Self.

To nurture our own bodies and minds, those we care about and for, our planet.

To consider what fulfills us, what ignites our passions, what gives us a sense of abundance.

To expand, to transform, to evolve.

To move into softness is counter-intuitive when our fear response is activated. It is challenging to do even in the best of times. We live in a culture that encourages us to disconnect, to judge, to be harsh and hard.

Moving into softness can be challenging. It requires self-awareness and a willingness to shift, to grow, to transform. It asks us to come home into our bodies, to learn to sit in the discomfort of our emotions and their bodily sensations, to expand our windows of tolerance so we can respond to situations with love for ourselves, others, and our relationships.

We are in challenging and complex times. Finding ways to calm our systems, to rest, to allow the space for our own evolution is vital. We are at a precipice in the collective, a time for us to decide if we want to continue on in the harmful ways, destroying our relationships and planet, or if we want to shift into a nurturance culture, one of caring, of compassion, of coming together and lovingly encouraging each other to expand outside our comfort zones, to break generations old patterns and cycles, to revolt against all that keeps us apart and to evolve into the people, and the society, we have always dreamed of.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weeklyish newsletter and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Last weekend Sarah Martland (Founder of Trauma & Co) met to figure out ways we can support our community right now. We have changed the pricing the the Trauma & Co Community to make it more accessible to more people, and we’ve also made some changes to what all will be offered in it. We have also brought an offering planned for later this year forward, as well as added an extra pricing level. You can learn more about Resourcing for Complex Times: Supporting Ourselves Through Challenging Experiences here.

When we fall back on harmful patterns & cycles

February 20, 2020 By gwynn

There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace – these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death. ~Frank Herbert, Dune

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
~Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (Frank Herbert)

Be mindful of people who feel like home, when home wasn’t a safe place to be. ~TheMindGeek

Change is often challenging.

And if we’re really honest with ourselves and each other, change can also be terrifying.

Why is change so terrifying? Why is it so easy to fall back into old (often harmful) patterns, cycles, even relationships? Why do we keep going back to things we know are hurtful and or damaging?

The why we do this is simple enough. It’s because when we were young, as our brains were first developing and our neural pathways were forming, as we were learning about the world around us, we lived in abusive, neglectful, and or chaotic environments. The neural paths that were then formed, associated what is known and understood with this chaos or harm.

We learned at an early age how to navigate harm. How to side step it. How to get through it. The chaos, in many ways, became “safe.” Even as it was hurting us.

It was safe because it was known. Not because it was actually safe. Not because it wasn’t causing harm.

Simply because it was known.

Breaking patterns and cycles is stepping into unknown territory. A land without any type of road map or navigation system. A land without paths or trails for us to follow.

Breaking patterns and cycles is not known to our brains. It is not what our neural pathways understand. It feels foreign because it is.

Because of this it feels uncomfortable. Even terrifying. It may not feel right. It likely won’t feel good at first or for a while. Even though what we are doing is actually good for us.

We fall back on old (harmful) patterns and relationships because they feel safe. They feel safe because they are known. The cycles we fall back into again and again remind us of our chaotic childhoods and that is understood.

We know how to navigate chaos.

We have no idea how to navigate peace. Real (non-oppressive, non-abusive, non-demanding, assuming, expecting) love. Freedom. Calm. Actual safeness.

And because we don’t know how to navigate it, because it is foreign, it feels weird, uncomfortable. And not just weird, oftentimes boring. And even more often, out and out unsafe. And so we avoid it, run from it, resist it, reject it.

So what does this mean then, as we are doing our work to break life long, often generations old, patterns and cycles to also learn to trust ourselves? As we are doing the work of processing our trauma? Of coming into our bodies and the present? How can we trust ourselves if what feels “safe” is actually harmful? How do we sit in the discomfort of change when every fiber in our being is screaming No! Go back to what we know!! ?

How do we leave, and stop returning to, relationships that are abusive, oppressive; that stunt our personal growth and healing; that keep us stuck in patterns and cycles that are harmful not just to ourselves, but ultimately to our children, to our other relationships, to the ways we interact with and in the world, when those harmful relationships are what feel like “home”?

First we need to develop a metric fuckton (yes, I believe this is an actual measurement) of self-compassion. Because a truth is we will fall back into these patterns. We will revisit these cycles. We will retreat to these relationships. That all, ultimately, cause us harm. Cause those around us harm. Cause our world harm.

We need to understand this is not failure. This is part of the process. With each falling back, it will feel less and less “right.” Not that the new ways of being and doing in the world are comfortable yet, but that what we knew just doesn’t quite fit anymore, and we know it, we feel it, viscerally.

Then as we continue to do the work of processing our trauma, of coming into our bodies, of learning to be in the present moment, we need to be able to allow the space to be curious, to explore, to question ourselves and our motivations. Am I doing X because it is what I know? Is what I know about X ultimately harmful to me? Am I avoiding Y because it is unknown and therefore feels unsafe? Or is Y actually unsafe?

Sometimes we won’t know the answers to these questions, sometimes we will answer the questions incorrectly and end up continuing a pattern or cycle that causes us and or others harm.

This is part of the process. This is part of learning to do different. This is part of breaking those patterns and cycles.

When we enter into new relationships that feel “boring” we need to explore similar questions. Does this feel boring because it’s actually emotionally and physically safe? Or does it feel boring because we actually don’t have much in common and therefore is intellectually unstimulating? Do I feel anxious around this person because they may be a threat? Or do I feel anxious because they are offering me actual safeness, understanding, freedom?

Again, we will answer these questions “wrong” sometimes. And that is OKAY. That is part of the process. It is part of the learning. It is part of getting to know ourselves.

Remember that first step of developing some self-compassion? Yeah, that. We always fall back on that.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t do the repair work we need to do when we cause harm in our relationships, in our world. We do that too. Having a history of trauma is not an excuse to cause harm and does not give us free pass to perpetuate harm.

We can be gentle with ourselves as we journey through this work. As we enter into, then retreat from, then enter into again, the unknown territory of breaking patterns and cycles, of learning what it is to be in truly loving and freeing relationships. Of owning the ways we cause harm to ourselves and others, and doing the work of repair without shame, but rather with the true intent and motivation to create change, within ourselves, within our relationships, and out in our world.

/../

This was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on February 17, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe right here.

We will be learning ways to break patterns and cycles, to slow down and self-regulate, to come into our bodies and reclaim them as our own in the six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors (TIE STS) program that beings March 16. To learn more click here.

We need each other

November 25, 2019 By gwynn

The world of intimate bonds is the world of emotions—a field of reactions and hidden desires for safety and acceptance that we all long for. All of us. ~Joseph Schaub, Divorce (or not): A guide

One of the things that trauma does is encourage us to isolate. It encourages us to be away from our family, friends, intimate partners, and communities. How this looks for each of us is different. It may look like us actually appearing to be a hermit and not interacting with people or it may look like we are incredibly social, with many friends and connections, yet all of those relationships are only surface level and we never reveal (much of) who we truly are, our fears, our wants, our needs.

Both scenarios (and a million in-between) are isolation. When we do not allow ourselves to deeply connect with others, that is one way our trauma shows up. Our not allowing this deep connection is a signal for our desperate need for a sense of safeness and acceptance, our need for love and a sense of belonging.

When we have unprocessed trauma living within us, it means our ability to have a sense of safeness — with others or with ourselves — is stilted. For many of us living with trauma, the traumatic events we experienced were perpetrated by people we trusted, people we possibly literally depended on for our actual literal survival. These types of betrayals, especially when perpetrated over and over throughout our childhoods teach us that we can’t rely on another, that the world isn’t safe, that those who claim to love you will only cause harm.

We internalize these lessons and they form the development of our neural pathways that then inform us as adults, once we are far from the harm, how to be in relationship with others.

David Richo, in his book How To Be An Adult in Relationships, talks about the “5 A’s” that make up our emotional needs as humans. These are: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.

We all need someone to pay attention to us in a way that builds us up.

We all need to feel accepted, just as we are, in all our messy and complicated human glory.

We all need to feel appreciated for our contributions to our families, our friendships, our communities, our world.

We all need affection, be that loving words or begin physically held.

We all need allowing, to be allowed to shift and change and grow, allowed to be complex, complicated, and even contradictory.

All humans have these needs. For those us who did not have most or any of these needs met as children, we have that much more of a desperation to have these needs met as an adult.

But even though we have this requirement to have these basic human needs met, we don’t trust that anyone will ever meet them.

Trauma is a complex and contradictory thing in and of itself. As a survival mechanism we isolate and yet isolation can literally kill us. Without the love and support of our community (be that chosen family, blood relatives, competent trauma informed professionals or hopefully a bit of all of the above), we slowly or sometimes quickly will bring about physical disease, intense loneliness and hopelessness, and sometimes a depression so deep there feels like there is no way out.

But our early life experiences have formed the ideas that we cannot trust other humans to have our basic human emotional needs met. And it takes a great act of courage and strength to reach out and ask for help. And frankly, some days we don’t have that courage or strength.

So how do we shift this? How do we find the resources to move through and past the fears of betrayal? How do we develop our own sense of safeness and trust?

It takes work. Patience. Time. Intention. Mostly, it takes work.

I deeply believe that we need to do the work of calming our nervous systems, connecting deeply to our boundaries and reclaiming our bodies as our own, finding our ways to our own center and ground. And then we need to continue this work through deep embodiment and trauma processing work.

Then slowly that sense of safeness, and our ability to trust others and ourselves, will grow.

We are not meant to do this processing and healing work in isolation. In fact, we actually cannot successfully do it in isolation. We need others, we need to do this work in relationship. This is the point of therapy, to help a person heal in a safe relationship so they then can take what they learn (and the ways they have shifted) out into the world and apply it to their other relationships.

Of course, therapy is not for everyone and frankly not all therapists (sadly) are competent.

However, that does not change the reality that we need to do this work of healing, of developing our sense of safeness, of cultivating trust, within relationships.

It does not make us weak to need other people, it makes us human. It does not mean we have a character flaw when we yearn for deep connections with others, it makes us human. It does not make us “less than” or “too much” to ask another for support, it makes us human.

Where this is tricky perhaps, is that we can’t rely on any singular person to fill all our emotional (or any other kind of) needs. No one person will ever be able to do that. We need a community of people and we need to be able to rely on ourselves in way that is helpful for us and not harmful.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry wrote :
No one is going to love you exactly like you imagine. No on is ever going to read your mind and take every star from the sky at the perfect time and hand it to you. No one is going to show up at your door on a horse, with a shoe you lost. Do you understand?
That’s why you have to love yourself enough, so that any other love just adds more candles to the cake you’ve already iced.

Our work in processing our trauma is loving ourselves, it is the cake and the icing of our making. But we don’t need to, and I would argue can’t, do this work alone. We build ourselves up as we build our relationships, our relationships grow as we do, we learn to trust others as we learn to trust ourselves.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum, honestly. The point being however, we need both. Both our own willingness to do the work, and people to support us and or guide us in this work.

It is true that no one person is ever going to meet all our emotional needs. Knowing this is part of our own maturation process. However, we can have a community of people, even a relatively small community of a handful of folks, who together can help us get our needs met.

That’s how we are supposed to be. In community. Serving each other and ourselves.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter on June 10, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

On insecure avoidant (dismissive & fearful) attachment styles

August 26, 2019 By gwynn

Dismissive-avoidant
A dismissive-avoidant attachment style is demonstrated by those possessing a positive view of self and a negative view of others.

People with a dismissive style of avoidant attachment tend to agree with these statements: “I am comfortable without close emotional relationships”, “It is important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient”, and “I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.” People with this attachment style desire a high level of independence. The desire for independence often appears as an attempt to avoid attachment altogether. They view themselves as self-sufficient and invulnerable to feelings associated with being closely attached to others. They often deny needing close relationships. Some may even view close relationships as relatively unimportant. Not surprisingly, they seek less intimacy with attachments, whom they often view less positively than they view themselves. Investigators commonly note the defensive character of this attachment style. People with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style tend to suppress and hide their feelings, and they tend to deal with rejection by distancing themselves from the sources of rejection (e.g. their attachments or relationships).

Fearful-avoidant
A fearful-avoidant attachment style is demonstrated by those possessing an unstable fluctuating/confused view of self and others.

People with losses or other trauma, such as sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence may often develop this type of attachment and tend to agree with the following statements: “I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to completely trust others, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to other people.” They tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness, and the mixed feelings are combined with sometimes unconscious, negative views about themselves and their attachments. They commonly view themselves as unworthy of responsiveness from their attachments, and they don’t trust the intentions of their attachments. Similar to the dismissive-avoidant attachment style, people with a fearful-avoidant attachment style seek less intimacy from attachments and frequently suppress and deny their feelings. Because of this, they are much less comfortable expressing affection.

~Wikipedia, August 2019

While the avoidant attachment styles are not my dominant styles, I have been in relationships (both intimate and platonic) where the other person has an avoidant style. Some of the ways I have witnessed these styles show up in others (note I have broken it down to three lists: characteristics they share; dismissive only; fearful only)

Both avoidant styles ::

Struggle with emotional intimacy
Unable to share their own thoughts or feelings with others in a constructive way
“Logics” their way out of emotional conflict

Avoidant Dismissive style ::

Become uncomfortable when relationships get too emotionally intimate; may perceive their partners as “wanting too much” or being clinging when the partner expresses a desire to be more emotionally intimate
Appear fiercely independent – act as though they don’t need others; they can take care of everything themselves
When faced with separation or loss, they shift their focus and attention to other (non relationship) issues and goals
Tend to withdraw and isolate, attempting to cope with loss and other emotions on their own
Deny their vulnerability; use repression to manage emotions that are aroused in situations that activate their attachment needs
When seeking support from a partner are likely to use indirect strategies such as hinting, complaining, and sulking
Overly focused on themselves and their own comforts; largely disregard the feelings and interests of other people
Typical response to conflict, and stressful situations is to become distant and aloof

Avoidant Fearful ::

Afraid of being both too close to or too distant from others; attempt to keep their feelings at bay but are unable to
Overwhelmed by their emotional reactions and often experience emotional storms
Unpredictable moods; unable to self-regulate or suppress feelings
Often in rocky or dramatic relationships, with many highs and lows
Fear of being abandoned and also struggle with being intimate
Cling to their partner when they feel rejected, then feel trapped when they are close
Timing seems to be off between them and their partner

What these styles can look like in the modern world:

Ghosting or semi-ghosting
Refusing to talk about emotional personal topics
Avoiding or ignoring conflicts by ignoring phone calls, texts, emails; when they do reply make no mention of the conflict

Ghosting is a very modern day way that those with avoidant, and particularly dismissive-avoidant, attachment styles cope with their feelings. They may tell themselves all kinds of things about why they are ghosting the person, but it does boil down to not wanting to face and feel with their emotions. Note that their partner may or may not even be aware of a conflict, as avoidant styles struggle to state when something is an issue for them.

As with the insecure-anxious attachment style, the avoidant styles grow from neglect from their primary caregivers during their developmentally sensitive years. This may be due to the caregivers having addiction issues, having avoidant attachment styles themselves, or could be from a life event in the adult’s life that has them withdraw into themselves, like grief over the death of a loved one or needing to work outside the home suddenly due to divorce.

Those with fearful avoidant styles tend to have grown up in homes when sometimes a caregiver was available and sometimes not; creating a sense of confusion and not knowing if the adult will be available to meet their needs.

Generally speaking anxiously attached and avoidant attached people are attracted to each other. Their relationships tend to look a bit like a cat and mouse game where the anxiously attached person reaches out for connection, then the avoidantly attached person withdraws, so the anxiously attached reaches out more and the avoidant withdraws more, each upping the ante so to speak with each turn of the cycle with neither ever getting their attachment needs met. This cat and mouse game can last for decades, for a lifetime even.

However as one or the other partner works through their own trauma history and starts to process it, learning to develop a more securely attached relationship style there are two paths the relationship could either go down: 1. The relationship ends or 2. The other partner also begins to work through their trauma history and learns how to become more securely attached in relationship.

Securely attached people can be in relationship with either avoidant or anxious attached people (and of course other securely attached people). The good news for those with the insecure attachment style, is if they are willing and able, these relationships are excellent opportunities for them to grow and begin their trauma processing work and begin to shift their styles. However, the securely attached partner is not the insecurely attached partner’s therapist, and so finding a good trauma informed therapist is vital to facilitate the shifting that can begin to happen in these types of relationships.

Of course the ways we relate to others, especially our intimate partners, is complex and varied. We all have a more dominant style that we typically utilize, however we all have bits of each of the insecure attachment styles in us, regardless of which one is more dominant for us. How our attachment styles show up in our relationships is also varied depending on our partner’s (dominant) style and the work each person has done in processing their own childhood trauma.

My hope for sharing about each of these styles over the last couple weeks is for you to learn a bit more about yourself and to help you develop a bit more compassion for yourself in understanding some more of the hows and whys you interact in the world the way you do.

The best news in all of this, is with the right trauma informed therapist and our own dedication to practice and growth, we can all shift from insecure attachment styles to a more and more securely attached style. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it can be done. It requires us to literally rewire our neural pathways, and I highly recommend a therapist who utilizes a combination of somatic and talk therapy. This rewiring can begin to happen in a few months, and with more and more work people can begin to see significant changes in how they feel in their own bodies and within their relationships in as little as a year to eighteen months.

That may seem like a long time (eighteen months), but consider how long, how many decades, you have lived with the attachment style you developed as a child. When we look at it from this perspective, eighteen months is a drop in the bucket.

That doesn’t mean that in a year and half you will be “healed” or “cured” or completely changed in your attachment style. I believe those of us who developed insecure styles as children will always need to manage them in certain situations and consciously and intentionally bring ourselves back into more secure ways of being. However, developing that pause, to be able to move into that secure way of being with ourselves and with others, is everything.

** I want to note that I do not believe it is the responsibility of those who have more securely attached styles to “help” those with insecure styles. None of us are responsible for another person’s growth or trauma processing when in intimate relationships or platonic friendships. However, love is complex and we may find ourselves being willing to be present during our partner’s growth. The key is being able to recognize when a partner is being abusive and to be very clear that abusive behavior is unacceptable and if repeated it is necessary, always, for us to save ourselves and leave the relationship.

/../

This essay was originally published in my newsletter on August 11, 2019 and edited for publication here. To read my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

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