What is Avoidant Attachment? And How Does it Affect Your Relationships?

Image by Beth Hope

Do you know which attachment style you have? This style, which describes the ways you think, feel and behave with current/potential romantic partners, is either secure or insecure – this is further divided into anxious or avoidant. Understanding your attachment style is profoundly important, for your mental health in general and particularly the way it impacts your closest relationships.

In a recent post, I described the impact of an Abandonment schema, which might give you a sensitivity to and fear of rejection or abandonment by your partner. This schema is often associated with an anxious attachment style, which means moving towards your partner by thinking about them all the time, messaging/calling them often, and worrying that they might be losing interest in you or having an affair. People with this attachment style can experience periods of intense worry and anxiety, until they get reassurance that everything is fine, their partner still loves them and nothing has changed.

In this post we will explore the other main type of ‘insecure attachment’, which is the avoidant attachment style. It’s thought that 25 percent of the adult population have this deeply rooted way of relating to others (with 50 percent secure, 20 percent anxious and five per cent anxious-avoidant). If you are one of them, you may find relationships – especially romantic ones – tricky in all sorts of ways.

What is avoidant attachment?

Essentially, avoidant attachment is the complete opposite of the anxious style, involving moving away from your partner, or potential partners. While anxiously attached folk constantly activate their attachment system, which helps them feel/be closer to their partner, avoidant people unconsciously suppress their attachment system all the time. They use deactivating strategies like criticising or finding fault with their partner, finding reasons not to spend time with them or have intimate conversations, avoiding physical contact and fantasising about the perfect partner – who might be just round the corner, if only they were free.

I recently read a brilliant book on attachment styles and how deeply they affect us throughout our lives – Attached: Are You Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the Science of Adult Attachment can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I highly recommend it if you are interested in psychology, or just need some help in finding/maintaining a loving, supportive relationship.

One of the things that struck me was the authors’ claim that, if you are avoidant, when you hit a crisis point in your life – like a painful divorce – your avoidance can melt away and you become anxiously attached. And this made so much sense to me, when viewed through a parts-based lens. It means that people with an avoidant style have an Avoidant Protector, who keeps intimacy and (especially) vulnerability at bay.

But hidden behind that protector is a young part who craves love, support, connection, warmth, intimacy – all the normal, healthy relationship needs that every child is born with. Sadly, that protector constantly blocks these relational nutrients, so avoidant folk often feel isolated and lonely. They too want love, they just don’t know how to let people in enough to give and receive it.

Healing your attachment system

As I am often saying in these posts, the good news is that none of this is fixed or set in your brain. Your attachment style can change over the course of your lifetime. How? Well, finding an attachment-based therapist using a model like schema therapy would be one route to healing. Another is finding a securely attached partner – we know that this is often profoundly healing and transformative for insecurely attached folk. This kind of person makes relationships easy, because they are calm, confident and consistent. They just love you, no matter what, which helps your protective parts calm down enough for your hurt little boy or girl to receive all the love they have long craved.

So don’t give up. There is always hope, even if you have always avoided or struggled with relationships. Perhaps give a bit more thought to the kinds of people you typically choose, taking it slow at first so you can get a sense of your partner’s way of relating before you plunge in. Of course, if you are avoidant you will never plunge in, but you can still think before embarking on a relationship to try and find a secure person to be with. It will make a big difference, trust me.

I hope that helps – and wishing you luck on your healing journey.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Try this Step-by-Step Practice to Manage Your Painful Feelings

Image by whoislimos

As the REM song reminds us, everybody hurts sometimes. To lead a human life – with all its sorrows, as well as its joys – is to be faced with painful feelings on a daily basis. On any given day, we might feel stress, anxiety, hurt, upset, loneliness, low confidence or self-esteem, disconnection, rejection, anger, frustration, depression and boredom. Nobody likes these feelings. No-one wants to feel them. But whether we like it or not, as members of the human species we must inevitably feel them.

As I often tell my clients, if you never feel painful emotions you’re either a robot or you’re dead. And neither option is very attractive!

Another way of thinking about this is that, to live a full, rich human life, we need to feel a rainbow of emotions. Everybody likes the light-coloured ones, like joy, love, excitement, pride, pleasure and satisfaction. And no-one likes the dark ones: fear, pain, anger, sadness or loneliness. But maintaining robust mental health and wellbeing involves experiencing the full range of emotions, from light to dark.

Do you avoid feelings altogether?

Something I often notice with my clients, especially when they have a trauma history, is that they struggle with painful feelings in a variety of ways. Some people don’t feel them at all – they experience so much internal detachment and dissociation that they feel totally numb, shutdown or empty inside. And in some ways, this works well as an emotional-management strategy, because they are able to function well enough day to day, without being buffeted by unpleasant thoughts and feelings 24/7.

But the downside is that they often feel so disconnected, from themselves and other people, that life is extremely lonely. These people feel isolated and alone, even in a roomful of people. They might also struggle to feel the pleasant emotions, like happiness and love, because this internal shutdown squashes all emotions, light and dark.

Or are you overwhelmed by them?

At the other extreme, many people I work with find their feelings completely overwhelming. In schema therapy terms, their Healthy Adult part gets swamped by the intense, overpowering emotions of their Vulnerable Child part – the young, emotional, hurt child we all carry inside.

Again, if there is trauma in your background, your nervous system might be highly sensitive and easily engulfed by threat-focused emotions like anger, fear or hurt. That is not your fault, it’s just how your brain, nervous system and body were shaped by painful experiences in your childhood.

The practice

The four Fs: Find it, feel it, let it flow, find comfort

Either way, whether you feel too much or too little, you need help in managing your painful feelings. Here’s a step-by-step practice I have developed over the years, which might help.

1. Find it. If you’re experiencing any overwhelming feeling right now, first locate it in your body. For example, if you feel anxious or panicky, you will probably feel that in your gut – perhaps butterflies, a knot in your stomach or deep, sinking feeling of dread in your lower torso. If you feel angry, you might notice your muscles tensing up – especially around your upper back, arms, fists, shoulders and jaw – and a surge of heat and energy in your chest, throat and face.

   It also helps to name the emotion (research shows that just naming an emotion helps reduce its intensity) so, ‘I feel anxious/sad/upset/angry/stressed/irritable/frustrated/lonely/hurt.’

   If you tend to detach and don’t know what you’re feeling, just focus on the physical sensations in your body, however faint they may be (butterflies in your stomach, a heavy/slumpy feeling in your shoulders and upper body, and so on).

2. Feel it. It’s counterintuitive, but one reason people get so overwhelmed with emotions is because they swing between detaching, distracting or soothing (with alcohol, cigarettes, comfort-eating, prescription/non-prescription drugs, gaming, gambling or a whole host of other substances and activities) and overwhelm.

   If you just want to understand how we’re supposed to feel emotions, look at a toddler. They have no problem feeling their emotions! If they are angry, they shout, stomp their foot, scream, have a tantrum. If they are hurt or sad, they cry. If they’re scared, they run to mum for a hug. The emotions flow through them like water.

   And once they have felt and released the emotions, it’s amazing how quickly they move into a different emotional state – happy, excited, chattering, chasing a butterfly… For toddlers, emotions don’t get stuck. They feel them intensely, release them and then are perfectly fine again. It’s miraculous to see.

   Remember that feelings can’t hurt you – they are just feelings, which all humans feel and in fact let us know we are alive – so allow yourself to feel them, bit by bit.

3. Let the emotion Flow. Many of us, especially (though not exclusively) men, have trouble in expressing our emotions. We feel incredibly sad, but we don’t cry. We boil with anger, but say nothing, clamping our jaw shut, balling our fists, but carrying on as if we’re fine.

   Emotions – especially big emotions like anger or intense sadness and hurt – are designed to be released. That’s why we cry when we’re sad, so we release a mixture of emotion and stress hormones. And when we have cried enough, we feel a sense of relief.

   If you’re angry, find some safe, non-destructive methods for releasing anger and letting it Flow out of your body (here’s a recent post I wrote about that). Learn to communicate assertively. Write angry letters you never send. Find ways that work for you of healthily releasing your anger, so it flows out and doesn’t fester inside, because that’s not good for your physical or mental health.

4. Find Comfort. Think about that toddler again. When he was scared, he ran to mum for a big hug. If his sister fell over and banged her knee, she would run to mum, or dad, or a grandparent for a big hug, soothing/reassuring words and perhaps some milk and cookies. This is the Find Comfort part of the practice. Once you have allowed yourself to Find and Feel it, then let the emotion Flow, Find Comfort either from someone else or yourself.

   Because unlike toddlers, adults can self-soothe – we can give ourselves a hug, by placing a hand over our heart and thinking kind, comforting, reassuring thoughts. This might be tough for you. But it’s a skill that needs to be learned, perhaps with the help of a mental-health professional. And you can learn it, so you then have the option of seeking comfort from a partner, family member, friend or therapist, or of giving it to yourself.

I very much hope you find that helpful – remember that, like all practices, it takes practice. That’s why it’s called a practice! Because you need to do it, repeatedly, for it to become more effective. And watch this space for more emotion-focused practices you can add to your mental-health toolkit in future.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why (Good) Friends are Key for Your Mental Health

Image by Kingsley Osei-Abrah

Imagine being an eight-year-old on holiday, making sandcastles on the beach. Then another kid shyly approaches and asks if they can help. They have their own bucket and spade, are about your age and seem friendly enough, so you say, Sure. You probably don’t talk much, just dig, fetch seawater for the moat, focus on building your indomitable sand fortress. Then mum says it’s time to go, so you take one last, longing look at your construction and wave goodbye to the other kid.

The next day, as you start over, the same kid sidles up. And again, you probably don’t say too much, but spend the whole day digging, carrying, pouring, building. By the end of that day, you are firm friends – and every day for the rest of your holidays you hang out, gradually chatting more about inconsequential stuff, but things that might seem very important for a pair of eight-year-olds.

After the holiday, you might stay in touch or you might not (that’s up to both of your parents, really). Either way, you made a friend and, whether that was a holiday friend or a long-term friend, it felt good, right? You probably didn’t think too much about it, but you both had fun, you got on, neither of you did anything especially annoying. And that was enough.

We are wired for friendship

It felt good because, apart from the simple pleasures of sandcastle-building together, something much deeper was going on. When that kid shyly asked to help, your brain quickly checked him out and put him into one of two categories: threatening or safe. If he had been a hulking teenager kicking your castle to bits, you would have put him in category one and called your parents to protect you. But this kid was small, friendly and nice, so you gave him a ‘safe’ badge and got busy playing.

This might seem simplistic, but it’s what we do, all the time, with every person we ever meet. Your nervous system is constantly checking people (and situations) out to decide whether they are threatening or safe. If they are threatening (or just seem that way) your threat system kicks in, as your fight-flight-freeze response is triggered and you act, quickly and decisively, to deal with the threat.

But if someone seems warm, friendly, open, kind, trusting, nice or is sending a whole bunch of other safe-seeming signals, an equally powerful system comes online: your attachment system. And while the threat system says, Go away! your attachment system says, Get closer. This is how we make friends, whether we are eight years old on a beach, an adolescent at school, or young adult at college.

And we are wired for this – to attach, get closer, hug, love, commit, be open and intimate. Attaching like this is in your DNA, because your ancestors on this planet have been doing it since mammals first walked the Earth, because humans, like other mammals, are wired for attachment. It’s why cats and dogs care for and feed their young, keeping them close until they are old enough to fend for themselves (it’s also why sea turtles do not, just laying their eggs on a beach before heading back out to sea – no attachment system).

When relationships are hard

Of course, for many of us, making friends and forming lasting relationships is not so easy. If you have a trauma history, this may be especially true for you. That’s because your attachment system probably didn’t get the warm, positive, loving responses it needed when you were young. If your parent or other caregiver was angry, anxious, unpredictable, unreliable or downright hurtful to you, the person who was supposed to be your warm, safe, loving attachment figure was none of those things. Instead, their behaviour fired up your threat system, which is essentially the opposite of your attachment system in terms of how it makes you think, feel and behave.

So your attachment style (how you relate to other people) is probably not secure, unlike our eight-year-old’s on the beach. This style might be some form of insecure attachment, either anxious, avoidant or disorganised (which is basically a mixture of the two). This will make it hard to form friendships and romantic relationships; it might also make it difficult to fit in and feel relaxed among fellow students or colleagues, especially if they are new. Many of my clients struggle with all of these different types of relationship.

But, as I am always telling them, the good news is that your attachment style is not set or fixed. It can change throughout your lifetime. So if you have, say, an anxious attachment style, it can become more secure throughout your life. How? Well, an attachment-based therapy, like schema therapy, is designed to help with that. A long-term romantic relationship – especially with a partner who has a secure attachment style – will also help a great deal.

Keep working and everything can change

So, as I am always emphasising in these posts, however bad it was for you as a child – and if your childhood in no way resembled that idyllic holiday scene, above – and however hard you have found it to form warm, close, long-term relationships, please remember that this is not a life sentence. It can change, if you put the work in – and get help from the right person.

Keep going, even if it’s a struggle at first. Don’t give up if you try dating, for example, and it doesn’t go well. Eventually you will find the right person for you. Keep working at those friendships too, because the rewards, long-term, are absolutely worth the effort. And better to have one or two close friends than a whole bunch of superficial friendships, or relationships with people who don’t make you feel good.

You deserve love, warmth, intimacy and happiness with your fellow humans as much as any other person on this planet. I very much hope you find all of them soon.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What Are Core Needs in Schema Therapy?

Image by Eka P Amdela

One of the most important ideas in schema therapy is that all children have core developmental needs. These needs are the same whether you grow up in Tottenham or Tanzania, whether you’re male or female, raised in the 18th or 21st century. All human children have the same needs.

Think of these needs as nutrients that we all require to grow up strong, resilient and healthy. It’s like a plant – every plant needs certain nutrients to thrive. They need water, sunlight, minerals in the soil, carbon dioxide in the air, the right temperature and growing conditions. If plants get these nutrients, they thrive. If not, they fail to grow properly and can be small or spindly.

So what are these core needs? There are five, listed in order of importance:

1. Love and a secure attachment

Attachment theory is one of the best-researched fields in psychology. Pioneered by John Bowlby, a British psychologist and psychoanalyst, attachment theory tells us that all babies are born hard-wired to attach, first to their mother, then father, siblings, grandparents, and so on. Ideally, babies form a secure attachment, meaning they feel strongly bonded, comfortable and deeply loved by mum.

Sadly, many babies don’t experience this, for all sorts of reasons, so they develop an insecure attachment style – either anxious or avoidant attachment. If this is true of you, you might struggle to form close bonds or romantic relationships as an adult. This attachment style stays with us for life, unless we do something (like therapy, or finding a loving partner) to change it.

2. Safety and protection

This one is self-explanatory. We all need to feel safe and protected, from infancy onwards. If your family environment either was or just felt unsafe, you might have problems with anxiety, or be a worrier. You may develop a Mistrust/Abuse schema and find it hard to trust people. Or you might cling to others, especially if they seem stronger than you.

3. Being valued as a unique human being

As I always tell my clients, this is not about being special, getting all As at school or being the smartest/prettiest/most popular kid. It’s just about being loved for who you are. Just you, with all your strengths and weaknesses, likeable and less likeable bits, imperfectly perfect, like every other child. If this need is not met, you might develop a Defectiveness schema, feeling you are not good enough, dislikable or unworthy in some way.

4. The ability to be spontaneous and play

All children (and other young animals) learn through play. But some parents are not comfortable with their kids being playful, spontaneous or silly. They might shout at or critcise their kids if they are being ‘too rambunctious’ or ‘foolish’. And the kids quickly learn to stifle their natural – and hugely important – instincts to run and laugh and play.

In adulthood, this can mean being overly serious, struggling to be playful or have fun. And this can cause problems in relationships, especially if your partner is healthily playful and silly. You may need to develop your Happy Child – one of the key modes in schema therapy.

5. Boundaries and being taught right from wrong

All kids need to learn to respect other people. That they are not the centre of the universe. That their parents, not them, are in charge and get to make the big decisions. This does not mean smacking, yelling, shaming or hurting kids in any way. It just means helping them grow up to be thoughtful, respectful, decent human beings.

If this need is not met, you may develop an Entitlement schema and feel you are special, better than other people and deserve to have exactly what you want whenever you want it. That will clearly cause problems for you and everyone close to you, so needs work in therapy if true.

I hope that’s useful to understand. Remember that if any of your needs were not met as a child, and you formed painful schemas as a result, none of that is fixed or set in stone. Reading blogs like this one (or the fantastic blog/schema therapy resources at Secure Nest), or self-help books, getting therapy, forming loving relationships – these will all help you get those needs met as an adult. Wishing you all the best with that journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

5 Things Parents Can Do to Raise Healthy, Happy Children

Image by Jakob Owens

Having children is the most profound, beautiful, life-changing and yet terrifying thing you will ever do. Nothing can prepare you for the awesome responsibility of holding that warm little bundle in your arms for the first time. And parenting — especially in those exhausting early years, when you think you will never sleep again — can be tough.

One of the hardest things for all parents is the worry that they will get it wrong and screw their kids up in some way. We will say or do the wrong thing and make them anxious, unhappy, or bereft of confidence. And no wonder — we are now deluged with information, much of it contradictory.

One parenting expert says let your baby cry it out at night; another argues vehemently against this, saying you should never let them cry. One expert recommends strict discipline with your teens; another says befriending and supporting them is best. This guru says be a Tiger Mom; that one says this will only make them stressed-out and destined to fail.

Trust your parenting instincts

Confusing, isn’t it? And in some ways I think the best thing you can do is ignore all the experts (including me!) and trust your gut. After all, some species of human has been raising children on this planet for millions of years. We know, in our DNA, how to raise healthy kids.

But the nature of modern societies means we now live in very strange, artificial, non-human ways — most of us in huge mega-cities, cut off from extended family and community, working punishingly long hours just to make ends meet. And many of us are stressed out, exhausted and stripped of our natural confidence about how best to parent.

Parents have never been under so much pressure to get it ‘right’ — while at the same time so lacking in elder-inherited wisdom about how to let themselves just be natural with their kids. Mums and dads are struggling — and I would like to help.

Lessons from my consulting room

As well as being the proud dad of a strapping 22-year-old young man — and having learned many parenting lessons the hard way over the years — I am also a therapist. I spend my days helping people whose childhoods have not been right for them, in one way or another.

Helping those struggling with chronic anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or a multitude of other life-limiting problems has taught me a great deal about what we, as parents, do to hurt our kids — even if we love them and are doing our best, which most parents are, most of the time.

It has also helped me understand what children need in order to be happy and healthy. After all, as I often tell my clients, babies are born ready to flourish. They are like little acorns, tiny and fragile but bursting with the potential to grow into a mighty oak. All they need are the right nutrients: light, soil, some minerals and they will thrive.

Your kids are just the same. So here are five pieces of hard-earned wisdom I would like to pass on to you, so that you can help your little acorns grow up strong, healthy and ready to flourish in the world…

1. There is no such thing as too much love

It is impossible to love your kids too much. That doesn’t mean you should spoil (see point 5), over-protect or smother them, but these are not the same thing as loving them. I mean hugging them, tight and often. Physical touch is how mammals communicate love, help to calm and soothe each other and build strong bonds (just watch a nature documentary about any kind of monkey cuddling and grooming each other to see how much our closest mammalian relatives need and value touch).

Tell them you love them, every day. And show them you love them, by listening intently; giving them your time, not money or things; play with them, read to them, bath them, be with them. These things feel good for you too, so it’s a win-win.

2. You can develop a secure attachment from day one

Babies are born hard-wired to attach to (usually) first mum, then dad, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts and everyone else they relate intimately to throughout life. And helping your kids develop a ‘secure attachment style’ is one of the greatest gifts you can give them — this will help them form close, loving, nourishing relationships for the rest of their life.

Again, this is about trusting your instincts. You are hard-wired to securely attach to them too. Just do all the stuff above, from the first seconds of their life, and you will both be fine. If you are able to breastfeed, that is wonderful. If not, please don’t feel bad about it — it’s not your fault and you can be physically close in many other ways.

Lots of skin-to-skin contact, soft words, lullabies, (just enough) eye contact, play, hair-stroking… just let yourself be an attentive, loving parent and you will raise securely attached, confident, loved kids.

3. Love your kids for who they are, not what they do

We have a self-esteem problem in Western societies. The (in many ways helpful) emphasis on good self-esteem means that we judge ourselves on our achievements and compare them with our peers. Parents do this too. We praise our kids for their gold stars, or straight As, or sporting prowess. And that’s fine, but I think it gives them the message: ‘I will keep loving you as long as you succeed!’

Instead, we should love them for them. And tell them, over and over: ‘I love you so much just because you’re you.’ With this unconditional love as a baseline, getting the A or scoring the winning goal is just the cherry on top. They already feel loved deep in their bones, so don’t need these achievements to feel good about themselves.

4. Aim to be a ‘good enough’ parent

The brilliant pediatrician and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, coined the phrase, ‘good enough mother’. I love this idea and use it with my clients (and myself) often. Parents — especially mothers — feel so much pressure to be perfect these days. But what does that even mean? I try really hard but I’m definitely not a perfect dad (just ask my son!).

Being good enough means trying your best, but getting it wrong sometimes. It means giving points 1–3 your best shot, but some days being a bit frazzled, snappy and impatient. It’s not a big deal. As long as that baseline of love is there, kids are pretty robust. They can handle an occasionally snappy mother or father and still turn out just fine.

5. Boundaries matter too

Although I think we should love-bomb our kids every day of their lives, I do worry about the kind of anything-goes, my little Tommy or Tina is the most special child in the world, I should never discipline them parenting I often witness. Kids need boundaries. They feel safe with structure and routine — especially with things like bath time, bedtime and (broadly) sleep routines.

It also makes them feel safe if they feel like you’re in control — no five-year-old should be the boss of a family! Children should be polite (mostly) and respect their elders. They need to learn not to hit, or bite, or have constant tantrums when they don’t get what they want, to share stuff, to be kind. Again, instinctively all parents know this, whatever the cultural or societal norms of the day.

So there you have it: my recipe for happy, resilient, self-valuing, confident kids. But please don’t turn these guidelines into more reasons to feel like you’re failing or beat yourself up! They are just guidelines. If they work for you, great. If not, do what feels natural to you.

Trust your instincts, go with your gut — and remember that you know how to do this. You don’t need a million parenting books to be a good mum or dad. Just love, value and cherish them and all will be well.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why is Your Attachment Style so Important?

Image by Ekaterina Shakharova

Humans, like all mammals, are hard-wired to attach to their parents from the moment they are born. When you are a tiny baby, the first person you usually attach to is your mother, followed by your father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends, teachers, colleagues, romantic partners, and so on, throughout your life.

This ‘attachment system’ in your brain is very powerful, because when you are small and helpless it is literally a matter of life and death whether your parents – usually starting with your mother – love, feed and keep you safe. So attaching to them is absolutely vital.

The first person to really understand this was John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who argued that all babies have this attachment system and, depending on their relationship with their mother, form either a secure on insecure attachment.

A secure attachment means your mother has looked after you well enough, given you lots of love and hugs, changed you when you were wet, fed you when you were hungry, made plenty of eye contact, sung to you – and all the other things babies need to feel safe and secure.

Attachment and relationships

If your attachment was insecure, your mother – for all sorts of reasons, often because her own attachment with her mother was not secure – couldn't meet your needs as a baby, so you didn't feel 100% loved by or safe with her.

One of Bowlby's  groundbreaking ideas was that the kind of attachment style you developed as a baby would stay with you into adult life. Why is this so important? Because people with an insecure attachment will struggle to form strong, lasting, happy relationships with friends, colleagues and especially romantic partners.

In schema therapy terms, these people may have an Abandonment schema, so constantly worry about being left or rejected by their partner. Understandably, this causes all sorts of problems and makes it very hard to have a stable, happy relationship with anyone.

The good news is that, as Bowlby and later attachment researchers found, you can learn to have stronger attachments – and therefore better relationships – throughout your life. Schema therapy is one of the approaches that is very good at making these changes. If you do have an Abandonment schema, for example, we would work together on healing it so you felt happier, more confident, more trusting and relaxed in relationships.

As I always tell my clients, however difficult things were in your childhood, and however much you are still affected by those experiences as an adult, it's never too late to change. Heal your schemas and you heal the most painful and vulnerable parts of you – this really can be life-changing, as I have seen time after time with the people I work with.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Humans Need Connection

Image by Chermiti Mohamed

Humans are born wired for connection – it's in our DNA, as strong a need as food, water and warmth. And if you look at a newborn baby, that makes sense.

Unless babies successfully attach to their mother, they won't be able to survive – human infants are born completely helpless, so we are entirely reliant on our caregivers. A loving, secure relationship is literally a matter of life and death for babies.

So in our brains is an 'attachment system', which gives us a magnetic attraction to others – (usually) first mum, then dad, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, school friends, teachers, adult friends, colleagues, mentors and later romantic partners and our own family, when the whole cycle starts over again.

Jeffrey Young, the founder of schema therapy, understood this need for attachment – that's why it is one of the core developmental needs he identified in all children (along with the need for safety and protection; to be able to express our feelings and emotions; spontaneity and play; and boundaries/being taught right from wrong).

Another psychotherapy pioneer to understand this fundamental need was psychoanalyst John Bowlby, often called the 'father' of attachment theory. Bowlby realised that all children (and adults) need a secure attachment to their caregivers, especially mum. If we are lucky enough to develop this secure attachment in infancy, this 'attachment style' will remain constant throughout our lifetime and help us form strong, stable, loving relationships with friends, romantic partners and then our own children.

Strengthening your connections

Most of the people I see for schema therapy were not so lucky. For various reasons, their attachments were not secure as children, so they have all sorts of problems in relationships now. Perhaps they struggle to commit, or dive in too quickly and deeply (especially if they are a Highly Sensitive Person - read about them here). They may avoid relationships altogether, because they are just too painful.

But, as I always tell my clients, although these patterns are firmly established in our brains, they are not set or fixed in any way. Our brains are always changing, throughout our lifetime (because of neuroplasticity). This remarkable discovery means that we can learn to attach more securely and so learn to love, to trust, to allow others into our lives.

This is one of the most moving and beautiful aspects of therapy – seeing people learn to deepen and strengthen their connections, first with me, then family, friends and later a romantic partner, even if this seems like an Everest-sized obstacle at the beginning of our work! However daunting it seems, remember that you are never too old and it is never too late to let love blossom.

We are born ready to love – it's just the painful experiences we have when young that throw us off the path toward fulfilling relationships. All you have to do – with help, guidance and support – is step back on to the path... 

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Struggle with Romantic Relationships?

Image by Gift Habeshaw

Many people have difficulties with relationships, for all sorts of reasons. Finding a suitable person to be with and then maintaining a reasonably happy, stable relationship is not easy, for any of us.

But if you avoid romantic relationships altogether; if you find yourself repeating the same pattern over and over again in every relationship you have; or if you are in a long-term relationship but feel consistently unhappy, perhaps feeling disproportionately angry with or jealous of your partner, it's possible that unhelpful schemas are the root of your problems.

As I explain in this page about schemas, they are unconscious, deeply-rooted ways of thinking and feeling that get triggered by certain situations – and romantic relationships are among the most common triggers.

If you avoid relationships, perhaps for fear of getting hurt or rejected, you may have an Abandonment schema. This is often linked to the death of a parent, or a significant member of the family leaving in a sudden and upsetting way. The love and care you received as a child may also have been unstable and unpredictable, perhaps because one of your parents had mental-health problems, or was just not cut out to for the complex business of parenting.

So avoiding relationships altogether is one way to make sure that this painful schema never gets triggered – sadly though, that means your life will be lonely and unfulfilling (if you actually want a relationship, which most of us do), so this is clearly not the most helpful strategy. 

Watch out for schema chemistry

If you find yourself playing out similar patterns in relationships again and again, or perhaps choosing a certain type of man or woman in one relationship after the next, 'schema chemistry' may be to blame. This describes the unconscious, schema-driven forces that make a certain kind of person irresistibly attractive.

When you feel very strong physical chemistry with someone, as if you can't get enough of them and feel like they are perfect for you in every way, tread with caution. It may just be healthy sexual attraction, of course, in which case there is nothing to worry about. But if you have a history of falling in love with unsuitable people, that lightning bolt of chemistry – though exciting and seductive – is not to be trusted.

If you are in a relationship but it's not a happy one, again that is not unusual – long-term relationships are hard work, requiring commitment, sacrifices and a huge amount of love and patience on both sides. But if you have the same kind of argument over and over – volcanically losing your temper about fairly minor domestic incidents, becoming very anxious or consumed with jealousy every time your partner speaks to a member of the opposite sex – then your schemas may be to blame again.

The good news is that the schemas which cause all of these problems can be healed. Although that's not easy, it's far from impossible. There are now a number of therapeutic approaches designed to help people with these deep-rooted, life-disturbing problems, such as schema therapy or compassion-focused therapy.

When I am working with people who have these kinds of problems, one of our long-term goals is for them to find a happy, healthy, stable relationship – after all, what is life for but to love and be loved? And a healthy relationship as an adult is one of the best ways to heal the wounds of childhood, so a little work in this area goes a long way.  

Warm wishes,

Dan