In the last blog, I shared some basics on attachment types. I didn’t create those myself; they are well-known ways that people connect, starting with their own parents. If you were not securely attached to your parents, this may impact how you connect with others in other parts of your life. This blog is to help you find some ways to use some self-care matched to your attachment history.
Avoidant Attachment Self-Care:
For those raised within an avoidant attachment relationship, people are very likely to take on self-protective measures like emotionally distancing themselves from others and minimizing the importance of interpersonal relationships. They are also more likely to focus on “intellectualizing” emotional experiences by inserting attempts at logic and reducting the communication of emotion to others (“I think” instead of “I feel”). Those with avoidant attachment often report in adulthood that they do not remember their early lives (underdeveloped life story) and within their existing relationships, they may function in an overly independent way that leads to feelings of loneliness and emotional distance within their life partners (“You don’t need me”).
A great initial step is to work on building a greater awareness of your own emotional experience. As humans, we have a very hard time understanding what other people are feeling and thinking if we don’t really have a handle on what WE are feeling and the thoughts, actions, or experiences that led to those emotional moments in time. We can’t interpret in others what we can’t interpret within ourselves. Research on how best to reconnect with the right, feeling, side of the brain suggests success when practicing more internally driven psychological activities, this supports better self-awareness. This may include techniques like guided imagery, exploration, and development of better awareness and identification of nonverbal communication systems in others (facial expressions, body language, gestures), and mindfulness.
Ambivalent Attachment Self-Care:
When you are raised with adult connections that are inconsistent, this often leads to an adult version of the self that is uncertain and anxious about whether or not others can be relied upon. The adult solution to help you break this cycle of too much/too little in your emotional responses to your own children is to start with self-care and self-soothing. The too little and too much parts of this cycle are different versions of the same thing. The person who received inconsistent emotional connection with their parents is often both hungry for this connection with their own children but simultaneously exhausted and overwhelmed at the emotional demands
The key to reducing and even reversing this insecure attachment is for everyone involved (parents and their children) to focus on self-soothing. This can be in the form of mind-body movements and mindfulness practices. There are a number of excellent kid-driven emotional regulation programs that can be of help as well. If you tend toward these responses and so do your kids, working on both kid self-soothing and parent self-soothing at the same time will help everyone function and connect more successfully. Self-talk is also an essential element to reduce the anxiety and self-doubt that are the primary messages generated cognitive. Working on your own or with a therapist to rewrite this quiet script that runs through your thoughts is essential. This means building in thoughts that offer affirmation of your worth and consistently coming back to them as truths.
Disorganized Attachment Self-Care:
For adult children who had disorganized attachment experiences within their own families, it is common for there to be a sense of emotional disconnection. Because of an early trauma history, those with a disorganized attachment often become frozen as a result of a flood of emotional overwhelm. If you haven’t already, working with a trauma-informed counselor to guide you through the process of making sense of this life experience is essential. You may have the hardest work of all, as healing from this experience often means facing and experiencing some of that fear again as an adult. Doing this with a good counselor beside you to support and foster improvement can make all the difference.
