Please don’t need me

Having all of these unresolved dependency needs really sucks as an adult.. Having insecure or disorganised attachment means relationships don’t feel safe and the two parts of the brain fight themselves over and over.

In their new book Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explore how some of these attachments get set up. The name of the book is : The Power of Showing Up : How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired.’

Reading it enlightened me about two things from my own childhood.. That the necessary feeling of safety that goes with a childhood in which parents are present, loving, engaged and non threatening when absent does lead to very shaky foundations in a child’s life, it also predisposes us as adults to a host of other problems.. A failure of or by a parent to keep the child safe (either from themselves or the other unsafe parent) and protected affects us aversely, as does having one parent be an erractic or or scary presence in the life of a child.. They also discuss how a feeling of competence and confidence is fostered when parents let kids struggle in necessary ways to learn or grapple with challenges while standing close by and NOT rescuing.

I am feeling all of this rescue shit going down in my relationship with Scott right now.. His replies have to be limited when he texts me before training or patrol due to the fact he is getting ready. The issue came up today and I got angry as I would rather have no contact than half arsed contact and my energy field in in the morning becomes attuned to him texting at 7 am to the point I wake about 5. On Saturday and Sunday nights I actually slept through from 11.30 to 5.30.. I got up but last night I woke at 1.30 and 3 and was awake until 5 I then fell into a deep sleep and woke at 8 am with my energy all over the place and unable to breathe.. I could not even bear to check the message until I got out for an early walk.

In it he said he contacts me to feel better, that I save him from his ruin and darkness and even if he cannot reply he will just text Yes Honey Yes Honey Yes Honey over and over and over again, which then to me feels weird and disengaged He told me he would rather this than no contact as without the contact he feels worse. .. Feel a bit silly unloading all of this in a blog but I really told him straight how much being pulled on is annoying me at present.. He and the fucking United States military has the money I need for repairs and clothes, the knees are coming out of my trousers and I am scared to buy new ones in case I run out of money.. Its shitting me no end right now. I kept trusting him every time he said they would let him go….it makes me sad and furious and feel so powerless at times I just want to scream… even typing all of this my body is burning.

Anyway back to the disorganised attachment pattern.. Here is what Tina and Dan say about it as the discuss the concept of ‘fear without resolution’ that seems to be replaying in my current relationship.

This kind of fear creates the biological paradox.. where a parent – who is supposed to protect us from danger – becomes the source of it. This paradox, in the literature referred to as fear without resolution, can create significant emotional damage and produce disorganized attachment pattern.. As a reminder, the problem is that one interconnected set of circuits – the mammalian attachment system – is insisting that the child go toward the attachment figure – while another circuit – the older, reptilian threat-survival reaction system – screams “Get away from the threat!” One body, two conflicting approach-avoid sets of commands.. And there’s no organised approach, so the child’s mind fragments. The brain becomes disorganized and doesn’t know how to process this fright without solution and these neurologically irreconcilable states.

This seems such a terrible dilemma for a child to be placed in.. The point for me now is though, that I am not a child. And I am not prepared to be pulled on endlessly by someone who declares I am the only one to ‘save him from his ruins’. I have had to fight like hell to escape my own ruins.. I would have stayed ruined with no therapy.. I would have continued to project it all on unavailable sources just as I have with my family. Honestly I am so close to cutting things with Scott right now..especially as Uranus stations over the next two weeks I am just wanting my freedom from all of this unresolved dependency stuff between us.. I am writing this more for myself to try and make sense of it.. Because at times as I push him away from him in annoyance, another part of me cries with longing for the complete lack of attachment, protection and nurturing I never got from an inconsistently unavailable father whose gaze and energy was so often turned away from me. And his anniversary of death is in 3 days.

The father I am needing right now surely lives inside of me! Anyway I got out walking and to the shops to get some red and blue picture frames to put as a splashback behind my stove because what was there before were artistic postcards attached to the wall with Blu Tak. I saw the frames a few weeks ago so today I went and got them and cut some of the postcards down to size and have assembled them this morning…. feeling proud today of that self improvement achievement, though after taking the photo I think it may be time to paint the wall a complimentary color to highlight them.