A change in attachment styles : working to understand attachment wounding and loss of the True Self in my life

As we heal from and begin to understand the true nature of our hurts in attachment we have a chance to turn things around in the way we react out of wounding or old styles of avoidance or anxiety.. .. As we begin to trust ourselves to release the pain of not being attuned to or understood as youngsters it becomes easier for us to stop blaming ourselves for difficulties with bonding or experiencing intense feelings in relationship and also makes us more aware of when and how we may be projecting in fear.

That said, the path of healing is painful as our wounds naturally select those along a pathway of attraction or choices that feel ‘familiar’ (similar to what we had or experienced in our family of origin.) Also if we carry a lot of anger about that : ANGER WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE OR EXPERIENCE ONCE WE START TO FEEL IT IT MAY FEEL BOTH UNSAFE AND FRIGHTENING.. I was thinking of this in regard to something I wrote last week about a follower saying she did not feel safe feeling and expressing her true self due to her father’s bias of who he preferred her to be.. I also listened to a program yesterday on sibling birth order and how it can affect us. Often the older child in a family is more executive and ambitious while the younger ones may rebel and want to change the world, though a lot of different things can affect this, it certainly rang true for our family.

One woman who rang in to the talkback spoke about how her father, being born in the 1920s (like my Dad) refused her a University education (like me she was born in the 60s) and how painful that was. That for me, put my own experience inside a kind of wider collective context but it also made me understand how much harder it was for me having nearly died in the year before, then watching my older sister hovering on the brink of death for the first year of my studies after which I ran away to try and get distance only to get into hot water with an addictive partner..

Having a sympathetic and empathic therapist has been essential for me. Kat discussed yesterday in therapy how the fear of my own anger can keep me bound. If I feel angry I immediately feel ‘bad’ as that is what I was told in my family especially by my second sister who was a goody two shoes and bonded deeply with Mum. Having another friend share how he supported and grew closer to his father from the age of 30 after his Dad had a breakdown and ECT made me see how much harder it was for me too.. at the age in my life my father had been dead for 7 years, and the only one he bonded with was my brother. Sadly older sister who came to grief with the aneurysm suffered that after over-running herself in an attempt to be seen by Dad, she was the second child.

I know my brother must surely have missed my Dad so much after he died as Mum told me in the years we shared so much after I got sober that when she used to go to the office they shared my brother would sometimes be sitting at Dad’s old desk wearing his green cardigan.. After that death I was sent away for a long time and my brother and his family did visit me over in the UK.. I also see other times he tried to draw close to to me but I pushed him away.. I only see that now but it was also very difficult for him to understand my level of attachment wounding. Even if his own relationship with his wife is a very avoidant and emotionally distanced one. they live in different towns but are not divorced. I guess that is good in a way as the climate on the coast suits my brother more and my sister in law loves the city and the galleries.. My sister in law is not a fan of much of our family and sadly the death of her own mother occurred at the same age my father was when he lost his father, 12 years of age.

I remember in 2013 having a fight with my second sister and Mum over this.. Mum was saying how my brother’s wife, when she came to live with them in the late 60s did not want to be with close to the family and used to go up the back in the garden to read a book, but this makes sense if you know that my sister in law was sent to boarding school after her mother died and then, when she came to live with us before marrying my brother, Mum did a really bad thing and read her personal diaries or letters and found out she had had a termination of pregnancy.. She then confronted both of them and tried to discourage my brother from marrying her. I tried to tell them both (my Mum and sister) it was a lack of empathy on their part at that birthday lunch for my sister in 2013 and they turned pussy bum mouths on me and then cut me off after which time my sister fell and hit her head from being on too much psychiatric medication. Only then did my Mum ring me seeking my help.

I tried to stand up for my two brother in laws too, from time to time.. They were made out to be bad husbands for both abandoning their wives but the part their wives played did not figure.. not that they were doing wrong things but just following the work far too hard family scripts.. putting business, appearances and achievement before emotional connection.. I was outside that in some way but when I was encouraged to pull back on work in 2000 after my first breakdown and breakthrough of repressed or complicated grief at 7 years of sobriety by my then Jungian therapist, Wendy, my husband raged at me and tried to demonize my therapy. He came into the room and screamed at me for taking the day off work which my therapist advised me to do. In the next year faced with that pressure from him and the fact my therapist left me at a vulnerable time for one full month in August I collapsed and decided to go ‘home’.

Things rapidly fell apart for us then as my husband’s family did not like me being sober or real and eventually encouraged him to leave me. Which nearly broke me.

Anyway I am happy to say now I have kinder people around me who support me and understand.. I have stayed true to my path of deep feeling and doing the brave work of exploring my attachment wounds.. In this regard I am glad I moved away from AA when I did as the person I was close to had a heavy dose of avoidant attachment and often encouraged distance when really I needed to understand the roots of things rather than distance alone. She also was not a fan of therapy and it was hard to withstand the ire I got at times for seeking therapy.

Staying true to ourselves while attempting to explore the nature of our attachment wounds and styles means facing pain and difficult emotions in a society where that is not always encouraged, advocated or understood.. Taking the risk to face our fear over being angry about misattunement from our real self and projection of ‘badness’ for trying to express it in some way is important work for those of us who had to learn to collapse, fawn or freeze in the heat of threats put on us to murder our true selves. Kat was explaining to me in therapy yesterday how the inner critic steps in to beat us over the head, this a form of punishment introjected from mis-attuned and ignorant parents perhaps also in flight from their own shadows.. My first thearpist Wendy said she thought I used alcohol to silence this part of me and I remember taking to her a dream where I was hitting myself over the head with a bottle. When we stop the addiction we have to face the killing voices and forces we internalized that wanted our True Selves ‘dead’. We may face shame from the outer critic of others invested in denying their own part.. I had this from so called ‘friends’ in my drinking years, shaming me, saying they would break off relationship (especially when they were all drinking too).. its a shitty thing to do to someone struggling with deeply unconscious wounding and we can get it from therapists too..

Anyway today I feel hope.. I am so at peace with who I am and even all of the pain.. I am finally seeing HOW LITTLE SUPPORT I HAD FROM BOTH OUTSIDE AND INSIDE BEFORE AND HOW ESSENTIAL IT HAS BEEN TO FINALLY BREAK AWAY FROM THE WOUNDED FAMILY OF ORIGIN SCRIPTS THAT ONLY DOOM ME TO BEING THE ‘BAD GUY’ FOR TRYING TO SPEAK THE TRUTH.