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

Is a Fear of Rejection Hurting Your Relationships?

Image by Marta Nogueira

How are you with rejection? Some people seem fairly immune to it and manage to brush it off. Others are very much affected by it, whether real or imagined, imminent or on the distant horizon. Many of my clients are in the latter camp, fearing rejection or abandonment, especially in romantic relationships.

As we try to address this problem, it’s helpful to begin thinking about it from an evolutionary perspective. Remember how humans have lived for almost our entire evolutionary history. We evolved from apes, who live in groups. And then lived as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, again in groups. We lived in villages with an extended network of family and others in our tribe.

These villages were well-protected, with strong fences surrounding them, because outside those fences were large, hungry animals who wanted to eat us. And neighbouring tribes, who could attack at any time. So it was very important – quite literally a matter of life and death – that you were inside that fence, especially as night fell.

And this meant that being rejected by the group in any way – shunned, banished, ejected from the village – would have been terrifying, because in that world (think the savannah, full of ravenous hyenas, lions and leopards; or forests, bristling with sharp-toothed bears, mountain lions and wolves) you would not make it for even a single day on your own.

Evolutionary psychologists think this is why the fear of rejection can be so intense, because somewhere deep in the more primitive recesses of your brain is the knowledge that rejection = death. It’s that stark.

Fear of abandonment

This is one reason why humans can be highly sensitive to the possibility of being abandoned in relationships. But there are many others, including having an Abandonment schema. This is a neural network in your brain holding ways of thinking, negative beliefs about yourself and others, powerful emotions and their resultant bodily sensations. When this schema gets triggered, you feel just awful – highly anxious and panicky, upset, angry or some other powerful emotion.

This would show up in your body as changes to your heart rate and breathing, becoming hot and sweaty, or tight, tense muscles. You might also believe things like, ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ or ‘Everybody I love will eventually leave me.’

I have been thinking about this schema a lot recently, as I am reading Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming fear of Abandonment & Building Lasting, Loving Relationships, by Michelle Skeen. It’s a classic self-help book, drawn from the schema therapy model, so much of it chimes with my way of thinking/working. Skeen reminds us that this schema can develop for many reasons, including being abandoned as a child – for example, if your father left the family to go and start a new relationship and you barely saw him after that.

The abandonment could also have been more subtle. In this case, perhaps nobody actually left the family, but they weren’t very attuned to you or your needs as a child. They might have been good at what I call ‘practical love’. Feeding you, keeping you clean, getting you to school on time, all the important logistical stuff of parenting.

But not so good at the warm, emotional side of being a mum or dad – soothing hugs, telling you that they loved you and making you feel cherished, valued as a unique little person. In this case, you might feel abandoned, because your needs were profoundly unmet. It’s like an emotional, rather than physical abandonment.

Whatever the cause of this schema in childhood, as an adult you may struggle with relationships in various ways. You might become anxious and clingy, texting or calling your partner multiple times a day if you feel them pulling away. Or you could do the opposite, pushing them away, picking fights or even leaving them before they get the chance to leave you. If you have this schema, you might even avoid relationships altogether, because they have been so heartbreakingly painful when they fell apart.

Healing your schema

If any of this resonates with you, I am sorry – it’s such a deep and painful schema and really can make life a struggle. But remember that none of this needs to be a lifelong problem. Schemas, like so many systems and structures in your brain, are not fixed or set in any way. I often write about the concept of neuroplasticity, because I find it such a hopeful and positive idea. It means that whatever kinds of painful experiences you have had, and however they have imprinted on to your brain, they can be changed. Schemas can weaken and fade in intensity. Your attachment style (which could be either anxious or avoidant, if you have the Abandonment schema) can become more secure.

It really is all up for grabs, because your brain is shaped and moulded by experience. Think differently, over and over, and you form brand-new neural pathways. So instead of ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ you learn to think, ‘I may not be perfect, but I am loveable and likeable just as I am.’ Over and over, until that pathway becomes wired in and the old one withers away.

Try reading Michelle Skeen’s book, for starters, because it really is very helpful and good. If this is a highly sensitive issue for you, I would recommend seeking therapy, preferably with someone who understands problems related to rejection and abandonment and can offer you a thought-through, convincing roadmap to healing.

And eventually, after doing some work on this stuff, finding a loving, supportive partner will be the most healing thing you could do. That may seem daunting right now, or even impossible, but it’s always one of my treatment goals when I’m working with abandonment-phobic people. It is doable, if you get enough help and support to make the necessary changes, trust me on that.

You could also try one of my most popular Insight Timer practices, Calming Your Parts: IFS Meditation. This will help you calm and soothe the young, abandoned part of you that gets triggered in relationships.

I very much hope that helps – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

What is the Secret to a Happy Life?

Image by Vonecia Carswell

Everybody wants to be happy, right? Me, you, that barista who served you coffee this morning and the homeless guy who looked so sad and lost on your way to work. It’s hard-wired into every human to avoid pain and seek pleasure – especially a consistent, lifelong feeling of happiness.

But the tricky thing is how? How do we learn to be, if not happy, then happier than we are right now? What if we struggle with mental-health problems and happiness seems like a distant mirage that fades every time we think it’s close? And what if we experienced significant trauma in our childhoods and so just leading a ‘normal’, functional life is a day-to-day struggle, let alone some fanciful notion of actually being happy?

I spend virtually every waking moment of my life pondering these questions. All I do is think, read, research, learn and practice with my clients (and myself, my friends and family) how to be happier. How to heal and recover from past traumas and childhood hurts. How to lift the mood of depression or calm the agitation of anxiety.

the search for happiness

One book, in particular, has stood out to me recently as I conduct this search. It’s The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schultz. Unlike many psychology books I read, it’s extremely well-written and highly readable. And it contains some genuinely transformative pearls of wisdom on what it takes to live a rich, meaningful and happy life.

The authors are the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development – a truly remarkable piece of research that has followed 724 men since they were teenagers in 1938. Approximately 60 of these men, now in their 90s, are still left. The Study chose two groups of men, one comprising Harvard students and the other from Boston’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

What’s so remarkable about this study is that it follows these men through their entire lives – from teenage years until, for many of them, those lives come to an end. And the researchers are able to glean a vast treasure trove of information about them, asking at regular intervals about every aspect of their health, day-to-day lives, their marriages, work, kids, views on life, coping strategies when times are hard…

This book is profoundly moving, because we hear the stories of these men, their triumphs and failures, greatest joys and toughest moments in their lives. We also hear from some of the 1,300 children of the original participants, who were later added to the project. It’s a brilliant book – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And remember this is a study on what makes us happy. What constitutes a good life. Not just the things that make us sad, stressed or afraid.

So what does make us happy?

Having tracked all of these people, for so many years, the researchers found a few key ingredients that seemed to add up to a well-lived life, whatever their class, income level or occupation. Trying not to have any regrets was one ingredient, as was developing successful coping skills for the bumpy bits of life.

But the most important ingredient seems to be about other people – developing and maintaining warm relationships was the most important factor determining which of these Bostonians were happy and which less so. In some ways, this is common sense. We know that, for example, being in a warm, loving, mutually supportive romantic relationship makes us happy. And we know that having close friends makes us feel good in all sorts of ways.

But studies like these, as well as decades of research into attachment, give us cast-iron, empirical proof that loneliness is a real problem for our mental and physical health; that the kind of relationship we have with our parents hugely influences the relationships we forge as an adult; and that having close, positive relationships with friends, family, colleagues and others is the key to a happy life.

What if your relationships are not good?

We have to be careful with studies like these, because it’s easy to think, ‘Well, my relationships are awful. I maintain distance with my family, am single and struggle to make friendships, so am I doomed to unhappiness?’ And my answer would be no, not at all.

Many of us – myself included – have difficult relationships with family members. You may also find friendships difficult, perhaps only having one or two good friends, or finding social situations hard to navigate. You may not have a partner, which is a source of ongoing sadness for you.

If so, please don’t despair. We live in the 21st century and there are many ways of living a good life that don’t involve marriage or children, let alone a wide network of friends.

But it’s helpful to remember that humans are social, tribal animals. Our brains are wired (indeed, primarily developed) for attachment, connection, relationship.

So if your relationships currently make you unhappy, please do get some good-quality therapy to help you cut loose those people who make you feel bad and find new people who light you up, or make you feel safe, or who just get you and accept you for who you are.

We can all do that, at any age and life stage. As I’m always saying in these posts, It’s never too much and never too late to heal. That applies to relationships too.

So please read the book, I’m confident you will enjoy it. And I wish you strength, courage and determination on your road to happiness, however long it may be.

Sending love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Why Do We Find Romantic Relationships so Triggering?

Image by Steve Watts

It is my tenth wedding anniversary this year. And I am lucky enough to have found someone who is warm, kind, caring and supportive. I genuinely don’t know how I would manage without her, because she has been there for me through so many hard times over that decade – illness, struggles with my mental health, tough times in my career. She is a gem.

But, trust me, my relationship history before this remarkable woman did not run nearly so smoothly. I have had my heart broken, more times than I care to remember. And, as a younger, more selfish man, I did not treat other people’s hearts with the care they deserved. I very much regret that now, but at least learned from those mistakes and now am (I hope) a kind, loyal, trustworthy and loving partner. I’m her rock and she is mine, which is truly a blessing.

I am sharing this with you to illustrate two key points:

1. A good romantic relationship is one of the most healing things that could ever happen to us (equating to many, many years of the best therapy you could find, I reckon).

2. A bad romantic relationship is one of the most triggering, hurtful and destructive experiences you could ever have (requiring many, many years of therapy to get over).

Relationships Fire up Your attachment system

Why are relationships so powerful, so emotionally activating for us? Well, partly because of the impact they have on your attachment system – one of the most powerful systems in your brain. A brief guide: your attachment system comes online the moment you are born, as does (hopefully) that of your mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and so on. But for most of us, our mother is our primary attachment figure, as we are literally part of her body for nine months (how much more attached could you be than that?), usually breastfeeds us and does most of the early caregiving.

So, you are born, your attachment system comes online and so does your mum’s. This is what helps you bond, as you both experience ‘attachment bliss’, that feeling of being completely loved, safe, cosy, warm and connected as she holds you in her arms and you gaze into each others’ eyes. And if this all goes as Nature intended, you feel securely attached to her and so develop a secure attachment style, which stays with you for the rest of your life.

Sadly, many of us did not experience this secure early attachment, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe mum was depressed, so was sometimes withdrawn and emotionally unavailable when you were a baby. Maybe she was drinking or taking drugs. Perhaps the family environment was highly stressful, involving poverty, domestic violence or some other kind of volatility and conflict. If she was stressed, so were you, so poor little you could not feel safe and secure, no matter how hard she tried.

None of this is about ‘mother-bashing’ – most mums are kind, loving and determined to be the best parent they can be. It’s just that sometimes, despite their best intentions, things don’t go as they should – and so exquisitely sensitive, utterly helpless, entirely dependent little you could not bond with her as you needed to.

If this was the case, you would have been insecurely attached and developed either an anxious or avoidant attachment style (or a mixture of the two). Again, this will have stayed consistent throughout your life, making relationships tricky – especially romantic ones.

How does this work in practice? Let’s say you meet a guy on a dating app. And he seems nice, at first. But soon he starts ignoring your messages, or giving vague, noncommittal answers – he might have an avoidant attachment style, so shuts down and withdraws if he feels like you’re getting too close. If you are anxiously attached, you might start panicking, wondering what is wrong and when he will leave you. Perhaps you start bombarding him with messages. You might even show up at his house, asking what you did wrong and how you can fix it. He gets more and more distant, you get more and more anxious, and so the whole painful cycle goes until, inevitably, it ends.

Good news: Your attachment style can be healed

So far, so depressing. But there is good news – we know from all the research (and there is a vast amount of research on attachment, dating back to the 1950s and the ‘father’ of attachment theory, Dr John Bowlby) that although attachment styles do stay constant throughout our lives, they are not fixed or set in any way. Your attachment style can change, so if you are anxiously attached but instead of meeting Mr Wrong on the dating app, you lucked out and found a kind, decent and securely attached guy, being with him would help you become more securely attached.

I would say that’s what has happened to me – after 10 years of love and stability, I feel much more securely attached to my wife than I did during all the crazy, rollercoaster years that came before her. So if romantic relationships are a struggle for you, please don’t give up.

As I am always saying in these posts and my teaching, it is never too much and never too late to heal. If you have a history of unhappy relationships, before embarking on a new one get some good therapy first, so you can heal yourself and stop playing out the same, painful patterns with every new person you meet. And then focus on the kind of person you choose – prioritise kindness above all else. Imagine this person as your best friend, not just an exciting lover. Would you be compatible? Would you be happy living with them, picking up each other’s dirty socks and all the other decidedly unromantic stuff that long-term cohabitation involves? Could you imagine them taking you to hospital if you were sick?

That’s what real, long-term, lasting love is all about, not the fireworks and can’t-keep-your-hands-off-each-other stage, which never lasts. See this person, primarily, as your friend and you will be much more likely to choose a keeper.

I hope that helps – and if relationships are a struggle for you, don’t despair. There is always hope – take it from someone who found lasting love, finally, in his middle age. And if I can do it, so can you.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Is Your Romantic Relationship Harming or Healing You?

Image by Hutomo Abrianto

Do you have a partner? If so, does your relationship make you happy? This is a crucial question, especially if you experienced trauma or other painful events in your life, as the quality of your romantic relationship can either help you heal those old wounds, or make them deeper.

In some ways, this is common sense – we all know that bad relationships make us unhappy. But it’s helpful to think about the different systems which impact your mental health, both internal and external. The internal systems are, generally, what we work on in therapy. These comprise your internal parts, such as (in schema therapy language) your Vulnerable Child or Inner Critic. We could also see all of the internal systems of your mind, brain and body as key drivers of either health or ill-health – for example, your nervous, hormonal and cardiovascular systems.

Why relationships are key

In therapy, less attention may be paid to your external systems. These would include your family (both the one your were born into and the one you made for yourself as an adult), friends, colleagues, neighbours, community and society. All of these systems, to a greater or lesser extent, have a big part to play in your mental and physical health.

But, as an adult, no external system is more important than the family you have created. And within this system, the quality of your romantic relationship has the greatest power to make you happy or not. And sadly, something I see time and again with trauma survivors, is that they don’t make good choices for their partners.

It can be baffling, both for the people involved and those who love them, so let’s think about why this can happen. Perhaps the biggest reason is that, if you experienced trauma, abuse or neglect as a child – and if the person hurting you was a family member – that’s what love feels like to you. Especially if the person doing the damage was your mother or father, they were a key attachment figure for you as a child. So you loved, needed and wanted to be close to them, even when they hurt you.

So your poor, developing little brain learned that love = hurt. That was your experience, day after day, so you became conditioned to feel love in this way. As an adult, this conditioning will lead you to (unconsciously, of course) choose partners who will also love and hurt you. It just feels normal and, on some unconscious level, right.

Schema chemistry

Another important concept to understand is that of ‘schema chemistry’. This means that the schemas in your brain make you, again unconsciously, highly attracted to people with whom those schemas fit. This is why we feel that intense, lightning bolt of attraction to someone, it’s like the schemas in both brains are powerful magnets, pulling us together.

For example, if you have an Abandonment schema, you might be dangerously attracted to people who are clearly unreliable and always leave their partner, usually involving an affair. They are clearly not a great choice as partner material, but you just can’t help yourself. Or, if you have a Defectiveness schema, you might find yourself dating someone who is constantly critical and putting you down – this makes you feel defective and not good enough, deep down, feeding your schema and keeping it alive.

Enough is enough

If this sounds like you, it might all seem a bit depressing. And it can be really painful, especially when we play out these patterns over and over again. But if that’s the case, maybe now is the time to clench your fists, grit your teeth, summon up all your courage and determination and say to yourself, ‘Enough!’ Enough hurt. Enough crying. Enough endless talks with friends, telling you to leave over and over.

Time to choose a relationship that heals. How? Well, you might need some therapy to help you recognise these patterns and learn how to break them. Or a stack of self-help books and loving friends/family members might be enough. Either way, you need to accept that your choices thus far have not been the best. You may also have to take a long, hard look at your current partner and decide whether they are good for you or not.

• Are they abusive – verbally, emotionally or physically? Then leave.

• Do they make you feel bad about yourself on a regular basis? Leave.

• Do they gaslight you, or take zero responsibility for any problems that arise in your relationship? Do they blame you for absolutely everything? Time to leave.

• Do all your friends and family keep telling you this person is bad for you, or untrustworthy, or just a not-very-nice, destructive person? Time to go.

Kindness above all else

Once you are out of that horrible situation, take some time to heal and regroup, spend time alone until you feel ready to date again, then write a list of qualities you are looking for in your new partner. And top of that list should be kindness. Far more important than how they look, or how charming they are, or how much money they have – certainly than that crazy chemistry that most people mistake for love, but is actually just a hormonal fever dream that always burns off after a few months, at best.

Choose somebody kind. Choose someone you think could be a friend – because long-term relationships are all about friendship, not lust. Choose someone with whom you are compatible, who you could live with, who has similar values and politics to you. Choose someone your friends like and approve of (they often know what’s best for you).

And if you do all those things, and find a nice, loving, supportive partner, it will be one of the most healing experiences of your life. Even if you are a trauma survivor. Even if you have been hurt by other partners, or in early relationships. A loving boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife is powerful, healing medicine.

I hope that helps and that you find someone good for you – because, especially if you have been through tough times in your life, you thoroughly deserve it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Have Trouble Managing Your Anger?

Anger is a tricky emotion. In pure evolutionary terms, anger is our signal to fight a threat, as part of the fight, flight or freeze response (anxiety is the emotion that tells us to freeze or flee).

This is all well and good if you are facing a hungry lion, but not so helpful if your boss has just criticised you, or another driver cuts you off in traffic. But this primitive, self-protective threat response explains why we can react so strongly, violently even, if we feel threatened – in a very crude way, that's what anger is for.

Most of my clients have some kind of problem with anger, roughly falling into two camps. The first group is scared of or uncomfortable with anger – theirs and other people's. If this describes you, it may be because one of your parents was given to angry outbursts, which as a child were very frightening.

That vulnerable child inside you learns to be scared of anger, even when you are – on the outside at least – now an adult. It's also possible that your family were rather buttoned-up, viewing any expression of anger as rude and uncivilised (a very British way to deal with anger!), so you learned to keep your angry feelings stuffed deep down inside you. As an adult, it's now hard to access and express them, even when it's appropriate to do so.

The other problematic form of anger is expressing it too often and too volcanically. This is the cause of domestic violence, bar brawls, violent crime, road/air/trolley rage and aggressive bullying. It's just as harmful as repressed anger, both to those around you and ultimately yourself – you will probably end up in serious trouble, perhaps even prison, if you cannot contain your anger and explode at the smallest provocation.

People with this 'anger style' may come from very angry, combustible families in which everyone was always shouting at/being aggressive to each other. They may also have been hurt, neglected or abused as children, so that child inside is absolutely furious at the world and can't help but express it, even when it's dangerous or destructive to do so.

The angry modes

In schema therapy, when people are expressing anger in a problematic way, we see this showing up as one of three angry modes. If you find yourself blowing up all the time, perhaps shouting or swearing at other people, being threatening or even physically violent, you are in Bully/Attack mode. This is the most problematic angry mode, so a major part of your therapy would involve learning how to respond to triggering situations in a calmer, more rational manner.

Anger-management strategies can be helpful here, as well as longer-term healing of schemas such as Abandonment, Mistrust/Abuse or Vulnerability that can trigger this attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence style of responding to threats or challenges.

The second mode, Angry Protector, is less destructive but still problematic. This is when you express anger in more subtle ways, perhaps non-verbally by scowling or with a closed-off body posture; with sarcasm or cutting humour; angrily complaining about or being harshly critical of other people.

This mode is all about keeping a distance between yourself and others, perhaps because deep down your vulnerable child is scared of attack or rejection. You may also be uncomfortable with any kind of criticism or challenge, so respond with subtle but unmistakeable shows of anger to shut that down.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

— Aristotle

The third mode is the most helpful, even if it doesn't at first appear that way! This is the Angry Child mode, and is evident in the way a person expresses their anger – often disproportionately to the perceived insult or infraction. You may have a tantrum, smashing or throwing objects (not to hurt others, just to release your anger). You might also get very tearful or upset.

And beneath the anger is always hurt, fear or sadness, so if we were working together I would help you express your anger in a non-attacking, non-destructive way, so we could contact and soothe the hurt, upset or fearful vulnerable child lying just beneath the angry surface. 

When we get people into Angry Child mode, teach them how to express their anger verbally or by doing something safe but physical, like twisting a towel or punching a cushion, they experience a tremendous sense of relief – all the anger literally drains out of their bodies. It can then be deeply healing and soothing to deal with the hurt that lies beneath – over time, your anger subsides as you feel happier, safer, stronger and calmer.

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

How to Stop Fearing Abandonment in Relationships

Image by Tamara Bellis

Many of my clients show up with deep-rooted fears and sensitivities around being rejected or abandoned. In some ways, that’s a normal aspect of being a human being – fear of rejection is hard-wired into our brain, because for most of human history being rejected from the group was, literally, a matter of survival. Finding yourself alone, outside the village stockade, surrounded by hungry animals and hostile tribes, was not a good place to be.

So we are all sensitive to signs of rejection by friends/colleagues/family, or worries about our partner being unfaithful or leaving us. But for some people, this sensitivity dominates their lives. These people probably have an Abandonment/Instability schema – one of the most painful schemas we can have, which can start to imprint in our brain from birth onwards.

And this makes it especially overwhelming when it gets triggered in later life – because the emotions and bodily sensations we feel might be pre-verbal, pre-cognitive and those of an infant; hugely powerful and utterly overwhelming.

Problems start in childhood

For example, Sonya comes to see me because she is having problems in her relationship. ‘Every time I think my boyfriend is going off me – even a tiny bit – I just freak out and start bombarding him with texts because I feel so anxious. I can’t bear it.’

When we start to explore her history, Sonya tells me that her mother was an alcoholic, so even though she did not physically abandon the family, she was often drunk and emotionally unavailable for Sonya and her siblings.

This speaks to part two of the schema: Instability. Even though Sonya was not actually abandoned, the attachment to her mother was not stable or secure, so she felt abandoned on a daily basis.

Stephen’s case is easier to understand. When he was five his father – who he adored – suddenly left his mother and started a new family. Virtually overnight his dad went from an attachment figure that Stephen loved and relied on to being completely absent from his life.

This clearly was an abandonment, so Stephen’s schema developed then. He now gets fiercely jealous if his wife even speaks to other men – because his schema gets triggered and he is overwhelmed by a wave of jealousy, fear and insecurity.

Healing the core wound

In schema therapy, we work on the Abandonment schema like every other – with a combination of experiential techniques (especially imagery and chair work) and ‘limited reparenting’, where we try to meet Sonya and Stephen’s core needs that did not get met in childhood.

For both people, the biggest need I would be striving to meet would be love and a secure attachment – to me, primarily, but later to other friends, partners and family members. This takes time, but magically we can heal even the deepest, most painful schemas – and help you feel calmer, happier and more secure.

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