#13 - Attachment Trauma in Relationships

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we're going to be talking about how attachment trauma shows up in relationships, right? Particularly marriages, right? I mean, committed relationships, not necessarily so much in our day-to-day relationships, like with acquaintances and stuff like that, but in particular how much how it shows up in our committed bonded relationships, right? And just for shorthand, I'm going to call that a marriage, right? Just so I don't have to keep using the phrase committed bonded relationship, right? I'm just going to call it a marriage. Even if you're not married, technically married, but you have a, you know, you've got a partner that you're very, very close to. You've been dating. We might plan it, be planning on getting married, you know, or you you may have just been together for a long, long time and feel that, feel kind of like you are a couple, um, but not necessarily married uh legally. But uh just for the sake of argument, work with me here, we're gonna just use the word marriage to mean all of these relationships that are that are these kind of exclusive bonded, committed relationships, life partners kind of thing. All right. Okay. So if you've been watching any of my videos, you know I've talked a lot about this whole idea that human beings are creatures of attachment, right? Which means that we naturally desire to form emotional bonds with other human beings, right? And these emotional bonds do a couple of things, right? Is not only do they help regulate our nervous system and do a lot of things physiologically for us, decrease our sensitivity to pain and all of those kinds of things. But it also helps us to develop. In fact, I would even argue it's the conduit through which our self-concept develops. So when we're kids, um, we really come into this world. I mean, we have, you know, kind of a personality that's hardwired. So whether we're extroverted or introverted, or, you know, we we tend to be more uh anxious or adventurous, things like that. I mean, those are part, kind of part of our hardwired personality. But as far as our self-concept is concerned, right, our sense of identity, our sense of safety, our sense of value, our sense of agency, our sense of connection with others, our sense of belonging, uh, none of those things uh are pre-installed in our brain when we when we're born. And so we get all of that stuff through our childhood, uh, through our interactions with our parents and our siblings and our peers and things like that, but primarily through our parents uh while we're growing up. When we grow up, however, in a home where those kind of those needs, those self-development needs, those self-concept needs, uh are not developed, where parents are absent in certain ways, where in instead of getting, you know, in instead of a trauma being something that is a violence done to us, there's actually something withheld from us where we didn't get the nourishment that we needed in order to develop a coherent sense of self or a strong sense of self. Then, you know, we go through childhood uh and into adolescence where we kind of break that parent-child bond, you know, we kind of go through that disruption place where we're like, you know, shut up, mom, shut up, dad, you don't know anything. I know everything. I'm gonna go out and do the world and all of that kind of stuff, right? You know, and parents are like, where'd my baby go? You know, if they're engaged at all. Some parents are just like, get the hell out of here. I can't wait to see you go. But um, but then we get into adulthood and we start forming uh relationships, you know, uh, with other people. Uh you know, people our our own age, right? So this where in childhood we are in a dependent state where we needed to get everything from our parents in order to develop our sense of self and how to navigate through the world and you know how to understand our our place in the world, how the world works, and all of that kind of stuff. Then we get into adulthood, and now when we are within the context of those emotionally bonded relationships again, that's where any of the things that we did not get as children tend to show up. They don't necessarily show up in uh in our casual relationships. I mean, somebody could be super popular in the community, everybody loves them, all of this kind of stuff, but but at home they're completely unable to connect and bond and have a healthy relationship with either their children or their spouse. There may be domestic violence when when they're interacting with other people, none of that stuff shows up. You might ask, well, why? And that has to do with the fact that that a lot of our self-concept and how we understand ourselves develops during childhood within the context of those attachment relationships, right? And so when we are in adulthood, it's like that context of the attachment relationships, those those being like a marriage, a committed relationship, right? It's like that's where the wounds of childhood tend to show up. And interestingly, it takes a little while for attachment bonds to form. When we first meet somebody and we start dating them, right, um, there's there's a couple of different systems in the brain that that keep us engaged with them uh long enough for that emotional bond to form, right? And that usually starts to bond around that that bond, that emotional bond really tends to start forming around two years into a relationship. Prior to that, right, there's a lot of like new relationship energy chemicals that are released in the brain, and we're just like, oh my God, I can't stop thinking about them. They're so great. Everything they say is funny. Everything they, you know, they they do is so cute. Uh and uh there's, you know, our sex system, it goes on overdrive. It's like, oh my God, we just have sex all the time, and everything we do is great, and everything they say is funny. And then about two years into the relationship, that's when this attachment bond starts to really take hold in the relationship. I mean, it's forming during those times. And one of the relate, one of the reasons why we engage in in a lot of sex, and every, you know, these brain chemicals are you know just making us so enamored with them we can't stop thinking about them, is that those systems are you know, are created or engaged in order to keep us activated or engaged with them long enough in order for those relationship bonds to form. And so it is not unusual that about two years, and it can be three years, it can be a year and a half, I mean, somewhere in that period where it's like suddenly there seems to be a change in the relationship. Now all of a sudden it's like, it's like that that initial, oh my God, I'm thinking about them all the time. Uh just everything, every joke is funny, everything they say is so clever, everything they wear is so cute. Um, now all of a sudden it's it's like we just view things differently. And we also may show up differently, or they may show up differently. And it's like, wow, where's that person that I knew a year ago? I mean, you seem like you're a different person than you were. And all of a sudden, things like some of the wounds, attachment wounds from childhood will start to show up because now that bond is formed. And so those bond injuries will start showing up in the relationship in a way that they hadn't previously. And it's not necessarily that the person was intentionally trying to be deceptive, and it's like, oh, I don't want to let them know who I really am, because once they know who I really am, then then it's like then they they won't love me. It's it's usually not that at all. It's that because that attachment bond hasn't formed, those attachment injuries haven't shown up in the relationship yet, right? And so this is one of the reasons why it's it's really a good idea to wait a while before getting married, right? This is why it's important to, you know, really, you know, date, live together, be engaged, you know, give yourself a good two and a half to three years, in my opinion, particularly if if both of you come from wounded families, right? Or or dysfunctional families or hurtful families where you've experienced some woundedness as kids, you want to wait until that emotional bond kind of forms in the relationship to see how that's going to unfold. Because for some, it's like all of a sudden their partner becomes a freakish monster and they're like, oh my God, it's like, why all of a sudden is there all this aggression towards me? Or why does every single little thing that I do and all of a sudden you fly off the handle or highly critical? Or why is it that now if I'm 10 minutes late, you're, you know, you want to see my phone and you're accusing me of of cheating on you or whatever, right? I mean, it's like, where was this person in the in the first two years of our relationship? And the the reality is that that person was still there, but hasn't hadn't emerged because the wounds that happened within that attachment relationship aren't showing up yet because that attachment, that emotional bond, that deep attachment bond really hasn't formed yet in the or hasn't become the the central focus of the uh of the relationship. That's not the organizational force of the relationship yet. That takes a couple of years. And I see this all the time when I when I work with couples who are struggling, right? I mean, couples will come in and they're they're just like, man, we just got along so great together. And then, you know, it's like, you know, it's a few years in, all of a sudden this other stuff started to happen. We get got into a pattern of conflict that we don't know how to escape from. And it's like every time it's like there's a there's a look or there's there's a tone or something happens, and we both recognize that, oh my God, here we go again. Things are now starting to blow up and escalate, and we don't know how to navigate through that. We don't know how to fix that. Help. And the vast majority of the time, what is happening in those situations is that there is uh when when we have some type of disagreement, or when something in here gets triggered, either we feel like we get a little bit frightened, or we feel hurt, or we feel sad, or we feel alone, or something right, happens. We you know, we we feel like our partner doesn't understand that then some part of this emotional woundedness, this attachment woundedness from our past gets triggered, right? That wound gets triggered, and now there's an emotional response that happens. And we can oftentimes tell when this is happening because we can feel it in our gut. We're like, if you really pay attention and slow things down in a conversation, it's like things are going well, and all of a sudden it's like there's this emotional inflection point that happens where all of a sudden we're like, wow, I can feel myself reacting. And I it's like I can see ourselves getting into this pattern, I can I can feel myself either getting angry or or something is is happening here, or I'm becoming scared, or I'm feeling very hurt. Something is is really getting triggered in there. And the reason why when that happens, why that conflict is almost impossible to uh to resolve, and oftentimes it just has to escalate until it just kind of burns itself out, and or both people just walk away. And they and oftentimes it's just that just ends up being unresolved. There's, I mean, it's like if you you try to re-engage that, it tends to just be a replay of what had happened previously. And what is happening if we were to if we were to look you know kind of carefully at what is what's actually showing up in the room when those kind of situations happen, right, is that a wounded part of ourselves that we had when we were children, right, is getting triggered and is coming up within the context of this attachment relationship when there's some kind of distress or conflict. And now this is another entity that is in the room that uh that that the couple doesn't know how to recognize, right? Doesn't they don't know how to to navigate through that. They still think that they're talking about like, you know, who to invite for Christmas dinner, right? Or why they were late, uh, or whatever, whatever the whatever that little trigger comment or or or conflict was about. And uh and and so they end up just kind of oftentimes shouting at each other, trying to reiterate their point to try to get the other person to understand. And the other person is like shouts, just kind of shouts back their position, and you know, like as though the what the issue was was that, you know, uh the the real issue was what they what they were talking about. The the the the who to invite who to invite for dinner, where to go on a vacation, or you know, uh should that should the children be um spanked or not, or you know, what is a reasonable expectation about school performance? I mean, any of these things can just become these massive escalated fights. And it and the reason why they tend to not resolve is that they're arguing about content, you know, about kind of the the conceptual subject, and they don't recognize the emotional component that is screaming for attention, right? That is is saying, I am here, I am really feeling scared, or I'm feeling angry, or I'm feeling threatened. And I and it's like I don't know how to communicate that. So I keep talking about why the kid needs to get A's, right? Or why they shouldn't be involved in sports, or why they should be blah, blah, blah, right? You know, our daughter's 12, she shouldn't be wearing makeup, or yes, she should. You know, I mean, it's it's like the escalation piece of the argument is rarely about the subject matter that is being discussed, but rather is this piece of ourselves that uh that has some emotional woundedness to it that tends to show up in relationships, right? And that is that is what I is what is referred to as attachment trauma. And so when, you know, when some 60-year-old guy or 70-year-old guy, right, is still still bitching about the fact that his dad, you know, brought their dog to the pound as a punishment or something like that, right? It's like, dude, that that happened 50 years ago. Why are you still hanging on to it? Right. It's like because that is there is there is an attachment wound there that has been unresolved. And unlike other types of injuries and unlike other types of insults or having having our bike stolen and stuff like that, right? I mean, it's like a couple years down the road, we forget that that even happened, right? It's like I I couldn't tell you how many times my bicycle was stolen as a kid. I just can't even remember them because they it it's like it didn't wound my sense of self in some way. But when there has been some some incident that has that has wounded our self-concept, it is much like there is a glob of clay that has a big finger hole poked in it. It's like that just doesn't go away unless you actively patch that over. Right. And so people come into relationships with with all kinds of handprints all over their sense of self, from how they're how they grew up and what their experiences were like. And those those traumas, sometimes small, sometimes huge, will play out in their marriage, will play out in their in their relationship with their partner, because that has kind of defined their sense of self and where their own sensitivities are. The moral of the story that you know I just want to leave you with today is that um attachment trauma is not so much about what happened to you in that it wasn't necessarily a violent attack. It wasn't necessarily a uh that you that you were raped or assaulted or bullied uh or anything like that, right? Uh that's kind of what we call big T trauma, right? I mean, those are traumatic events that happened, right? I mean, those are kind of with it, those are specific events that that occurred. Little T trauma or attachment trauma was more about what what we were deprived of, where our deprivation was, emotional deprivation was while we were growing up, right? And unlike being a specific event, right, this was kind of a a context with which like every day we had these little these little micro injuries that to to like to list any single thing almost seems like we're being petty, right? It's like, well, how come dad always passed the grapes to my sister first? Right. I mean, sounds just absolutely absurd to say like that should wound you, right? Or that, you know, they they didn't say that they love me or didn't come to my games or things like that. And any one of those things in and of themselves are, you know, just don't rise to, you know, to kind of like the the level of trauma you would think. But when those are just an example of an entire pattern, interaction pattern where we were ignored or they didn't uh pay attention to us, they're always too busy with their own stuff, or the home life was unstable and safe because you know, my parents are both alcoholics and were constantly fighting, or my dad was in prison, or my mom was, you know, was was uh depressed or sleeping around and there are all these strangers in the house. And you know, it's just like there there could be all of these things that are going on where our, you know, our our sense of you know safety, our our sense of identity, our sense of value, our sense of agency just was never developed because we did just didn't have that kind of interaction. And when we show up in in our adult relationships, it's like that imprint shows up in our our current relationships. And it doesn't mean that we're that we're condemned to you know to always repeat particular patterns or things like that, but we we just have to be aware of where some of our emotional sensitivities are. And so when we get into an argument, for example, and we feel some kind of emotion flowing over us, right? When we feel that that sense of rage, where we feel something kind of like shifting the tone of the room, that is a very good sign that something, some kind of attachment trauma is showing up in the conversation right now. And unless we stop and address that, the conflict it this is just gonna blow up into a conflict that that never seems to get resolved. And people may say things that they don't really mean, and um, you know, they they may do things that they let her later regret. And uh, and a lot of that is just coming from you know a sense of woundedness, from that sense of attachment trauma. So I hope that this was clarifying in some way, and uh, I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Talk to you soon.