I’ve had four sessions now. I find my sessions revelatory, not because of what my therapist says or asks but because of my responses. As a Self-Projected Projector my voice is my superpower. This last session I brought up my relationship with my mother when my therapist asked a few probing questions.

I usually need a couple of days to process my therapy sessions, sometimes longer. My therapist left me with some questions to ponder this time. Specifically she asked me to consider the injustice I felt both in childhood and am currently feeling with my failed marriage. She asked if I thought I could let go of that perceived injustice. She also asked me to consider why I felt I was a failure and why I tend to wait until I fail before I ask for help.

In considering her questions to me, I got to thinking a bit about attachment style because it seems to play a major role in my romantic relationships. I took the attachment style test a while back and I am disorganized attachment (fearful-avoidant) which is defined by the person’s strong desire to be close to someone but also a fear of getting close. About a year ago I did research into attachment style but really didn’t dive deep into it because it didn’t seem relevant. However, after yesterday’s session and a question by my therapist specifically asking me about my parents and if I felt safe with them, it became clear that my overall feeling of not being safe in life developed in my childhood and has been plaguing me since then. 

This attachment style developed mainly from my relationship with my mother but my father also played a role in it, of course. My mother was “hot and cold” with me. One minute she would be smiling, receptive and encouraging of love, hugs, snuggles and the next she would be upset or angry, yelling, or rejecting my attempts to hug, snuggle or love her. She also use to mock and humiliate me when she punished me and my siblings often even inviting my other siblings in to make fun of me or help punish me. For example, she had my older sister hold me down over the toilet bowl as she literally put soap in my mouth to “wash my mouth” of the bad word I said. Some of her behavior was also traumatic. For example, she use to threatened to leave me on the side of the road when we were driving in the middle of nowhere often pulling over and even opening the door. Other times she would threatened to leave me at the “all girls school” which was for “bad” girls like me. I remember feeling absolutely terrified of these things happening (I was very little, like 4-7yrs old). This creates a situation in a child where there is “fright without solution”. 

My father would often laugh when he punished us, especially if he was spanking us. He also threatened to not take me home during my visitation time with him. I usually didn’t want to visit him during his time with me but was forced to by my mom because the courts said she had to make me. He was really only this way during their divorce that I can recall. Prior to that I favored my father and would’ve called myself a daddy’s girl. Oh how I love him! I have fond memories of helping him work on his cars, him teaching me to ride my bike, and snuggling with him in bed early in the morning on school days. When he became his angry, vengeful self during the divorce, I watched the daddy I use to love turn into someone I was scared to be around.

My attachment style developed out of a push-pull dynamic around love. I want it desperately but I am also afraid of it because the love I grew up with was unsafe and unpredictable. This explains why I reacted how I did when I first experienced the Kundalini. It also explains why I have been told by many how I seem like “two different people”. I am this way in friendships and romantic relationships, always keeping a safe distance just “in case”. 

My ex is anxious attachment, I have no doubt. He got so desperate when I would withdraw that he resorted to coercion and other abusive tactics. Of course, my response would be to try and get as far away from him as I could, which I ultimately did with the divorce. I don’t know about my first husband. I think he may have been secure attachment because he always responded to my fearful avoidance with patience and acceptance. I also think he was secure attachment because I often found being with him “boring”, which I have since learned is a typical consideration of insecure attachment styles to attached individuals. Ha!

Once we recognize our attachment style we can use that awareness to recognize when we are acting out patterns that no longer help us. The fear I feel when I get “too close” is noticeable, always has been, and I have always acted on it. I think sometimes it was justifiable but many times it was not. I remember struggling in my first marriage because he was gone a long time. I had difficulty adjusting first to him leaving and then to him returning. I would get very avoidant and grumpy whenever he returned from his weeks long work assignments. He was always able to help me through it, though, and never made me wrong for being how I was. In my second marriage there was no help in adjusting whatsoever. Instead, my ex would panic and come on stronger, forcing hugs and closeness, and pointing out my flaws to make me feel shame for being how I was. There was no patience or acceptance of where my behaviors might have been coming from. He took it all very personally as if I was rejecting him or trying to be mean. The more I “rejected” him, the more coercive he became, the more I withdrew or reacted negatively and the cycle just continued and escalated to the point of becoming abusive. 

We were two wounded children acting out. That is it.  

I also notice that I tend to choose partners who work a lot and/or are gone a lot. This selection process happens subconsciously, of course. When my partner is around me for extended lengths of time I can get annoyed and agitated just because they are there. I often justify these feelings but honestly there is never a reason that makes sense.

Source