We human beings are very social creatures. As a social species, our development in childhood and throughout our lives unfolds within the context of close relationships with others, particularly our early relationships with our caregivers.
The special relationship between caregiver and child is referred to as an “attachment”. An attachment is a specific type of bond to another person who we turn to for protection and care. Think about the last time you experienced hardship or intense stress — who did you turn to? We not only form attachments with our caregivers, we form these bonds with romantic partners, too. Our attachments to others can be either “secure” or “insecure” depending on whether we derive a sense of security from the relationship we have with the person we are attached to.
Beginning in infancy, our repeated, daily interactions with our caregivers teach us about ourselves, our caregiver and what to expect in relationships. It is through these early attachments we learn the fundamental rules for relating to other people. If our caregiver provides sensitive and responsive care — such as a caregiver who promptly picks up and soothes their crying baby or a caregiver who comforts their young child when they awaken after a bad dream — we develop a sense of our caregiver as supportive, trustworthy and available, and of ourselves as being worthy of our caregiver’s support.
Our belief here is: “You are dependable, and I am worthy.” We will experience the relationship as a nurturing safe haven. If, however, we receive insensitive and unresponsive care from our caregiver, we develop a sense of our caregiver as unavailable and untrustworthy, and of ourselves as unworthy of care. Our belief here is: “You are untrustworthy and I am unworthy.” We will experience the relationship as unreliable or unsafe. Here we are missing a safe haven.
What we learn in our early relationships shapes the expectations we have, not just about our relationships with our caregivers, but all other relationships. If we received sensitive and nurturing care as infants, we develop a positive expectation that others will be sensitive, supportive and emotionally available throughout our lives. We will expect to find refuge in other relationships just as we did with our parents. When a person has these positive expectations in a relationship, they are said to have a “secure attachment”.
If, however, we received insensitive and unsupportive care, we develop an expectation that others will also be insensitive, rejecting or emotionally unavailable. We acquire a belief that we cannot depend on others to provide us with security and safety. People with these negative expectations are said to have an “insecure attachment”.
Our expectations about whether others will be emotionally available or not influences how we behave in relationships. A person with a secure attachment trusts the people they love can be relied on for emotional support, and is, therefore, confident expressing their emotional needs and turning to others for emotional support. By reaching out to others who are emotionally available and dependable, those with a secure attachment are likely to continue to receive emotional support in their relationships throughout their lives. This reinforces their positive expectations about relationships.
Someone who has an insecure attachment, however, often goes into relationships expecting others to be emotionally unavailable and, therefore, tends to become overly self-reliant and avoids asking others for support. A person with an insecure attachment may believe, “I can’t rely on others, I can only rely on myself.” By never asking others for help, a person with an insecure attachment doesn’t provide others with the opportunity to demonstrate their emotional availability. In this way, the person with an insecure attachment may continue to experience a lack of emotional support from others throughout adulthood.
Most of us will have encountered someone like this who is more avoidant in relationships — the person who seems to overvalue independence and refuses help even when it’s offered. It can feel hard to get close to someone with this relationship style as the message they send is “I don’t need anyone.”
Not everyone with an insecure attachment avoids seeking support from others. Sometimes, those with an insecure attachment become anxious about whether their loved ones will show up for them and, in turn, become almost obsessively preoccupied with that person’s availability. People who experience high relationship anxiety may be described as “clingy” or “needy”. These people often had caregivers who were inconsistent in their care; sometimes they were sensitive and available and other times they were rejecting and unavailable. A child in this situation doesn’t know what they are going to get, so they aren’t able to relax and rest into the security of the relationship. Instead, they learn to stay hypervigilant for signs of whether the caregiver is available or unavailable. This pattern of behaviour is carried into later romantic relationships, too.
Research shows there are many long-term benefits of having a secure attachment. Children with a secure attachment have better relationships with their parents and siblings, have stronger friendships and better social skills, are better able to regulate emotions and manage stress, have higher self-esteem and greater confidence, are better able to solve problems that arise in relationships, have a positive outlook on life, know how to be kind and trust the people they are close to.
The research shows us that the quality of our early relationships really matters. Our experiences in these early relationships have a strong influence on our ability to form satisfying and healthy relationships with others throughout our lives. This is good news for those who are lucky enough to have experienced a secure attachment with our caregivers, but what about those of us whose relationship history is characterised by insecurity? The good news is that even if you lacked secure attachments in childhood, you can learn to build secure attachments in your adult relationships. It is possible to shift from insecurity to security.
Healthy adult relationships
It’s no secret that some of our deepest hurts happen in relationships. Thankfully, we also heal in relationships. In fact,
a healthy adult relationship is one of the most powerful ways to heal old childhood wounds and develop healthier ways of relating to both ourselves and others.
Romantic relationships and adult friendships provide an opportunity to get our emotional needs fulfilled (sometimes for the first time). These relationships can offer a corrective emotional experience. You may, for example, form a relationship with a partner who shares their deepest thoughts and feelings with you, which allows you to experience the emotional intimacy that was lacking in your relationships with your parents.
Unfortunately, healthy relationships don’t just appear like a genie from a bottle when we decide we are ready for them. In fact, if you are someone who had difficult relationships with your parents and family members growing up, you may find yourself drawn into relationships with people who remind you of your parents
— people who are not able or willing to have a healthy relationship with you. This might seem paradoxical.
Surely if we recognise the limitations of our caregivers, we wouldn’t seek out a partner who is similar to our parent? It happens because of something psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, called the “repetition compulsion”. Human beings are drawn towards what is familiar, even when what is familiar is painful. We may actually experience high chemistry with people who remind us of our parents. People will often recall meeting their partner for the first time and saying such things as “it was like we had known each other for years” or “it feels like we’ve known each other our whole lives”. What we aren’t aware of is that this feeling of familiarity happens because that person reminds us of someone we have known our whole lives, often our mother or father. Simply by being mindful of the tendency to be pulled towards the familiar, we can make more empowered choices about who we date.
Therapy
Whether you engage in therapy with a psychiatrist, psychologist or counsellor, therapy happens within a relationship. The relationship between a client and therapist is called the “therapeutic relationship”. Research shows that one of the most important predictors of whether someone will benefit from therapy is the quality of the therapeutic relationship. In fact, the quality of the therapeutic relationship has been found to be more powerful in helping people than the specific type of therapy the therapist provides. This is powerful evidence that we do indeed heal in relationships.
If you stick at therapy long enough, you will develop a relationship with your therapist. If there is a good fit between you and your therapist and you experience the relationship with your therapist as supportive, then therapy may provide you with the opportunity to have healthy, new relationship experiences.
A good therapist will be interested in your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and experiences. If you grew up in a family where your emotions were dismissed and no one showed interest in your thoughts or perspectives, then you are likely to experience this aspect of therapy as deeply healing. If you were not encouraged to open up and share your inner world with your caregivers, then having a therapist gently guide you to share your thoughts and feelings will help you become more open and experience emotional intimacy with future friends and partners.
A good therapist will also ensure you feel safe in the therapeutic relationship. If you were someone who grew up with abusive or intrusive caregivers, therapy can provide you with the opportunity to experience relational safety. Once you have experienced this safety, you have a new reference point to guide you in finding that safety in other relationships.
As we begin to experience more healthy relationships, our expectations about relationships get updated. We learn that it is possible to experience fulfilling relationships and we are able to take our new, positive expectations into the world to help us find the kind of satisfying, secure relationships we are worthy of.
Rachel Samson is a clinical psychologist practising in South Australia. She has a special interest in the trait of sensitivity. You can find Rachel on Instagram @australianpsychologist
