Examining The Impact Of Childhood On Adult Attachment Styles

One of my favorite quotes is, "People will teach you through love, through challenges, or both” by Edgar Cayce. That said, let's dive deeper into the realm of love and attachment.

When you are born, you come into this realm eager to experience and connect. Your initial caregivers and those critical first interactions taught you how to respond and survive in your environment.

For some, the early interactions created unpleasant experiences still felt today. That first shock, possibly in the form of misread cues, neglect, or abuse, stagnated the energy flow to your energetic centers. They either started to spin counterclockwise or closed altogether. The more closed off or disconnected, the more you develop coping methods.

Those coping mechanisms and the stories you told yourself about your experiences got further ingrained into your personality. Perhaps today, you have certain attachment styles that may not be true to what you want but operate as a defense mechanism to keep you safe.

I don't know your story. Everyone has something from their childhood that sits in the back of their memory in a trauma file. Whether you grew up in a single-parent home, with grandparents, in foster care, on the street, or with both parents physically present but emotionally distant, an effect was made somehow. Those experiences and others have affected your capacity to let others in. Sometimes, you may not believe you deserve anything good because of what you experienced.

The partners you attract throughout life reflect the areas you need to heal with your parents.

I had to earn that the hard way. I attracted mates that reflected the relationship I had with my father. And I didn't know how to show up as a woman in relationships because of my relationship with my mother. As I got older and deeper into my self-reflection, I realized that my environment was intentionally set up for me to learn exactly what I’m sharing now.

So, back to your capacity to let others in your attachment style(s) affect how you love, trust, and show up for others and allow others to show up for you. When you heal enough, you get to a place where you are no longer at war with your parents and yourself. From there, you can be the peace you need for yourself and others. You will also understand that everyone is participating in their life script with their challenges, nuances, and information that they have at the time. And just like you, they are still learning the lessons assigned to them.

Your parents were only functioning with the tools they had back then. They could not give what they did not have. I've noticed, however, that when a parent is not functioning or able to function as a parent, other parental figures like an aunt, uncle, grandparent, foster parent, etc., would step in to fill a void so that folks could stay sane even if it were for a short while. Naturally, you want your parent. You are programmed to want to bond with the people you came through. However, sometimes, they may have just been the vessel to get you here for reasons that only the Creator would know. Your greatness doesn't come from someone else. Healing and finding meaning in your life will help you stop the cycle of insecure, avoidant, or abusive relationships you may have been drawn to when you didn't know better.

As you delve deeper into the reasons behind the breakdowns in your relationships, you will experience a breakthrough. Over time, you will retrain the part of yourself that learned to function from a survival mindset. This will lead to the creation of the meaningful connections you desire, which will become your reality.