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Unattainable Intimacy: The Curse of the Insecure Attachment (Medium Version) Each year in my hometown of Decatur, Alabama, the city hosts a memorial day festival, which the locals simply refer to as “The Jubilee.” Decatur isn’t terribly large, but despite its modest size the festival manages to bring in an impressively large crowd. There are a number of things people look forward to at the Jubilee, from the antique car show to an abundance of live music and great food, but by far the main attraction are the hot air balloons. Whether I was watching dozens of these roaring, colorful behemoths gracefully soar through the sky during the day or glow like giant lanterns scattered across the landscape at night — as a child these balloons were nothing short of awe inspiring. Unfortunately, these incredible moments are not the most vivid memories I have of the Jubilee. The most vivid memory I have of these balloons, in fact one of the earliest and most vivid memories I have in general, is of when my mother left me with my half-sister to go on a tethered balloon ride. It was not explained to me that my mom was only going for brief ride, so in my three-year-old mind all I could see was that my mom was flying off somewhere and that she had left me in the arms of my half-sister, who was practically a stranger to me. As I watched her moving further and further away from land, I panicked and desperately called out to her as loud as I could, hoping that I could persuade her to reconsider leaving me. Besides the memory of the terror I felt being very clear in my mind, I’ll also never forget my mother’s response to me once her ride was over. “I wasn’t going anywhere, Joel,” she reassured me in a matter of fact tone. However, I did not feel assured. If anything, I felt confused and less safe. Looking back, I feel like I was owed an apology that ensured nothing like that would happen again. Meaningful Memories Of all of the days and events we live through in our lives, we only remember a very tiny percent of them. It is for this reason that I think we remember what we do for a reason. In other words, just as I think the symbols in our dreams are not random and can be interpreted to reveal important wisdom, so too do I think our memories, especially vivid ones, hold metaphorical significance. The reason this memory stands out so much to me is because it tells me everything about the kind of relationship I had with my mother when I was a child, as well as throughout the rest of my adult life. What this memory tells me is that I did not have a secure attachment with my mother. And because I did not experience a secure bond with her, I did not feel safe with her. I felt like I mattered so little to her that she could leave me at any time without hesitation if she so desired. Attachment Style The kind of attachment we have with our primary caregiver has a huge impact on the relationships we choose throughout our lives as well the relationship we have with ourselves. All children need a secure attachment with their primary caregiver. Children who experience a secure attachment are better equipped to maintain emotional balance in the face of stress and are more likely to develop a healthy sense of self. This was a need that was not met. My mother often kept her distance from me and my attempts to bond with her were often met with rejection. “Go back to your room,” she’d say frequently when I’d try to climb in bed with her to cuddle after I’d wake up in the middle of the night as a child. As a teenager, during the middle of conflicts she’d abruptly abandon the conversation by turning around, walking out the door, and driving off in her truck. Sometimes she would stay gone for hours. This only reinforced and confirmed my fears of abandonment as a child that if I upset her enough there would be nothing to stop her from leaving me — not even love. Also, my mother was very distracted and thus, emotionally absent. This wasn’t inevitable, of course. It was not like she just didn’t have the time to make proactive attempts to connect with me and ask me how I was doing. She was, after all, a full time mom. I just was not important enough for her to put me a little higher on her list of priorities. She certainly did have time to do things like pursue a degree in criminal justice, which she never used. Being the strident feminist that she was, I’m sure she was just exercising her “strength” and “independence” by liberating herself from the shackles of traditional gender roles. Essential Defenses Still, when caregivers are distracted or overworked, from a child’s perspective it appears as though mommy and daddy are on the verge of collapse. As a result, children naturally learn to adjust their behavior so as not to apply any extra pressure to their already exhausted parents. The last thing a child wants to be is the straw that breaks mommy’s back. In tribal societies, being too burdensome could easily result in abandonment, which for a child is synonymous with death since children simply cannot survive without a caregiver. Hiding preferences and emotions that would be perceived as inconvenient to the parents then becomes the default choice for a child whose survival depends on the bond between him and his caregiver. Ironically, the child can only exist through self-erasure. I like to think of this process as putting the true self in cryosleep, since we can never truly eradicate our authentic self, so that we can revive these parts of our identity at a latter date. Self-knowledge and therapy then become the process by which we unthaw ourselves. Without self-knowledge we will remain eternally frozen in the thick, murky ice of history. It’s hard to fully grasp the amount of stress a child experiences when he is put in the position of having to self-erase. A child naturally wants closeness, but when a child has parents who don’t want him to act upon getting this basic need met is to become “inconvenient,” which creates distance and rejection. However, to not act on getting this need met is to also ensure distance and isolation. It truly is a head wrecking double bind. The best option the child can hope for is to choose between the lesser of two torments. In any case, he is put in a position of choosing that which is most unnatural to him. When a child’s survival depends on the bond between he and his caregiver, the idea of having incompetent or cruel parents is a thought much to overwhelming for a child to entertain. What children do as a way to cope is to blame themselves for the abuse that is done unto them as a way of maintaining some semblance of an attachment with their caregivers. For example, if a mother is coldly distant and neglectful, this behavior can’t be seen by the child as the callous and rageful act that it truly is. Instead, the child says, “Mom must be distant because there’s something wrong with me. I must not be lovable.” Core Beliefs This is the origin of core beliefs. Core beliefs are the very essence of how we see ourselves, other people, and the world. Most of us will have developed very entrenched core beliefs by the time we have reached adulthood. These beliefs are deeply rooted in the unconscious where they will remain hidden like an artifact in an undersea shipwreck without deliberate efforts to bring them to the surface of awareness. Trauma from abuse and neglect has a detrimental impact on these core beliefs. For example, a secure attachment can lead us to form positive core beliefs about ourselves, such as “I am intrinsically lovable,” whereas traumatic experiences can lead us to form negative core beliefs about ourselves, such as, “Others will abandon me” or “I am not worth caring about.” When core beliefs form, it is as if the child becomes cursed as surely as if a witch had just waved her wand and cited a magical incantation that said, “from this day onward you will be chased by a rain cloud that will shower dysfunction and unhappiness upon your relationships.” Self-Fulfilling Prophecies What I mean by this is that core beliefs affects our behavior since these beliefs are liable to become self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if I am a woman who had a violent and authoritarian father, I will unconsciously excuse his behavior by saying, “Men in general are oppressive and hostile.” This allows me to maintain distance from my unprocessed rage by projecting it into something abstract like “The Patriarchy” and therefore, maintain some sort of an attachment to him. Taking this route, however unjust and dishonest it may be, would also reward me with all the social approval that comes with pretending to be bravely taking up a just cause called, “feminism.” After all, it does take a great deal of courage to criticize men. Thus, because I believe men are oppressive and violent, I will bully men and feel that my misandry is justified as a form of self-defense. Lo and behold, because the men are being bullied, they will likely react to this hostility with hostility, which will in turn only serve to reinforce my core belief that, “Men are oppressive and hostile.” Suddenly, the victim becomes the aggressor and the aggressor becomes the victim in this topsy-turvy narrative that is so typical of projection. What We Don’t Process, We Repeat. While I have made enormous strides since I started on this path towards self-knowledge, to say that I have completely healed from not having my need for a secure attachment met would be dishonest. In fact, I still experience anxiety and insecurities that stem from this loss. Because my mother could and would leave at any moment, sometimes I find myself feeling anxiety when I interact with women that are even close friends. I notice, for example, that if I receive a message that seems unenthusiastic or very brief, I will immediately blame myself and think, “Hey, she doesn’t seem happy to talk to me. It must be because I did something wrong.” When I read these messages I also interpret them in such a say so that the other person sounds cold and dismissive, as if they just want me to go away, which in turn exacerbates my fears. And despite knowing consciously that my friends have never interacted with me in the way I’m imagining, these moments for me still become very visceral. Suddenly, I feel like I’m in the position of a child again who has no object constancy and is fearful that mommy is going to leave at any moment. I’m incredibly proud of myself for sitting with and exploring the anxiety, rather than managing it through behaviors that only would create the abandonment I fear the most. There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity. Insecurity must me tackled from within. With self-knowledge, I will lift the curse of the insecure attachment. Find more great content at Self-Knowledge Daily

A new video where I talk about a segment from a TV show “True Detective,” about the purpose of religion, and about it's relation to insecurity and fear of mortality. http://dai.ly/x1d0iu7