Changing old patterns
Growing up, I could always make friends easily. I was funny, popular, a fabulous raconteur, and the life and soul of every party. At school, I had girl friends arguing over who was going to sit next to me in class. I was one of the ‘cool’ kids who all the boys wanted to date. …
Continue reading “How Your Attachment Style (and trauma) Shows Up In Friendships”
My daughter asked me recently where the term ‘bunny boiler’ comes from. I laughed, as I recalled Glenn Close’s psychotic character in ‘Fatal Attraction‘ and how, after the huge success of the film in the 80s, any female who demonstrated a glimmer of insecure behaviour was labelled a bunny boiler, relating to the scene where …
Continue reading “When Trauma And Pain Show Up As Crazy In Relationships”
As soon as we are born, life comes at us. We all need attachment, to survive, and if your parents or caregivers didn’t meet your emotional needs fully, you were abused, abandoned, or neglected, you will feel unworthy and unlovable deep down. You will learn behaviours to cope and to keep yourself as safe as …
I remember a few years ago, a friend persuaded me to attend a meditation class with her. I couldn’t concentrate or focus, it was boring, and I was just desperate to get down the pub after. This is just one example of how I typically lived for most of my life. If I did ever …
The primary goal of a human infant is to maintain proximity to its caregiver, which was necessary for survival during our evolution. Babies can’t survive alone. They depend on their main caregiver (attachment figure) to literally keep them alive. Founded by psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory outlines …
WHAT IS THE MOTHER WOUND? The bond between a mother and her child is so strong that British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott believed that there’s no such thing as an infant, but only an infant and their mother. He believed that a child’s sense of self is built by the kind of a relationship that they have with …
Self-regulation is how we cope with certain emotional behaviours and physical movements during stressful situations. Self-regulation is the skill that helps individuals stay focused and attentive during times of stress. Our ability to self-regulate as an adult has roots in our childhoods. Learning how to self-regulate is an important skill that children learn both for …
Continue reading “What is self-regulation, and why is it important?”
Emotional maturity is defined by the ability to manage our emotions and take full responsibility for our actions. Emotional immaturity can be the result of insecure attachments in childhood, unresolved trauma, or mental health issues. If you have problems communicating your needs, controlling your reactions, regulating your emotions, or are defensive and hyper-sensitive to criticism, …
If our emotional and physical needs are met as children, we grow up believing that we have a right to be here and that we are capable, lovable and able to take care of ourselves. But often, getting these needs met depends on how well the needs of the family have been met. For example, …
In his book ‘Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner child‘, John Bradshaw relays a story of how, as a grown adult on holiday with his wife and children, something didn’t go his way, and before he knew it, he had stormed out of the accommodation, and was pacing up and down in a new hotel …