Changing old patterns
Typically when we think of addiction, we think of alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling. Although not yet an official diagnosis, a more common, yet far less known form of addiction is an addiction to people. Research from 2016 suggested feelings of intense romantic love activate regions of the brain’s “reward system” — the same regions …
You may have a mother wound if you were invalidated or made to feel that your weren’t important. If your feelings were ‘wrong’ or you were blamed for things you didn’t do. By your mother. If you weren’t allowed to ever express or explore negative emotions, this may result in chronic low self-esteem. Do you …
The intense love you feel with a narcissist or when you are in a trauma bond, isn’t actually love. It’s infatuation. It’s addiction. And it is because you are revisiting/reenacting something you went through in childhood from your primary care giver/s. Subconsciously, we keep revisiting what we know, what is familiar. No matter how painful …
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 …
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 …
I was a codependent for most of my life. Desperate to be loved, I jumped from one long-term relationship to another, from a very young age, most of them being abusive. I was desperate for friends, so clingy and needy, I either put up with bullying and toxicity even in adult friendships, or drove any …
After years of never really fitting in, always feeling as though there was something wrong with me, and entering into toxic friendships and abusive relationships, I finally found myself at rock bottom. I had no choice but to seek help, if I was going to get through. At my first therapy session, not even …
Continue reading “Are You Living In Survival Mode? (and what to do about it)”
I have been a people-pleaser for most of my life. Not trusting my own judgement, so relying on others to tell me what to do. Ignoring red flags in people, trying to see the best in them. Which has got me into many dangerous situations, and stuck in a cycle of toxic friendships and abusive …
Continue reading “The Fawn Trauma Response – Are You A People Pleaser?”