A Mission 22 Blog Series on Relationship Healing, Divorce Recovery, and Healthy Vulnerability.

PART II: Come to the fire.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed the idea of attachment. This is a way of describing how we participate in relationship dynamics and how we balance the needs of ourselves against the needs of others. An attachment is a relationship strategy to get personal needs met, and a healthy attachment is a strategy where this dynamic is mutually beneficial.

How do we know whether the attachment strategy we formed when we were young is healthy and thriving when we are grown up?

What is Unhealthy vs. Healthy Attachment?

One simple way of describing unhealthy versus healthy attachment is whether our relationship is best described either by the overarching sense that “I’m okay, whether you’re okay or not,” versus “I’m okay only if you’re okay.” 

And by “okay” here, I mean in the grand, overall sense of stability in your sense of self; I don’t mean it in the sense that you should somehow be totally unaffected emotionally if your spouse or child or someone close to you gets injured or something.

So, the unhealthy attachment says, “I’m existentially only okay if you are pleased and happy.” Or something like, “My sense of self and connectedness is outsourced entirely to the feelings of another human.” 

This operating system is extremely common among those of us who learned how to “use the backdoor” to meet our needs. “If only I’m a good child and do the right things to make my parent’s emotions stable, they will feed me and treat me well. If I perform poorly, they will cross with me, and that is a threat to my survival. Therefore, I am responsible for their emotions through my actions. My very survival is contingent on my good behavior, which is tied to their feelings.” 

The Impact of Attachment

Can we begin to see how this leads to people pleasing or leads to that tendency to outsource our sense of self to another person (which essentially describes codependency)? 

At that age, we are almost entirely ego-centric, meaning we don’t have a sophisticated enough theory of mind to understand that others’ actions, choices, and feelings have nothing to do with us. It doesn’t mean we were dumb or slow learners. It means that during our formative years, we were doing the best we could and that wiring is often maintained into our adulthood.

While I might understand intellectually that I cannot be the orchestrator of someone else’s emotions, our emotional selves—still worried that someone will leave us if we don’t behave like a good child—create a covert contract as a means to manage the attachment dynamic. 

If the attachment is disorganized and confused, the operating system of our relationships may form into a dynamic of, “I hate you. Please don’t leave.” It’s a severe oscillation between clinginess and rejection. The lesson learned as children is that caregivers both serve as a vital means through which we grow and survive and, at the same time, are a source of pain and hurt. Thus, the simultaneous pushing away and fear of abandonment lead to a dual-horned stuckness of fearing both closeness with a person due to the risk of neglect and a longing for a connection that we want to guarantee will last. 

How Does This Play Out Later in Life? 

It might be seen in someone engaging in serial relationships where, early on, they are more than willing to fall in love rapidly because it seems like such a relief that, at last, they found someone they can rely on. However, in short order, they become worried that they are getting too close, and their child logic will kick in and crank up the fear that too much closeness equates to potential harm. Therefore, they will start behaving in ways that seem to make no sense to the new partner. 

“Hey, wait, I thought you were stoked on this? Why are you pushing away all of a sudden?” 

The insecure individual begins to create circumstances that practically guarantee that the other person leaves, despite initial success, as a self-fulfilling prophecy plays out: no one ever stays with me! I can prove it! Look at how people never stay with me! 

Not realizing the entire time what the common denominator is. We might subconsciously try to recapitulate the childhood scenario, and maybe this time it will actually work out…but without the awareness of the pattern, of course, it never works. 

So it’s not that someone had seven failed relationships with seven different people, they had one relationship that failed seven times. But this doesn’t mean there is something wrong with that person; it can just mean that their system of attachment isn’t producing the results they want. 

A Journaling Exercise for Healthy Attachment

Systems can be worked on and improved. And since no one has a 100% air-tight, fool-proof relationship system, totally free of codependency and rejection anxiety, the practice below is something everyone could probably benefit from. 

Let me invite you to a fire, that ancient cauterizer of old wounds.

We are spending the evening at a remote campground, and there’s an open space on the log next to you.

You notice another person near the woodline, away from the ember’s glow, partially hidden for fear of coming near.

Your eyes adjust, and you see a striking familiarity in that person. Because that person is you, young-you, the version of you who created all those stories to explain why people treat them the way they do.

Young-you is a little timid and thinks that they’re being judged by old you who “knows better” now. 

Put yourself in their mind’s eye, standing there on the edge; you’re now talking to current you and current you is the one in the distance over by the fire. 

You have something you need to say to current you, something like this: 

I’m sorry that I made so many assumptions about why people hurt me. I did the best I could to relate to them and get myself taken care of, and sometimes it felt like it was working, even if everything wasn’t as good as it could be. I believed things about myself that were not true and held on to them, passing them on to you. Now, I take full ownership of believing these things and it was a misunderstanding.”

Now current-you to young-you: “Thank you for doing the best you could to take care of me. I see you, I love you, and I forgive you. Please come by the fire with me.” And watch young-you come and share the warmth. 

I encourage you to use this as a journaling exercise and actually visualize the setting.

Starting From a Place of Grace

Any process of change, as far as I can see, must start from a place of grace, of seeing the humanity in ourselves, and as we do that for ourselves, we can start to practice it with others. By bearing witness to our younger selves, we can create the grace needed to start working on our system. We see that at the bottom, there’s nothing truly wrong with us—we bear our creator’s image—but that we are capable of living from misunderstandings. 

And then, for the brave, we can progress to the next step: self-disclosure to others. Or, if you like, confession.