Child Detective
What delighted your caregivers about you? What earned you praise and closeness?
Maybe it was good grades, being quiet, your appearance, going with the flow, acting tough.
This behavior was reinforced for you as a necessary one to hold onto for survival.
It earned you what you wanted most as a child, attachment to your caregivers.
As a child you were dependent on your caregivers for survival and attachment equals survival.
A rupture in attachment threatens survival and is therefore to be avoided at all costs.
To avoid ruptures, you as a kid were a detective.
Constantly searching for clues to this mystery - what brings my caregiver close and what pushes them away?
Do you recall what created distance from your caregivers as a child?
Distance could have been in the form of shame, punishment, ignoring.
As an adult, you likely unconsciously continue to repress this part of yourself.
Maybe it’s the part of you that desires pleasure, playfulness, intimacy, vulnerability, or boundaries.
The great news is that part of you is there! And that part of you can be tapped into and supported by other parts of you to courageously make a more frequent appearance in your life.
We learned these ways of being to survive as a child, how beautiful they are to have kept us safe and attached, our main goal as a child. Let us thank them and honor the ways they have supported us.
AND ALSO
Let us give ourselves permission to experiment with other parts of ourselves, engage other tools of wellbeing in our toolbox.
Further reading -
No Bad Parts Richard Schwartz PHD
Good Inside Dr Becky Kennedy
Myth of Normal Gabor Maté MD - (chapter on attachment verses authenticity)