I've been a therapist for over 15 years, I've worked with thousands of individuals and over a thousand couples, and what I'm going to share with you today has been an absolute game-changer for me in my personal life, as well as in my practice. Let's talk about abandonment and attachment!
Every baby comes out of the womb screaming out of necessity. Why? Because we come programmed to do whatever we can to have our needs met, and right from the start, those needs are to be fed, held, and cleaned up! Simply stated, abandonment equals death, literally! If nobody meets our needs, we won't eat, and we'll die. For the first year, it can be pretty easy...scream and get held. Get held and get fed...cry, and repeat. But as we get a little older, we're still expecting to be able to express ourselves and get our needs met. "I want candy before dinner!" When our parent says no, all of a sudden, we're at a loss..."Wait a minute, I scream, and my needs get met; what's going on here? I want candy, and I don't care if it's before dinner!"
At this point, welcome to the world of abandonment. No guilt, no shame, we're just a bunch of imperfect humans in an imperfect life, trying to get our needs met because getting our needs met is a factory setting. If it doesn't happen, we feel like we may die! I like to think of it as two parallel paths develop. On the one hand, we have the abandonment path. If people aren't meeting our needs, we start to believe it must be something that WE'RE doing. We must be broken, we must be unlovable? But we don't understand that we're simply coming from a childhood where EVERY child is ego-centered. Again, no judgement, no shame, it just is! And we also lack empathy when we're young because we're coming from some factory settings that tell us we're the center of the universe, and our needs used to be met rather easily. This is what leads to "toxic shame," or, again, what's wrong with ME? If I was funnier, prettier, smarter, more agreeable, then my needs would be met...which isn't true. Still, it's how we move from those early years into adolescence and eventually into adulthood.
On the other hand, we have the attachment path. How can we get our needs met? We have to figure out HOW in every given situation, not even understanding that this is not the way to truly find ourselves. So do we get more attention as the peacemaker, or the athlete, or the smart kid, or the one who just doesn't cause any problems? Or do we get our needs met by being angry, rebellious? We just want to know that somebody sees us, that somebody is aware of us. Because if nobody sees us, we may eventually not get our needs met...we may feel abandoned. And remember, abandonment equals death.
In this video, I cover these concepts in much more detail. Understanding these abandonment and attachment concepts can help you show up more authentic in your own relationships and give you a little more empathy in your relationships. And these abandonment and attachment issues are just one of the many things that I address in my upcoming Magnet Marriage course, created with my friend and an incredible podcaster, speaker, and coach in his own right, Preston Pugmire. Head over to http://tonyoverbay.com right now and sign up to find out more about my upcoming Magentic Marriage course, or subscribe to my podcast, The Virtual Couch, wherever you listen to podcasts, to learn more about communication in general, along with parenting, goal setting, how to overcome addiction and so much more.
