Is your past impacting on your relationships?
There is one issue that I have observed more often than any other in over 25 years of clinical practice, and that is the impact of our childhood upbringing on the kind of adult relationships that are possible in the present.
Parental relationships and counselling
Some people clearly have a difficult relationship with their parents, and for obvious reasons if a parent has been absent, abusive, or rejecting. But often the impact of childhood upbringing and parenting is not immediately obvious and it can lurk in the background while other, more immediately pressing, issues are easier to identify and work on in counselling. Issues such as eating disorders, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, relationship problems, social isolation, addictions, problems at work, and bullying, are issues which I regularly work with and with 80% of these clients it becomes apparent that experiences in childhood have been a key determining factor.
ATTACHMENT
The kind of relationship it was possible to have with your parents when you were a child often has a profound influence on the way you have relationships (with partners, friends, work colleagues etc) as an adult. This is sometimes referred to as someone’s ‘attachment style’.
Probably around 50% of the population have what is called a ‘secure’ attachment style meaning that mostly they find their relationships work well with no particular issues around feeling ‘needy’ or fearing abandonment, for example. Everyone else is likely to experience a range of attachment styles called ‘avoidant’, ‘anxious’, or ‘disorganised’ depending on the particular environment and the relationship dynamics between them and their significant caregivers.
There are many reasons why these different ways of attaching and bonding with another human being arise. Often it can be the outcome of trauma going back many generations within a family, and it is the understanding of this intergenerational narrative that can help someone understand how they were parented in the way they were and how this has impacted how they in turn are able to relate, attach and bond with others. In therapy we can start to unravel the historical narrative around attachment and bonding and find ways to heal any gaps in experience.
I have a particular interest in working and understanding human relationships from an attachment perspective, and have undertaken a number of trainings with trainers from The Bowlby Centre (world specialist attachment based training and therapy centre in the UK).
Intentional neglect
There are many ways in which parents might be neglectful. They may be obviously and deliberately neglectful and abusive and this will often understandably lead to a damaging emotional and psychological effect on the child as they grow up and can often interrupt the confidence they have in others to be helpful and loving towards them. This can have a powerful influence on the kinds of adult relationships that might then be possible.
Unintentional neglect
Parents may also be unintentionally neglectful. They parent to the best of their ability at the time but may have problems of their own which mean they cannot provide the level of care, love, and attention that a small child needs. I see this often in people who come to counselling and who, from their description, seem to have a parent (often a Mother) who we might describe as narcissistic – the kind of Mother who always needs to take centre-stage and who cannot help but plead ‘what about me?’. The child of a narcissistic Mother may find themselves not really knowing what they feel (because they daren’t not feel anything in the face of their very needy parent), or being careful about how they express themselves least they might antagonise their Mother. This can come to light when exploring how intimate adult relationships tend to go wrong because they are unable to assert themselves, and find themselves always acquiescing to their partner.
Counselling to support your relationships
I have found that by far the most helpful way of exploring relationship difficulties in the present that may have their roots in the past is to spend time considering the role of ‘attachment patterns’. Research in ‘attachment theory’ has shown that the way that we relate to significant others in adulthood is likely to be influenced by our early emotional bonds. So the patterns of relating that we develop in infancy with our main caregiver/parent in particular, but also with siblings and grandparents has a direct influence on the way we feel able to relate to others when we are adults. In this way attachment patterns, as they are called, can help us explain repeating patterns in relationships and can help us understand why we always seem to take a similar and particular role, and have similar relationship experiences, with those that we try to be friends or lovers with.