Tiny Buddha

Tag: insecure attachment

  • Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    “I always wondered why it was so easy for people to leave. What I should have questioned was why I wanted so badly for them to stay.” ~Samantha King

    Do you feel afraid to speak your truth or ask for what you want?

    Do you tend to neglect your needs and people-please?

    Do you have a hard time being alone?

    Have you ever felt panic and/or anxiety when someone significant to you left your life or you felt like they were going to?

    If so, please don’t blame yourself for being this way. Most likely it’s coming from an abandonment wound—some type of trauma that happened when you were a child.

    Even though relationships can be painful and challenging at times, your difficult feelings likely stem from something deeper; it’s like a part of you got “frozen in time” when you were first wounded and still feels and acts the same way.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may have consistent challenges in relationships, especially significant ones. We may be afraid of conflict, rejection, or being unwanted; because of this, we people-please and self-abandon as a survival strategy.

    When we’re in a situation that activates an abandonment wound, we’re not able to think clearly; our fearful and painful emotions flood our system and filter our perceptions, and our old narratives start playing and dictate how we act. We may feel panic, or we may kick, cry, or scream or hold in our feelings like we needed to do when we were children.

    When our abandonment wound gets triggered, we automatically fall into a regression, back to the original hurt/wound and ways of reacting, thinking, and feeling. We also default to the meanings we created at the time, when we formed a belief that we weren’t safe if love was taken away.

    Abandonment wounds from childhood can stem from physical or emotional abandonment, being ignored or given the silent treatment, having emotionally unavailable parents, or being screamed at or punished for no reason.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may feel that we need to earn love and approval; we may not feel good enough; and we may have our walls up and be unable to receive love because we don’t trust it, which keeps us from being intimate.

    We may try to numb our hurt and pain with drugs, alcohol, overeating, or workaholism. We may also hide certain aspects of ourselves that weren’t acceptable when we were young, which creates inner conflict.

    So how do our abandonment wounds get started? Let me paint a picture from my personal experience.

    When I was in third grade a lady came into our classroom to check our hair for lice. When she entered, my heart raced, and I went into a panic because I was afraid that if I had it and I got sent home, I would be screamed at and punished.

    Where did this fear come from? My father would get mad at me if I cried, got angry, got hurt and needed to go to the doctor, or if I accidentally broke anything in the house. Did I do it purposely? No, but I was punished, screamed at, and sent to my room many times, which made me feel abandoned, hurt, and unloved.

    When I was ten years old, my parents sent me away to summer camp. I kicked and screamed and told them I didn’t want to go. I was terrified of being away from them.

    When I got there, I cried all night and got into fights with the other girls. My third day there, I woke up early and ran away. My counselor found me and tried to hold me, but I kicked, hit her, and tried to get away from her.

    I was sent to the director’s office, and he got mad at me. He picked me up, took me out of his office, and put me in front of a flagpole, where I had to stay for six hours until my parents came to get me. When they got there, they put me in the car, screamed at me, and punished me for the rest of the week.

    When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia, depression, and anxiety and put in my first treatment center.

    When my parents dropped me off, I was in a panic. I was so afraid, and I cried for days. Then, my worst nightmare came true—my doctor told me he was putting me on separation from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them or see them for a month. All I could think about was how I could get out of there and get home to be with them.

    I didn’t understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents to love me, to want to be with me, to treat me like I mattered, but instead I was sent away and locked up.

    I started to believe there was something wrong with me, that I was a worthless human being, and I felt a lot of shame. These experiences and many others created a negative self-image and fears of being abandoned.

    For over twenty-three years I was in and out of hospitals and treatment centers. I was acting in self-destructive ways and living in a hypervigilant, anxious state. I was constantly focused on what other people thought about me. I replayed conversations in my mind and noticed when someone’s emotional state changed, which made me afraid.

    It was a very exhausting way to be. I was depressed, lonely, confused, and suicidal.

    There are many experiences that trigger our abandonment wounds, but the one that I’ve found to be the most activating is a breakup.

    When we’re in a relationship with someone, we invest part of ourselves in them. When they leave, we feel like that part of ourselves is gone/abandoned. So the real pain is a part of us that’s “missing.” We may believe they’re the source of our love, and when they’re gone, we feel that we lost it.

    So the real abandonment wound stems from a disconnection from the love within, which most likely happened when we abandoned ourselves as children attempting to get love and attention from our parents and/or when our parents abandoned us.

    When I went through a breakup with someone I was really in love with, it was intense. I went into a panic. I was emotionally attached, and I did everything I could to try to get her back. When she left, I was devastated. I cried for weeks. There were days when I didn’t even get out of bed.

    Instead of trying to change how I was feeling, I allowed myself to feel it. I recognized that the feelings were intense not because of the situation only, but because it activated my deeper wounding from childhood. Even though I’ve done years of healing, there were more layers and more parts of me to be seen, heard, cared for, and loved.

    The “triggering event” of the breakup wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me to experience a deeper healing and a deeper and more loving connection with myself.

    When we’re caught in a trauma response, like I was, there is no logic. We’re flooded with intense emotions. Sure, we can do deep breathing, and that may help us feel better and relax our nervous system in the moment. But we need to address the original source of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in order to experience a sense of ease internally and a new way of seeing and being.

    Healing our abandonment wound is noticing how the past may still be playing in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s noticing the narratives and patterns that make us want to protect, defend, or run away. It’s helping our inner child feel acknowledged, seen, heard, safe, and loved.

    Healing the abandonment wound is not a quick fix; it does take self-awareness and lots of compassion and love. It’s a process of finding and embracing our authenticity, experiencing a sense of ease, and coming home.

    Healing doesn’t mean we’ll never be triggered. In fact, our triggers help us see what inside is asking for our love and attention. When we’re triggered, we need to take the focus off the other person or situation and notice what’s going on internally. This helps us understand the beliefs that are creating our feelings.

    Beliefs like: I don’t matter, I’m unlovable, I’m afraid, I don’t feel important. These underlying beliefs get masked when we focus on our anger toward the person or what’s happening. By bringing to the light how we’re truly feeling, we can then start working with these parts and help them feel loved and safe.

    Those of us with abandonment wounds often become people-pleasers, and some people may say people-pleasing is manipulation. Can we have a little more compassion? People-pleasing is a survival mechanism; it’s something we felt we needed to do as children in order to be loved and safe, and it’s not such an easy pattern to break.

    Our system gets “trained,” and when we try to do something new, like honoring our needs or speaking our truth, that fearful part inside gets afraid and puts on the brakes.

    Healing is a process of kindness and compassion. Our parts that have been hurt and traumatized, they’re fragile; they need to be cared for, loved, and nurtured.

    Healing is also about allowing ourselves to have fun, create from our authentic expression, follow what feels right to us, honor our heartfelt desires and needs, and find and do what makes us happy.

    There are many paths to healing. Find what works for you. For me, talk therapy and cognitive work never helped because the energy of anxiety and abandonment was held in my body.

    I was only able to heal my deepest wound when I began working with my inner child and helping the parts of myself that were in conflict for survival reasons make peace with each other. As a result, I became more kind, compassionate, and loving and started to feel at peace internally.

    Healing takes time, and you are so worth it, but please know that you are beautiful, valuable, and lovable as you are, even with your wounds and scars.

  • Why I No Longer Chase Emotionally Unavailable People, Hoping They’ll Change

    Why I No Longer Chase Emotionally Unavailable People, Hoping They’ll Change

    “Never chase love, affection, or attention. If it isn’t given freely by another person, it isn’t worth having.” ~Unknown

    We met at a bar with Skee-Ball and slushy margaritas for our first date.

    She was gorgeous. I noticed that as soon as I walked in. I still wasn’t sure whether we’d have anything to talk about though. The messages we’d exchanged had been minimal.

    It turned out we did.

    Conversation flowed from one topic to the next—meandering from her passion for biology in college to how I tried to master mountain boarding at summer camp as a kid to how both of us were passionate about writing/putting words to the page.

    I found her articulate, funny, sociable, and down-to-earth. I liked her intellect. Her wit. Her seeming earnestness and appetite for unconventional topics like the environmental benefit of eating insects and sexism in the taxidermy industry.

    She came over to my place after; I cooked dinner for us. Talk got deeper. She shared the effect her dad’s depression had on her when she was a kid; how she’d personalize his quiet moods. I shared some of the instability I’d experienced as a kid.

    The evening ended in a hook-up. Nothing like a good trauma spill for an aphrodisiac.

    A couple weeks later we had another date. I felt similarly elated afterwards. But doubts began to surface before our third; she was acting wishy-washy and noncommittal.

    I talked them away, though, because seeing her filled me with buzzy joy. Our interactions powered me through the week with a buoyancy unlike any that my morning coffee had ever provided.

    So we kept going on dates.

    She’d bring flowers to them. Lift me into the air when we kissed, which I loved. Tell me I was a “really good thing in her life.”

    The last day I saw her, we biked around to local breweries.

    The sun shone against our faces as we sipped from each other’s beers out on the back patio—having what felt like a raw conversation about intimacy patterns and fears. She was working on hers, she said. I acknowledged some of my own in return.

    When she asked if she could kiss me (for the fourth time that day) as we unlocked our bikes, I remember how wanted it made me feel.

    I carried that golden effervescent feeling with me into the next day. It was still with me when I opened a text from her—but  shattered into spiky glass shards when I read what it said.

    That she couldn’t continue seeing me. That she wasn’t in the right place emotionally.

    It’s not you, it’s me.

    We all know the spiel.

    **

    It wasn’t the first time I’d had my heart dropped from the Trauma Tower on top of which a woman and I had been insecurely attaching.

    This woman was just one among several in a pattern. You can call it trauma bonding. A hot and cold relationship. The anxious-avoidant dance. These push-pull dynamics that played out through my twenties had elements of all of these.

    One day the person would open up. We’d connect and it’d feel like I’d really seen them, and they’d seen me.

    The next day they’d pull back (even in the seeming absence of overt conflict). The contrast was painful. The shift felt jarring.

    According to Healthline, “Recognizing emotional unavailability can be tricky. Many emotionally unavailable people have a knack for making you feel great about yourself and hopeful about the future of your relationship.”

    Whenever these situationships crumbled, it would really break me. Feelings I’d hoped to have buried for good would resurrect—among them, doubt that anyone would ever choose to see and accept me fully.

    And yet the “connections” felt so hard to disentangle from once formed. From my perspective, the woman and I often had strong chemistry. Words came easily. We talked about vulnerable things, but could also laugh and enjoy the lighter aspects of life. They were my type physically. The perceived strength of our connection compelled me to stay.

    **

    It took me some time to realize that each relationship of this sort that I remained in spoke to unhealed parts of me.

    Part of the healing I did over the past few years involved looking at the role I played in them. It involved realizing that I too contributed to the cycle—by continuing to give chances to a person who couldn’t (or didn’t want to) help meet my needs.

    I contributed by staying and hoping the situation would shift. That the clouds obstructing their full attention and investment would magically lift. That they’d depart to reveal the sun that was waiting all along to wrap its powerful rays around my heart.

    I contributed by not establishing boundaries. For instance, in one situationship I felt as if I’d become the woman’s therapist, there to reassure her when self-doubts overtook her; to validate her following any perceived rejection by strangers; to coddle her ego when she felt unattractive in the eyes of the male barista who’d just served us our coffee.

    I could have set a limit around how much she confided in or leaned on me. I could’ve communicated that if we were just friends with occasional benefits, then I only had so much bandwidth. That it didn’t feel reciprocal to be her on-call therapist.

    I also could have left at any time. I chose to stay in these situations, though, despite the signs. Perhaps I thought those signs were ambiguous enough to be negotiable. Or that I was just giving the benefit of the doubt.

    Additionally, I chose to look at the women for who I wanted them to be, who they could be somewhere down the line, and who they sometimes were—rather than seeing them for who they fully were on the whole and in the present moment.

    When we see others for their potential, no matter how innocent or well-meaning our willful obscuring of the present reality may be, we pay a cost.

    **

    Inconsistency and unavailability are less attractive to me the older I get and the more that I heal from my past trauma. Game-playing has even begun to repel me in a way it didn’t used to. When a person shows signs of it, I notice my interest starting to wane. Conversely, qualities like consistency and decisiveness, and earnestness are increasingly attractive now.

    In my thirties I no longer find the emotional ups and downs of an anxious-avoidant dynamic sustainable. I want something calmer.

    I hope for a connection that takes a load off—not one that adds more stress to a world already saddled with the weight of so much of it. One wherein we’re both safe spaces for the other. I believe this is what we all deserve, granted that we too are willing to put in some work.

    In general, having a choosier mentality means you may stay single for more years than you imagined—because it’s true that the dating pool bubbles with people whose traumas and defenses are incompatible with our own. I think maybe it always will.

    Still, when I picture all the heart pain spared, it’s an approach that feels right. The thought now of being pulled back into another cycle of fleeting hope and optimism punctured by blindsiding shards of disappointment unsettles me more than the thought of staying indefinitely un-partnered.

    Not only that, it also saddens me. The sadness I feel is for every person ever caught in the same emotional cyclone. I can’t help but think it’s such a tremendous drain of energy. Energy that could be used instead to vitalize both the larger world and our own lives.

    **

    No more will I follow the bread-crumby path to another person’s heart when it takes me so far from the integrity of my own.

    And anyone who’s been through similar experiences—I encourage you to remain hopeful that one day, a person who’s deserving of your love will step into your life and onto your path. Until then, remember you have you. Treasure yourself, treat yourself well, and realize you’re worth more than chasing. You deserve to put your feet up and let someone chase you—or better still, come meet you in the middle.

  • 7 Ways Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Your Romantic Relationships

    7 Ways Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Your Romantic Relationships

    “Love is the greatest miracle cure. Loving ourselves creates miracles in our lives.” ~Louise Hay

    When you are unlucky in love, you tend to blame yourself for not being enough and maybe blame fate for not giving you a break already! Everyone else around you is in happy, long-term relationships, but you just can’t get there.

    You might come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with you—you’re too old or too fat—and all the good ones are already married, and you will just die alone! You never think for one moment that your relationship history is playing out a dynamic from childhood.

    I felt like this for thirty-seven years of my life. It was like I kept dating the same man but in different bodies. The way I felt was always the same. Always chasing after someone who was unavailable in some way. Some had addictions, some were in relationships, some prioritized other people, but the underlying feeling was the same. I am not good enough to be loved.

    Other times I avoided relationships all together, or I was the one running away from the ones who did want me, telling myself that they were not what I wanted. In all situations it ended in the same way—me single, feeling incredibly lonely and hopeless. Looking at everyone who could manage a relationship wondering what was wrong with me.

    I continued aimlessly looking for love in all the wrong places, completely unaware of how my childhood was impacting my relationship choices. Thankfully, I began a journey of healing that started by reading and listening to self-help content. I became aware of Pia Melody and the concept of love addiction after reading her book by the same name.

    This relationship behavior I kept repeating was actually a trauma response. I had grown up with a dad who was emotionally unavailable and very much focused on his own needs. Unconsciously, I was finding him in these other relationships. It got worse after his suicide.

    Since then, I’ve learned a lot about how our childhood trauma plays out in relationships. Here are seven ways it can happen:

    1. You are in a relationship but don’t feel loved.

    You are in the relationship you once wished for, but you still feel this emptiness and feel like your partner is to blame. If they did x, then you would feel loved and enough.

    You blame them and they trigger you. But are you expecting the love and care from them that you are not even giving to yourself? Are you filling up your own love so that their love is just a bonus? Are you even noticing the ways they show you love? It may be different to your love language. Maybe things are not right, but are you working on repairing the issues rather than blaming or ignoring them?

    Our first relationships (with our parents or childhood caregivers) teach us about attachment. If your relationship with your parents was sometimes really loving but other times they were cold and distant, you didn’t grow up with love being available and consistent. Which is why relationships can make you feel anxious and you can over-give and feel lonely in a relationship.

    2. You are the fixer in love.

    When you date or even marry, your partner tends to be the broken bird that you are obsessed with fixing. Or they might be a narcissist who is all about their needs and you taking care of them. Either way, you have found yourself in toxic relationships that don’t feel safe or good.

    They could be an addict and you pour all your energy trying to save them while feeling depleted and unloved. You become almost obsessed with how you can save this person you love so much. It’s quite possible you’re repeating a dynamic with one of your parents.

    For example, I very much repeated a pattern of finding men to fix because my relationship with my dad was all about his needs and his struggles with his mental health. I was always saving him, and when I did, I would receive love from him. I thought this was love, so I repeated this unconsciously in other relationships.

    3. You chase unavailable love.

    You spend all your time and energy chasing after someone who is not available in some way. They need fixing, have addiction or family issues, are in a relationship already, or won’t commit to you. But you think of them day and night. You are obsessed with getting them to choose you, but they don’t and this spirals you into despair.

    You just keep trying and sometimes use other addictions to numb the pain. I was addicted to a psychic line at the height of my love addiction with an unavailable man because I was looking for confirmation that we’d end up together. This is what launched my healing journey, as it really did make me feel insane at times, especially when the object of my affection kept coming forward and then running away.

    We often will attract people who are playing out their attachment trauma from childhood with us. Often one that is opposite to us. So if you chase love, you may attract someone who runs away.

    4. You avoid relationships entirely.

    Falling in love feels like too much and it just makes you feel so anxious, so you might avoid relationships entirely and seem to function better single. But the loneliness is intense. You wish you could be held at night.

    You will do things to avoid these feelings, like overwork, take care of others, keep your social calendar super busy, numb with TV, drink all the time—whatever you can do to not feel your feelings!

    If you even attempt to go on a dating app your heart races and you feel terrified. So you run back to your safe single life, wondering what is wrong with you that you can’t even go on a date.

    5. You ignore the red flags.

    The object of your affection does things that don’t feel safe, yet you don’t say anything out of fear of losing them. You have no idea how to set a boundary and ignore warning signs that this person may not be good for you—how they talk to you, put you down, deny your reality, or even get physically violent.

    Since you grew up with a parent that did the same to you, it feels almost normal. Even though your body will tense up around them, you are used to that. You stay too long in relationships that don’t make you feel good, where you get very little. You feel like this is the best you can get, so you focus on the good rather than noticing the bad.

    6. You feel suffocated in your relationship.

    You are in a relationship that feels safe and easy, but then your brain starts to question it all. Am I attracted to this person? Do I feel suffocated by them? Are they the right one for me? You will convince yourself that they are wrong for you and end the relationship, as you have no idea what healthy love even is. It makes you feel so anxious to end up with the wrong person.

    7. You don’t think you can get better.

    You are in a relationship because you don’t want to be alone, but it doesn’t make you happy. But you don’t think you deserve any better. The fear of leaving and being alone feels like too much, so you just stay. Resenting the other person for not making you happy but not taking any action to make your situation better.

    —

    Many of us fall into more than one of these categories.

    Without healing and inner work, we unconsciously play out patterns from the past and stop ourselves from having a fulfilling relationship.

    We can’t even objectively see what is wrong because so much of what we are experiencing in our relationships is based on our past trauma wounds. We don’t know what we don’t know, and if no one  modelled a healthy relationship for us growing up, how can we know what it is ?

    I had no ideas my parents’ relationship was unhealthy because the constant fighting was my normal, so I had no idea I could have something different.

    Romantic love felt stressful for me for many years. I was either pining after them or they were driving me mad. I didn’t know there could be any another way.

    But understanding my relationship patterns and where they came from has been a game changer for me.

    Now, after a journey of healing the past relational traumas with my parents through therapy, books, and support groups, I know how to have healthy love. What changed was I learned how to love myself and care for myself the way I wish others would love me.

    This changed everything…

    As my relationship with myself improved, so did my relationship with men. I am now married, and thankful my marriage is nothing like my parents’. When there’s conflict, we have the tools to move through it and come out stronger.

    We have a strong relationship in large part because I have done a ton of inner work and healing. Unlike in previous relationships, I now know my own worth, and I also know how to express my needs and boundaries with love and kindness.

    I finally took responsibility for my behavior and moved out of victim mode. This changed the relationships I attracted, not just romantic. I now knew how to treat myself with love and respect, and this meant the quality of love I received was healthier as a result.

    Our internal issues play out in our relationships. Once we heal on the inside, everything changes.

    Love yourself the way you wish to be loved by someone else. Notice when your relationship is triggering negative emotions and ask yourself, “What do I need?” Start to give yourself what you need and then you will learn to ask others for what you need. Showering yourself with your own love will change everything.

  • All the Wrong Reasons I Slept with Men Before and Why I’m Changing Now

    All the Wrong Reasons I Slept with Men Before and Why I’m Changing Now

    “We think we want sex, but it’s not always about sex. It’s intimacy we want. To be touched. Looked at. Admired. Smiled at. Laugh with someone. Feel safe. Feel like someone’s really got you. That’s what we crave.” ~Anonymous

    I have not had sex in years. I was meditating one day, and my mind was silent (an extremely rare event), then I heard “Do not have sex until you are married.” Something I heard often growing up as a southern Baptist.

    I started breathing fast, and my thoughts immediately started racing. I am pretty sure I cried, if not in that moment, later on. I felt I had been given clear instructions on what to do to take my life to another level.

    The problem was that marriage was not on my to-do list. I do like the idea of monogamy, but I don’t like the idea of being legally bonded to someone for life. Then, if for whatever reason that does not work out, I have to go through the legal system for my breakup.

    I also thought that would mean I would never have sex again, so my mind was all over the place. Fear had taken over. But then I actually listened to that message.

    The first thing I became clear about was how, on a subconscious level, I was having sex with men before I was ready because I lacked the confidence to say no. I had a fear that if I did not have sex with them, they would not like me or stick around. 

    I also learned that I was using sex to get my needs met. Sometimes I was just lonely and wanted to cuddle or be held, but I would not communicate that. I felt that no one would give me that, so ultimately, I would end up knocking boots with someone.

    I learned that I had a belief that my value was tied to my sexuality. I also learned that when I have sex with someone, I develop a strong attachment to them. I was not able to think clearly. It no longer became about growth or love but about ego. Are they going to call me? Do they like me? I never asked myself if I liked them.

    Although I have no clue as to when I will be sexually active again, I do know this: I have redefined my definition of marriage to one of a spiritual partnership. A union, not legally bound but soulfully bound for whatever time period it flows. And that’s what I’m waiting for now.

    To me, this non-legal marriage is about growth. It is a safe space to evaluate whether or not the relationship should continue. Maybe with a weekly or monthly check in. If it feels right, you keep going forward; if someone decides it’s not working for whatever reason, you move on. People grow and change. Sometimes you grow together, sometimes you grow apart. There is not this underlining pressure to stay bonded to someone your twenty-year-old self attracted.

    A spiritual partnership is a place where it is safe for us to be our authentic selves. We encourage each other, support one another. Explore our sexuality. There is a comfort in telling the other person what feels good and what does not. It is safe to say and share what we think and feel. I think we may find this type of spiritual partnership ends up lasting much longer than most marriages.

    Another lesson I have learned since I received the message about not having sex is that I always thought sex was something that you had to do. I didn’t think a person could function without it. Turns out you can. I have become more familiar with my body and what I like and what feels good to me. I have become more confident and learned that my worth and value is not at all related to my sexuality.

    I have also learned patience, trust, and surrender. We have a tendency to settle because of fear. This is something I want to challenge.

    I want to see what it is like to wait. To be patient and trust that I will form a meaningful relationship in time if I don’t jump on anyone who shows interest in me because I’m afraid of being alone. I have a feeling it will be much more rewarding than I can imagine. 

    I have learned that my body is sacred, that I want to share this with one person and give this to them as gift. I want to wait to have sex until I am in a spiritual partnership not because someone told me to but because that feels right for me. Not having sex helped me learn to love my self, develop my own set of beliefs outside the religion I was raised in, and flourish into someone that I like and respect.

    If you find yourself having thoughts like “Men are always taking advantage of me” or “There are no good men out there” or maybe “I feel like I am being used,” I highly recommend getting quiet with yourself and asking yourself: What role am I playing in this? What am I doing to create this reality for myself? What can I do differently to get different results?

  • Scared of Losing People You Love? How to Work through the Fear

    Scared of Losing People You Love? How to Work through the Fear

    “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~Joseph F. Newton

    “Oh my God, Mom…” she said with a verbal eye roll.

    “What?” I responded, sure that I had said too much or overshared like I normally do.

    I can’t recall what my daughter and I were discussing openly about while standing in line at the grocery store checkout, but I do remember the girl ringing us up laughing and saying we sounded just like her and her mom.

    I paused, unsure what that meant.

    “Is this what a healthy mother/daughter relationship sounds like?” I questioned to myself. It was a completely foreign concept to me.

    I wanted to create a strong bond with my daughter, but my own relationship with my mother was dysfunctional and boundary-less when I was a child, leading me to overthink everything when it came to creating a relationship with my daughter.

    My mother had significant mental health challenges, which eventually led to her death by suicide.

    I had no idea what healthy felt like.

    Insecurity plagued me when it came to connecting with my daughter. Was I giving her too much or not giving her enough? Did she trust me? Did she feel comforted by me? Was I too lenient? Was I too distant?

    It was hard to tell when the voices of doubt chimed in.

    I’ve watched other moms with their daughters since I was a young girl. I wasn’t exactly sure what normal was, but I knew it was not telling their daughters how depressed they were or talking through their marital issues. I knew it was not asking their daughters for advice and relying on them to feel good enough to get out of bed by midday.

    I knew my relationship with my mom was different, but it was the only one I had. My normal was gripping codependency and making sure she was okay so she would be there the next day.

    I didn’t want that relationship with my daughter. I wanted her to feel whole and complete and deeply loved without having to take care of another human being to feel it.

    My journey into motherhood was far from easy. With few role models and almost no experience with children, I felt like I had nothing to go on besides instinct alone. And my instincts were part of my problem. I couldn’t always hear them.

    When a child grows up in a volatile environment during their early development, they learn to distrust connection. When what feels comforting and loving one minute can turn to betrayal and rejection in the next, trust in others does not come easily.

    A human’s natural inclination is to want connection, but inconsistency or harm against a person creates a fear in that same connection. When this happens during early development, the child learns to fear what it also deeply desires—which develops into an adult who is quietly terrified to experience and trust reciprocal love.

    The only way I knew how to create that healthy connection was to look deeply into myself and be aware of my patterns and how I was passing them on. And so I observed—a lot.

    I observed other families and the way mothers spoke to their daughters. I observed the way the daughters responded to their moms. I watched what drew my daughter in, and I watched what pushed her away.

    I learned to listen without speaking (which is absolute torture when codependency feels like home), and I learned to ask more questions instead of giving unsolicited advice. I’m still learning, and most likely will be for the long haul since old habits die hard.

    But it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t just learning how to respond to normal discomfort when someone I love was uncomfortable. It was learning to respond to normal discomfort when I was uncomfortable. It was learning to not shut down and begin to emotionally detach when insecurity started to get loud.

    Raising my children is one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to navigate with these embedded fears. To give birth to a part of you and know your job is to let this soul grow into themselves while they slowly leave you a little more each day. Pulling them close to me to feel safe and loved and teaching them to leave all at the same time. It’s like one long continual dance of love and grief.

    My daughter started college this year and I knew it was going to be tough when she moved on campus, but I had no idea the depth of the grief I would feel. It’s not logical. And the logical part of me likes reason and boxes to put my feelings in. I cognitively knew it was temporary, but my body did not know. It stores memories of every loss and every time I’ve felt left behind, and it was eager to remind me.

    “Life will never be the same again. It’s over.”

    And that is true. But until those old pangs of grief retell their stories without being dismissed and reprimanded for being dramatic or “too much,” I could not see that the new life may even be better than the one before.

    When I let myself experience the sad and angry feelings without reacting to them, they moved through me faster and I could see what I needed to stay connected.

    I requested we have small doses of consistent communication during the beginning stages of her being gone so I could show my fears they were unwarranted. We sent pictures on snapchat most days, and it was just enough to feel connected without being intrusive. It worked for us and comforted my childhood-driven fear until it passed.

    The first time she came home was over a month after she left. Our oversized puppy expressed it best with his big cries and leaping happiness to be with her again. We missed her and our little family felt the absence of her presence in a big way.

    The joy of her energy filling our house was immense. To be in my space again and under my care felt like she never left. She was in and out and visiting friends and doing her thing, but her presence was the reassurance I needed.

    It felt like the scared toddler in me re-experienced object permanence. Proof that it’s safe to trust that if love walks out the door, it also returns. Maybe not in the same shape or the same way, but it comes back when it’s ready… and maybe it never truly left to begin with.

    My little-girl heart, still quietly afraid of loss, was healing.

    Fears of re-experiencing old pains and heartache are the norm in the human experience, and the more we understand our fears, the more we can work with them to keep our connections strong and secure. It also helps us to not pass them on to our children, our partners, our friends and family.

    Our job is not to silence our pain or our fears. Our job is to invite them to the table, let them speak, let them breathe, and let them share their story to completion. Their interrupted cycle is what keeps them around longer as they impatiently wait to be noticed.

    When a fear shows itself through strong surges of emotion (sadness, anger, loneliness, etc.), ask it for more information like you would someone else.

    You can do this verbally out loud or write it out. Ask, tell me more about that pain or fear. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? Does it hurt or feel restricting? Have you experienced this feeling before?

    Then ask when was the last time you recall feeling this way. What was happening? Who did it involve? What were you scared of? What was the outcome? What might you be doing right now to avoid that same pain? Is it working?

    As you start to uncover the sensations and emotions, ask, what would you tell someone else who was experiencing this same pain? What would you tell a child?

    And my favorite question, what is the most loving and compassionate thing you can do for yourself right now?

    Questions like these give us the opportunity to feel our feelings without transferring them on to someone else and give them a voice they might not normally have. Our inherent need to be seen and heard is met, and we are not ignoring what is asking to be felt.

    The more we let ourselves feel, the more we can hear the voice underneath the feelings once they pass. The quiet intuitive voice who always knows how to nurture us, heal our wounds, and instructs us how to have the courage and ability to have loving relationships with those we care about.

    It’s normal to have fear in our connections. It’s part of our experience as humans and often how we learn about ourselves most. But to let those fears dictate the way we connect keeps us from connecting in the ways we truly crave. True intimacy requires vulnerability and a trust that starts within ourselves. The more we are willing to listen to the fears that drive us, the more we are open to the love that feeds us.

    What are you really scared of? Let your fears be heard, but let your heart lead the way.