Attachment Style

Mine is Disorganized Fearful Avoidant.

I desire love/relationship, but I don't trust myself to choose safely. (I was adopted by a narcissist woman)

I am very easily hurt. The hardest (non)relationship is with my adult children. They can be awful.

But imagine being raised by a mother with this attachment style...

They were my entire world when they were young. Up until recently, I enjoyed being with them.

How do you heal from this?

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Hello Deee. I'm sorry you are struggling. It must be
alot to deal with. I do hear an open, honest assessment though. You really seem to know yourself. I think that is a good quality to have. It sounds like you have nice memories of times ago when your children were growing up. I hope you can find an answer to your question. My thoughts will be with you through your journey. shaggy

Hi Dee,

So sorry you had to deal with a narcissist. That is awful. My heart goes out to you.

You could check your library for these books:

"Toxic Parents" by Susan Forward

"You're Not Crazy, It's Your Mother" by Danu Morrigan

They might help??

I feel ya. Fearful-avoidant here too. Meet person->attach->fear->disconnect cycle over and over and over. I don't have any advice on parenting or something that will solidly work for you, but I do find things are less chaotic when there is a bit of distance between others and myself.

I would say a good first step is to gain some insight and awareness of when and how the insecure attachment is affecting you. In therapy I've been working on behavioral chain analyses (more for BPD impulsivity but I think most people w/BPD have either an anxious-preoccupied or fearful-avoidant style, and those without BPD could probably use it looking at regretted actions within a relationship). Basically you look back at something you wish you didn't do and identify vulnerabilities, triggering factors, the behavior itself, short-term and long-term affects along with ways to change the behavior next time. I can see how that would be helpful with some fearful-avoidant behaviors in relationships (i.e. did x because of feeling overly affectionate or y because of wanting to distance self..and then trying to balance the extremes trying to integrate reason mind with emotion mind).

Fearful-avoidant feels a lot to me like black and white (probably subconscious) thinking leading to alternating between extreme, opposite emotions and behaviors within relationships. If you can actively challenge the intense close-ness and the alternating fear of such intimacy, over time it'll become more engrained and automatic.

Just some ideas. There's probably some better literature out there on working your way towards secure attachment and dealing with things during that process.