Do you have attachment issues?

I have attachment issues but we haven't worked on them in therapy yet. My therapist says I had disorganized attachment growing up from the questionnaire I did. I have been seeing her for 6 months but I don't feel attached to her at all. I definitely don't trust her enough to be vulnerable with her. I don't think I have ever had a positive attachment with anyone.

not sure if this is what i have but i am terrified to get close to anyone (out of fear of losing them if i do) we are just starting to discuss in therapy

I used to.

Basically, I got so hurt by my first therapist that I never became attached to any therapist ever again... cos I don't want to relive that

I assume I have "attachment issues" although it has never been explicitly described as such by my therapist. He has described a "push-pull" dynamic with me, however, and that's the classic "come here -- go away" style of people with fearful attachment issues. Which would make sense given my background, I guess.

Basically I am "working" on this by recognizing that I am actually the one doing the distancing in my adult relationships. I try to face up to how I isolate myself from loved ones that I say I want to be close to. I am trying to intentionally let them in a little more even when my instinct is to put up a wall.

Similar for me. The push/pull tendency has driven nuts quite a few people in my life over the years (including my parents!) but it has also intrigued and drawn in just as many, often the same people that get frustrated, but the overlap is not perfect.

In my case and experience, I often feel that the push/pull is actually related to two main values in my personality, rather than classic fear of attachment/intimacy per se. One very major defining feature of me, on the one hand, is being fiercely independent, having a very strong sense of personal desires, purpose, values etc. Meaning that I want to discover, carve out, and experience my life the way I want, on my own terms, in my own time. My entire track of life choices have been very much in line with this drive. But on the other hand, I also intensely desire company, understanding, deep intimacy (often to the level of feeling to merge with someone based on similarities in interests and values) and, when I am in a mentally healthy period, I actively seek out such companionship and people, and really cherish very close intimate relationships. Not afraid of them/it at all. For me, it's more having these, sometimes seemingly two polar opposite drives. And both can be equally strong.

Is this an issue with attachment? Supeficially, I usually think it is... but not really sure. Can anyone relate?

Perhaps a difference between detached avoidant and anxious avoidant is that the detached don't see it as a problem

Yes, but I don't work on them in therapy. At least I don't feel I do, despite how my therapist practices schema therapy and it aims to "establish a secure attachment". I have only had a very brief discussion with my T on attachment, mainly me saying I'm attached to her...

I think I do have attachment issues but we never discussed it much in therapy and never worked on it per se. My last T said that she was anxious ambivalent and thought I was, too.

Maybe that was a bad mix -- but also maybe I felt more "comfortable" or "at home" with that. The old reenactment thing. In a way it was probably necessary to bring up the issues but then my T couldn't handle me when they did come up and I left -- rejected again.

I'm coming to believe I also had some "splitting" going on. Emotionally, not intellectually, I idealized her at first (a practice I had learned in childhood, to keep people close to or approving of me) then when we tried to work on areas where I got angry (because I felt unseen or outright disapproved of) I was stuck, emotionally, in she's all-bad, she's horrible. And she couldn't deal with being the "bad other" in my perspective because of her issues, maybe related to her own anxious ambivalent attachment style.

Basically, though, I see concern about attachment issues as kind of a fad. Important, but not everything. What happens in healthy development after a healthy attachment?

Yes, that's what I tend to think as well. Of the two, I am definitely the detached kind, although I don't consider myself completely avoidant, more fluctuating on the spectrum between avoidant and secure. One way how I actually started seeing it as problem when I was younger was how my detachment can really stress out some people that have more need for attention and emotional interaction. I would want to dismiss these situations by default and habitually, but cannot very effectively for example in a work environment. Personal relationships I have much more control and choice over and I do tend to mix with people that are similar to myself in this sense (and in many other).

I actually just went to see one of my therapists (I see them only occasionally now) to discuss this very issue. What the T said was that the way I describe my attitude, it more sounds professional than dismissive with solid boundaries, but some people just want to be taken personally a lot of the time and do not care so much about individual differences. The T suggested that I talk to these people directly about boundaries and work ethic instead of ignoring them.

I think some of the lifetraps include attachment issues, although they're not labelled as such. For example the abandonment lifetrap, fear of abandonment, seems like it is an anxious attachment style. Others like defectiveness have their origin in attachment issues in childhood and also can affect relationships in the Here-and-now.

I think there are lots of lifetraps, I don't remember them all. Do you work with this concept?

BTW it's nice for me that I'm not the only one doing schema therapy here

I suppose it's good that she was at least aware of her issues - but it seems like she should have done a lot of work herself to resolve them as far as possible, before becoming a therapist. That was so unfortunate for you!

I can't see the poll on my mobile but I know I have a lot of attachment issues which I confuse as love sometimes. I often get my attachment confused with erotic transference but I am learning to separate the two. In my last attachment to my last t, it was very painful because my heart longed for connection knowing all she provided was an hour a week. It was very difficult to unattach to her because I felt that she forced me to attach by building some kind of friendship but when I wanted more than our hour the boundaries were reinforced. There was a lot of enmeshments going on. T would disclose a lot about her personal life and I became her therapist. It was very confusing for me and my attachment. My attachment is normally avoidant but t forced me into a relationship by hooking me in.

That was the code of my youth! I wasn't in therapy back then so did not experience it that way, but with teachers and other mentor figures. There was also a lot of acting out, and that was how I'd learned to separate the two. For example, I got engaged in romantic/sexual relationships with some of those people, thinking that that's what I wanted - until the actual act happened, or even just a clear possibility of it. Often, then I experienced a strong aversion and felt like "wtf am I doing here?" How I learned that I did not really want to get involved with them in that way, it was more a reaction to a fantasy that really only existed in my mind and I projected it over and over. I often wonder how it might have been like to experience those things in therapy back then. Either some intense internal pain I guess or, if with an unethical T, probably one of those disturbing acting out stories.

Actually, for me, what I confused with erotic transference was a very personal identity search and attachment to an internal defensive value system, not so much to other people. The latter drove the ET for me for a long time, I think I'd projected that system onto those people, who clearly shared certain characteristics.

I actually often wonder how much of our so-called interpersonal attachments are genuine attachments to other people, and not some form of self-projection.

My T works with the schema modes rather than the lifetraps, not sure why. Maybe because she's only got the first accredited workshop under her belt.

My ex T who wasn't trained in schema therapy did the YSQ with me but it's been more than a year and I wonder if my schemas have changed, especially as back then I wasn't assessed to have a mistrust schema but current T says I've a lot of mistrust

I agree that schemas / lifetraps include attachment issues.

I like schema therapy concepts I just don't know what my lifetraps are, and I don't think we target them since T focuses on modes.

Quite a few posters here are in schema therapy as well