Do You Struggle In A Relationship With Someone Who Is Afraid Of Your Love?
You're Invited To The Zoom Weekend Workshop- HEALING ATTACHMENT WOUNDS IN RELATIONSHIPS
Everyone deserves to be loved by someone safe enough and trustworthy enough, even those who have been severely hurt in childhood. Trying to get close to someone with severe attachment wounding is a challenging journey, and it’s not for everyone. Just like someone who decides to climb Mount Everest might approach the challenge with both trepidation and enthusiasm, knowing the risks involved, those who choose to try to be close with someone with severe attachment wounding- but are not severely wounded in attachment themselves- may have a very particular kind of hard road ahead.
It's not quite right to compare grown adults to children, no matter how wounded their inner children might be. But just like a foster child is likely to make life difficult for a loving, generous-hearted foster parent, those with severe attachment wounding are likely to act out, violate your boundaries, resist your bids for connection, get clingy if you get too far away, and test you severely in their attempts to discern if you can be trusted. This makes it very difficult to have an equal, reciprocal relationship, because you are likely to wind up caregiving more than you’re cared for, and distrusted, even though you're trustworthy. This might make you feel burned out and resentful. But the rewards can also be deep and beautiful, if you have the stamina and patience to slog your way up the mountain.
Your real growth work, should you choose to accept the challenge, is to walk the razor’s edge between attending to your loved one's significant needs- without throwing your own needy parts under the bus and neglecting yourself. This often means intensive Internal Family Systems work on your own "parts," who deserve the same or even greater degree of care than your loved one's parts will need. This can be a deep, meaningful, and lovingly intimate journey to explore your own wounded parts and your own protector parts.
Without the inner journey that requires caretaking your own parts first, it will be nearly impossible to have a healthy, reciprocal, safe, trusting relationship with someone with severe attachment wounding. But if you can learn to walk that razor’s edge, while also getting some of your own intimacy needs met with family and friends, outside the relationship, choosing to try to get close with someone with attachment wounding can be incredibly rewarding and full of heart-opening moments. You become the welcoming committee for so many parts in your loved one, who might never have been truly loved by anyone before. And you might be surprised how many parts in yourself will be evoked so you can love your own parts more deeply- yourself.
If you’re capable of being patient enough to earn the trust of your loved one's young parts and their protectors, while also attending to the needs of your own parts, you have the potential to be the recipient of a tremendous outpouring of gratitude from both your loved one and your own parts. The reward can be a lot of love and loyalty, since people with attachment wounding who do the hard work of healing can be incredibly affectionate and devoted partners, friends, and family members. You’ll also enjoy the rewards of your own altruism, since choosing to get close with someone with attachment wounding can be a great act of service to another human being, as part of a spiritual path that prioritizes service to those in need of more love.
The trick is to walk this path without codependence, without enabling, without "spiritual bypassing," without neglecting your own needs, without martyring your own parts in order to prove to someone else that they really are lovable.
Walking this razor's edge is the topic of our newest Zoom weekend workshop.
INTRODUCING HEALING ATTACHMENT WOUNDS- A Weekend Zoom Workshop To Support Those Who Love Adults With Severe Attachment Wounding
In This Workshop You Will:
-Get support for you, the caregiver, so you don’t feel so crazy, lonely, confused, and helpless when someone with severe attachment wounding behaves in ways that hurt you
-Extend compassion to yourself and others in the class, because it’s hard to be distrusted or unfairly tested when you’re doing your best to earn the trust of someone with trust issues
-Increase your compassion for those with severe attachment wounding, so you can build your stamina, increase your patience, and make sense of why these folks might behave in such confusing ways
-Identify the common behaviors exhibited by those with severe attachment wounding, so you don’t take these behaviors quite so personally (even though they do impact you personally
-Understand polyvagal theory and the neuroscience of why your loved one might act paranoid when you're behaving in safe enough ways
-Learn how to protect your own precious “parts” without throwing them under the bus, while still being as kind and gentle as possible with the parts of someone else with attachment wounding
-Double check yourself to make sure you’re not employing “spiritual bypassing” beliefs or practices to avoid holding someone who acts out because of attachment wounding accountable for behaviors that hurt you
-Out yourself about your own shadow parts (the parts you have the power to heal yourself)
-Find your edge of what’s okay and not okay, so you can avoid either enmeshing or abandoning someone who might already be waiting for the other shoe to drop
-Learn how to trigger less yourself- and also how to minimize the unavoidable triggers you’ll inevitably bump into when trying to get close to someone with severe attachment wounding
-Calm your own nervous system so you can rest a bit for the weekend, while still learning, growing, and strengthening your capacity to be kind to yourself while caregiving others
-Get tips on how to support your loved one in a way that can actually help you be a healer for your loved one with attachment wounding, so you can both earn secure attachment more easefully
If this sounds helpful to you, someone who loves you, or someone you love, please consider passing along this invitation.
Doing this kind of work in one-on-one therapy is always ideal, but not everyone can access or afford one-on-one therapy, so this workshop is part of our ongoing effort to support health equity and make this kind of healing work more available.
We're looking forward to supporting you in loving bravely, with self protection and compassion for everyone involved..