Remember your teenage years?
A time of intense emotions, yearning for independence, and grappling with self-identity. It turns out, how we express ourselves in our teens is often connected to our earliest life experiences.
Much of what we needed more of as an infant will end up being expressed as a teenager as so many of our emotions are right at the surface during that time of development.
Our earliest experiences, while we don’t consciously remember them, have a profound influence on how we live our lives. Left unexplored, our early life experiences live like a reference point in the body and the risk is you end up navigating your love life from that place
Your teenage self has something to reveal about our current relationship.
If your experience was that 'Mom wasn’t really there for me in a meaningful way', then you typically find that you don’t have a partner that is consistently loving or supportive.
If your teen years were filled with 'Mom is always on my back, nothing I ever do is ever good enough' in your adult relationships you may find yourself drawn to partners who are emotionally distant or critical. You might crave their approval but struggle to ever feel like you've truly earned it, mirroring the dynamic you experienced with your mom.
Attachment sciences support how deeply these early life experiences affect how you love and how you relate not only to your parents but how you maintain connections in all of our relationships.
These early experiences, not consciously remembered, create a template for how you show up in love or turn away feeling that you have to protect your heart from being hurt { again }.
Often those who experienced a prolonged separation from their Mom in the first 3 years of life, live with a body-centered fear of being left alone.
In our adult relationships, we may skip over addressing difficulties so as not to rock the boat, avoiding conflict to keep the relationship together.
The adult now willing to do anything in order to avoid repeating that past pain, does everything in order to keep love close.
This can include people pleasing, over-giving and accepting the unacceptable in order to avoid losing the relationship and ending up alone.
When we give more than we receive in our relationships, we do it to pick up the slack of the other side, to fill in the empty spaces.
If it’s your natural instinct to give, a new practice that will support your relationships is to only give as much as your partner is capable of receiving. Within the delicate balance of give and take, relationships thrive.
Unearthing unresolved issues from your past, particularly those related to your earliest experiences and your relationship with your parents, sheds light on your current relationship needs.
Just like a detective piecing together clues, this self-discovery process can reveal the root causes of your present behaviors and desires in love. With this newfound awareness, you can begin to make conscious choices and build healthier, more fulfilling connections.
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