The Womb to Now: How Your First Relationship Shapes Your Love Life

Our most deeply ingrained lessons about how to be in relationship develop in the womb.

From the moment of conception we develop in relationship.

The experience in the womb shapes the brain and lays the groundwork for personality and emotional temperament.

Did you know that the way we acted as a teenager has something to reveal about our current needs in a relationship?

As an infant our brain is patterning after our caretaker’s brain, there is a lot of neural selection that goes on at this time. That means what is kept and what is pruned is based on our caregiving environment.

We have the least developed brain at birth, of any other animal born, we come into life the most dependant on our caregivers. Would you be surprised to learn that 90% of brain development happens outside the womb in direct relationship to mom.

Within a baby’s developing brain, we all have neurons that grow in direct relationship to the care, attention from mom along with her focus and her attunement with our needs.  There are also neurons that are pruned if mom’s attention is elsewhere. Often what builds over time is the internal message of I’m not safe or I’m not worthy when not FULL in what mom can give.

A lot of people feel disconnected from their mom and this makes it difficult for us to create bonds with other people, to trust life ~ especially in intimate relationships. Without a loving connection to one’s mother, we rarely feels a loving connection to ourself.

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. This unique window of time in our life when we are reaching for independence but still dependent on Mom and / or Dad for what will need in life.

Its so empowering to know that these early life experiences don’t have to be lived out as a life sentence.