'My Parents Treated Me Well, So Why Do I Still Want Therapy?' |
Here’s something I hear a lot in my practice: “My childhood was fine. My parents loved me. They didn’t hit me. They showed up. So why do I feel like something’s off? Why do I still want therapy?”
People usually say it with a mix of guilt and confusion. As if the wish to help oneself needs an excuse. And in the case of outwardly stable families, it is very tricky because such families may still cause their children the trauma of disorganized attachment.
And this is the case where trauma doesn’t announce itself as trauma, since it comes from a parent’s own unresolved trauma.
Let me explain.
A baby is wired to run to their parent for safety when they’re scared. It’s a basic survival instinct. But what happens when the parent is the source of the fear?
That’s the paradox at the heart of disorganized attachment. The very person who should be a safe harbor becomes, unpredictably, a source of alarm. For example, a mother lost in her own grief for years, staring through her infant with a trance-like look. Or a father, struggling with depression, jerks away when his toddler reaches for a hug, because he has no energy for hugging.
These moments are often fleeting and are easy to miss........