Copy of Copy of What's Love Got To Do With It? - Lori Stroup, Assoc. CMHC

“Because I love him…,” a friend says to me over coffee when she explains why she is staying with her boyfriend whom she just found out is cheating on her.

We have all heard it before: “You can’t help who you love.” “Love is blind.” “Love makes me do crazy things.”

Love. Is it really love that does all that, or something else? What we think is love clouds our judgment. What we think is love hijacks our brains. What we think is love is really called attachment.

A particular form of attachment is taught to us by our primary caregivers in our early development years. Kim Fredrickson, author of Give Yourself a Break, posits, “we were all born with emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual needs. Ideally our parents and caregivers met these needs when we were small. Most parents are wonderful about meeting their child’s physical needs for food, shelter, clothes, schooling, and so on. But besides these basic needs, we also have vital emotional, relational, and spiritual needs that often get missed” (2015, p. 33). Put another way, “the determinant of attachment is not food, but care and responsiveness” (McCleod, 2009).

Though most parents mean well, when intangible needs go unmet, children typically grow up believing their needs are bad, or that somehow they are not good enough to have their needs met. At such a young age it is much easier and less scary to believe this than what might be more accurate—that our parents don’t have what it takes to recognize and meet our needs because their needs were not met in their early development years (Fredrickson, 2015).

As we grow up we all face questions such as: Am I loveable? Am I important? Will I be heard? Are my needs worth meeting? Am I good? Is the world safe? Will I be accepted? Will I succeed? These questions—typically already answered by our caregivers before the age of seven—form our core beliefs, which influence our everyday decisions, how we view ourselves, what coping skills are developed, and even who we choose to share our life with. This becomes the example of how to do life with other people—a relationships map. This template forms the lens through which we see the world and ourselves, and shapes how we make decisions later in life. If we do not receive the assurance that our needs matter early in life, we are at risk of developing a skewed sense of self and forming unhealthy attachments later in life. Essentially, we make relationship decisions not necessarily because its love, but because its familiar—its what we know.

There is hope, dear ones. We can challenge and change our relationships map by developing a healthy attachment with ourselves. As adults if we seek to meet our own emotional needs, rather than looking to and relying on others for assurance and validation, we develop a healthy self-image, and learn how to self-soothe and regulate our emotions, thereby reducing anxiety and depression symptoms. How does one do this? By practicing a few simple steps: 1) Identify your emotions. 2) Notice where and how you are experiencing it in your body. Is there a shape, size, color, texture, weight, or image you can use to describe how your body is experiencing the emotion? 3) Identify the need. For example, do you need to be heard? How can you listen to yourself? Do you need to be loved? How can you love yourself? Do you need to be validated? How can you validate yourself? Are you scared? How can you reassure yourself? 4) Trust yourself and respond to yourself with love, kindness, a listening spirit, and a non-judgmental heart. If you need help learning how to do this, allow me to recommend the aforementioned book, Give Yourself a Break by Kim Fredrickson. Read it slowly and allow your paradigm to shift. 5) Reflect on and document your findings. Continually pay attention to and take inventory all the wonderful things you are learning about yourself. 6) Be thankful for the learning experience and the message. 7) Develop and practice a regular self-care routine. You are worth being taken care of, including by yourself. 8) Continue to get to know and appreciate yourself by doing things on you own. Go by yourself to the museum, zoo, aquarium, movies, restaurants, etc., Take a class on something you have always wanted to learn. Get comfortable doing things by yourself that you like and enjoy, and that stretch and challenge you. Don’t skip this step! Doing things alone is actually a wonderful experience if you let yourself enjoy it. Be brave, you can do it!

The more you practice these steps, the more you will be able to meet your own emotional needs, and the better prepared you will be for that healthy and life-giving relationship you are longing for. After all, its two whole and healthy people that make a whole and healthy relationship. On this Valentine’s Day, decide to love yourself by developing a healthy attachment to yourself.

Lori Stroup, Associate CMHC is now accepting new clients.

References

Fredrickson, K. (2015). Give yourself a break: Turning your inner critic into a compassionate friend. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell.

McLeod, S. (2009). Attachment theory. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html