Externalizing The Voices of Maladaptation

I’ve been writing essays for ten years, 5 in earnest. I began writing about insights that came through me. Some inner voice would urge me to speak on a subject; politics, our culture, the arts, philosophy and personal development were the main subjects. I see how we exchange ideas via social media and other interactions. We often adopt ideas and stances when one of our preferred thinkers presents us with a novel idea.This exchange can be powerful and helpful, accelerating our development, our connection to others and to new information. But the results of such exchanges can also be deadly, spreading misinformation about cures and viruses, autocrats in savior’s clothes. We are amazing creatures, and yet we’re not great at discernment. Each of us falls prey to propaganda, fake news, and quackery constantly. We think in fallacies and are influenced by unseen biases. We also fall prey to a cynicism that all unfamiliar ideas must be quackery unless and until our intellect is satisfied. We can wall ourselves off from useful information that might help us. Such is the nature of our myopia.I have been circling around attachment theory for maybe 10 years. Initially a friend used it to explain my behavior in a relationship that was not working. I began exploring the concept and the vast implications of this important work. As the years have passed I believe that attachment theory is a deep-dive most of us need to take.The idea is that we have mal-adaptive stances toward bonding and relationships based on early childhood neglect or abuse from our caregivers. PTSD, from this perspective, is omnipresent, not just for survivors of natural disasters and war. Early life and relationships later on affect our capacity to give and receive love, to trust or conversely, to be alone.We’re all familiar with how our minds can play tricks on us. Our egos worry, blame, judge and envy others. They preoccupy us with shallow aims if we are not vigilant. We can and must develop the capacity to discern truth from fiction, in the world at large and in our own minds. We so often identify with anything our minds say and all feelings these thoughts illicit. We can become depressed or anxious if we identify with negative self-perceptions. We can generalize about the opposite sex or people of different spiritual or political leanings. Many of these stances are borrowed from people in our lives: our parents and siblings, teachers and friends. Clearly social media propagandizes us constantly. We are bombarded with an overwhelming cacophony of talking-points that illicit feelings in order to get us to vote for a candidate or to not vote at all. We are asked to: buy this product, trust my authority, keep up with the Joneses. We could be forgiven for wanting to collapse under the weight of these conflicting and demanding external influences. But as above so below; a similar manipulation is occurring within.I posit that our personal attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, secure, anxious-avoidant, are as important to study as our favorite politician’s shady past or our tantric breath work Doula’s training. We take our own thoughts and beliefs as gospel at our own peril. We are misled by the cognitive distortions provided by our faulty attachment styles when we unquestioningly identify with what they tell us about ourselves and our lovers. I call this the ego’s ego. Attachment is an overlay onto our already complex nature that we must include and account for if we are going to truly learn to trust our discernment on affairs of the heart.It’s not enough to realize we have an attachment style, to name it and accept it. We must be willing to question our every belief. Because intimate relationships eventually illicit these deep-seated trauma responses. If we identify as those responses, we will rationalize their whispers. We will reject those who are safe or seek those who are not. We will be unwilling or unable to be alone or conversely, we will run away from vulnerability.Our attachment styles are rudimentary programs (created in response to childhood traumas) that have never been updated, never questioned and never externalized. We think they are us, but they are not. Second nature is not nature. We are the person in the jail cell, waiting to be free. We are the human that needs connection and safety, space and boundaries. We are the little kid inside who doesn’t notice how the fearful thoughts are not us, but an outdated program that has been protecting us since we were too young to know.We can thank these trauma responses because they helped us survive. And yet we must externalize them, to not identify as them. They are no longer helping. We must see them as a faulty security system: one variety locks down the estate every time the wind blows, the other convinces us to abandon the estate in search of safety. And like a real security system, they can be updated, replaced or removed. Since these trauma responses are second nature, we can learn to see past them. One of my life goals is to continue to do this work and to help others in their liberation from the vagaries of complex PTSD and childhood trauma.positivepsychology.com/attachment-theory/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe