Are You Self-Sabotaging Your Relationship?

After experiencing childhood traumas or adult relationship trauma, we take our trauma into the relationship and or view our partner through the same trauma lens.

Trauma affects our attachment style causing a person to have an anxious/avoidant or an insecure attachment style.

An anxious/avoidant attachment is the person wants to connect with their partner, however, they tell themselves they don’t need the connection so they push their partner away as a way to protect themselves.

Essentially they are self-sabotaging their relationship.

An insecure attachment can make the person look needy and clingy. They constantly demand to do things with their partner rather than occasionally doing things separately.

If their partner does an activity outside the home, the person who is insecure will demand to be updated on where their partner is, when they’ll be home and who they’ve seen.

This is caused by a fear of abandonment.

Parents also unknowingly program children to behave a certain way in their own adult relationships later in life through their own interactions with each other.

Children internalise their parents’ behaviours within their relationship.

The messages Children gain from their parent’s relationship and from their relationship with their parents tell them about the world, relationships and themselves.

These messages tell a child the world is either good or bad, relationships are either safe or unsafe and if the child is good or bad.

Attachment styles begin developing from infanthood based on their relationship with their parents, however, as mentioned earlier, trauma can also change what may have initially been a healthy attachment to an anxious/avoidant or insecure attachment style.

If you would like to understand more about the issues in your relationship, please click on the link below for a booking today.