Bonding anxiety

Having experienced too little secure attachment as a newborn child results in feelings of abandonment, deep loneliness and lack of self-esteem. Establishing a healthy symbiosis is vital for a child who depends skin and hair on a parent's love and care. The lack of nurturing and secure attachment can later give a craving for the symbiosis you missed so much as a child. In love relationships, this child in yourself is still looking for the missed symbiosis.

When parents need their child for their own emotional needs, because their own early childhood needs have not been met, it can feel suffocating for a child. The feeling of not being able to breathe. The child then has to shut itself off out of body preservation and do everything possible to avoid being swallowed or swallowed up. In doing so, it closes itself off not only from the other person, but also from its own feelings.

If you notice that you have trouble making deeper contact in a relationship, it is good to examine for yourself what ideas and experiences you had in your early childhood and teenage years. What was the family situation like and what was the contact with others like. How do the experiences you went through affect your current life?

The importance of this research is that you come to realise that many behaviours are learned and not genetic. Genes have nothing to do with the attachment you experience in your life and therefore are not a cause of commitment anxiety. It has everything to do with what you have learned and this means that you can unlearn certain behaviour and replace it with a new attitude. This requires discipline and attention, especially in the beginning; once you have learned an attitude, you don't just unlearn it. When you make a real effort, it is indeed possible to adopt a different way of bonding.

Codependency is the urge to conform without regard to your own feelings and needs. You put someone else's wishes and desires above your own. You sense the needs and desires of others.

Fantastic you may think and more people could do that, nothing wrong with that!

However, codependency is a stress response to disturbed attachment. It is fear of abandonment and an unconscious attempt to still get what was missed before, or to avoid being hurt again. So it is an unconscious strategy to control the other person and your relationship(s). You give yourself up to maintain the relationship, which you may make more ideal than it is. You love yourself through the other person. This is fragile because if the other person's love for you stops or changes, you stop loving yourself or valuing yourself. So it is very important for you to get on as well as possible with the other person, only through this do you put yourself aside.

The bottom line is that you lose yourself in other people's problems. By regularly saying yes where you subconsciously or obviously feel no. After all, you love to see the other person happy and grateful. You actually became dependent or made dependent (Co-dependent) on others in your childhood. Old patterns work long until you start to recognise and dismantle the illusions. Wanting to face the truth is something you do initially within yourself.

Recognising codependency, commitment anxiety or separation anxiety is not always easy to spot in yourself. You have often behaved this way for as long as you have been alive so the behaviour has become normal for you. And it is natural to others because you are always ready to help. So you will have to break through a deep pattern to arrive at different behaviour.

An important step is learning to name your own feelings. If you are able to name your feelings, you can use this to deepen the bond with your partner and bonding will be easier and deepen.

Do you choose fear or love?

Do you continue to believe that you are a victim of the situation and keep waiting to be rescued or do you feel and understand that your life is your responsibility. The opposite of commitment anxiety and separation anxiety is love. It means loving yourself more and going through old ingrained patterns. Of course, this is an exciting process and we are happy to help you go through it as pleasantly and well as possible. The first step is deciding to stop letting your fears guide you and then looking for help. You can learn good attachment and you will definitely start to feel a lot happier.