Attachment Types - Overly Independent

[anonymous]

@Valentino Glad you mentioned this- As far I'm concerned Brene Brown is the presiding expert on this topic. Her book opened my eyes to the raw truth about being real, being authentic to what you are as a human being that needs connection with your peers.

 

[Valentino]

I recently revisited some of Brene Brown's work... watched part of her video synopsis of a 12 session course work titled Connections..

From that I got an insight I called 'Shame Bombing', it's what commonly happens when stress gets out of control and emotions are triggered... We use anger to attack, but the actual bombs are shame, guilt and blame..

I've recently been reviewing Dr. Dan Siegel's work, and have been totally amazed at how practical he can explain and combine neuroscience with psychology.... This guy is probably one the best resources for understanding what the hell is really going on with our mind, emotions, brain, and psychology....

I highly recommend his work, and he's got tons of free videos on youtube..

 

[Hashi]

I'm afraid I'm finding this frustrating. My whole reason for posting is to do with trauma. I struggled through Brene Brown's TED talk on the power of vulnerability and I think it has nothing to do with extraordinary trauma and has nothing to say to me. If your big struggle is wanting ideas to be tidy or wanting your child to make the tennis team then fine, that's your issue, but I don't relate to that as an example of vulnerability.

I'm in a wholly different place and I'm seriously strugging with any idea that I'm in the same bracket as someone who hasn't been through some of the things I've been throught. I find it problematic on a number of levels and it isn't helpful.

I'd like to bring this thread back to my original reason for posting, or otherwise let it fade away. I feel alone not only with the fact that connection is a problem for me, but with the fact that I don't want connection. As I said before, I don't feel ambivalent. I don't see that I want connection but have trouble achieving it.

I think because of my early experiences I see things differently, and I feel alone with that. That doesn't necessarily mean that I could be more accepting of vulnerability if only I would let myself. And I've got to be straightforward and say that someone who hasn't been through the kind of trauma I've been through, or perhaps no particular severe trauma at all, isn't going to persuade me that somewhere deep down I really want to connect. I was hoping for anything that would make me feel less alone, and anything about healing given my starting point. An alternative idea and not the usual.

I think my starting point is not what the discussion is now about.

Maybe there needs to be a new thread to talk about the things that are now being discussed.

 

[Mayday]

I feel alone not only with the fact that connection is a problem for me, but with the fact that I don't want connection

Going back to your original reason for posting. Yes, I feel very similar. Sometimes I don't know if inside I actually do want connection, or rather (with what I suspect is the case) that I just want to connection to be easier because it would make the logistics of life easier. By that I mean, it's pretty hard, if not impossible, to live a life without having anything to do with other people. I think I can see benefits in connection, but not sure I will ever get past it being somewhat of a necessary evil.

I was telling my therapist recently that I'm starting to overcome some of my phobia about talking on phones, and she was all excited for me. I kind of think she thinks that I'm starting to see connecting with people as not so scary, and I didn't exactly correct her, but for me, being able to talk on the phone isn't a step towards connecting with people. It's a step towards making my life easier, because talking on the phone sometimes will achieve what I want to achieve easier than email or other communications. I think it's a hard concept for most people to get their heads around.

Maybe whatever happened to me in early childhood has simply changed the way my emotional connections work, and that is why I am different to other people. A bit like the difference between people on the Autistic spectrum, who think differently than NT (neurologically typical) people. My brain is wired differently. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate that there are benefits to being able to connect with people, it's just that it isn't a driving force for me, and I'm not sure it ever will be. I would like to be able to connect better, because I perceive that it would make my day to day life function better. I'm not sure anyone who is emotionally-typical can ever really understand this, because I suppose to them, being able to connect with other people is so fundamental.

Edit: Sorry, this might not be what you mean either...just my take on it. :)

 

[Abstract]

Hashi, I do still have thoughts about this and I am hoping I will come back here with them. They may not be helpful but I will give it shot. Hopefully! I am afraid I am a bit unreliable and I am aware of how treacherous the ground is for you with this subject and a paragraph is therefore not going to do it.

I haven't got the focus to watch or read all the detail written here and the ted talks. I think I understand where your feelings are coming from with this. I do think you have expressed very clearly that you cannot even want something different and believe that probably has been understood, mostly. You are not disorganised and and are not anxious avoidant and are dismissive with your patterns. I certainly have heard and understood it. Not understood it in a sense of being you as only you are you but still empathising with enough of it to get where you are coming from.

The main issue here is not only you processing some of the pain around this trauma for you but finding a way to make the changes you need to make in order to be able to utilise T help properly. Again in order to be able to process the trauma. That is where my focus lies (change in order to help therapy) and it seems this is a focus for you too. So you may not want to be different or feel hidden need for connection but you have recognised that you need to find a way through this regardless.

I also know that plain CBT type approaches don't work well for you, in a similar way that they don't work for me. They work really well for many but it might help for those responding to know it as I think that effects how we can hear things. For me anyway. It's often not about right or wrong and rather about what works for us.

 

[Valentino]

I'd like to feel less alone with it, but I see so many posts that are almost the opposite that I wonder how alone with it I am.
...
I don't really want to be close to others, intimacy has little appeal for me. ... I find it hard to trust because I don't believe anyone else can be relied on in the way I can rely on myself. Anyway, I see being vulnerable as the ultimate stupidity (for myself).
...
I probably haven't been clear enough that I see my view of "vulnerable = stupid" as a big problem for me, not a better position compared to anyone else who is able to be more open.
...
the fact that I don't want connection.
... I was hoping for anything that would make me feel less alone, and anything about healing given my starting point. An alternative idea and not the usual.

I'm having trouble reconciling two positions that seem to contradict each other. You don't want connection but at the same time you want to feel less alone, would like guidance, encouragement and feed off your therapist's belief in you?

How in the world do you get those things without having a genuine connection with another person?

Do you really totally outright reject your vulnerability? Have you considered the downsides of this strategy? Without vulnerability, connection is impossible, and along with it, genuine communication and interactions with other conscious beings. Others will not be able to trust you, nor will they be able to relate or understand you.

except with my mother. What keeps me stuck there is her extreme manipulation combined with my guilt. When I opposed her in a major way before, she went blind from stress and the stress was what I was putting her through. I avoid contact as much as I can, but if I stopped seeing her altogether I'm pretty sure she'd die as a direct result - her health is poor - and I can't deal with it.
...
made me think that I'm actually very empathic but have blocked that because of my experiences with my mother, who later became off-the-scale controlling and manipulative. (To flag up - she has no formal diagnosis since she never sought help and I don't want to think about diagnosis, only her behaviour and how it affected me.) Unfortunately I'm still very empathic towards her. It's like curse. I cannot switch it off. Which is why I don't want to take steps to separate myself and probably cause her to literally die from her emotional martyrdom.

Your mother's behavior sounds like a classical personality disorder issue (histrionic or borderline maybe?) with extreme emotional hyper-impulsivity and insecurity. That along with your history of trauma, would make you very easily fall into codependent traits. Personality disorder people can be like emotional vampires, sucking out your emotional life, and then totally distorting your sense of reality and kill any trust of people or trust in the world. Their out of control unpredictable and hyper-fast inner emotional turmoil is in itself overwhelming and traumatic.

I just recently came to terms that my dad had borderline personality disorder, and that was a big contributor to why I grew up emotionally detached. A borderline just can't give healthy bonding or attachment to another person. I fell under the spell of believing his constant distortion campaigns, it took a lot of suffering and personal failure to start unwinding all those beliefs that I was brought up with. But with my Aspergers instead of being all mistrusting, I ended up being naively trusting of people in general, which led me to multiple adult traumas, because I couldn't recognize danger.

An alternative idea and not the usual.

It can be frustrating trying to understand and respond appropriately to your needs. I feel your emotions one way, but read your words another way, how to communicate back? Also I sense a lot of emotional triggers near the surface, so it almost feels like walking through a land mine.

Instead of constantly looking for a new or alternative way, maybe consider that you might need to translate a usual way to better work for you?

My healing journey included over a decade of seeking and exploring, self help, psychology, qi-gong, meditation, spirituality, energy work, therapy, support groups, etc. Not one single method or teaching had a sudden magical long term healing effect. It was a journey of regular failures and not connecting with others. But eventually I figured out ways to translate the practices and teachings into ways that would work for my needs.

 

[anonymous]

This is the first and greatest dare... To reach out for support, truly willing to trust and act with the feedback. The idea "vulnerability is only for people whose struggle is not related to trauma" is a misperception. I am not intending to be harsh or disagreeable.

I stumbled through 8 years of severest counter dependence. Hyper independence.

Still struggling. Extreme trauma locks us down to an highly unconnected state, warping the "fit in to survive" instinct down to "only survive for myself". I think that PTSD's most debilitating impact is the formation of this counter-dependence. It's a brutal combination bringing in fatal flaw thinking, hyper vigilance, a huge mess of toxic fog.

I don't know you so I am not assuming what you experience out of that fog, but I am telling you that to progress from that feeling you have to get the definitions of everything that makes up this state.

A question for you: I have read over your first post, and I am curious about what you mean by the metaphysics of your relationship with T.

 

[Hashi]

being able to talk on the phone isn't a step towards connecting with people. It's a step towards making my life easier, because talking on the phone sometimes will achieve what I want to achieve easier than email or other communications. I think it's a hard concept for most people to get their heads around.

Exactly. For me, most things are a cost/benefit calculation and I don't think many people can understand that (or perhaps believe it).

Often people make assumptions about the reason I'm doing something, or about my personality, that are far off the mark. Then they're surprised at something else I do because they see it as uncharacteristic, when it's completely in character (my actual character, rather than their assumptions).

People often don't understand why I'll sometimes walk completely away from something and not look back, while at other times I'll stay and work on a very difficult situation. They don't seem to notice that I rarely do anything in the middle, like hanging around in a friendship that's past it's shelf life.

 

[Hashi]

I'm having trouble reconciling two positions that seem to contradict each other. You don't want connection but at the same time you want to feel less alone, would like guidance, encouragement and feed off your therapist's belief in you?

I think that's a fair point and it's my fault for not being clearer. I do allow some vulnerability and I do have some connection. Otherwise I wouldn't leave the house.

At the same time, I feel that my approach to connection can be quite different to many people's. The neediness and dependency I see in many posts here, as I talked about initially, is something I can't relate to at all. I perceive it as feeling a lack in themselves that they want someone else to fill, or help them fill. Or that it would give them a great increase in well-being and motivation. In myself, I perceive it as something I don't like but it might be a means to an end. That end is specific, not general. It's about quantity (achieving a certain amount) rather than quality (general improvement).

It's like other people who express dependency are sitting in a car and need petrol so they can drive. They think anything other than driving is "less than", not having a car is a lack. I don't even bother with the car in the first place because I know that it involves making choices, learning to drive, maintaining the vehicle, getting a licence, finding parking spaces and - especially - constantly requiring petrol. The effort isn't worth it and I don't want to be constantly depending on things outside myself. I'd rather find a different way to go where I want to go.

Where the vulnerability and connection comes in, is that I need something to facilitate this. At the very least, I need to be able to walk. If everything I do is within walking distance then that's enough. If I want to do things that are farther away, I need to find something else - like public transport. I still don't see a need or have a want for a car. I either restrict what I do, or I find a different way to do it. Public transport is the limit of my vulnerability/dependency and connection.

For a long time that's fine. But then I want to do something beyond that limit. For example, stay out until late so that it isn't safe to walk home from the station. The obvious suggestion that most people make is to learn to drive. They tell me all the advantages, the freedom it gives them, the difference it makes to what they can do.

My friends who themselves were averse to driving explain how they got used to it. Even though they hate the maintenance and repairs and still wouldn't drive on a motorway/expressway, they're able to drive enough to meet their needs. One of them actually loves driving now. They suggest giving me a mini lesson so I can see for myself. They offer to lend me their copy of the Highway Code (rule book).

What helps me more is the friend who also has no desire at all to drive. He doesn't see it as freeing. He doesn't associate it with being grown up, having advantages, giving him options, improving his life. Driving has no attraction for him, and without any appeal the energy it takes (including literally, in terms of petrol) isn't worth it. What this friend does is give me ideas that don't involve learning to drive.

The obvious answer is to take taxis sometimes. Unfortunately, directly due to trauma, this is extremely difficult for me. But I'm willing to work on it, and I do work on it.

This is actually a literal example. I don't drive. The cost/benefit analysis comes out far too negative. It takes too much energy and involves too much reliance on the external, compared to any advantages. I see why other people like it for them, but I see nothing positive about it for me, especially because I actively dislike cars.

My aim isn't to learn to drive, which would involve learning to want to drive. My aim is to be able to take taxis but I have had taxi-related trauma. Taxis are still cars and leaving other complications aside, I dislike taxis for that reason. But I'm willing to work on getting round that aversion. I have to get past the barriers I have to some extent, and I do get past them to some extent. But only to an extent. I'm not interested in learning to get round my aversion to individual car driving.

Maybe my reasons for not wanting to drive are flawed in other people's eyes (I have other reasons too, on top of the ones here). Maybe other people think if I would only be more open minded about it and try it, I'd see the advantages. If they grew up in a place dependent on cars, or highly attached to driving, they might find it hard to understand how anyone can settle for living without driving. This view might have got them through their own obstacles to learning.

Maybe other people think that at some point I'll want to live somewhere that means I'll have to learn to drive. I won't. Where I live will always be decided by the fact that I don't drive, not the other way round. I'm never going to drive. I don't want to want to drive. I don't want to read about other people learning to drive. I just want some help getting taxis.

 

[Hashi]

I know there are other points that have been made - thank you to people for responding. I'll come back later.

 

[Mayday]

You're speaking my language Hashi. PS. I don't drive either (and always get told how weird that is).

I don't know if it was trauma, or just the way I am, but I have never seemed to 'need' people to the extent that I see in others.

 

[rainy_daze]

Often people make assumptions about the reason I'm doing something, or about my personality, that are far off the mark. Then they're surprised at something else I do because they see it as uncharacteristic, when it's completely in character (my actual character, rather than their assumptions).

Do you think that people possibly don't know what your character is because you don't share much of your personality with them? Or that people assume things because that's how people make sense of their world or the people around them? Do you think you make assumptions about what connection means to others because you don't want connection?

I guess it would be frustrating having people assuming things about you when they don't know you, and possibly freeing in a way to not rely on others. I think the part that sticks out the most is that you feel alone and you don't relate to some posts on here which you think come across as neediness in some ways. If you found another person who felt the same as you about connection, or understood or related to you, would you feel less alone? Somehow, for me, I think this falls under the category of connection.

You started the thread with relating to this:

Insecure/Avoidant: These children are friendlier with strangers than with parents; they do not look to caregivers for comfort; they pay more attention to the environment than to people. Gradually they become hostile and distant with peers and teachers alike, socially isolated, less compliant with rules, and more expressive of negative emotions. As they grow older, these children are frequently very independent; sullen and oppositional; not likely to seek help when injured or disappointed; angry and distant; lacking in empathy; omnipotent in their approach to the world and rejecting of nurturing.

and this is the most important bit, possibly?:

I'd like to bring this thread back to my original reason for posting, or otherwise let it fade away. I feel alone not only with the fact that connection is a problem for me, but with the fact that I don't want connection. As I said before, I don't feel ambivalent. I don't see that I want connection but have trouble achieving it.

I guess I'm a bit confused, because you feel alone... is this because you feel others don't understand what it is like to be independent, like you are? Because others to you seem needy, and you feel almost the opposite of that? Yet at the same time you know that there is a bond between you and your therapist, but it is only there because this is something you needed to do? The only sentence of the Insecure/Avoidant I related to was: Gradually they become hostile and distant with peers and teachers alike, socially isolated, less compliant with rules, and more expressive of negative emotions. Distance allows you to keep yourself safe and isolation protects you. That's my take on the reasoning behind that. If trauma is going on, this kind of behaviour makes sense.

I think there's something in your cost/benefit and driving analogy. I liked it a lot, it's clever. I also don't drive, and I can get where I want to go without a car.

There's a lot in your words Hashi, and I want to make sure I'm understanding you properly, and what you're working through just now.

You have trouble achieving connection because you don't want it? Or is it other reasons? If being connected to someone isn't important for you, does it matter if you struggle to achieve it? Or why does it matter, if you're okay living your life the way you want it, without the need of a car (or deep connection to others)? Therapy, for you, obviously has more benefits, but involves connection, which is something you sort of reject or don't feel an urge to have or struggle with? Do you think you need to achieve connection, or are things in your life fine the way they are (for example, you rely on yourself, and your T or others only when it is necessary to maintain your feeling of independence and do what you need to in life)? (I thought the questions might help but feel free to completely ignore if they aren't helpful for you)

You can be "overly independent", and that is fine, because that is you Hashi. I see no problems in being who you want to be or who you are. If you're happy and confident with yourself, then that's a great thing :) (sorry if that sounds like an assumption). It's sad that you feel alone with this feeling, and I'm not sure how that feeling will change for you.

[Apologies for rambling, it's all over the place, however there are a lot of issues around the reality of independence and connection so a short reply wasn't possible. Above is what I'm thinking about in relation to your original reason for posting]