Posted by emmanuel98 on September 3, 2010, at 19:46:23
In reply to childhood attachment and maladaptive traits » Free, posted by violette on September 2, 2010, at 23:18:31
I read about attachment theory and I definitely have avoidant attachment. As a child, I walked away from my mother in a department store and walked to the car to wait for her, because I couldn't stand being around her. I was 3. At 5, I tried to run away from home. All my life, I avoided attachment (with two exceptions - my husband and my daughter) but by the time I was in my forties, all the defenses and rationalizations I used to deal with this maladaptive behavior came crashing down and I felt so lonely and depressed I couldn't bear it. I got addictied to drugs and that helped me hold on for a few years longer/ Then the drugs stopped working and I sought therapy. I immediately became so attached to my therapist that I would fall apart if he went away for a long weekend.
Therapy and getting attached like that helped me a lot. Going to AA and making friends for the first time in my life also helped a lot. But I still regard solitude, which I cultivated, working at research and academic jobs, as intolerable. I'm trying to get past that with DBT and am changing careers so I have a more social work environment.
poster:emmanuel98
thread:960556
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20100831/msgs/961206.html