The Power of Self-Attachment

#TransparentTuesdays

A question that’s been coming up a lot in my coaching practice is:

How can a person ever feel fundamentally worthy of respect, love, and protection when their lived experience is that other people didn’t (or don’t) think that they were?

How can you come to feel worthy of kindness, in a world that has been cruel to you? How can you come to know yourself as fundamentally good and right, if your family always told you that you were bad and wrong? How can you come to feel deserving of comfort and care, when other people have offered you only pain and abandonment?

This is a very complex and nuanced question, and I certainly won’t be able to do it justice here today in a thousand words or less, but the simplest answer to this question is that a lot of what we think we need from others in order to feel safe and worthy actually comes from inside ourselves.

Of course it’s a lot easier to show ourselves love and compassion when other people have shown it to us first, and it’s a lot easier to respect and accept ourselves when we’ve been treated with respect and acceptance. 

But a lot of my clients eventually run into the conundrum of realizing they struggle with self-worth, self-compassion, self-respect, or self-acceptance because they’ve had experiences in which they weren’t shown those things from others, and worry that those experiences will make it impossible for them to ever feel good enough.

After all, if you can’t go back and change the past, and your past is filled with trauma, neglect, abandonment, violation, or even violence… how are you ever supposed to ever feel safe, worthy, or good enough??

Forgive the oversimplification here, but essentially what needs to happen is for you to become the person you needed back then. 

For you to have your back. 

For you to show up for yourself. 

For you to offer yourself the respect, connection, acceptance, love, or protection that you needed from someone else.

If you were left alone when you should have been be protected and cared for, you might need to become the person who protects and cares for yourself. (And it might also be really healing to go back to the version of you who needed those things, and tell them that they are not alone anymore, because you are here!)

If you were rejected or abandoned when needed to be loved and accepted, you might need to become the person who loves and accepts yourself now. (And it might also feel really good to go back and give that younger version of yourself the love and acceptance they didn’t get!)

Despite what happened to you, and the pain of how other people treated you, you can become your primary protector, cheerleader, best friend, and source of support— both for the adult version of you now, and for the little version of you who is still hurting from back then. 

You can build a relationship with yourself in which you feel safe in the world knowing that at least one person will always be there for you when you need them. That someone will always have your back, so that you know you will be respected, protected, loved, and accepted in every single room you walk into. 

You get to be that person.

To be clear, we humans are social animals, and we’re wired for relationships and community, so it’s not like we can ever just totally disregard what we’ve learned from how other people view us or treat us, and this is by no means to suggest that you can or should just “get over” your traumas. 

We first learn who we are and what we deserve through the eyes of our caretakers when we’re little, and we continue to learn who we are and what we deserve through our relationships, experiences, and social conditioning as we get older. We’re wired to crave connection with others, and to want to feel loved and valued and accepted, and it’s excruciating when that doesn’t happen, and when people actively mistreat, disrespect, violate, or hurt us.

But at a certain point, we can look back and have our own backs.

• We can decide that what happened to us was wrong. 

• We can decide that we deserved better, and we can give that “better” to ourselves. 

• We can decide to protect and stand up for ourselves, even when other people didn’t. 

• We can decide to love and accept the parts of ourselves that other people said made us unlovable and unacceptable. 

• We can decide to show ourselves respect and compassion, even if other people treated (or treat) us like we don’t deserve that. 

• We can go back to that scared and hurting younger version of ourselves, and let them know that they are not alone because we are here with them.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t hold other people (or the systems of oppression that empower them) accountable for the harm they do, or that individuals can or should be able to heal in isolation. The healing of individuals is inextricably linked with the healing of relationships and communities, and we absolutely need to change the harmful systems that lead to so many people getting wounded in these ways. 

But there is such a thing as secure self-attachment, and it can be a wildly healing and liberating tool for many of us who have been wounded by others.

Have you ever worried that your history of trauma would make it impossible for you to ever feel safe, worthy, or good enough? How does it feel to imagine being the person you needed back then, and having your own back now?

Big hug,

Jessi

PS If you want to learn more about this, or work together this spring, apply for coaching with me here!