Attachment styles and emotional memory have a significant relationship, people with anxious styles are known to focus on the most painful memories of their past, for example, focusing on yesterday’s wounds, unable to overcome the anger or suffering generated by an attachment figure who has failed to meet their emotional needs.
John Bowlby’s attachment theory remains in place today, thanks to him we have a better understanding of human behavior, personality styles and, above all, the higher or lower quality of our interpersonal relationships, however, we do not talk so often about how attachment styles and emotional memory are related.
- Think about it.
- A lot of who we are today depends on our past experiences.
- Yesterday and the interactions we had with our family and other close people sculpted much of our personality.
- Whether we like it or not.
- We are small boats that travel daily to the seashore.
- Emotional memory.
Having a past full of good memories makes us freer on our way, it gives us a push to get where we want to feel safe, on the other hand, having painful, cold or absent relationships creates a burden, it is impossible to move forward because our gaze is always in the past, where there is frustration, suffering and unresolved problems.
“I speak neither of vengeance nor forgiveness, is forgetfulness the only vengeance and the only forgiveness?-Jorge Luis Borges-
Many people have been shaped by the tyranny of their own memories. There is no doubt that the past shapes us, but what we must never allow is to be permanent prisoners of suffering, victims of a past where the present is lost.
Attachment styles and emotional memory are directly related because the quality of attachment largely determines our psychological well-being. Studies such as that conducted in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California indicate:
Let’s look at the characteristics of each attachment style and its relationship to emotional memory:
A sure attachment is one in which the child knows that her parents will give her what she needs, she trusts them because she knows they are accessible, that when she is afraid they will take care of her, besides if there is one thing that defines this style of healthy attachment, is that the child feels safe when exploring the world.
Something like this undoubtedly generates a chest full of happy experiences, it is this substrate that configures a stimulating and uplifting emotional memory with which the child becomes a mature, independent and confident adult, able to freely create his own gift.
In this case, the child learns early that he cannot trust his parents, when you need something, these numbers are not always available, sometimes they show some affection, sometimes they are cold and distant.
They are parents who range from moments of carelessness or carelessness and moments of severity and control, all of which create ambivalent situations in which the child lives in a state of constant anxiety and insecurity, has little or no control over what happens. then she doesn’t know what to expect; uncertainty that he doesn’t know how to manage and that only creates insecurity.
Attachment styles and emotional memory tell us that the person, in this case, ends up focusing on certain facts of the past, for example, does the adult remember those moments of the past when he needed support or help and did not receive them, when they felt alone, frightened?
As a result, an “attachment” is created to these painful and unresolved problems, which somehow feed on anger and frustration. They are emotions that tend to block the person. every memory, every painful experience.
The attachment of avoidance arises when the child assimilates, even if he is not aware, that his need for care will be met with indifference or even contempt. This means that these children usually try to become emotionally self-reliant.
Forgetting probably facilitates your emotional disconnection with the people around you. As a hypothesis, it can be thought to be a defense mechanism that the brain itself eventually generates to reduce the intensity of suffering at the cost of increasing the sensitivity threshold.
As you can see, attachment styles and emotional memory have a direct bond. The quality of our first relationships influences the quality of our emotional life. Therefore, if a past of traumatic experiences lurks behind the door of our present, it is necessary to cross this threshold to solve and cure this problem.
Let us learn to free tyranny from the painful emotions etched in our memory.