Healing from Attachment Anxiety and Chronic Mistrust

Attachment anxiety often stems from a caregiver who finds the needs of a baby overwhelming. Contrary to popular wisdom, babies are extremely sensitive to their mothers’ responses. If Mama feels she can’t possibly fulfill the needs of her baby, the baby learns to become demanding. The more he or she cries, the more attention baby gets. But the emotional support is inadequate because just as mama is afraid she isn’t enough, the baby also internalizes that anxious message. The belief developed in infancy and carried on into adult relationships is I can’t get enough!

Later, in adulthood, romantic relationships and friendships become unwitting repetitions of this unconscious sense of abandonment.  Those suffering from an anxious attachment are clingy. Needing constant reassurance, they often go to great lengths to please their partners, often losing themselves in the relationship. They often project fantasy images over their partners to justify their enormous sacrifices to sustain the relationship.

The normal go-to for a person with an anxious attachment style is someone avoidant. This offers fertile ground to replay the internal mantra of never receiving enough love. A common symptom of this anxiety-ridden belief is that one is only motivated by loving encouragement. In the absence of constant reassurance, one feels an absence of self. Tragically, because of the well of unmet need, one is unequipped to deal with real intimacy when it comes around. Too little sense of self prevents being able to respond adequately to real emotional honesty.

The Road to Healing: Understanding Your Inner Selves

We tend to think of ourselves as only our current age. But if we were to look deep inside ourselves, we would recognize the voices of our childhood, each representing a different phase. As an adult, re-parenting from an outside source is not an option. But nor is it necessary. What can be extremely effective in healing the emotions of the various children inside us is reframing our role as parents of our inner child.

How This Worked For Me

About a decade ago, I embarked on a real search for inner wholeness. I trained in every kind of inner healing modality out there, just about. While some worked better than others for me, each gave me a deeper understanding of how I worked. I began to develop an ability to separate myself from the flood of my emotions and, instead, use them as trails back to my original wounds. I became an observer of myself while experiencing myself. This kind of self-awareness is key to beginning to uproot longstanding behaviors.

With this understanding of myself as both inside and outside of myself, I heard the voice of a woman crying inside me. At the same time, during one long winter, every tree I saw looked like it was upside down. I don’t know how to describe this except that as I looked at the bare branches, they looked like underdeveloped root systems. It took me a couple of months to put these two circumstances together.

You see, I had an underdeveloped foundation. And when I looked inward to confront the tears of the woman inside, I found that woman to be my mother and not me. Instead, within this internal picture, I was only six months old. One of the major realizations I had within that internal vision was that my mother, very young and overwhelmed with poverty and a new baby, felt engulfed by my needs. In retrospect, I know I communicated the same to my first baby. I was the tree without a sufficient root system.

 I can’t do this. I am not enough. The cries of young mothers can create such insecurity within a baby. A secure foundation is communicated through a mother’s belief that she is okay and that she and her baby will work it out. Fear undermines a baby’s ability to trust that things are ultimately going to work out and that their needs will be provided for.

So, back to the scene where I am a plump six-month-old in a yellow jumper, sitting silently in my carrier next to a young and desperate mother. I feel the lack. I try to be good at comforting my mother. And I invite Jesus into this internal world. And He comes in, safety enveloping that little room. He picks me up and holds me, heart to heart. And my thirty-five-year-old body relaxes.

Jesus often operates in real-time. I mean that while sometimes He can heal emotional wounds of long-lasting duration in a moment, sometimes He requires real-time growth. I carried this scene and felt Him holding my compact little baby body for several years. Eventually, He invited me into this scene as an adult. He then gave me back to myself. I held my little baby self, heart to heart, and then she just disappeared inside of me.

You see, I got the object affection constancy I needed from Jesus and myself. We often dismiss inner child forms of therapy because they seem silly to a logical mind. But we are spiritual creatures who live both inside and outside of time. When our spirits retain the wounds of abandonment, whether physical or emotional, we can reach back into time and pull our past selves into a present healing moment.

If you feel there will never be enough love or care from those you love and cannot trust anyone to fill your needs, the solution is not external. Sometimes, we try to solve this through religion. We memorize scripture that tells us who we are. I am not dismissing scripture. But the answers to our deepest fears and wounding come from the Holy Spirit, who lives within us. In cooperation with our hearts, He who draws all men to Himself draws our inner child with his or her mistaken beliefs and deep wounds to His healing love.

More than almost anything else I have ever done in the name of personal growth, the time I spent with Jesus as an infant changed me. I became far less clingy. If I felt the old insecurity rising, I put myself back in His arms. I concentrated on feeling His heart beat in time with mine. If I lost myself in people pleasing or feeling needy, back in His arms, I would go to be refilled time and again. At first, I could only do it a few seconds at a time. Now, my heart is at rest in His great heart.

I am no longer anxiously attached. I took the tests, and now I am securely attached to my Heavenly Papa. My marriage is far more enjoyable for both of us. I can communicate my needs without anxiety. Did this happen overnight? No, but the wounding did not either. But I write this today to share with you he who the Father has set free is free indeed.

This book taught me the prayer method I outlined above. If you are serious about healing, this is a must-read.

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Revelation: How to Open the Eyes of Your Heart