Attachment styles and emotional memory: when we hold on to grief.
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Attachment styles and emotional memory form a significant relationship. Thus, for example, it is known that people with an anxious style put their focus on the most painful memories of their past. They focus on the wounds of yesterday, unable to overcome the anger or grief generated by an attachment figure who did not know how to meet their emotional needs.
John Bowlby's attachment theory is still valid today. Thanks to it, we have a much better understanding of human behavior, personality styles and, above all, the lesser or greater quality of our interpersonal relationships. However, something that is not so often talked about is how attachment styles and emotional memory are linked.
Let's think about it. Much of who we are today depends on our past experiences. Yesterday and the interactions we have had with our family and other people close to us have sculpted much of the anatomy of our personality. Whether we like it or not, we are small ships that move daily through the sea of emotional memory.
Having a past full of good memories makes us freer in our journey. It gives us the impetus to move forward wherever we wish, feeling safe and secure. On the contrary, the dregs of painful, cold or absent relationships create a burden. It is impossible to move forward because our gaze is always fixed on that islet of yesterday where frustration, suffering and unresolved issues loom.
"I do not speak of revenge or forgiveness, forgetting is the only revenge and the only forgiveness."
-J.L Borges
Attachment styles and emotional memory: types and characteristicsMany people are shaped by the tyranny of their own memories. Yesterday shapes us, there is no doubt, but what we must never allow is to be permanent prisoners of suffering. Victims of a yesterday where we lose the present.
Attachment styles and emotional memory present a direct link because the quality of the former determines, to a large extent, our psychological well-being. Thus, studies such as the one carried out at the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, point out the following.
The different types of attachment can even mediate the quality of our memory. Thus, depending on each one of them, we may even suffer from gaps and loss of many memories. In other cases, the person lives focused on certain images of his or her past.
Therefore, let us look at the characteristics of each attachment style and its relationship with emotional memory.
Secure attachmentSecure attachment is the one where the child knows that his parents will offer him what he needs. He trusts them because he knows that they are accessible, that when he feels afraid he will be taken care of. Likewise, if there is one thing that defines this healthy attachment style, it is that the child feels safe to explore the world.
Something like this undoubtedly generates a memory chest full of happy experiences. It is that substrate that shapes a nurturing and uplifting emotional memory where the child will give way to a mature, independent and self-confident adult capable of freely creating his or her own present.
The anxious styleIn this case, we have a child who learns early on that he cannot trust his parents. When he needs something, these attachment figures are not always available. Sometimes they show a certain affection, other times they are cold and distant.
They are fathers and mothers who oscillate between periods of abandonment or neglect and moments of severity and control. All this generates ambivalent situations in which the child lives in a state of constant anxiety and insecurity. They have little or no control over what happens, so they do not know what to expect; an uncertainty that they do not know how to manage and that only generates insecurity.
Attachment styles and emotional memory tell us that the person, in this case, ends up focusing on certain events of the past. For example, the adult will remember those moments in the past when he/she needed support or help and did not receive it, moments when he/she felt alone, scared....
Therefore, an "attachment" is created towards those unresolved and painful issues, from which, somehow, rage and frustration are fed even more. These are emotions that tend to block the person, hence it is often difficult for them to release every memory, every painful experience.
Avoidant attachment
In this case, avoidant attachment appears when a child assimilates, even if not consciously, that his or her need for care will be met with indifference, if not contempt. As a result, on average, these children try to become emotionally self-sufficient.
Thus, in order not to experience further harm, emptiness or suffering, they choose to shape an emotional disengagement that will characterize a large part of their relationships.
Studies, such as the one cited above, point out that in these cases it is common for gaps, disconnected or fragmented memories to appear. Many childhood episodes are forgotten or remembered in an imprecise, blurred way.
Interestingly, people also characterized with an avoidant attachment style in their affective relationships also show memory problems.
Forgetfulness probably facilitates their emotional disengagement with the people around them. As a hypothesis, we can think that it is a defense mechanism that ends up generating the brain itself to lower the intensity of suffering at the expense of raising the threshold of sensitivity.
To conclude. As we can see, attachment styles and emotional memory share a direct link. The quality of our early relationships mediates the quality of our emotional life. Thus, in case a past of traumatic experiences hides behind the door of our present, it is necessary to cross that threshold to resolve and heal that universe.
Let's learn to release the tyranny of those painful emotions that imprint our memory.
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