It’s important for us to understand our parts and what they are trying to do when we are using an attachment lens. These parts can give us so much information about our needs and what would be helpful and supportive to us in our current relationships (or inform us about what we really want and need in a partnership if we aren’t in one currently and want to be).
Read MoreI have always wanted more in relationships.
I remember being in elementary school, maybe 7 or 8, and deeply longing for a best friend. I had friends, but I always felt a little bit on the outside of those relationships. They would automatically play with each other at recess, and I had to ask to join; they sat next to each other at lunch, and I had to try to squeeze in or just choose to sit somewhere else. It wasn’t that they were being mean or intentionally excluding me as much as they were just in their own world together, and I wasn’t a part of it in a meaningful way until I was right there in front of them.
Read MoreI have been thinking a lot about the idea of integration and disintegration (or abandonment) of ourselves—how easy it is to break ourselves into pieces to accommodate what’s happening in our lives. We learn how to do this when we are young. Because we are attuned to our environments, we quickly pick up on which parts of us are welcome and which parts are not, and soon we are able to put some parts away so that we are more palatable, more acceptable, and less..ourselves. This happens for all of us at some point, whether that is in our family of origin, elementary school, or later in our adolescence.
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