The Theories behind Conflict: Attachment & Trauma

“Bonding through dependence never works, whereas bonding through freedom always does.”

- Shirley McLaine

In 2013, I left my corporate career because I was disappointed and a bit shaken up by the lack of support I felt I experienced. It left me conflicted within, both regarding my past and future ambitions as well as how I could’ve handled the situation better.

There was something fascinating about the destructiveness that I had experienced in my professional conflicts and that I knew I carried within. I felt an urge to dive into the subject matter and so went and got a degree in conflict resolution, which turned me into a mediator and subsequently a meditation teacher.

And yet, I felt something was amiss. A more profound understanding of the fabric and origin of my personal conflicts as much as the conflicts I witnessed around, incl. the ones that are widely reported on.

By coincidence I read a book by Franz Ruppert, whose trauma perspective on all things human has since marked my understanding of the world and the people in it.

Understanding human relationships, their conflicts, and the dimensions that both are based on and expressed through requires a closer look as to how we attached when we were little and how our psyche might have gotten traumatized in the process.

Let me start with the first.

Some of you might have heard of John Bowlby, the British psychologist that developed the theory of attachment, which he defines as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings”. Children are psychologically highly dependent on their parents/caretakers, which means their very existence depends on them meeting their essential needs for safety, care, love, acceptance, etc.

The more aware, present and psychologically available a parent is, the securer her child will attach to her. She can more freely interact with the world around her because she doesn’t need to worry about her mom/dad and their wellbeing.

It seems though that this is more the exception than the norm. Many of us have experienced that our parents were physically and emotionally unavailable, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they were not there. A mom that worries constantly and hovers around us is just as unavailable aka concerned with her own stuff than the one that doesn’t pay attention to us at all.

Parts of us will then stay stuck in the rage, grief, anxiety, or desperation that is caused by our parents’ lack of presence. And they express themselves in a variety of coping mechanisms, which don’t serve us in the long run. They form our limiting belief systems, our sense of self-(un)worth, our projections and expectations through which we stress out our relationships.

It is therefore worth understanding the concept of psycho-trauma which has 3 distinct dimensions:

1.    the initial situation which is emotionally overwhelming or even life-threatening,

2.    our inner response to it which activates tremendous stress that can only be contained by entering a state of freeze/standstill,

3.    and the short- to long-term consequences (coping mechanisms) which are attempting to keep the over-activation under control.

A psycho-trauma causes our psyche to split, which in turn means that we disconnect from our Self and lose the ability to see reality clearly. It makes it difficult to then be in healthy, constructive, thriving relationships because we likely don’t know who we are, what we need and what we want.

What I find tremendously helpful is to understand that all of my conflicts, especially the ones that are repetitive, are basically nothing else than an updated version of the core conflicts that I’ve experienced in attaching (or trying to attach) to my parents.

It is crucial for me to see that every conflict (especially the repetitive ones ;) with myself and others is the psyche’s attempt to come full circle, that is to heal/integrate parts of myself that I’m ready to embrace.

This is – as everything essential – a tender and self-informed process. No good thing happens overnight, especially not the tearing down of the walls that keep us separate from ourselves and others.

Do you want some more background on attachment & trauma and how it might affect your sense of Self and the world?