The Human Condition
The human condition is an ongoing cycle of emotional highs and lows, where suffering and joy exist in tandem, shaping our understanding of each. Modern struggles, though different from our ancestors’ fight for survival, still revolve around finding purpose, connection, and meaning. Rather than eliminating pain, true healing comes from learning to share our suffering with others, recognizing that we are not alone in our experiences.
As a mental health professional, and someone who is a curious human being in general, I spend a large amount of time trying to understand the complexities of human emotions and the reasons for the pleasure and pain that humans can experience on a regular basis. The underlying question is this: are humans always bound to return to “suffering”, regardless of what we do? Is it the human condition to experience loss and sadness, forever, along side happiness and pride and excitement?
As a therapist I must ask myself this question repeatedly as it is part of my job to help people with their suffering. If there were a “happy” pill to take away sadness, people wouldn’t go to therapy at all. If there were a pill to take away sadness, would we every really feel happy, though? Would there really be light if there were no darkness? If the human condition is to swing between emotional well-being and emotional suffering, then would we really know happiness without knowing what pain feels like?
I don’t try to talk my clients, my friends, or myself out of being unhappy. Mostly because I have learned that being unhappy is not permanent, and I don’t think that ignoring or burying the pain will really make it go away faster. I do, however, strive to work with the meaning of the pain. For example, if someone is consistently depressed over a long period of time, they may think that this means that they will always be depressed, which is not necessarily the case. But every time that they are depressed thereon after, when they return to sadness, the meaning that they make may be that they are still sad and that they will always be sad. On the other side of 10 years of steps to becoming a therapist and practicing therapy, I have formed the opinion that the point of therapy might not be to eliminate the sadness, but rather, to learn let people in when you are suffering as to not be alone. I now understand therapy as being the practice of reaching out in the suffering, and learning to be with another in suffering, as to learn to repeat this in your outside life, as to surround yourself with those people in your life who understand and who also don’t want to be alone in suffering.
For hundreds of thousands of years before this point in time, it was our purpose to survive on a daily basis. Our survival needs were forefront to our emotional issues. Finding food, clean water, safety, warmth, and other basic survival needs kept us from the daily suffering that we now experience in absence of the basic will to survive. Struggles now have become making enough money, not feeling isolated, finding meaningful relationships, and finding meaning in general for our purposes on a daily basis. Our survival needs have manifested differently and they are now not what we spend every second of every day thinking about, or fighting for. So if you are feeling depressed, overwhelmed, hopeless, and like your life is existentially pointless, it might be helpful to think about spending some time in the wilderness, conceptualizing how you would go about finding food if you didn’t have any, how you might build a shelter, how you could keep warm. And if you feel like you are the only one in the world suffering right now, it might be helpful to talk to someone to discover that you could possibly be understood by another person and potentially many others.
Bianca Aarons LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist in San Francisco . Bianca’s specialties include attachment, trauma, sexual abuse, post traumatic stress, relationship issues, depression issues, couples work and work with teenagers. Learn more about Bianca at www.biancaaarons.com, email her at BiancaAaronsMFT@gmail.com, or call her at (415) 553-5346 to ask any questions or to set up a consultation session.
Attachment Decoded
Understanding our own attachment can be helpful in our relationships, at work, at home, and with partners. Attachment styles can be soothed when we work with them in a healing way.
What are people talking about when they bring up attachment styles? It seems like all the hype right now for the single, the painfully attached, and the hopelessly romantic, navigating their relationships, breakups, and dating lives. Below I will attempt to provide a simplified, savvy way of describing attachment for all to understand.
Everyone has a specific attachment style based on their unique relationships and relationship history, both with their family systems and with others around them. Our attachment styles predict how we show up in a relationship and how we feel about relationships. Some people have very solid relationships and have an easier time becoming close with friends, holding jobs, and maintaining long-term and stable relationships. Others struggle to become attached or feel that attachment is very painful. These styles can mimic our earliest attachments, starting from our birth. They can also be beliefs we picked up along the way based on dating abandonments and failures, moving school systems and having to start over, or having betrayals within relationships. Loosing a loved one that we are close with can also affect our want or ability to attach again.
Attachment styles are commonly linked to and affected by fear responses. A more in depth description of the 4 fear responses can be found in my previous blogs. The 4 fear responses are the flight response, the fight response, the freeze response, and the cling response. If our past relationships have given us a reason to believe that we have a reason to be afraid of the other, whether we are afraid that they will cheat on us, fire us, abandon us, or need too much of us, our fear responses may be activated within a relationship at work, with friends, and with romantic partners.
Below are some brief descriptions of the Attachment Styles:
Secure Attachment- Attachment is easy for this person. They are responsive to others, they are good at expressing feelings, they feel things consistently, but maybe not deeply all of the time. They are emotionally regulated and put together. There is no fire because they know how to put a fire out before it begins. Securely attached people don’t struggle to express whether they are sad or angry, and because of this, they have a tendency to move through feelings quickly and don’t hold things against you. Securely attached people are known for being in long term, stable relationships. Securely attached people can date insecurely attached people without it being difficult, because the work of being in a relationship is second nature to them. It is said that, with a lot of work, an insecurely attached person can “earn” a secure attachment style.
Anxious Attachment -This is a person who may be calm and feel relatively normal until they begin to date someone, at which time, they feel constant fear and insecurity. Think “cling” response; some people will cling to others when they are afraid. This is because they have had the experience in relationships of being threatened by an abandonment, ie, having someone leave them. They will do anything to stay in a good place with you, they will sacrifice their own needs, they will consider changing themselves, because they are afraid that you will leave. Their constant texting and need for you could end up being the thing that drives you away, especially if you tend to be more ambivalent or avoidant in relationships. An anxiously attached person is in a lot of pain in relationships, most likely because they had to fight so hard to get their relational needs met from an early age on, and they know that the first step to getting any need met is to take care of the other. These people do best with securely attached people, but they will intuitively choose an insecurely attached partner to try and work through their past Karma.
Avoidant Attachment- Someone who is avoidant tries to avoid having serious feelings in general, mostly by having a series or string of casual sexual interactions that never become more than that. Thing the “flight” response- they may run away when threatened by closeness. An avoidant person is actually anxious underneath it all but they have a hard time letting themselves feel the full extent of that by guarding themselves from closeness. Their parents were likely very anxious, very controlling, or over involved- and not in an emotional way. Or, they just weren’t really there at all.
Ambivalent Attachment- Someone with an ambivalent attachment style has an immensely difficult time deciding what they want. They will consistently swing between being anxious and avoidant on a daily basis. Think "freeze" response- they are in a freeze of fear about what to do. They can’t make up their mind about you, about what job they want, about where they want to live. They are terrified in being trapped in a relationship because they don’t know what they need, and even if they did, they wouldn’t know that there was a possibility of getting the need met or how to go about asking for it.
Disorganized Attachment -Maybe this person will be fine one minute, and extremely angry or sad the next, over the drop of a hat. The “fight” response is most commonly displayed in this attachment style. Maybe they will attach very quickly so someone, or to multiple people. Someone who is disorganized will feel a lot of confusion in relationships, and will not know whether or not you are a safe person to trust. Disorganized attachment is a more rare attachment style. Unfortunately, severe trauma, such as repetitive childhood sexual abuse, repetitive physical abuse, and severe early childhood divorce situations often lead to a disorganized attachment style
Healing Attachment Wounding
1. Awareness is the first step.
2. Noticing your tendencies in relationships
3. Trying to be aware of what you are feeling in your triggered moments, of wanting to text, of becoming angry, of wanting to walk away. Pause before acting your feelings out.
4. Being able to recognize and communicate your needs to others.
5. Being allowed to have all of your feelings of disappointment and anger alongside your happier feelings.
6. Trying something new in a relational interaction that you would never have tried before, in your family or with past relationships
7. Individual therapy, couples therapy, group therapy- healing through relationships and relational awareness can be a powerful tool
8. Reading books such as “Attached”, by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller
9. Visiting home and family with a new lens
10. Talking to friends
I want to name a couple of important things here. The purpose of using attachment theory is to help understand yourself a little better, or to help put words and meaning to things that do didn't have words for before. It's not meant to put a permanent label on you, stick you in a category, or judge you. It's my belief that someone can have one attachment style, forever, and another person can have multiple attachment styles at the same time. Also, we can move from being anxious into being avoidant into being secure- our attachment changes with each partner we have and with our own will to grow. The interaction of two humans coming together can create an anxious relationship, or a secure one, ect. There is hope here, we aren't doomed to our attachments forever.
Bianca Aarons LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist in San Francisco's Duboce Triangle area. Bianca’s specialties include attachment, trauma, sexual abuse, post traumatic stress, relationship issues, depression issues, couples work and work with teenagers. Learn more about Bianca at www.biancaaarons.com, email her at BiancaAaronsMFT@gmail.com, or call her at (415) 553-5346 to ask any questions or to set up a consultation session.