Breaking the Cycle of Dysfunctional Relationships

Our attachment to our parents is our primary and most fundamental relationship. When a parent is absent or abusive, deeply rooted beliefs, such as "I am unlovable" or "People cannot be trusted," may emerge and prevent us from connecting with others.

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In secure parent-child attachments, the child feels safe, trusts the parents, and feels worthy of love. When parents are emotionally unavailable, neglectful, or outright abusive, instead of venturing out to other activities and completing their developmental tasks, the child spends their energy trying to be attuned to the emotional or physical cues of the parent so they can keep themselves safe.

To avoid being rejected or hurt, the child learns to make themselves small and prioritizes meeting other people’s expectations over identifying and advocating for their own needs.

By nature, children are egocentric, have not fully developed cognitively, and internalize the belief that they are to blame for issues in their home, such as their mother’s addiction, domestic violence, or divorce. Developmental milestones might get interrupted by attachment wounding, causing approval-seeking and dysfunctional relationship patterns.

Unprocessed trauma, or attachment wounding, can manifest as hypervigilance, increased startle reaction, and a state of being hyperaware of one’s environment. These are trauma responses our bodies have developed to protect ourselves from danger. Left unaddressed, these wounds can lead to misinterpreting non-threatening events as threatening.

Individuals with a history of trauma report intense, difficult-to-control emotional experiences, which may appear disproportionate to the present circumstance, and express the need to always monitor and scan their environment. Numbness and dissociation are additional trauma responses that can lead to shutting down or underreacting to one’s environment.

When the relationship between the parent and child is insecure—if the parent is absent, emotionally unavailable, highly critical, or abusive—the child can feel unworthy of love, allow people to dismiss them, disrespect their boundaries, abandon themselves, and not take care of their needs.

The internalized belief could be that relationships are unsafe and that loved ones will hurt or abandon them. This can lead to pushing people away when they feel as if they are getting too close.

How Attachment Wounding Can Manifest in Adult Relationships

Recognizing that we were raised by abusive or dysfunctional parents may be more challenging than identifying toxic behaviors in friends or coworkers because our identities are formed around our parents. Some aspects of our personality may be coping strategies we developed to survive our childhood.

• People pleasing: Children learn what it means to be in a relationship from their caregivers. In households where the caregiver is inconsistent, neglectful, emotionally volatile, or impulsive children learn to adjust their needs in accordance to their caregiver's emotional state. As a result, they may not have insight into their emotional landscape, let alone advocating for their needs. This can then lead to prioritizing other people's needs and desires over their own.
• Constantly seeking approval: When children grow up in homes where love feels conditional, they learn to continuously assess whether their behaviors meet the expectations of others. This may result in relying on external validation rather than internal validation.
• Inability to regulate emotions: Parents are responsible to teach their children how to identify and name their emotions and how to utilize effective coping strategies. When children grow up in households where their emotions are invalidated or their parents don't model self-regulation, they don't learn how to manage their feelings and, therefore, may feel overwhelmed by their emotions and overreact to situations or disconnect from their emotions and underreact.
• Avoiding conflict: Similarly, children learn conflict resolution skills by observing their caregivers handle differences and conflict. If they grow up in homes where their opinions were deemed unimportant, their voice wasn't heard, or they were shamed for their emotional reaction, they may learn to avoid conflict as a survival mechanism.
• Having too few or too many boundaries: Children learn how to show up in relationships from their early attachment figures. If their autonomy was not respected as a child, they may not learn how to ask for that respect in their future relationships. Similarly, if they didn't feel emotionally safe growing up and were hurt by the very people who were supposed to love and protect them, they may learn to put up walls and emotionally distance themselves from others in an attempt to protect themselves.
• Longing for connection but having difficulty forming and maintaining relationships: A main human drive is to be connected to another. However, when children grow up in dysfunctional households, opening up to another human and showing vulnerability may feel too risky.

How Do I Heal From Dysfunctional Narratives?

The realization that we were raised in dysfunctional or abusive homes can be very painful as it shatters the foundation of our belief systems. However, awareness about our unmet childhood needs is the only path to breaking toxic relationship patterns, restoring our sense of self-worth, and rewriting the narratives that interfere with our ability to build and maintain healthy relationships.

• Consider seeing a therapist who specializes in attachment injuries and childhood trauma.
• Use mindfulness and self-compassion exercises to reframe dysfunctional beliefs. There are many workbooks and coloring books that incorporate mindfulness practices.
• Meditate: There are apps with guided meditations that specifically target depression or anxiety.
• Journal: If you have a hard time getting started, use a workbook with writing prompts to guide you.
• Inner-child work: This technique focuses on unmet childhood needs and brings them into awareness. You can practice this on your own through expressive writing or work with a licensed clinician.
• Somatic techniques: Body and breath work help identify triggers and release emotions that pertain to trauma.
• Join a support group.

Attachment Essential Reads

"Baby Reindeer" and the Psychology of Attachment

Swinging With Attachment Styles

Remember that attachment wounding is not an identity or a life sentence. Humans get injured in relationships yet heal in them, too. Consider what the first step of your healing journey could be—and take it.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.