Attachment theory and my childhood experience

In this paragraph, I’d like to use attachment theory as a foundation to discuss how my childhood experience affects my interpersonal relationship. I think this is a good starting point to understand how the interaction between a child and mother will affect the interaction with other people. I was diagnosed eczema when I was a kid. The red and scaly skin was annoying and that affected my daily life a lot. Apart from physically unwell, that also affected my appearance. But interestingly, the skin condition didn’t affect my self-esteem nor formed any obstacle for me to make friends with the others. I met some good friends during the key stage one and two, and I had an enjoyable primary school life and some wonderful friendships. When I looked back this history, I thought a possible reason why eczema didn’t affect me too much is because a secure attachment was developed when I interacted with my mother since the infant stage. My mother provided an environment that was full of love and acceptance and I had grown up with prompt response and sufficient physical touch. I remembered that I can always seek help and support from my mother when needed. And my request was never neglected. As a result, I was empowered to explore the world freely and try to interact with other kids in a friendly way. Even though the illness still exists, I still feel comfortable to build interpersonal relationships with the others.

In the second paragraph, I’d like to share what I heard from a helpee and discuss how the childhood experience formulates anxious-resistant insecure attachment. One of my helpees was grew up in a family that lack of love. Her mother spent most of her attention to take care of helpee’s elder brother and rarely spend time with the helpee. Unfortunately, helpee’s elder brother treated her badly because of his own emotional problem. As a result, helpee is grown up in an environment that didn’t offer sufficient care and love from other family members. And she established a mindset that close relationship can only obtained by ingratiate someone. When the helpee grown up, she wished to draw attention from friends and other males and tried to make them happy, so that she might able to build close friendships or love relationships. After a few helping sessions, she realized her way of building relationships is because of what she encountered during childhood and puberty. And the past hindered her to maintain proper and healthy relationships. Although we didn’t managed to find a possible way out during the sessions, she’s still delighted to understand herself a bit more and she wish to continue to explore possible ways to deal with the insecure attachment.

To conclude, I tried to use the attachment theory to understand my own history and what I heard from a helpee. And I found out that the childhood experience affect people a lot. The interaction between mother and children not only affects the childhood, and it’s highly likely that it will affect the rest of the life. However, I don’t think that the attachment type will remain unchanged for the whole life, I believe there’s possibility to change if people experience proper attachment with their partner or other intimate relationship throughout the life. Since I only have limited understanding about attachment at the moment, it worth more investigation and discussion regarding this before I make any conclusion.

Ideas from psychodynamic approach

I’d like to discuss the fusion of sugerego and values I learned. Superego represents the mind that what I wish to achieve in an ideal world and it regulates my desire, behaviour and speech. The key question is what kind of source that I refer to when the superego is formed. For myself, I think that relates to what I learned from some individuals and church. I am a believer since I was a kid, and I believed that the teaching from the bible is what I wish to follow in my whole life. As a result, the Christian value became the ideal value that determine what’s right or wrong and guide me to become the person that I wish to be. On the other hand, I met many good people at school and church. They did a lot of great things to help other people because of their religion. I was attracted by their personality and doing; thus, I wish to follow these role models’ path and act like them when I grown up. That means my superego was gradually formed by learning from value of religion and some role models, and most of those values are overlapped. When I became an adult and encountered struggles in daily life, I noticed how these values deeply affect me. I found that it’s challenging to completely follow the values when I face people that run counter to the values that I trust, and that make me pain to follow the value such as ‘love your enemies’. I think the struggle between my superego and how my ego balance reality and ideal is the biggest challenge for the past few years. The struggle not just affect how I work, but also challenge me how to maintain a proper relationship with various parties.