Unable to bond: What to do to bond anyway

People and social relationships are necessary in our human lives. We are social beings and our society is designed for total cooperation with each other. Sure, there are jobs where you interact less with people, but not interacting with people at all is almost impossible, and that's just to make money and to meet your basic life needs.

Because we are social on more levels than that. Having good social ties is also good for our health. For example, we like to have a partner to age with, and a good bond with your children is always nice, too.

But what if you feel that you can't bond well and therefore don't have a good relationship with your children or partner. Or that you can't find a partner at all?

What does attachment mean?

First, it's helpful to know what attachment actually is. Attachment is about how you act toward people who are important to you, such as your parents, partner and children. In doing so, it is also about the trust you have in them being a safe base for you.

For example, if you try something and it fails, a good attachment makes you feel that family and friends will take care of you then. They are your safe haven, so to speak, if you have good attachment[1].

If you look at it this way, good friends can also be a safe haven. Especially if you can discuss with them any risks you want to take and whether they might want to be a kind of safety net in case of failure.

How you bond with people is something that comes about early in life and this can affect the rest of your life (source 1, page: 194). Mind you, it can, because eventually you can also influence yourself to attach in a different way if you find that what you have been doing up to that point is not working for you.

Why is attachment important?

Being able to attach yourself well to people has several advantages, such as daring to take risks. And thus be able to live the life you really want. Or at least taking the steps to get close to it.

In addition, being able to bond well is also helpful if you ever get therapy, because if you can bond well with your therapist, this is good for the treatment. It is then more likely to be successful (source 1, page: 194).

Types of attachment

There are multiple ways you can get attached.

Secure attachment

With safe attachment, you feel a secure foundation. This makes you open to new experiences, able to collaborate and commit to a project.

Scattered anxious attachment

If you suffer from scattered attachment, you often suffer from low self-esteem and often see other people as superior to you. This can make you feel dependent in relationships.

As a child, for example, you might have found it scary to be away from your parents, perhaps suffering from homesickness.

You are also more likely to suffer from borderline, anxiety disorders or abuse narcotics[2].

Avoidant attachment

In this form of attachment, you try to avoid emotional intimacy and connection. As a result, you are usually very good at taking care of yourself. You tend to be secretive and don't let other people take you off track. You also usually don't reveal your plans to others.

If someone wants to be intimate with you break contact.

You can get this form of attachment if your parents did not respond well to your signals that you needed something. As a result, you have learned that expressing what you need does not ensure that you will necessarily get it. This makes you feel that you can only rely on yourself in your life.

However, because you don't really do intimate, you still don't get what you really need. People you are in a relationship with may also feel neglected. For example, your partner may feel lonely in the relationship[3].

What is insecure attachment?

Insecure attachment is really about the attachment you were given as a child. If that was unsafe, you are more likely to have avoidant or scattered attachment later in life.

But what can you do with this knowledge to still have a good attachment with important people around you?

Attach to your partner

For how you attach to your partner, it is helpful to know the way you attach whether this is the fearful scattered attachment or the avoidant attachment. Maybe while reading this you already have the idea "this describes me" and that may be true.

But to then make that attachment healthier, it can be helpful to take a moment to go back to the moment in your life when you decided that you were either very dependent on people or just didn't need people (not really). This is usually a moment from childhood.

With hypnotherapy, you usually do this with the regression technique. The hypnotherapist puts you into hypnosis and then it helps you go back in time to the moment when you thought "I'm worth less." Or "I need to trust myself."

Next, you're going to do something with that moment. After all, you know much more about how life works now than you did then. The therapist helps you reinterpret this moment.

This regression technique has also been studied by scientists to see if it can transform insecure attachment if someone has had a traumatic childhood, and in this early research it did[4].

You can also learn other techniques, such as talking to your inner child. In this way you can tell yourself, so to speak, that you are no longer dependent on your parents and that everything has turned out well and that you are allowed to attach yourself to people. You may also give people your love so that they know you care about them. You may discuss intimate thoughts with your partner, and your partner is just as dependent on you as you are on him/her.

Attach to friends

The way you bond also affects the friendships you have. With secure attachment, you can and expect to have fun friendships.

With the more insecure attachment types, friendships are also less good. People with avoidant attachment often also have negative expectations about friendships[5].

Also for friendships, you can perform regression and have the conversation with your inner child. But in addition, you can also change the future image you have about friendships so that you have more positive expectations and therefore show more positive behavior, such as trust and planning in the future with your friends.

For example, instead of a regression, you can perform a progression. In that case, for example, you can visualize what your social life will look like in, say, a year from now. Then you go back in time, so to speak, to the moment of therapy, and in that journey back you see everything you do to form those optimal friendships.

Bonding with your parents

Your parents have a lot of influence on your bonding, and if that hasn't gone well, it can be very easy to blame your parents for how you have relationships. But that doesn't help yourself or your bond with your parents either. Especially not if you actually prefer to have a good bond with your parents anyway.

One way to turn your anger around is to consider what that which you think your parents did not do right has ultimately brought you. Blaming will help you no further.

Gratitude is important for the attachment you have with your parents in adulthood[6]. So what can you be grateful for?

If you had to do everything yourself it did bring you independence, for example. That can then be something you are grateful for. If they were very protective which makes you feel somewhat dependent now they at least wanted you to be safe and you are aware of dangers which makes you not take unnecessary risks. That can also be something you are grateful for.

In this way, the view of your parents can still change and remember that they too were only doing this for the first time and they did their best with all their life experience and situations they had in their lives at that time.

Bonding with your (adult) children

When all is said and done, you've automatically become fairly attached to your children, but you may find that when they're out of the house you still find that comforting. You may think your attachment has not worked out well when you hear friends talk about missing their adult children.

Then remember that everyone is different. You also don't want to be dependent on your children as you want to give them the space to live their own lives.

What is most important is that you can be proud of your adult children and that they are getting their lives in order. The phase of parenting is basically over and now you may just enjoy the fruits they reap. Do things still go wrong? Then you can now help your child precisely as friends instead of giving them another lecture.

You can also perform a progression technique with your children to see how to strengthen your bond with them to improve bonding and build a fine adult life with them.

And you can even perform regression in the case of adult children to see if you have acquired certain beliefs over the course of your life about how to deal with adult children and change them if those beliefs are not helping you continue bonding with your child.

Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help all kinds of problems? Then come to the free online master class.

Or enroll in one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses.

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