Many people come to therapy feeling confused about why they are struggling with anxiety, depression, or managing their emotions. They say things like:
• “I had a normal childhood. My parents weren’t abusive.”
• “Nothing really bad happened to me growing up.”
There’s often an assumption that only people with overtly traumatic or abusive childhoods develop emotional difficulties later in life. But the truth is, our ability to regulate emotions, handle stress, and navigate relationships isn’t just shaped by what happened to us—it’s also shaped by what didn’t happen.
The key factor? Attachment.
Attachment Shapes Emotional Regulation and Relationships
From the moment we are born, our brains and nervous systems are shaped by the way our parents or caregivers respond to us. Do they notice when we’re distressed? Do they soothe us consistently? Do they allow us to express big emotions without shutting us down?
Attachment isn’t about whether our parents were “good” or “bad”. It’s about how safe and connected we felt with them—and how that connection gave us the capacity to feel safe and secure with our emotions, in relationships, and even own sense of self.
Secure attachment isn’t about having perfect parents. It doesn’t mean there were no disappointments, no arguments, no moments where a caregiver failed to understand us. Secure attachment means that when those inevitable ruptures happened there was repair, and that over time, we learned both closeness and distance, emotional attunement and emotional failure, could all be navigated in a safe, predictable way.
Attachment Patterns and Emotional Regulation
Diane Poole Heller offers a simple way to understand how attachment styles shape how we handle emotions:
• Secure attachment: “Feel and deal.”
• You can experience emotions without being overwhelmed. You can express needs and handle disappointment. You trust that relationships can hold both closeness and conflict.
• Insecure Avoidant attachment: “Deal, not feel.”
• You may be independent, logical, and self-sufficient, but struggle to express emotions or rely on others. You learned to shut down emotions because they weren’t met with comfort or validation.
• Insecure Anxious attachment: “Feel, not deal.”
• You feel emotions deeply and intensely but struggle to soothe yourself. You might fear abandonment, overanalyze relationships, or need a lot of reassurance. You learned that connection was inconsistent, so you cling to closeness.
• Insecure Disorganized attachment: “Can’t feel, can’t deal.”
• You may feel stuck in patterns of emotional chaos or numbness. If caregivers were frightened, frightening, unpredictable or unsafe, your nervous system didn’t learn how to trust relationships or how to regulate emotions safely.
If you see yourself in one or more of the insecure patterns, it’s not because something is wrong with you. It’s because you adapted to the kind of caregiving you received. But recognizing the role of attachment doesn’t mean blaming our parents. Most parents and caregivers did the best they could with what they had. We can hold our parents in compassion while also understanding how we were impacted by our earliest relationships.
The Invisible Impact of Childhood Emotional Misattunement
You didn't have to experience abuse or violence in your home to have insecure attachment. If you grew up feeling unseen, emotionally dismissed or invalidated, or constantly trying to earn approval, you might find yourself struggling with emotions, self-worth, and relationships in adulthood. Emotional misattunement might look like:
• Parents who provided for physical needs but weren’t emotionally present.
• Being told to “stop crying” instead of being comforted.
• Feeling like you had to be “good” to be loved.
• Parents who gave the silent treatment.
• Being punished or sent to your room for expressing emotions.
• Not having a safe space to talk about feelings.
• Caregivers who were too overwhelmed, distracted, or emotionally unavailable.
When children experience emotional misattunement, they tend to blame themselves rather than recognized their parents or caregivers couldn’t always meet their emotional needs. Janina Fisher puts it simply: “It is easier for children to be bad than to believe they are alone in a dangerous world.”
This means we might internalized the belief that:
• “I have to be strong and not need anything.”
• “I have to be perfect to be loved.”
• “Other people’s feelings are more important than mine.”
• “It's not ok to feel angry or cry."
These beliefs don’t just disappear in adulthood—they show up in our relationships, in our self-esteem, and in our ability to regulate emotions.
Healing Starts with Awareness
The good news? Attachment patterns aren’t permanent. Your struggles have roots, and with awareness and support, those roots can be healed. Working with a skilled therapist can help with these steps towards healing:
1. Acknowledge your attachment wounds without minimizing them.
2. Develop self-compassion for the ways you’ve coped. Your patterns make sense.
3. Learn to regulate emotions a little bit at a time.
4. Practice new relationship patterns—with yourself, inner child/parts, and others.
5. Seek out secure relationships that allow you to experience safety, consistency, and repair.
You don't have navigate this journey alone. Our team of registered therapists are here to support you in building self-compassion, emotional resilience, and healthier relationships one step at a time.