Attachment vs. Authenticity
A little while ago I read a book by Dr. Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal, and I was shocked by how often I see one of its themes come up not just in a clinical setting, but everywhere. As I believe it’s relevant to just about everybody, I wanted to share it and my thoughts on it, with a recommendation at the end to boot (see Author’s note). I’ll try to keep it simple, but it is a long and meticulously crafted book*, so read on with a pinch of salt.
Simply put, the core concept is that our two primary core needs, attachment and authenticity, can and often do come into conflict, leading to various mental health and interpersonal problems. Increasing our understanding of this conflict and how it shapes us makes it possible to regain our authenticity and foster close attachments.
What do we mean by core needs?
Dr. Maté summarises a lot of science, medical and psychological research on topics from chronic pain, to mental health, to social and systemic problems. A lot of these issues are associated with some very common personal traits, such as: automatic concern for others’ emotional needs, and disregard for your own; a rigid identification with your social role and responsibility; the repression of healthy, self-protective anger, and; the harbouring and compulsively acting out of two beliefs: I am responsible for how other’s feel, and I must never disappoint anyone.
He then proposes that the tension between and eventual clash of two of our essential needs, attachment and authenticity, may be a potential cause of these traits.
- Attachment refers to our drive for closeness – proximity to others both physically and emotionally. The primary purpose of attachment is to facilitate being cared for – young humans, born prematurely (compared to other mammals), require caretaking for survival. What we learn during our early years, that we need to do things or to behave in certain ways in order to be cared for by other humans, stays with us for the rest of our lives.
- Authenticity is the quality of being true to ourselves, and the capacity to shape our own lives from a deep knowledge of that self. Again, it is a need based in survival – without knowing and honouring our ‘gut instincts’, we would not last long in the primordial context. Imagine questioning the instinct to evade a predator!
Where does the conflict come from?
The tension and clash doesn’t come from having both of these needs. It comes, in today’s society, from often having to face them off against each other: what happens if our need for attachment is put at risk by our authenticity? This choice is frequently thrust on us as children, when we receive the message that certain parts of ourselves are acceptable and others are not.
Good children don’t yell, spoken with annoyance, carries an unintended but clear threat: angry children don’t get loved.
Being nice, burying our anger, and working to be acceptable may become a child’s way to survive. This can be internalised as I’m lovable only when I am doing things well, setting us up for a life of perfectionism, cut off from that part of us that needs to know we can fail, be ordinary, be boring, make mistakes and still get the love we need and deserve.
Now, this isn’t just down to our parents, although in the home may be where this is likely to first occur. But even securely attached parents may themselves have suppressed their authenticity in exchange for belonging. This underlying belief could then be passed down, leading their child to believe that their emotions and thoughts are not acceptable. Thus wider societal messages, perceived by us through our parents, or social media, our peer group, teachers, colleagues etc. could have similar effects, even at later stages of life.
Maté states the reason for this being that attachment and authenticity are equal but when it comes to survival, attachment comes first. If the choice is A) hiding your feelings, even from yourself, but getting the basic care you need, or B) being yourself and going without, option A wins every time. So any perceived threat to fitting in, being accepted and therefore receiving this care could potentially lead to conflict with our need for authenticity.
We can’t help this, and we can’t simply switch this survival mechanism off when it no longer serves us. Inauthenticity and survival can seem to be one and the same at a young age. They then become hard-wired into our nervous system, our ‘second nature’ Maté calls it, leaving our original, authentic nature lost to us.
How does this affect us now?
Maté goes on to describe how this can carry on into adulthood, moulding our personality and leading us to act in ways that may seem charming or compassionate but are rooted in behaviour that is detrimental to ourselves. A very common example is when asked if we’d like to do something social, go for a coffee perhaps, when we really can’t be bothered. We like the person, and enjoy getting coffee with them sometimes, but today is not the day.
‘Yes I’d love to’ is the response. Huh? Despite knowing we could explain to our friend that we don’t feel like it, we’ve just gone ahead and said yes. Why? Social pressure, boredom, anxiety, doesn’t really matter, the result is you’ve suppressed your authentic nature, that authentic ‘no’, in place of your second nature.
An important aside is the difference between suppression and repression – suppression is conscious, actively pushing down an emotion you don’t want to present to others, whereas repression is unconscious, like when being reminded of a particularly bad event makes you behave in ways you don’t understand.
- Suppressing emotions is associated with higher activation of the sympathetic nervous system, i.e. the stress response.
- Repressing emotions reduces our ability to respond to and protect ourselves from stress. If we can’t recognise our stress because we’re so accustomed to pushing it down, not acknowledging it or letting anyone else see it, then how can we know to protect ourselves from its physiological effects?
It may seem gloomy, impossible to change, but, as Dr Maté assures us, with awareness and self-compassion, we can change inauthenticity to authenticity without harming our relationships or changing all that much.
The first step is building awareness: identifying yes’s and no’s that go unsaid. Don’t skip ahead – no need to change the way you are reacting just yet, just start to notice all the times you say yes/no when you really would have rather said the opposite… or something else.
Next, is reflecting on all these situations you have identified: what lead to you behaving inauthentically in that moment? Simply, why did you feel you couldn’t react the way you wanted to? Perhaps you were worried it would seem rude, or maybe felt like it was your responsibility to make the other person/people feel comfortable. The factors at play here may not be obvious, journalling or discussing such situations with a therapist might be necessary.
Lastly, try to think back to earlier times you experienced something similar: maybe people in your family made you feel like you should behave a certain way in front of certain people, or in specific situations. This can take some time, going back to when we developed underlying self-beliefs about our roles and responsibilities is no mean feat – that short list of traits at the start of this blog might be a good place to start.
How can we put this into practice?
After pinpointing the unspoken no’s or yeses, identifying the various impacts, looking at the stories underpinning such self-denial’s and their sources, it might be time to take the first steps in addressing them and leading a healthier life.
Maté puts forward a 5-step technique to reprogram thought loops (adapted from Jeffrey Schwartz’ 4-steps in his book, The Mind and the Brain). It requires commitment, mindfulness, and above all else, daily conscious awareness. A written journal of your progress, attempts, successes and failures helps too.
Step 1: Relabel
The first step is to call a spade a spade, or in the case of self-limiting thoughts… a thought.
For example, if we’ve pinpointed that we often behave as though ‘I am responsible for others’ feelings’, we can relabel this as: ‘I’m having the thought that I’m responsible for someone else’s feelings’. ‘I’m having the thought that…’ is a helpful template, but you can use plenty of other phrases to relabel any thought that you have: ‘I’m acting as if I’m only lovable when I do things well’, or ‘I seem to believe I have to always be strong’, etc.
This wont make a thought go away: trying to do that, or fighting with our thoughts will only make them resist, push back and make it harder for us. We’re trying to gently relabel the thought or belief as not true, or at least up for debate. Thus every single time it pops up again, which it will, we are going to relabel it. That’s it.
Step 2: Reattribute
Here we are going to attribute the relabelled thought to its true source – the brain. We’re not blaming ourselves or anyone else, we are recognising that this comes from neural circuits in the brain. ‘My brain is sending me the thought that I am responsible for someone else’s feelings… again’.
Again, the aim is not to get rid of that thought, it is to remind ourselves that we didn’t ask for this or do anything to make it happen. But it is happening.
Step 3: Refocus
This too, shall pass – and step 3 is about making it easier for ourselves to let it. We can consciously move away from our thoughts by doing something else, not avoiding them, not suppressing them, but not letting them take us for a ride either.
Put simply, when we catch a negative or unhelpful thought, we find something else to do. Aim for 10-15 minutes at first, don’t worry if you miss the chance a few times, or many. It is going to take daily conscious awareness and much practice to get good at this. Remember, some of our thoughts may have been hard-wired since very early childhood.
Physical activities are a great way to get through the refocus time, but above all else we need to make sure we enjoy it. Take a walk, put on some music, we could even focus our thoughts on something that makes us feel good, loved or happy, like a fond memory. Over time, our brains will learn that it doesn’t have to run with every thought or impulse that pops up and spiral itself down. It can choose to do something else, every time.
Step 4: Revalue
Step 4 is about going deeper into the stories underpinning our thoughts and belief’s. Even with the best intentions, all the deliberate I’m lovable, I’m lovable’s can do nothing to overcome a persistent and recurring belief that ‘I’m worthless’. So we need to revalue our learnt responses – ‘What has this belief/thought done for me?’ We know where it came from, what it was intended to do, but what have does our experience tell us? Has it left us isolated? Made us feel guilty, ashamed or worried?
Be specific – what is the value of this belief over your life time? How has it affected you today? Affected your relationships? Let’s not kid ourselves, there are going to be some benefits, otherwise we wouldn’t have kept it around in the first place, so factor those in too.
It’s very important that this whole process is non-judgemental, but especially during the revalue step it can be easy to feel dumb or too far gone, so we need to be extra vigilant. Remember, it’s not personal, plenty of people have experienced this exact same thing. We’re just communicating with ourselves about it, that’s all. Whenever we decide to do this is the right time to do it, we must work to not judge ourselves for not doing it sooner.
Step 5: Re-create
This is Dr. Maté’s addition to the model. He states: ‘it is time to re-create: to imagine a different life, one truly worth choosing’ (page 428). In all the other steps, we are challenging and releasing thoughts, beliefs, or patterns that may have been with us all our lives. So, what do we want instead? Using conscious awareness again, think what your life would look if you were living with integrity, being authentic to yourself. Consider your values and how best to move forward from now.
Dr. Maté points out 2 things: first, it is not our good intentions that will ultimately lead us to wellness here. It is making sure that we don’t lack intention. We are certainly going to struggle and make mistakes. We’re human after all.
Second, it helps if we don’t take this process too seriously. We’re not helping ourselves by removing all the spontaneity and vitality from the curious inquiry into our minds. So let’s have fun with it, treat it as recreation, Maté says. These aren’t fun steps, this isn’t a fun process, but if we can keep light hearted when approaching it we will find it much easier to stick to and, hopefully, more meaningful in the long run.
Authentic connection with others and ourselves in a safe and joyous way is possible. Cultivating authenticity can create a tool for fostering connection with others, which may mean utilising therapy to learn to relate differently to past survival patterns and coping behaviours. By gently addressing recurring attachment patterns, many types of therapy help construct new self-beliefs through our attachment styles, thus compassionately making changes to our lives. If anything in this post has rang true for you, or you think it may be helpful to someone you know, then please get in touch and/or encourage them to do the same.
We can begin to cultivate authenticity, by validating our emotions and choosing to consciously develop a relationship with our own inner lives. The masks we form as children are difficult to identify, and a simple, but by no means easy, first step is to build awareness of when we suppress our authentic reactions.
*Author’s Note: this article was written using concepts from Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal, Chapter 7, A Traumatic Tension: Attachment vs. Authenticity (pp. 96-112) and Chapter 29, Seeing is Disbelieving: Undoing Self-Limiting Beliefs (pp. 422-9). I cannot recommend this book enough for anyone who is interested in well-being, their own and others’, and I strongly suggest going to the library or bookshop and getting yourself a copy – you wont regret it!
References
Maté, G. (2022). The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. Knopf Canada.
Schwartz, J. M., & Begley, S. (2009). The mind and the brain. Springer Science & Business Media.