I've decided I have what is called 'anxious attachment' style (c.f. John Bowlby) which might have started as early as through premature birth which led to long hospitalization, and then growing up with sick parents. My mum had postpartum depression, so I was handed around among relatives a lot, and some years later mum nearly died of her first heart failure when I was about five years old, which in turn at the time made me very angry, depressed and withdrawn. I recall a lot of visits to the hospital, sitting in the hallways, crying.... I still recall how to walk to the Thorax clinic.
I've thus had a tendency to be fearful and anxious and definitely socially wary and withdrawn in unfamiliar situations during my early school-age years. This has reinforced a certain social anxiety and negative self-esteem. Researchers have found that children who develop insecure internal working models of social relationships, come to view the world as unpredictable, comfortless, and unresponsive.
On top of that parents of socially wary children sometimes try to support by actually intervening and taking over for the child, and prevents the child to develop a sense of self-efficacy. Which is exactly what happened.
Increasing experiences of failure following social initiation suggests, according to researchers, that a socially withdrawn child (like me) may incur peer rejection on a continual basis, which is how I recall my school years. I think there might have a bit of bullying going on. And so withdrawn children (like I was) may come to believe that there is something wrong with themselves rather than attributing their social failures to other people or situations. This creates a feedback loop you start to believe that the social failures are personality-based. And as a withdrawn child without siblings, you play by yourself a lot, etc. etc.
According to researchers it also appears to be an insidiously stable entity. I was always among the least popular in my class (chosen last in gym class etc) and changed classes often over the school years, always initiated by my parents "to help". This happened five times over nine years. Now I've learned that once a child has been established as being at the bottom of the social dominance hierarchy, relational processes may perpetuate that child’s standing, which explains why it turned out badly also in new places. I had a propensity to engage in withdrawn behavior. For example I could hide in the library, or in the loo, or take long one-hour walks during the lunch breaks so as to make myself invisible in the school yard to avoid being confronted by peers. For a while I was so stressed I found it hard to stand the ticking of clocks, blinking luminescent-screen tubes in the classroom etc.
Withdrawn behavior and peer group exclusion (one manifestation of peer group rejection) has been shown to be linked to children’s trajectories toward depression and internalizing of problems making us act in an anxious and withdrawn manner by emitting anxious cues, and avoiding peers. Also lack of social responsiveness through e.g., reservedness, diffidence, melancholy.
On top of that it didn't help much that my dad came down with probably psychoses and paranoid schizophrenia when I was 11 years old, my mum had a second round of heart failures when I was around 13 at the same time my dad was hospitalized long-term for said schizophrenia, which led to many hospital visits at multiple hospitals, I remember long corridors with multicoloured pathways and dreary visiting rooms (again).He had weird ideas, insisted of having window blinds folded, not being seen by neighbours, etc. Turned the clock around, overactive at night and slept during the day, ran his computer line printer all night long and listened to long-wave radio on a hideous Grundig machine (I had to move out of my room into another one because of this, there must have been a terrible row over it to make it happen, but I seriously don't remember anyhing, anything of those horrible teenage years.)
I had one friend at the time, fortunately, plus my grandmother was there for me. My mum was very yielding, almost invisible. Later on mum died when I was sixteen and I found myself stuck with dad. (I had hoped that he would just disappear but it didn't turn out that way.) I have few relatives, and they didn't offer much support. I've now read that children raised in such environments will become hypervigilant for threat cues, and have noticed this behaviour in me even today. According to one site, depressed and/or mentally ill parents (or dead ones for that matter) might be frightening because the child knows that the parent cannot provide protection or comfort, so they become more observant.
I decided to struggle with all of these issues on my own, partially and particularly out of fear of anybody knowing how bad it had been. (I've overcome this by now, obviously, hello all you net supervisors....) I said to myself "I don't need anybody *sniff*" and although I did manage to get out of school with good grades at age 19 (I somehow and with an effort aced all but one of 17 subjects in our A-level natural science program
) I later nearly derailed myself at university, flunking almost every exam for a little more than one full year and it was the worst year ever, ever.
I went to a psychologist but found out there was a queue for over two years to even get a first appointment () so I skipped all thoughts of that, and decided to fix it on my own instead, on the swim-or-drown-principle, and somehow managed to pull together, with a little help of a friend who had proven it possible by finishing the other degree program, and so I applied for this other degree program and later took that degree with good marks and later managed to land a job as well, and have consecutively held down jobs for over 25 years, and in the end all seems to have gone rather well except I'm still to this day quite anxious, and find it hard to trust people at face value but have a tendency to check and probe before I decide to trust someone... and never fully. I especially dislike it when I'm ghosted by people, one day they're there, the next - not, and never heard from again. (
)
Securely attached individuals grow up feeling safe, seen, secure and soothed, though.
One research study showed that people who are anxious about relationships or who tend to avoid them are better at detecting impending danger and acting quickly. (For example I recall a fire drill at a big company in 2007, and at the moment I pushed the door to enter the fire escape I could see over my shoulder how the other people hadn't even lifted their butts from their swivel chairs yet...)
Anyway, I've read that one way to fix the defucnt attachment style is to:-
a) A long-term relationship with someone with a healthier attachment style than your own. (Check!)
b) Writing a coherent narrative to understand how your experiences are still affecting you. (Check!)
c) Entering into psychotherapy. (Nope! There must be some other way, surely?)
So I still struggle to make friends, do avoid conflicts, am pretty bad at maintaining contact with other people who unless they're strictly business acquaintances. Then it's OK:
John T Cacioppo has come up with a four-step method called EASE that actually looks like it can work. Step one is of course extending and start interacting with others in social environments, have a plan, be selective and expect the best, for dealing with chronic loneliness. Some of the other ways to deal with it is to volunteer, taking classes, hook up with Facebook, go to concerts and art galleries etc., make your own club, take up contact with old school friends. For me these things haven't worked out though (have tested them all). But I was close to making a friend at a sailing class once. I have such low self-esteem so I can't believe I'm likeable and am thus stonewalling all attempts made by other people if I even notice them at all in the first place. It's a bit like the Groucho Marx quote: "I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
I first contemplated posting under "Social Anxiety" but now when I'm finished, I think it will fit in better under the "Success stories" headline.
Reply With Quote
