Growing up with emotionally unavailable, avoidant, or neglectful caregivers is like being handed the world’s worst driver’s manual. It’s dusty, the words are too small to even see, and perhaps even parts of it are missing all together. It leaves us guessing and trying to fill in the blanks ourselves.
And the vehicle? An old, rickety car with unreliable brakes, a sputtering engine, and a steering wheel that pulls hard to the left. Oh, and it is a clutch so its 100% more stressful. You feel the anxiety build as you begin to think on how in the world you are going to not stall out on the highway in this death trap. Similarly, you’re told to navigate life—relationships, identity, emotions—not just without ever being shown how to do so healthily but being given the worst tools and foundation.
For many, this is what early attachment trauma feels like.
Instead of being guided with warmth, responsiveness, and safety, you’re left to guess your way forward. Healthy parents, not perfect ones, focus on the above features of comfort and know just the proper balance of challenge for their littles. Through trial and error, a kind, healthy parent learns what their kiddos need and can meet it through their lifespan. If you are left guessing because you had parents who could not be bothered to tune into you, you might find yourself stalling in intimacy, overcorrecting in conflict, or veering off-course in your relationship with self. What’s worse is the belief that it’s somehow your fault for not driving smoothly. The internalized guilt of the young child bleeds into adulthood without healthy, corrective emotional experiences.
The truth is this: when the original manual is faulty or missing, it is not broken or worthless—its unwritten and needs slight revision.
In attachment-focused therapy, we begin the gentle, courageous work of rewriting that manual. Yup, courageous indeed because most of us in these circumstances stand out from our family system as soon as we begin questioning. Questioning why things happened the way they did and even questioning our parents on their reasonings; all things healthy and developmentally appropriate as someone begins tending to their attachment injuries (aka car manual). Yet, most of us are met with avoidance or gas lighting in these instances. What do we do next?
We look at the parts of the old instructions that were shaped by survival—hyper-independence, people-pleasing, emotional numbing—and we ask about the other ways and options for living. Who else can we be should we be given the chance?
This is where healing becomes an act of creativity.
Henri Matisse, the phenomenal early 1900’s artist once said, “Creativity takes courage.” And for those healing from attachment wounds, creativity means more than artwork. It’s the bold act of constructing a new way of being—learning to feel safely, relate authentically, and trust deeply, sometimes for the first time. Take a look at Matisse’s paintings, then compare it to his more traditional counterparts of the time. His art reflects boldness and stands apart greatly. Today, he remains celebrated as one of the greatest artists of all time. Heck, one of his paintings recently sold for over 80 million back in 2018!
Will we be remembered and will our works retail upwards of 100 mill? Probably not, yet our impact on this world, and all the words you come into contact with, will be just as influential. Particularly in the world you come into contact with later on are tiny ones that call you momma and daddy.
It’s about imagining a self, inner child, and adult that’s not shaped by absence or fear, but by curiosity, compassion, and connection.
In therapy, we slowly begin to write a new manual—one that helps you navigate identity, relationships, and emotional experience with clarity and care. We map what safety actually feels like. We identify the difference between unsafe versus uncomfortable, and we explore what you needed back then, what you deserve now, and how to get it.
And we do it together—no longer alone in the driver’s seat struggling with reading an old, raggedy half falling apart manual.
If you were handed a broken manual or perhaps none at all, you are not doomed to repeat its lessons. You can pause. Relearn. Reclaim. Heal.
And eventually, drive forward—on your terms- courageously.
