My wondering and wandering through the tenets of attachment theory led me to deep understanding of what stoked the overly compensatory behaviors of my life. Once I realized and applied what it had to offer, it all began to make sense: the larger themes of abandonment and rejection that puppeted me from the shadows; the perfectionism and the need to micro manage my environment and the resultant obsessive compulsive behavior..... with the expectation that by concretizing my reality, I would be given a sense of permanency and trust that had never been achieved in the earlier developmental stage of my existence. These lessons must be learned before we can move onto more productive stages. But since I never got the necessary imprint of value and worth, of trust and safety, I was doomed and destined to keep trying to fulfill those needs through out my entire life. Thru recovery I reached a level of understanding, enabling me to see the nature of my blockages, and then to realize ways to eliminate them from my life, and thus became empowered to resume my life. Now, the record is no longer skipping. And all with the help of the God of my understanding, who supplied the candle and the company along the way.
My family were not 'bad' people. My parents were well intentioned, though ignorant of healthy child rearing skills (which had not been modeled for them), however, their flaw was not in that they were under educated, but that they refused to take advantage of sources and knowledge systems beyond those approved by their Roman Catholic faith for effective solutions to the many dilemmas they encountered in their child rearing challenge. They had been raised thinking the voice of science unimportant, and thus their parenting approach became a carbon copy of that of their parents. Inevitably, they became one dimensional, emotionally and psychologically unavailable, modeling ideas and impressed patterns of relating to their progeny that did not serve us as we carried those forms as relational models into broader relational experiences with persons, places and things outside of that milieu.
To replicate those patterns forward as life strategies became the approach for living and relating. However, once I began to learn that that strategy would not accomplish the goal of making connection to people, I modulated my behavior to the contrary strategy: avoidance and isolation. Soon, I began to use the pattern to my disadvantage by doing its opposite. Not having completed the necessary circuit of healthy bonding to a trusted source of nurture, it became my lot ( I love the biblical imagery there ....) and destiny to keep repeating the search for the 'teat' that would sate my need for 'food': the bond of love; until that happened I would become and ever remain "Lot" frozen in place always looking behind, unable to forge ahead. I became attached to the 'spot' I was in. It seemed as though the only way to establish meaning for myself would be by hitching my wagon to some other star (seeking yet again resolution of the elusive attachment bond through external sources).
Through the process of recovery I learned to choose nurturing 'stand ins' to supply the wiring that failed to happen in infancy, and once I developed relationships of trust with a few reciprocal and trusting others, I was then free to proceed to the next stage of development: establishing a healthy sense of ego, separate and autonomous, and self-determining. No longer interrupted, no longer seeking attachment to something outside myself in order to find my value and meaning, I was then able to proceed with the process of becoming and fulfilling my purpose for being the 'star stuff' that I am created to be.
Now that I understand it better, I am no longer needing to be angry about it. Not only have I liberated myself from a lesson that I was not able to complete in a timely fashion in my earlier days of life, but I no longer have to blame anyone, or be anyone's victim, waiting for permission or approval before deciding which are the right choices for me.
Unimpeded, I can design my life using the resources at my disposal, given as a birthright when I emerged from the very first womb that bore me into physical existence.
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