The Human Drive to Belong

A fundamental human need is to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When fundamental dysfunctions of emotions collide with human bonding, we get tossed in a self perpetuating battle of unfulfilled longing for love and relationship sabotage. We seek connection but fears ruin closeness. Strong conflicting mechanisms engage in a life disturbing battle. 

In this tumultuous quest for connection, we often find ourselves caught in a paradox where our deepest desires clash with ingrained fears. The echo of past wounds reverberates through our interactions, prompting us to erect walls that shield us from perceived threats while simultaneously isolating us from the very affection we crave. This internal conflict manifests in behaviors that can sabotage relationships—pushing away those who seek to love us or misinterpreting benign gestures as signs of rejection. As we navigate these emotionally charged waters, the yearning for intimacy becomes entangled with anxiety and mistrust, creating a cycle that is challenging to break.

However, understanding this intricate dance between longing and fear offers a pathway toward healing. By acknowledging how attachment trauma has shaped our responses and perceptions within relationships, we can begin to unravel the patterns that hinder closeness. This awareness empowers us to confront maladaptive beliefs and cultivate healthier emotional responses, allowing space for vulnerability and authentic connections. In doing so, we take significant steps toward transforming our relational landscape—from one marked by pain and avoidance into one characterized by openness and mutual support—ultimately fostering an environment where true belonging can flourish once more.

Emotions , Learning and Trauma

The motivational system is functional. Feeling affects proceed conscious thought. The world is populated by living organisms that survive—and even flourish—without conscious thought. Our internal sense of well-being relies on conscious translation of these feeling affects, creating what we experience as emotions.

Consciousness has a strong serviceability for survival in complex and competitive environments—emotions are a byproduct of consciousness. Our biological system signals good, bad, and dangerous through chemical changes that disrupt homeostatic balances, we experience discomfort and prepare to receive or resist.

Many emotional responses are innate—a baby feels hungry and cries. But other emotions arise from learning, we associate things, places and people with the past; when a history was chaotic, learning  projects chaos on the present. Attachment injuries may poison the otherwise good good feelings associated with attachment.

Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and executive director of the Mindsight Institute explains that childhood trauma and neglect “have been found to impair the growth of the integrative fibers of the brain” (Siegel 2009).

Surviving In a Complex Social World

Survival in our complex social world is difficult. the intricate cultural rules of belonging are learned during infancy and prolonged childhoods. We develop skills of relating in the earliest months of life. Psychology research in object relation theory and attachment theory examine the intricacies of these necessary stages of development.

Robert DeMoss, former Clinical Director of a mental health center in New Mexico, wrote that during infancy, “we humans are completely dependent on others for our survival, and during our prolonged childhood, we readily learn language, many cultural rules, and the basics of living in a society—merely through being in the presence of others.” These critical times are not all rosy. DeMoss cautions that during the earliest years of our lives, “we cannot resist the influences of other people, whether those influences are positive or negative” (DeMoss, 1999, p. 163).

What we see and experience has “far reaching ramifications for our ‘understanding’ of appropriate social behavior” (DeMoss, 1999, p. 149). Trauma is a significant source of learning. Painful events are marked as important to future survival. Futures are interpreted through the lens of the past.

Opportunities to bond are disrupted by rascal histories of relationship trauma, bursts of emotion erupt and interrupt. The stings of the past re-emerge, reminding of trauma that we closely associate with belonging.

Trauma from a Thousand Small Injuries

Life shattering events damage our psyches and interrupt normal processing.​ These traumatizing disasters require new learning, reorganizing and critical care for healing. However, single devastating events are not the only cause of trauma. Long, protracted experiences of emotional neglect, frustrating needs, and harsh judgements grates on well-being leaving notable scars on our souls.

My twenty-year marriage fits the latter. No notable single event, just a series of disappointments and loneliness. These traumatizing relationships give just enough space to hope they will improve—many never do.

After my divorce, I began dating a nice gal. We both were recovering from painful relationships, experiencing residue from the emotional damage. One night, while we were cooking dinner, she made a gentle correction, “the pan is too hot, you need to turn down the heat.” Unexplainably, the simple remark stung (I suppose a reaction from my twenty year history of continual criticism).

I responded to the correction with a disapproving glance. The evening slowly deteriorated into uncomfortable silence. Small events in the present brought us back to the wilted meadows of our past, evoking implicit memories of hurt, and inciting protective emotions in both of us.

Intertwining of Past Trauma and Present Relationships

​​Thoughts, experience and accompanying feelings intricately intertwine; past experience invokes feeling reactions to the present, feelings create value perceptions, and perceptions ignite thoughts and reactionary behaviors. Behaviors, even disapproving glances, impact others. The complex web of interconnected emotions. Personal histories aren’t self-contained; they escape our boundaries and pull the histories of others to the surface.

Our attachment trauma becomes an integral part of our relationship to the world.

Painful experiences diminishes happiness. Those close to us respond to our projections. Our habitual return to trauma evokes powerful emotions, motivating responses. We are primed for action. Biological programming insists we respond to fear, unfairness, and loss. The emotions warn the body that something isn’t right, and we need to act—NOW. However, trauma disrupts our ability to correctly identify danger.

Misdirected Learning from Trauma

The larger the attachment trauma, the greater the emotion. Dominant emotions burst through with robustness, giving more importance to triggering event than it deserves. We biologically prepare for a sizable threat when the correction or disapproving glance were harmless. An impoverished and hurtful childhood typically forges intense protective emotions that were adaptive to the child but problematic for later connections; the traumatic childhood memories imprint relationships with danger.

The adult burdened by brawny, over-aroused emotions is always guarding against the fears of unpredictable and chaotic connections. For some, any feelings of closeness sparks unnerving fear of abandonment.

Daniel Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, explains that fears of “annihilation and abandonment” are the origins of “the desperate withdrawal and anxious approach common in ambivalently attached individuals.” Siegel continues to explain that the excessive parasympathetic reactions to possible relationships ruptures are an “adaptation to inconsistent and intrusive parenting” (Siegel, 2020).

See Fear of Abandonment for more on this topic

Protective Childhood Patterns

These dreadful patterns that traumatized our childhood continue to haunt in the present. The powerful emotions influence thoughts that direct behaviors and, ultimately, alter the environment. Many unrealistic fears become reality; not because we accurately detected a threat but because our reactions placed unnatural burdens on delicate budding connections, overwhelming fragile relationships; the emotions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Emotional Processing Theory helps explain this between past trauma and relationship interference in the present. The research finds that trauma victims often avoid trauma memories, and related cues. The avoidance is negatively reinforced, provide measured immediate relief from overwhelming emotions (Martinson et al., 2013). Avoidance, however, maintains emotional processing and attachment fears remain intact and continue to disrupt closeness.

Boys that feel rejected and ignored by their parents “are likely to sidestep romantic involvements rather than endure the anxiety of bidding for an acceptance” they have never known, explains Carl Hindy, Ph.D., J. Conrad Schwartz, Ph.D., and Archie Brodsky in their wonderful book If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure?: Learn How to Deal With Anxiety, Jealousy, and Depression in Romance–and Get the Love You Deserve! (Hindy & Schwartz, 1990).

Fear of Closeness Prevents Closeness

​​One of life’s cruelest ironies. The victim’s painful traumas that injured attachment motivates actions that inhibit closeness, leading to the likeliness of repeated painful endings. Each failure perpetuates a painful legacy, confirming the belief that relationships are painful.

​The fear increases and motivates stronger alienating behaviors. The glance or the correction is attacked with protective defensiveness. The partner, the target of attack, often reacts with their own protections, around and around the present continually drags up the past further igniting relationship anxieties.

All the moving pieces—reactions, emotions and reactions to emotions—spread and strengthen, as relationships repeatedly moves through this dynamic cycle, closeness is destroyed. Another loss smolders in memories, traumatizing the victim, accumulating the pain with other losses, and increasing vigilance of hurtful threats when the next attempt at love begins. An early attachment trauma invites repeated relationship trauma throughout our lives.

Interrupting Destructive Cycles

​Aaron T. Beck in his classic book Love is Never Enough wrote: Beck offers hope, these tragic interactions can be challenged and changed. He teaches that, “this kind of twisted thinking can be untangled by applying a higher order of reasoning” (Beck, 1989).

Any hope for belonging and intimacy rests on interrupting the self perpetuating cycles that destroy relationships. When fear and anger rule, the impending overwhelms, magnifying emotions, dimming creative solutions to relationship conflicts.

Young couples, unaware of accumulating small hurts, miss opportunities to intervene and prevent another painful ending. The hope that the new relationship will cure all the ills from the past is magically blinding. As the relationship progresses, if necessary relationship building elements are neglected, the small hurts begin to accumulate in larger attachment traumas. As lovers become more invested and dependent—old fears resurface. The fears then spur thoughts and protective reactions. The young couple, just emerging from bliss, is unprepared for the emotional road ahead. The mounting frustrations, hurt, and dramatic interactions may be too much for intimacy to develop.

Underneath conversations lie a growing fear: “you don’t love me.” The returning ache from childhood abuse and past attachment injuries invade the soul and overwhelm the possessor. We can’t resolve disagreements during emotional flooding when we replace meaningful discussion with defensiveness. We never find love and intimacy in these cycles.

See Nurturing Love for more on this topic

Expecting A Partner to Do Our  Emotional Work

​When we task a partner to relieve our painful relics of attachment trauma, we unwittingly blame them for our connection woes. Perhaps, we are expecting too much, driving caring and considerate others away. We have personal emotional work to do.

Old processes are recycled with each new connection; joy is replaced with fear, magnifying anxiety, and motivating attempts of control to prevent the inevitable. Overloaded emotions stimulate elevated responses—even neutral triggers cause us to jump. The rotating partners doesn’t resolve our emotional injuries. They can’t fulfill emotional needs, when we suck everything they have to offer into an unfillable wound.

Trauma leaves lasting impacts on perception, everything is subject to unconsciously interpretations as threats. The slightest word, facial expression, or gesture triggers powerful emotions. Those reactions are our monster to tame. A partner may help. Yet when we blame the demons on our dear partner, the one we once loved, our labels transform them into the enemy.

See Emotional Black Holes for more on this topic

Hope for Change

​There is hope. We can untangle these relationship-destroying patterns left from our attachment trauma. With recognition, we can change directions, avoiding familiar pit falls. Healthy relationship changes require knowledge, skill, and empathy; and most importantly—patience.

Attachment trauma embeds emotions unfitting to present experience deep in the fabric of our psyche. Quick solutions to break long existing patterns seldom work. Reconstructing a broken relationship requires more than stumbling through a new technique. We need practice, patience, and often professional guidance.

Associated Concepts

• Adverse Childhood Experiences: These refer to potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood (0-17 years). These experiences can include various forms of abuse, neglect, witnessing violence, and growing up in a household with mental health or substance use problems.
• Risk Regulation Model: This model proposes individuals have an internal regulation systems that individuals use to navigate the intense conflicting demands between self-protecting security and desires for security and belonging.
• Parataxic Distortion: This is a term coined by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. It describes the tendency to perceive others based on past experiences and unconscious biases, rather than on their actual present behavior.
• Emotional Safety: This refers to the feeling of being secure, supported, and comfortable expressing one’s thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment or rejection. It encompasses trust, empathy, open communication, and the absence of emotional harm or manipulation.
• Entangled Relationships: These refer to relationships where the relationship impairs and prevents growth of the partner. Healthy relationships expand and encourage growth in the partner.
• Fear of Engulfment: This refers to a dynamic in relationships where one individual feels overwhelmed or suffocated by the other’s excessive attention, control, or dependency. This can lead to a loss of personal identity and autonomy, as the individual feels consumed by the relationship.
• Love and Fear: This refers to the opposing emotions experienced by high relationship anxiety during attachment processes. When someone suffering from anxious attachment falls in love, it is also accompanied by intense fear of losing that love.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

We can heal broken Relationships, resurrecting them from the depths of sorrow. Broken relationships require a healing environment. We must confront automatic responses and emotional reactions together with our partner.  Above all, we must invite relationship friendly skills into the circle. Mastering skills of compromise, cooperation and follow through, establishing the beginnings of trust and security.

We must also forgive. We all have imperfections. Flaws are easily exploited and deemed at fault for a lack in closeness.; we must avoid blaming a partner’s peculiarities and take responsibility for the health of our connections. We must display compassion in our words and feel it in our hearts.

If we fail to take responsibility, we will continue to blame our partners for the internal disruptions caused from the stings of attachment trauma. A partner may trigger emotions but not be the sole cause—the cause is much more complex. Emotional disruptions are a relationship problem not a partner problem.  We must accept personal accountability for unhealthy behaviors, recognizing the programmed emotional responses.

Over-time, we notice subtle changes from the accumulating positive interactions. As we respectfully work through disagreements, trust increases. We can resolve some problems; others continue. When we approach issues with patience and understanding, we find solutions. Our partner’s differences may annoy but with skill we artfully differentiate serious problems from normal irritations of connection. We learn to integrate the personality differences without demanding change. As partners cultivate healthy skills of relating, they find welcomed relief from those bothersome stings of the past.