When The Past Is In The Present: Attachment, Attunement, and Why We Repeat What We Don’t Repair
Why We Talk About Your Past
When I tell a new client that we need to talk about their family of origin, I often feel a subtle tightening in the room. There is a specific kind of hesitation. Sometimes it’s protective, a quick assurance that "my parents did the best they could." Other times it’s dismissive, a feeling that what happened thirty years ago has nothing to do with the argument they had in the car on the way over. And almost always, there is a fear that we are going digging for tragedy.
The reality is, most people think exploring the past is about cataloging how awful their childhood was or finding a villain to blame. But that isn't the goal. We aren't looking for monsters. We are looking for the internal working model that runs your life.
We don't just leave our childhoods behind; we carry them into every relationship we enter. As children, we are excellent observers but poor interpreters. We watched how our parents treated each other. We learned what happened when we cried, when we made a mistake, or when we needed comfort. Based on those observations, we developed a distinct set of expectations about how love works. We learned whether it was safe to be vulnerable or if that would get us hurt. We learned if we needed to perform to earn love, or if we were safe just being ourselves. This internal model—your attachment style—is the filter through which you experience your partner today. It determines how you give love, how you receive it, and exactly what you do when you feel disconnected.
This rarely plays out in dramatic flashbacks. It usually happens in the small, quiet moments of your week.
Consider the "good kid" dynamic. If you grew up in a home where you learned that having needs was a burden to your stressed-out parents, you likely developed a strategy of being low-maintenance to stay safe. Fast forward to a Tuesday night when your partner asks where you want to go for dinner. You automatically say, "I don't care, whatever you want." But ten minutes later, you feel irrationally annoyed that they picked a place you hate. You aren't just annoyed about tacos; you are re-experiencing the old, silent rule that your desires are an imposition.
Or consider the "chase." If you had a parent who was inconsistent—sometimes warm, sometimes cold or absent—you may have learned that love is fragile and requires constant monitoring. Today, when your partner comes home quiet after a long day at work, your internal alarm bells might ring. Instead of seeing a tired person, you see a threat. You start asking, "Are you okay? What's wrong? Are you mad at me?" Your partner feels crowded and withdraws further, and you find yourself reacting not to the present moment, but to an old, familiar fear of abandonment.
We look at the past not to stay there, but to free you from it. If we don't understand your internal model, we are destined to repeat it. We will unknowingly hand the same set of rules down to our own children, or we will sabotage our relationships by reacting to ghosts from thirty years ago instead of the person sitting right in front of us.
Therapy provides the space to examine these strategies. We can finally look at those old rules and ask if they still serve you. Maybe the strategy of "don't ask for help" kept you safe when you were seven, but now it’s keeping you lonely at forty. Maybe the rule "stay quiet to keep the peace" worked in your childhood home, but now it’s preventing real intimacy in your marriage. When we understand where we come from, we stop reacting automatically. We gain the ability to pause, to choose a different response, and to build a connection based on who we are today—not who we had to be back then.
