Childhood can make you or break you. It could create this confident, world-dominating person or a broken individual who fears the future. Personality plays a part, but in the nature versus nurture world, you get dealt a lot of cards depending on your childhood. From who raised you to where and how, your childhood is going to impact everything from your salary to your fiancé. By the way, if you’re looking to improve your relationships no matter how you were raised, don’t miss another post we made called “The 8 Behaviors that Will Destroy Your Relationship.”
Now, here’s how your childhood is shaping your relationships in three big ways.
1. Your childhood determines your attachment style.
If you’ve never heard of attachment styles, there are four of them. The one that you have is primarily formed around your relationship with your caregiver from birth to age three. Usually, those are your parents or guardians.
The attachment styles are secure, anxious-preoccupied, avoidant-dismissive, or fearful-avoidant. You can tell a bit about each through their names, but there is plenty of info on each one of these online if you want to dig deeper. How your parents interacted with you determines the attachment style that you adopt. Then, you carry this attachment style into adulthood with your friends and, eventually, into romantic relationships.
These styles will shape everything from how you handle your partner saying “I love you” to whether you fight or shut down during disagreements.
Since three out of four styles lean towards negative, it goes to show that there are a lot of people with not-so-great attachment styles due to their childhood. Quite a bummer since you can’t pick your family. But, don’t fear; Individuals can change their attachment styles with some self-work, awareness, and growth.
I’m definitely feeling a secure attachment with you wonderful viewers. Could you show me you feel the same by subscribing for more content like this? You know I appreciate you!
2. Your childhood shapes how you communicate in love, conflict, and everything in between.
Communication is everything. It’s what creates relationships and destroys them. It’s what separates the isolated depressed individual and the flourishing success story. Unfortunately for some and fortunately for others, we learn the basics of communication from who we hang out with the most as a child. Usually, it’s our families, but for some, it’s neighbors, nannies, or even friends at daycare.
In one of my former jobs, I worked with children. It was amazing how close the apple fell from the tree. Our star student? His mom was involved, always volunteering at his school, and packed him a super lunch every day, just to name a few things. The one kid who kept getting in trouble for aggressive behavior and disrespectful comments? Well, I saw his mom drop him off once and curse him out for forgetting his water bottle at home. Apple, tree. Same roots.
When all you see is one style of communication, you adopt it as your norm. Unless you’re lucky enough to have self-regulated and introspective parents, you’ll probably find you could improve a bit in your communication, like most of us. To get started, check out our other post called, “How to Practice Self-Reflection.”
3. Your adult role models in childhood influence your emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation is how we express what we feel. Think about the last time someone really upset you – this is great insight into your regulation. What did you do? Did you ignore them and shut down? Maybe you snapped. Or, did you try to resolve the conflict with a cool, calm, and collected attitude? No judgment either way, we are all different, learning, and growing! Just like how you learn the basics of communication from your childhood, the adults in your life demonstrate an example of what to do with these overwhelming things we call emotions. If your caregiver expressed their feelings calmly and supported you during times of distress, you’re likely to have internalized that to face your adult obstacles with resilience.
If, instead, your caregiver was anxious or a screamer, you may get much more on edge whenever something goes wrong. You may not know how to appropriately identify what you’re feeling, much less how to deal with it or cope. Luckily, it’s never too late to learn emotional regulation techniques, regardless of your childhood role models.
Conclusion:
You may be finishing this post feeling happy about your childhood or bitter about what you were taught subconsciously. If you feel the latter, I want to offer you some support. Sometimes adults don’t make the best examples, but they are still learning too. Now that you’re older, you can take the reins and make the changes to be the version of yourself that you choose. Hopefully, that makes you a better example for the next generation. I know you can lead the way!