Today, I turn 26 years old.
For the most part, I’m pretty happy with my life. There’s not much I regret, or that I feel like I’d want to do over again. That’s largely due to “Connectedness” being one of my top 5 Strengths. (That’s a deep dive into StrengthsFinders–a post for a different time!)
The way I prefer to function is by focusing on how I can improve for the future. Conversely, a lot of my preparation for the future involves learning from the past in order to avoid repeated mistakes.
But what happens when the things from my past that I’m trying to learn from were out of my control in the first place? What if I wasn’t even aware that I had past issues regarding a certain subject, only to find myself reacting strongly when I’m put in those situations?
“When we were growing up, we inevitably experienced pain or suffering that we could not acknowledge and/or deal with sufficiently at the time. So as adults, we typically become triggered by experiences that are reminiscent of these old painful feelings.”
I recently became aware that one of my triggers from childhood is abandonment.
Those who know me are probably aware of how independent I am. When I graduated high school, I moved out by myself, put myself through school, and got started in my career on my own. (See my previous post for a more detailed explanation). It wasn’t easy, but I worked hard to make sure I could survive regardless of the flaky circumstances around me.
Though it’s not something I talk about regularly, a significant part of my upbringing was growing up without my Father. But honestly, his absence was never really felt because all the women in my family make up a fierce matriarchy. My grandmother taught me how to be self-sufficient. I learned that if I wanted to find out the answer, or how to do something, I had to figure it out myself.
I now realize that all this independence was inadvertently contributing to the emotional wall I was building. While the stereotypical girl with “daddy issues” would be throwing herself at any man who paid her the least bit of attention, I chose the opposite route–
I’ve avoided relationships.
I didn’t really understand why before. I thought maybe my standards were too high and unrealistic. (Okay, okay… my standards are high, but they definitely are not unrealistic). I thought that maybe it was just hard for me to connect with someone on an emotional level. (While attractiveness plays a factor, my emotional connection definitely trumps a physical connection). These are still true in various degrees.
But, what I’ve learned through introspection is that my default behavior is to avoid relationships, because I’d rather not take the chance of letting someone in who will end up abandoning me.
My father’s abandonment is my trigger.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I sometimes approach my friendships in a similar way. Relationship Building is my strongest Domain (again, a StrengthsFinders post will come soon). But at times, I feel that I create a threshold I won’t let myself pass. The logic here is that the more I show that I care, the higher the stakes become if I were to somehow lose that friendship.
Well, this all sounds kinda fucked up, doesn’t it? Haha.
I started this post with no means to an end, really. The intention was to materialize a lot of the thoughts I had floating through my head. Emotional triggers are never fun to uncover. But on the bright side, it feels like less of a hurdle because I’ve become aware of it.
And awareness is my first step towards change. We all have our issues. I’m just trying to confront mine and move forward with my life 🙂
Happy 26th to me! I have good feelings about this year.