Let's do something really silly. Pretend you're climbing a mountain and you notice the rope you're holding on to starts fraying. You can see it's about to break at any moment. Your climbing buddy next to you tells "don't worry, just have a good attitude and everything will work out." You're probably thinking that an extra rope to hold on to would be much more useful than an attitude adjustment. Of course, you'd be right. It's obvious a good attitude isn't enough in this situation because it doesn't address the underlying problem - the rope that's about to drop you 500 stories down to the ravine below.
Do your relationships ever feel like you're just hanging on by a thread?
You may know you're in a bad relationship. Maybe your partner is too controlling, or they're too dependent on you. Maybe there's always a lot of fighting or screaming. Perhaps there's not enough trust in the relationship. Something always feels out of balance. In a bad relationship, nobody's needs are getting met in a healthy manner.
Perhaps you may find yourself leaving these relationships and starting new ones only to find the same patterns repeating. Or you may be telling yourself that if you just have a "good attitude" things will work themselves out? But wouldn't it be great if you could stop waiting for the bad situation to work itself out and do something to understand how to work it out now?
To understand why you keep struggling in relationships, let's look at some research done on preschoolers.
When researchers looked at preschoolers who had been abused through repeated injury or physical pain by their caregivers, it turns out these preschoolers lost the ability to read the emotions on people's faces correctly. They perceived anger on faces that had neutral or even sad expressions. Obviously, in an abusive situation at home where there is real danger, this hypersensitivity may have protected them.
But this same thing that protects them at home brought trouble on the playground. For instance, reading anger into situations where there is none leads school bullies into attacking other children whom they perceive to have hostile intentions (it should be noted schoolyard bullies often have a history of physical abuse).
Had these preschoolers had a family that modeled how to manage anger appropriately and been there for the child, these same preschoolers would learn how to better read emotions and handle their own emotions in a healthy manners.
What you don't "unlearn" as a child, you take with you as an adult.
UCLA psychologist Allan Schore theorizes that the development of the key part of your brain involved in relationships, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), depends on your childhood experiences. If you had an abusive childhood, your OFC may not develop correctly - resulting in a limited ability to handle emotions like anger, shame, or fear. Yet, it's being able to effectively handle these "negative" emotions that enables you to navigate through the world of human relationships with great skill.
But there is hope.
Because the brain can change somewhat due to new experiences (scientists call this neuroplasticity), finding a nurturing relationship later in life can help to rewrite the abusive scripts that were placed into your brain as a child. But how do you start doing this?
The answer is through trusting relationships.
Now if you've been abused, you may not feel like you can trust anyone right now, especially if all you've known are bad relationships. But that's ok. Schore makes the case that if you find an effective therapist, you will automatically start to build rapport and trust, without blame, neglect, and all the other negative emotions from your past abusive experiences.
Now if you've tried therapy before and you feel like it didn't work, this is where having a good attitude can help.
It may be the particular therapist you tried wasn't right for you. I suggest trying to find a therapist that practices cognitive-behavioral therapy, as that particular style of therapy works on helping you develop skills to change your thinking patterns and your actions, which is how you change anything in your life. It could be that you didn't attend therapy regularly enough so you could build that sense of trust.
Overwriting your past learned relationship behaviors takes time, patience, and a good attitude. Like climbing a mountain with a rope that's about to snap, a good attitude isn't enough to stop you from struggling in relationships. You have to learn how to build the foundational skills of all good relationships - namely, regulation your emotional and communication patterns to get healthy results. But a good attitude will help you to keep trying. And that's what eventually leads to your success.
