Thinking. Growing. Learning. Changing.

Monday 24 October 2011

Living with Reactive Attachment Disorder

"In order to understand what an unattached child feels, one must understand his perspective. Imagine that you are the young child who must cross a frozen lake in the autumn to reach your home. As you are walking across the lake alone, you fall suddenly and unexpectedly through the ice. Shocked and cold in the dark, you can't even cry for help. You struggle for your very life. Alone, helpless, and hopeless without the very air you need to breathe for life, you struggle to the surface. Locating the jagged opening, you drag yourself through to the air and crawl back into the woods from where you started. You decide to live there and never, ever to return onto the ice. As weeks go by and you see the others skating and cross the ice, you become clearer in your perception that the ice hates you alone. If you go onto it, you will die.


The ice represents the strength of the bond and your ability to trust. It was damaged by the break in your connection to someone you trusted. Some children have numerous bonding breaks throughout their young lives. This is like crashing them through the ice water each time they are moved, scarring and chilling their hearts against ever loving and bonding again."


Thomas, N - "When Love is Not Enough" (2005:15)




What is worse, is that you can see the illogical stupidity of it all in your own mind, but you can never change how you feel. Regardless, that fear will never leave you.

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