Jane Watson Therapy

06/02/2026

06/02/2026

06/02/2026

There’s a moment in every healing journey when you realise something devastating:
the patterns hurting you today
are the same ones that once kept you safe.

And that truth is complicated.
Because you don’t just outgrow a coping mechanism —
you grieve it.

As a child, you learned quickly what you needed to do to survive:
stay quiet, avoid conflict, anticipate danger, shrink your needs, disappear when emotions rose, become self-reliant, become perfect, become invisible, become “easy.”
You adapted because you had no other choice.

Your nervous system built a map based on danger:
stay small to stay safe
stay busy to stay unnoticed
stay agreeable to avoid punishment
stay numb to avoid overwhelm
stay independent to avoid disappointment

These weren’t flaws.
They were strategies — carved by necessity, wired by repetition, held together by fear.
And they worked.
They carried you through.

But adulthood changes the landscape.
What once kept you safe begins to cost you:
you sabotage opportunities because success feels unsafe,
you push away intimacy because closeness triggers old alarms,
you avoid taking risks because failure feels like humiliation,
you overcorrect, overthink, overfunction,
or you disappear from your own life because presence feels too vulnerable.

You tell yourself you’re broken.
But you’re not.
You’re simply living with an outdated survival system —
one that hasn’t been shown the new reality yet.

Here’s the part no one talks about:
letting go of these patterns feels like death.
Not metaphorically — neurologically.
Your brain interprets change as threat because your identity was built inside those defenses.
Who are you without the people-pleaser?
Who are you without the perfectionist?
Who are you without the overachiever?
Who are you without the detachment?

The terror isn’t irrational —
it’s the body protecting the only version of you it has ever known.

This is why healing feels like destabilisation.
You’re not just breaking a habit —
you’re reshaping the self that emerged from trauma.
You’re updating a nervous system built in chaos.
You’re teaching your body that safety doesn’t require self-erasure anymore.

And that takes time.
It takes grief.
It takes sitting with the fear that rises when you choose a new path:
speaking instead of swallowing,
resting instead of overworking,
receiving instead of overgiving,
staying present instead of dissociating.

These choices don’t feel natural at first.
They feel wrong.
They feel dangerous.
But they’re not.
They’re new.

And every time you practice them —
every time you stay with yourself a minute longer than your past allows —
you’re not sabotaging your healing.
You’re rewiring it.

You’re not losing the version of you who survived.
You’re honoring them
by finally learning how to live.

05/02/2026

05/02/2026

04/02/2026

04/02/2026

04/02/2026

You adapted to survive. That’s how attachment patterns are formed in our earliest years. Every attachment style is shaped by thousands of moments in childhood:

- How comfort was given (or not given)
- How distress was handled (or not)
- How emotions were met or unmet
- How safe or unsafe connection felt

And for many, your caregivers aren’t the villains of your story (I know this is not true for everyone. For some, they are. I’m sorry for that.) For many, they are just humans doing the best they could with the tools, capacity, and information they had available to them. Not to mention their own attachment patterns.

Many parents today still don’t have language for emotional attunement, regulation, repair, or relational safety. They weren’t taught these things and didn’t have access to the neuroscience we have now. Not to mention, they likely didn’t have someone modeling secure connection for them.

This post isn’t to blame, shame, or judge anyone. This post is to bring understanding and awareness to how your attachment patterns were formed to remove shame from ourselves. The hope is that you can stop asking, “Why am I like this?” And start saying, “Of course my nervous system adapted this way. Now, I can rewire this pattern.”

Because you can! While your childhood explains your patterns, your adulthood is where you get to heal them. 🧡

Plus, a bonus, is that as we meet people, we can meet them with more compassion and understanding when they are struggling with their own attachment patterns. We are all on our own journeys toward finding safety and security.

Disclaimer: This is a general overview, not an exact description of your childhood

03/02/2026

.kellyvincent

03/02/2026

03/02/2026