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Showing posts from August 1, 2013

Behind the Armoring

From our earliest relational experiences in life, in bonding encounters with caretakers and family members, continuing via the trials of navigating childhood and young adult institutions, we develop emotional and physical armoring to help us survive the inevitable difficult experiences. Even the most secure of attachment styles between infant and caretaker have disruptive breaks and discontinuities that create anxious emotional reactions before a secure bond is restored. Infancies spent amidst insecure attachments can result in frequent feelings of being imperiled (after all, we are dependent on others to survive until well into our teens, at the very least). By the time we arrive in the challenging dramas of workplaces, social and romantic encounters, we can find ourselves quite defensive, vigilant, armored. The role of armoring is to shield us from re-experiencing some of the woundings that resulted in childhood, via our interactions with stressed or narcissistic caretakers, bu