Stahl Yes, No, Maybe

How to recognize and overcome fear of commitment - Help for those affected and their partners
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-641-27021-6
Verlag: Kailash
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch

Nearly all human beings want a lasting, happy relationship, but in many cases it just doesn't work out. Some people seem always to fall in love with the wrong kind of person. With others, the relationship breaks down just when it is becoming closer. And some live with a partner but still feel lonely and isolated. What is going wrong? 'In the final analysis, fear of commitment is at the bottom of many relationship problems,' says the expert on fear of commitment Stefanie Stahl. In vivid case histories, the German psychotherapist shows the many ways in which fear of commitment manifests itself. She explains the typical behavior patterns of those who fear commitment, introducing the 'hunters', 'princesses' and 'stonewallers'. The famous German psychologist illustrates why fear of commitment is genuine fear, explains possible causes and shows how to overcome it. Anyone who has read this book will know how to recognize people who fear commitment and how to deal with them. A helpful book for those affected and for their partners.

Stefanie Stahl, Diplom-Psychologin und Buchautorin in freier Praxis in Trier, ist Deutschlands bekannteste Psychotherapeutin. Sie hält regelmäßig Vorträge und Seminare zu ihren Spezialgebieten Beziehungen, Selbstwertgefühl und praxisnaher Psychologie. Mit ihrem Modell vom Sonnen- und Schattenkind hat sie eine besonders bildhafte Methode zur Arbeit mit dem inneren Kind erschaffen, die über die Grenzen Deutschlands hinaus auf große Resonanz stößt. Stefanie Stahls Bücher, allen voran 'Das Kind in dir muss Heimat finden', stehen seit Jahren auf den Top-Rängen der Bestsellerlisten und haben sich millionenfach verkauft.
Die Autorin ist eine begehrte Keynote Speakerin, hostet die beiden Podcasts 'So bin ich eben' und 'Stahl aber herzlich' und wird regelmäßig als Expertin für Presse und Talkshows angefragt.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stahl, Stefanie

Leseproben

Causes of fear of commitment

The role of the mother

Whether or not we are capable of commitment in our later lives depends to a great degree on our relationship with our mother during the first years of life. It depends on whether our brain associates attachment in earliest childhood with feelings of “security, warmth and protection,” or with “abandonment, loneliness and fear.” Since the first two to three years of life fall victim to infant amnesia and we are unable to recall them, our experience during that period is normally not accessible to our conscious mind. Consequently the unconscious plays a very large role as a powerful instrument of control in commitment phobia. A small baby is wholly dependent on its mother. In the first months of life it does not even know that it and its mother are two separate beings.

The infant is totally governed by its needs and feelings. Its emotional life consists of sensations of pleasure and displeasure. Feelings of displeasure can result from hunger, thirst, cold, heat and physical complaints. The infant cannot deal with too much displeasure by itself. The feeling of displeasure triggers severe stress and the child begins to cry. The mother’s job is to stop the stress if possible, to calm the child, to feed it, warm it and comfort it. Along with the need to have its displeasure alleviated, the infant also has a congenital need for social contact and human affection, so the mother’s job is not just to relieve the stress of displeasure but also to impart in the child the feeling of wellbeing that results from human affection and attention.

In the first year of life the child learns increasingly to control its motor skills, to grasp more firmly, to turn from its back onto its stomach. It learns to crawl, and toward the end of its first year it takes its first steps. Increasingly, therefore, the child can control its desire for affection and food itself, by reaching for its mother or its bottle, crawling towards its mother, or turning away from or toward her. If all goes well, mother and child become attuned to one another. The mother understands her child’s signals better and better and reacts to them. The child learns that it is understood and that it can influence the satisfaction of its needs. It learns from experience that it can actively provoke the reaction it wants from its mother. That includes not only its wish for affection, but also for independence. The better the child can move, the more it wants to explore its surroundings independently. Important as it is to satisfy the child’s hunger for affection, it is equally important to let go and allow it to explore the world. A mother’s ability to empathise with her child’s needs is a fundamental prerequisite for enabling the child to establish a stable bond with the mother.

If during this period the child finds that its mother is there when it needs her but sometimes leaves it in peace when it wants to be alone, it learns to rely on her. The mother becomes a reliable source of comfort and protection, a stable base from which the child can fulfil its desire for independence by turning to other interesting people and things in its surroundings. The mother’s empathetic behaviour enables the child to gain confidence in relationships and a sense of basic trust. This can be understood as a feeling of being welcome and accepted in the world. It is a whole-body experience. The child stores the information about whether or not it is accepted and loved in its body. It feels acceptance and trust with its entire body, as a sense of wellbeing that it carries into adulthood as an attitude to life. The traces of remembrance of this time are buried deep within us even if they can no longer be accessed by the memory or the conscious mind. Also linked to the sense of basic trust is the certainty of being able to influence relationships rather than being helplessly exposed to them. Thus the child learns that in principle one can rely on relationships, regulate and establish them.

If this interaction and interplay between mother and child succeeds, from around the second half of its second year the child develops an “inner attachment” to its mother. The child learns to distinguish between the mother and other people and things, and she becomes unmistakable. This stage of development leads to shyness with strangers, sometimes known as “eight-months anxiety.” Since the mother has now become the sole trusted person and the child can reliably distinguish between her and other people, it becomes apprehensive with strangers.

The inner attachment is distinguished by a phenomenon that psychologists call object constancy. Object constancy means that the child knows that the mother is there even when it cannot see her, for example because she is in another room. The child internalises the mother’s image and therefore no longer depends on her physical and visual presence alone to know that she exists. In a way, the child has taken possession of the mother internally and has her in its heart. It is primarily this feeling that is experienced as inner attachment. It is the warm and usually retrievable feeling that one feels for loved ones as an adult, too. At the same time, inner attachment is accompanied by a deep feeling of security and protection.

The latest neurobiological studies have proven that the core of all human motivation is the receiving and giving of affection and esteem. Thus the need for attachment is biologically engendered in us. The human motivation system, which is essentially controlled by the neurotransmitters dopamine and oxytocin, is activated best when affection, recognition and love come into play. Isolation and loneliness, in contrast, can paralyse the human motivation system. The individual is then plagued by feelings of great meaninglessness and no longer feels any impetus, as happens in cases of severe depression. The neuronal circuitry for the motivation and attachment system is formed in the brain in the first two to three years of life, which are in the years when basic trust and inner attachment to the mother emerge. If during this period the child receives too little affection, the neuronal circuits for the aforesaid neurotransmitters develop considerably less well in the child’s brain than in that of a child that experiences sufficient affection. From the neurobiological viewpoint this means that a child that does not receive sufficient love and affection in the first years of life not only suffers damage to its “software” in the sense of its psychological make-up, but also material damage to its “hardware,” because fewer synapses between the nerve cells of the motivation and attachment system are produced in its brain. The brain of this child and the later adult cannot produce as much dopamine and oxytocin as the brain of a person who experienced sufficient affection in its early years. Interaction between the internal motivation and reward system and external affection, love, and recognition functions only to a limited degree. In an extreme case this “hardware” damage can be a key reason for fear of and difficulties with commitment in later life.

The first two years of life are thus of crucial importance for a person’s capacity to commit. However, they alone do not determine a person’s later development. The subsequent years of development have a strong influence on the later capacity to commit. Often, the child-rearing behaviour of the mother or parents continues. The mother who found it difficult to respond sensitively to her baby is usually unable to understand her child’s needs in later years. Naturally, there are exceptions attributable to special circumstances of life, for example, if mother and child are separated during the sensitive phase of attachment, perhaps because the mother is in hospital. This can unsettle the child greatly in its development of attachment, but the mother is not to “blame.” If the mother behaves sensitively and lovingly when they are together and in subsequent years, it goes some way toward compensating for her earlier absence. Mothers or parents who live in very strained financial circumstances and must therefore resort to strangers to look after their children at a very early age can compensate to a great extent by organising the remaining time with their child lovingly and sensitively. There are many reasons why a mother may be under severe strain in the early years of her child’s life and therefore unable to pay as much attention to her child or children as she would in better circumstances. Such mothers, and fathers, can make up for some of these failings once circumstances improve and the crisis is over. Likewise, a child that spent its first five years in dramatic development circumstances but then moves to a loving foster family can catch up with the neglected forming of attachment. Admittedly, neurobiological studies have shown that a certain “hardware defect” remains in such cases, too. I would counter the neurobiological perspective by saying that the psychological program of a person can be largely overwritten, even at an advanced age. I have supported clients who changed considerably and developed a high degree of commitment capability despite having a “hardware defect.” It is a case of mind over matter.

On the child’s part, too, various preconditions can contribute toward the ability to form an internal attachment. Children come into the world with different temperaments and different predispositions that make it easier or harder for their mothers to be there for them and to form an attachment. For example, “cry-babies” can drive a mother to despair, and mothers who would have bestowed loving...

Über Autor(innen)

Stahl, Stefanie
Stefanie Stahl, Diplom-Psychologin und Buchautorin in freier Praxis in Trier, ist Deutschlands bekannteste Psychotherapeutin. Sie hält regelmäßig Vorträge und Seminare zu ihren Spezialgebieten Beziehungen, Selbstwertgefühl und praxisnaher Psychologie. Mit ihrem Modell vom Sonnen- und Schattenkind hat sie eine besonders bildhafte Methode zur Arbeit mit dem inneren Kind erschaffen, die über die Grenzen Deutschlands hinaus auf große Resonanz stößt. Stefanie Stahls Bücher, allen voran »Das Kind in dir muss Heimat finden«, stehen seit Jahren auf den Top-Rängen der Bestsellerlisten und haben sich millionenfach verkauft. Die Autorin ist eine begehrte Keynote Speakerin, hostet die beiden Podcasts »So bin ich eben« und »Stahl aber herzlich« und wird regelmäßig als Expertin für Presse und Talkshows angefragt.