How Do Emotional Ties Affect Our Mental Health?

If we look at the first days of our existence, babies are already prepared, from birth, to develop fully on a physical, psychological and emotional level; Even so, its growth is influenced by different determining elements. Among those factors that affect child development, the leading role of the environment that surrounds the baby and, above all, the influence exerted by the beings closest to him stand out

For this reason, the family constitutes a central element for the healthy maturation of the baby and, in particular, the reference figure to which the baby is linked, the so-called attachment figure. This reality explains why the first interactions and experiences generate a great impact on this small being, who is in an extremely sensitive stage.

In summary, affective development begins from birth and starts from our family interactions, so that adults have learned to relate to our environment and respond emotionally based on the patterns and models experienced and acquired as children and, especially, to from the relationship developed with our attachment figure.

These primal influences from early childhood accompany us into adulthood that is, they interact with us throughout our lives, and mediate our ways of relating to others and, primarily, to those closest or dearest to us.

What is the importance of our family environment?

The family environment intervenes substantially in the baby’s development and the greatest influence is exerted by the reference figure to which the baby is attached, the so-called attachment figure In the field of mental health, there are numerous scientific works that suggest that establishing a secure attachment bond is essential for the healthy development of the baby, both on a physical, biological and psychological level. The baby builds a secure attachment bond when he feels comforted, loved and cared for by the father, mother or primary caregiver. On the contrary, she develops an insecure attachment when her needs, especially emotional ones, are not covered by her reference adult.

The theories that have studied our bonding interactions come from fields as different as neurodevelopment, attachment, biological or psychosocial approaches. As a species, we develop in an interpersonal, relational or emotional context. Hence the importance of highlighting the influence exerted by the baby’s first interactions and with the baby. In fact, the responses that the referring adult gives to the baby affect how the baby will understand the world.

If the baby experiences a healthy bonding relationship, in which his physical and emotional needs are met, he will tend to integrate this relationship centrally in his development and that, in turn, will influence his way of relating to others. It’s more, The consistency of those first interactions will not only affect the baby in a relational or emotional way but it will have an impact on the development of the structural and functional networks of your brain, since it is in an extremely sensitive stage.

Therefore, children who have been cared for by their parents with sensitivity, in a welcoming environment and with help to regulate their emotions have the foundations to generate a secure attachment. In this environment, children have had the opportunity to express their feelings and needs, which have been addressed with receptivity and sensitivity.

Consequently, these children will tend to express their feelings more easily, whether of joy, sadness or lack of comfort, in contrast to those children who have developed an insecure attachment, because, as babies, they may have experienced some (or many) deficiencies in attention from your attachment figure. Parents may have been insensitive to their affective or emotional needs they may have responded to those needs inconsistently or may have offered reactions that are not adjusted to what the baby or child formulates.

Attachment in our life

If the response of the attachment figure to the needs of the baby is substantial for its stability and correct development, so are the experiences lived and interpreted by the child coming from its attachment figure That is to say, in the bond that occurs in the mother-child or father-child relationship, the way in which the adult referent interacts with the baby is as important as the interpretations that the child makes of the behaviors of her parents.

Thus, studies in these areas ensure that emotional development is essential during the first years of life and that the bond that the baby establishes with his or her attachment figure is essential for the child’s mental health. Furthermore, these bases not only affect this initial stage, but the way in which our first relationships influenced us also become constitutive of the mental health of the person throughout their vital development, from birth to death. adulthood, passing through adolescence and youth.

Consequently, this stage can be considered an essential stage to cultivate positive and sensitive parenting, which promotes the establishment of a secure attachment between the baby and the bonding figure and which can promote its correct development. This is how parents or guardians have the important task of providing their son or daughter with the basic needs for their survival and satisfying adequate personal development

If we think that feeding is essential for the baby’s life, we must keep in mind that it is also essential to feel safe, comforted and loved. That is, the baby needs to be emotionally nourished through healthy interactions in her environment, which helps build that secure attachment. This implies that it is not enough to meet the baby’s physiological needs, but emotional or affective needs must also be satisfied.

Echoes in adult life

In general, the patterns that influenced us in childhood continue to operate in our subconscious and are familiar to us. How many times have we caught ourselves doing or saying something that our parents did and that we actually dislike? Sometimes, they are patterns that we have identified and that we try to avoid or that we work on so as not to reproduce them and, other times, on the contrary, we enhance them because, for us, they constitute a good example or way of being in the world.

On other occasions, these patterns are expressed in a way that we are not at all aware of and, perhaps, someone outside of us shares a comment or observation with us that makes us realize that we are obviously repeating those patterns. Whatever the way, our way of expressing feelings has a lot to do with what our parents or reference adults taught us explicitly or implicitly, in addition to the impacts or important experiences we experienced in childhood.

As adults we may be repeating these patterns with the people around us and with whom we interact In particular, they may be mediating the way in which we relate to our most loved ones, with those people with whom we establish important emotional ties, such as, for example, our partner or our children. Or they can intervene in the way we choose a partner, perhaps in a search to make up for a lack or to have a personality structure that is familiar to us.

In these environments we can reproduce familiar roles and express our emotions in the way our role models taught us or in the way certain events affected us. And if we want to go further, these patterns become more evident when it comes to being parents, either because we repeat with our children, very faithfully, how we were raised or because we deal, precisely, with the battle of not repeating certain models.

Sometimes this can confront us in our way of relating. Therefore, it is important to stop and reflect on whether some of the circumstances we experience or the actions we take are influenced by our primary relationships or whether these primary relationships affect us in the way we relate, and if they cause us pain, review how to heal them.

Therapeutic support can help us bring these patterns to consciousness in order to relate in a more assertive and fully conscious way, not only with our environment, but also with ourselves From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand why it can be difficult for adults to understand our own feelings and reactions to different situations and, even more so, to know how to show how we feel or master our responses when we are involved in circumstances or contexts that affect us. emotionally.

Sometimes there may even be a lack of connection with ourselves that makes it difficult or impossible for us to identify why we are feeling this way, why we respond in a certain way and what needs we are not meeting.