Why Don't I Feel Good Enough?: Using Attachment Theory to Find a Solution

"It’s a lovely book by Helen Dent, a lovely summary of attachment theory. Attachment theory underpins a lot of psychology—the simple observation that as humans, we need to relate to other people. In fact, you can’t survive as a human if you don’t have relationships. Your baby, just by itself, would literally die. It has to have a parent or committed carer. All the way through our lives, we need other people. I know there are one or two hermits in the middle of nowhere. But they’re a tiny, tiny, tiny minority. Most of us are social and need and relate to other people. So, attachment theory really underpins much work in current psychology and child work and developmental work. It’s lifelong: our attachment patterns affect how we relate to others. So it helps us to try and understand what our particular patterns of relationships are. “Attachment theory underpins a lot of psychology—the simple observation that as humans, we need to relate to other people” Most people have a reasonably secure attachment and have had good enough relationships with parents that our relationships with others are reasonably stable and we meet our needs, more or less. There are some who, based on unfortunate childhood experiences, have more difficulties in relationships. Attachment theory helps us to try and understand what is going on with those people who have later difficulties in their relationships. I think this book very nicely lays it out. Again, it’s written for the layperson—so you can look at your own attachment and understand what you might do differently. I like the fact that it’s not written merely for the academic. I think I would encourage them to get as wide an experience as possible, including doing things which aren’t technically labelled psychology: talking to lots of people, having lots of life experience, and reading a lot of novels. I was very tempted, when you asked for my five books, to name five novels. Those are my parallel learnings, if you like. Just talking to people, attending to people, and reading the distilled experience of others, in the form of stories. I said novels, but I also mean plays, drama, and so on. Stories often have, at their centre, a human dilemma: how do we relate to people? How do we deal with people abusing power? How do we survive relationships and their problems? How do we thrive? And so on. Yes, empathy. I can’t know the life experience of everybody. So reading novels about other people’s lives is very important. Reading about the lives of people who’ve come to live in a different country, what it’s like to be an immigrant, what it’s like to be old or young. It’s very difficult just from your observation of life, as the people you know tend to be more like you. So, actually going out and reading stories can tell you more about other people’s experiences. As a therapist, you don’t just draw on all these five lovely books that I’ve been talking about, important though they are. They’re there to help you to know what to do next, as I mentioned. They’re good theories which are practical. But you also draw, of course, on your own experiences and your own relationships. Your own feelings of despair or hopelessness or envy or love or friendship. You know about them through your own experience and through reading stories. So, I think novels and literature are enormously important too."