Why We Must Understand the Past Before We Can Choose the Future

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “Why do I have to go back into my childhood?” The question usually comes after we've been talking about a marriage that feels impossible, a relationship that keeps cycling through the same arguments, or a family dynamic that leaves someone feeling angry, exhausted, and misunderstood.

Most people want practical answers. Tell me how to communicate better. Tell me how to stop overthinking. Tell me how to stop getting triggered. Tell me how to stop choosing unhealthy partners. Tell me how to stop feeling abandoned, and those are fair questions, but eventually, I ask a question of my own, “Where did you first learn that?’

The truth is, very few of our fears begin in adulthood. Adulthood simply gives them new faces, new names, new opportunities to replay old wounds. For me, understanding attachment theory changed everything; it gave language to experiences I had carried for decades without understanding. It helped me stop viewing myself as broken and start viewing myself as programmed, and there is a very important distinction between those two things. Broken implies something is wrong with you. Programmed implies something happened to you. Once you understand the programming, you finally have a chance to rewrite it.

I was born in Germany. My mother was in the Army. At the time, I knew none of this, of course. I was simply a child trying to make sense of the world around me. Years later, I would learn that my mother had joined the military as a means of escape. She was not running toward opportunity. She was running away from pain. She was the second oldest daughter in a family of seven children and, like many women before her, had been forced into a role she never chose.

Caretaker.

Protector.

Surrogate parent.

All while enduring abuse herself.

My grandmother had endured her own set of hardships. Her husband, my mother's biological father, died in the line of duty as a police officer. Years later, she remarried a man who brought his own trauma into the family system. His trauma became her trauma. Her trauma became my mother's trauma. My mother's trauma became mine. This is how generational wounds travel; not because anyone consciously chooses them, but because pain that is not healed tends to find a new home.

My mother eventually met my biological father while stationed overseas. I know very little about him. His story remains largely hers to tell. What I do know is that she became pregnant with me. He transferred away. Another man signed my birth certificate, and my mother moved to San Francisco. The first lesson of my life was already being written before I ever took my first breath: people leave.

My sister's father came next. Then my brother's father, he is where my story really begins. My first step-father was an alcoholic; not the charming, funny uncle at family gatherings kind of alcoholic. The kind that becomes terrifying when he drinks. The kind whose anger consumes the oxygen in a room. The kind who sees children as extensions of his own pain. My sister and I were not his biological children; my brother was, and he adored my brother. That did not stop him from hurting us.

This is where attachment theory stopped being a concept and became my reality. I was four years old. My sister was two. My brother was one. I remember my sister crying in her crib. I remember trying to help her because she was hungry. I reached through the slats and propped her bottle up. I thought I was helping. He came into the room furious, “You want to be a baby?” he screamed. He grabbed me, put me in a diaper, and made me stand in the corner. I was in the middle of potty training. I remember needing to use the bathroom.

Begging.

Pleading.

Being told no.

I eventually wet myself. Then I was beaten for it.

People often ask me why I became anxious as though anxiety appeared one day out of nowhere; as though my nervous system simply woke up and decided to malfunction. No. My nervous system adapted perfectly to the environment it was raised in. I learned very early that my needs were dangerous. I learned that mistakes led to pain. I learned that speaking up carried consequences. I learned that survival depended on reading the room before the room read me.

One day I soiled myself after holding everything in for too long. He sat me on the edge of the bed, “Why did you do it?” he demanded.

“I don't know.”

Smack.

“Why did you do it?”

“I don't know.”

Smack.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until I eventually fell off the bed and cut my leg on a toy tractor. The sight of blood stopped him; not my tears, not my fear, the blood. Another day I realized my mother worked in the office of the apartment complex where we lived. She was only yards away. I could see the office from outside. I begged to go to her. I knew she would help me. He refused.

Instead, he separated my sister and me. He tied our bedroom doors together using clothing. Every time I opened my door, hers would slam shut. Every time she opened hers, mine would close. Two frightened little girls, pinched fingers.

Tears.

Panic.

No escape.

At one point he picked my sister up by her hair and threatened to tie her to the ceiling fan. I remember wanting my mother so desperately that it physically hurt, and I remember realizing I could not get to her. That moment became the blueprint.

Not consciously.

Not intentionally.

But neurologically.

My four-year-old brain learned something important; being alone is dangerous, being separated is dangerous, being abandoned is dangerous, and if you love someone enough, maybe you can make them stay.

When my mother came home, I told her what happened, and then I watched him punish her for it. I watched alcohol glasses thrown. I watched screaming. I watched violence. I watched my truth become her pain. So, I learned another lesson. Speaking up is dangerous too.

The day my aunt helped us escape is still vivid. My mother and Him were fighting. I closed the bedroom door and sat with my younger siblings the way I often did, trying to protect them; trying to keep everyone safe.

My aunt appeared at the window. She motioned for me to open it. I handed my brother through first, then my sister, then climbed out myself. I could hear my mother struggling to breathe in the next room, and I genuinely did not know if I would ever see her again.

People often ask why I became anxiously attached; why I feared abandonment, why I chased unavailable people, why I begged partners to stay, why I tolerated unhealthy relationships, why I became controlling when I felt unsafe, why I panicked when someone needed space, why I cried when someone pulled away, why I held on long after relationships should have ended, and my answer is always the same: because my childhood taught me that love disappears, that people leave, that speaking up is dangerous, that being alone is unsafe, and that if I worked hard enough, loved enough, sacrificed enough, maybe I could finally earn permanence.

The story doesn't end there; by second grade my mother left us with my grandmother. She was pregnant again, trying to survive, trying to make impossible choices. As an adult, I can understand that. As a seven-year-old little girl, I couldn't. All I knew was that my mother was gone.

Again.

I remember discovering she had come to visit. I ran downstairs excited to see her, but she had already left. I remember chasing her vehicle down a gravel road, crying, wondering why she didn't want me. A child doesn't understand adult complexity. A child creates meaning, and the meaning I created was simple: I am not enough for people to stay, and that belief followed me everywhere.

Into friendships.

Into dating.

Into marriage.

Into parenting.

Into adulthood.

When I began studying attachment theory, suddenly my entire life made sense: the manipulative crying, the fear when someone wanted space, the desperate need to be chosen, the tendency to stay too long, the inability to leave unhealthy relationships, the resentment, the panic, the anxiety, the abandonment wounds; all of it made sense, not because it excused my behavior, but because it explained it, and explanation is where healing begins.

This is why I tell clients we have to understand the past, not so we can blame it, and not so we can stay trapped in it, but because we cannot heal what we do not understand. You cannot change patterns you cannot see. You cannot stop demanding that your partner heal your childhood wounds until you realize those wounds are childhood wounds. You cannot stop expecting your spouse to fill every emotional hole left by your parents until you recognize that expectation exists, and perhaps most importantly, you cannot stop being a victim of your story until you understand the story you've been telling yourself.

For me, this realization didn't come until I was thirty. I had already lived through countless unhealthy relationships, years of repeating patterns, years of trying to get people to stay, years of expecting others to heal pain they did not create, years of confusing love with rescue, and that is where the next stage of healing begins.

It doesn’t start when we blame our parents, when we blame our partners, or when we become experts on trauma, but when we realize every person sitting across from us has their own wounds too; their own attachment injuries; their own fears; their own programming. The question then becomes, “Can two wounded people become conscious enough to heal together? Or is one still asking the other to do all the work?” That distinction changes everything, and that is where we'll go next.

Book a Free Strategy Session here, we can discern your attachment style, determine how it's affecting you in your life, and help you gain clarity around what you can do about it and how you can start choosing healing in your own life.

Always Shining.

XO Ashley