Ep #16: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Dating Patterns (Without You Realizing)

Ever wonder why you keep repeating the same patterns in dating — like chasing emotionally unavailable people, feeling like you’re “too much,” or constantly questioning your worth? In this episode of the Secure Love Club podcast, we’re going deeper than surface-level dating advice. Because often, what you’re experiencing in love today has everything to do with the environment you grew up in.

You’ll learn:
• How your nervous system was shaped by early attachment experiences
• The link between childhood emotional neglect and anxious attachment in adulthood
• Why you feel more chemistry with people who are inconsistent
• How your inner child might be running the show in your love life
• Practical ways to start healing and breaking the cycle

This episode is here to help you connect the dots — not to blame your past, but to free you from patterns that are no longer serving you. When you understand where your patterns came from, you finally have the power to change them. 🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript

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You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends. Welcome back to the club. Today's episode is a big one. We're talking about how your childhood might still be impacting your love life in ways you haven't even realized. If you've ever asked yourself, why do I keep dating emotionally unavailable people? Or why do I freak out when someone pulls away? The answers might be buried in experiences from your early years, and no, this is not about blaming your parents or living in the past. It's about understanding your attachment style so you can finally change the pattern. Let's start with the basics. Your attachment style, the way that you connect, love, and relate in relationships. Didn't just appear out of nowhere. It was shaped in childhood. And again, this isn't about blaming your parents or dragging up the past for the sake of it. It's about understanding the blueprint, your nervous system created when you were little so that you can start to rewrite the parts that aren't serving you anymore. As a child, you learned everything about love, safety, and connection through the people who raised you, usually your primary caregivers, okay? Your parents. You didn't come into the world with a conscious belief system about relationships. You absor, you absorbed it, sorry, through experience. So if your emotional needs were consistently met. If someone was there to comfort you when you cried, attune to your feelings, offer reassurance. When you were scared, you probably developed a secure attachment, and that means you internalized the belief that I'm lovable. People can be trusted and love is a safe place to land. But if love felt unpredictable. Conditional or overwhelming, your nervous system adapted to survive it, because that's what kids do. They don't assume that the adults are the problem. They assume they are the problem. And so the nervous system, why is itself to keep you safe in a world where love. Doesn't always feel safe, and here's the real kicker, those adaptations don't disappear just because you've grown up. They follow you into adulthood, especially when things get intimate or emotionally vulnerable. That's why even as an independent, smart, successful adult that I know you are. Dating can still feel so damn confusing and triggering. And I have so many amazing women who come to me as clients, and they are crushing it in their career. They are trailblazers. They are, you know, they have great friendships. They, they enjoy their life, but when it comes to relationships, they just can't seem to get it right. So let's talk about anxious attachment, specifically. The one that so many of my clients struggle with, and I'm guessing you struggle with if you're here listening to the podcast, and this typically forms when your caregivers were inconsistent, okay? Sometimes they were warm, present, and loving. And other times emotionally distant, distracted, or even rejecting. And you might be sitting here or standing there, walking there listening to this thinking. But maybe I had a great childhood, like my parents were around. I don't remember them being distant. They were there for me. But these attachment styles. Can form from very minute experiences, micro details, right? It could be just a handful of times or, um, a collection of times when your parents, you know, turned you away every time you came up to them when they were working because they were too busy to give you, uh, their time and attention in that moment. And that felt like rejection to you. Like it can happen in. You know, small T trauma ways. It doesn't always come from Big T trauma where they may have been physical or emotional abuse in the household, or your parents went through a really hectic divorce and you didn't know what the fuck was going on. Okay, so what does your nervous system learn from all of that? It learns that love is unpredictable, that you have to work for attention, and that closeness might disappear at any moment. And so you adapt by becoming hyper attuned to other people's moods, you become a master at reading the room, anticipating rejection, and trying to earn love instead of simply receiving it. And that's why in your adult relationships, you might find yourself anxiously waiting for it. The person to text you back, you are overanalyzing every interaction or feeling deeply unsettled when there's any distance. It's not because you are needy or broken, okay? It's because your nervous system is doing what it learned to do, which is chase connection and fear abandonment. The good news, my friend, is that your attachment style is not a life sentence. Just because you were wired one way doesn't mean you have to stay. That way you can rewire, reparent and re motherfucking claim your relationship with your with love, and that's exactly what we're gonna explore in this episode. So let's dive in. I wanna make this nice and tangible for you. Really give you just something to just. Grab onto and sink your teeth into because it's one thing to understand anxious attachment in theory, but it hits differently when you feel the patterns in your body when you realize, oh my God, this explains so much of how I've been showing up in love. So here are a few real life ways this might be playing out for you now based on your early experiences kicking off with if you had to earn love by being. Quote unquote, the good girl or the good boy. Okay, maybe you learned early on that love came with strings attached. You were praised when you were easy, quiet, and helpful, and maybe subtly or not so subtly punished when you were messy emotional, or just had needs. So now as an adult, you might find yourself over-functioning in relationships. You are the one doing the most. You're texting first, planning the dates, remembering the little details, constantly trying to prove you're worthy of being chosen. And deep down there's this belief that love has to be earned, that you have to be perfect to be kept. So you might struggle to ask for what you really need, even the basic stuff, because you don't want to be too much needy or a burden. You'd rather suppress your needs than risk someone pulling away. So instead of expressing yourself, you bottle things up until it eventually explodes or eats you alive from the inside. And I have been there. The next one is if love felt conditional. So you may have grown up with love that depended on how you performed, how you behaved, or how convenient your emotions were for the adults around you. So now your nervous system has internalized the idea that love can disappear if you don't manage it perfectly. You might fear that if you show your real raw emotions like sadness, anger, confusion, even joy, people will leave. So you edit yourself. You monitor how much of you is quote unquote, safe to share. You become hypervigilant in relationships, always scanning for signs. They're pulling away. A slightly dry text means they're over it, a delayed response, they've surely met someone else. You are constantly bracing for rejection, and as a result, you might even preemptively pull away or sabotage things before they can hurt you. I see this happening with a lot of my clients. They will. Project a story onto the distance they're experiencing because it's their way of controlling the narrative. It's their way of, if I know what's going on, I won't be blindsided, or I'm gonna pull away and sabotage this connection because I'm, uh, I'm feeling like you are gonna do that to me, so I'm gonna beat you to the punch, because then at least, even though it's gonna hurt, I'm the one who caused it. Yeah. The next one is if you were praised for being independent, and this one's sneaky because being independent is often celebrated in our culture. But if you were only praised when you didn't need anything, if your strength, self-sufficiency and silence were the things that got you love. Then vulnerability starts to feel unsafe. Now, as an adult, you might really struggle to let people in. So you are that friend who gives advice but rarely opens up. You might be dating, but there's a part that's always holding back, keeping a wall up, and it's not because you don't care, but because deep down you don't fully trust that anyone will truly be there if you let them see the real you. You might even pride yourself on being low maintenance. You are never needing too much, you're always being chill. But the truth is your needs aren't being met. And somewhere deep down you are craving intimacy and emotional safety, even if you don't know how to ask for it. So on the outside you have this mask of like, I'm this strong independent woman, but internally you can actually feel. Very isolated because you are human and you have needs. You need human connection. You need sensitivity, love, vulnerability. But those emotions feel so unsafe for you because you learn early on that that's not where you derive love and acceptance. You derive love and praise for when you are strong, when you are self-sufficient, when you don't need anyone to come and rescue you and meet your needs. Okay, so we just have this warped perception of what creates love and healthy relationships. And the final pattern here is if a parent was emotionally unavailable or inconsistent, this one hits hard for so many anxious attaches. If your emotional world wasn't mirrored or validated, if you never knew which version of a parent you were going to get. Your nervous system got used to inconsistency, so now you may find yourself drawn to partners who give you those mixed signals one day they're all in the next day, they're cold or distant. And even though it hurts, it feels familiar, your brain wise it as love, because that's what love felt like growing up. You might mistake the emotional rollercoaster. So the anxiety, the weight, the highs and lows for passion. That chase becomes addictive and you think if I can just get them to stay, that will mean I'm lovable. And so you stay in dynamics that constantly trigger your attachment system because deep down you're trying to heal the original wound. Every single one of these patterns makes so much sense. When you look at where they began, you weren't broken, you were adapting, which is what children do so well. But now as an adult, those old survival strategies are keeping you from the very thing that you crave, the most safe, secure love. So by now, you might be starting to connect the dots. You're seeing how your early experiences shaped your beliefs, your behaviors, and the way you show up in love. But I wanna take this even deeper because this isn't just about your thoughts or your childhood memories. This isn't just some mental pattern. You can logic your way out of which I know you want to.'cause so many of my clients do this. They wanna intellectualize their feelings, they wanna understand it on a cognitive level, but unfortunately, that's not enough to shift these patterns because my love, this is biological. Your nervous system plays a massive role in how you experience dating, connection and emotional safety. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about your nervous system, because it's not trying to sabotage you. It's not dramatic, it's not clingy, it's not weak, despite what some people may have told you. It's wired for survival. Your nervous system's entire job is to protect you from danger, and when you were growing up, it learned what was safe and what was threatening. I'm doing air quotes here based on the environment you were raised in, and that wiring doesn't just disappear once you hit adulthood. It sticks, unfortunately.'cause now we have to go and do the work to unstick it. So if unpredictability, emotional highs and lows or cons, inconsistent affection were your norm, guess what? Your body now equates with. Love that exact chaos. Your nervous system associates. Emotional instability with connection, because that's what it learned Love felt like. That means when someone actually shows up, calm, grounded, and emotionally available, your system might freak the fuck out. You will feel bored, disconnected, uninterested, or even uncomfortable. Okay? You might tell yourself there's no chemistry. This is, they're not for me. There's no chemistry, there's no spark. Like it feels boring. But what's really happening is that your nervous system is like, hold up. This is too calm. This doesn't feel like love. Where's the chase? Where's the anxiety spike? I'm used to, and that's where so many anxious attaches get stuck, myself included in the past, okay, I was in your ex exact shoes. They walk away from the very thing that could help them feel safe because their system is still wired to chase the emotional rollercoaster they knew as a kid. But here's the truth you need to hear. Calm is chemistry. Consistency is sexy. Emotional safety doesn't mean boring. It means your nervous system can finally breathe. You just might not be used to that yet, that shift from chaos to calm, from survival to safety, it takes time, it takes intention, and above all, it takes compassion because your nervous system isn't the enemy. It's not trying to hold you back. It's just trying to protect you in the only way it knows how. So instead of beating yourself up when you feel turned off by the quote unquote nice guy or nice girl, or feel activated by someone inconsistent, get curious. I want you to ask yourself, is this chemistry or is this a familiar chaos? I've mistaken for love. The more awareness you bring to your patterns here, the more you give your nervous system the space to recalibrate. And with enough safety, consistency and self-trust, your body will learn a new normal. And let me tell you that new normal, it's so much better than the old chaos. It's calm, grounded, mutual secure, and yes, still hot. Because real connection doesn't come from anxiety, it comes from attunement. And I have been through this process, so trust me when I say you've gotta give it a chance, because when you allow yourself to be held by someone who is consistent and emotionally available and secure, and you just let yourself relax into it. My God, does the attraction start to grow from the most grounded place, not from this anxious fight or flight state where it could be taken away any moment and that level of predictability is hot. So now you understand your patterns aren't random. They're not personality flaws, they're adaptations. Clever protective ways. Your nervous system tried to keep you safe. Your nervous system is so clever, right? Even say that to yourself, you are so clever. I know you've just been trying to have my back. But once you see those patterns for what they are, something powerful happens. You stop blaming yourself and you start reclaiming your power. Healing is possible, my friend, and it starts with something deceptively simple but deeply transformative. You start with compassion, not shame. We've gotta drop this self-criticism, this judgment being so hard on yourself. You must be compassionate and understand. It's not that you are broken. It's not that you're too dramatic or you're too much, or you're just bad at relationships, or you are that person who has so many needs that no one will ever be able to meet them. No. When you are in these relationships, you are just responding to programming that made total sense at the time when you were young. The way you attach, the way you react, the way you crave or push love away. It all came from somewhere. It was learned, and that means it can be unlearned. So here's how that healing journey begins. Number one is get curious about your early experiences. Set aside some time to journal without pressure or expectation. This is where we just want to explore. Ask yourself, what messages did I receive about love? Were you told directly or indirectly that love had to be earned, that needing something made you too much, that love disappears if you are not perfect. Right. What were the messages you received? Write them down. Next question. What did I have to do to feel seen, safe or worthy? Did you have to be the helper? The achiever, the quiet one, the self-sufficient one who never caused a fuss. Right. What was the rule book you started to write and develop that told you, if I just follow these rules, these guidelines, I will be loved, I will be seen, and I will be worthy. This reflection here isn't about digging through trauma or blaming your parents, blaming your caregivers. No, it's about connecting the dots. You get to witness yourself here with compassion, and you get to understand why your heart, your mind, your nervous system. Operates the way that it does. The next step is notice your triggers in real time if you can. Awareness here means learning to catch the pattern in the moment. So the next time you're dating and someone takes a little longer to reply, or they say something vague that leaves you spiraling, or you sudden suddenly feel the urge to fix things or overexplain or chase, pause. Take a breath. And ask yourself, what does this moment remind me of? Is it echoing something from your past? That feeling of being ignored, misunderstood, left out, not chosen. That is your inner child raising her hand. She's not asking you to panic. She's asking you to notice, okay? The goal here isn't to avoid being triggered. Triggers will happen. All throughout life, especially in relationships, it's inevitable, but the power is in recognizing when it's happening and choosing to respond differently. This is something we go through inside peacefully Attached my signature program is. You get my signature Trigger Tracker, which is a tool that is designed to help you identify the specific behaviors and experiences that activate you in relationships. It helps you identify where that trigger is coming from. So what was the early experience reminds you of? You get to identify the need that you feel is not being met. You get to use the self-regulation tools that I teach you in the program, and then you get to meet that need for yourself or communicate the need to your partner, which you also learn all about effective, healthy communication with custom frameworks and tools and all the things. So keep that in mind. If you ever wanna take this work deeper, peacefully attached is where you will do that. Okay. Number three is learning to reparent yourself. And this is where the magic starts. When you feel anxious, when you feel abandoned, when the old stories start shouting in your ear, you get to become the parent you needed but didn't get at the time. And so this might sound like saying to yourself, Hey, I know this feels scary, but you are not alone anymore. It's okay to feel anxious. That makes sense. Based on what you've been through. Okay. So you're really validating what you are feeling. You're validating that inner child's emotional experience, telling yourself you don't have to earn love. You are already worthy. You are already worthy exactly as you are. You don't need to chase here. You don't need to fix anything. You get to just show up as your beautiful, authentic, compassionate self with self respect, and the right people will match that. Instead of shaming yourself for being triggered, soothe yourself. Validate your emotions. Hold space for the little one inside of you who's still waiting to feel safe. This certainly is about, isn't about pretending that your feelings aren't there. It's about showing up for yourself in a new way and over time, this is how you build internal safety. This is how your nervous system starts to calm down and trust that love doesn't have to mean chaos anymore. Here's the bottom line. Healing begins when you stop abandoning yourself in moments of emotional activation and start showing up with presence and compassion. It's about, in those moments when that old ex shows up in your life, or that situationship that's been going on for far too long, triggers you again, and you have the choice of, I either run back to this person and continue the pattern. Or I notice that this does not feel good. You get present in your body and you have compassion for yourself by validating how you feel. I totally get why you have this urge to run back to this person. I fully understand it, but we get to make a different decision here. This is not about fixing yourself, it's about coming home to yourself. And when you do that, my love, the game changes. Dating feels different. You stop chasing people who don't choose you. You stop settling for breadcrumbs, and you start moving from a place of grounded competence and emotional clarity and the love that you attract from that space. Whole different frequency, my friends, whole different frequency. So I'm excited for you and the journey that I know you are on. If this episode hit home. Please know you're not alone. So many of us are healing these wounds and learning to love in a healthier way. If you found this helpful, I would really love if you would leave a review and share it with a friend, it would mean the absolute world to me. If you can take a couple of minutes of your time to. Give me a five star rating if you love this, and leave a review about what this podcast means to you. Uh, maybe a breakthrough that you had, because the more, uh, that you can do that, the more this podcast gets sent out to people who will benefit from it. And the more you benefit, the more everyone benefits, the more we all get uplifted and change collectively. As always, come over on Instagram. Let me know what landed for you the most. And until then, remember. Your past may have shaped you, but it doesn't define your worth. You are safe to outgrow the patterns that no longer serve. You have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.