In April 2023, I was required to write an essay for my Emotion-Focused Therapy class, reflecting on my attachment styles. I didn’t receive a good mark because it was too personal, not academic; however, the process of writing it was necessary. I wanted to share it.
My mother was always there for me. She continues to be there for me now. The past four years have been difficult, with the death of my father in 2019 and the onset of COVID, with the travel restrictions between Hong Kong and Canada preventing me from seeing her. When I was young, I could depend on her for all my emotional support. She was a stay-at-home mother in the first years of my life before returning to work when I started primary school.
Looking back at my early years, my first relational attachment to my primary caregiver was secure based on John Bowlby's criteria. My mother was always around from birth until around two years old, up until today. She remains the person I turn to for emotional support. When I was a young child, there wasn't an overreaction if I fell or something went wrong. I was free to make mistakes and learn from them, knowing that the safety and support of my mother were always around me in my early years.
With my mother, things felt safe and secure; however, there were issues with my brother, which may have created an insecure attachment with peer groups. My brother was an angry child, according to my mother. After she gave birth, she went through a period of postpartum depression where the attachment to him was not secure. There wasn't emotional support from others for my mother, making it difficult for her to bond with him. As a young child, he would hit, lash out and seek to harm me. He was never happy, and we would learn he was sexually abused by a family member when he was around five years old; we would remember 30 years later, after he was arrested. I was not. I feared being around my brother, but I was alone with him after school when my mother started working, which was when I was in primary school. During this time, he would terrorize me until he left for secondary school, when my parents paid for him to attend boarding school. I would stay at friends' homes or seek ways to avoid going home until I knew my mother or father would be around to protect me.
Things became even more complicated when I started school in grade one (primary one). Socially, things were good. Being in a small community of 90 people made it easy to find friends who joined sports and interest clubs, such as scouting. In my first year of primary school, my teacher mentioned how it would be difficult for me to focus on things going on around in the classroom. I was missing many of the benchmarks for a child at my age. My shoes were always on the wrong feet, even when the letters L and R were written on the tops of the shoes. Academically, forming letters would be odd – d/b, q/p, and many misformed letters like s and e. I could not read simple books like 'See Spot Run' no matter how many times they were read with me, and I followed along. Behaviourally, I seemed aloof but not energetic. There were no discipline problems; instead, I was overly helpful to the teacher, seeking approval within this setting, as I knew I was different.
I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, or what is known today as ADHD, inattentive type (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5, 2013), by the Clarke Institute in Toronto. It was suggested that I be put in a special non-residential school about 40 km from my home, which taught students with mental health issues. Medication was not recommended then, and I never took it until I was 43. I was seven years old and didn’t fully understand why I was going to a new school where I didn't know anyone, in a town I had never been to. I don't remember my issue being discussed with me, or if it did, I didn't fully understand it, but took it as if something was wrong with me and needed to be fixed.
Many psychological theories have associated attachment insecurity and ADHD (Storebø et al., 2016). There is a belief that emotional dysregulation is an essential feature of the hyperactive–impulsive type of ADHD (Storebø et al., 2016). The perinatal period plays a critical part in the initial attachment of people with ADHD and the development of attachment. Looking back, it feels like my mother and father provided a secure environment in the initial stages of life. My brother's treatment of me and my moving to a different school while still having the same friends in my village caused an insecure attachment with my peers. The secure attachment to my mother grew stronger as doubts arose about others, and it became more challenging for me to make friends.
The special school I went to had many students with the more hyperactive style of ADHD, developmental delay, autistic, or a mixture of different mental health issues at once. Some students had physical challenges, such as using a wheelchair or having minimal sight or hearing. Looking around the class, I couldn't understand why I was there. Students in my class would move in and out on a monthly or yearly basis. I wouldn't know or play with the students in the other courses, as they were in a 'normal' program, meaning a classroom with no modifications in the curriculum. My social circle consisted of these students during school time, as well as children in my village. I continued with sports and local activities with the students in my village. With my village friends, I was teased – called dumb and stupid. I realized that doing simple tasks, such as tying, reinforced the feeling that I was not good enough. Eventually, I would withdraw from sports and local activities, preferring to stay home to watch TV alone if I could or find neighbours to play with or hang out with so I wouldn't be alone with my brother. I now understand how there was shame in my abilities, and feel my attachment style to peers was insecure, but I still maintained a strong attachment to my primary caregiver.
My goal as a schoolchild was to be 'normal,' meaning not being in the special school, but rather attending my village school with the kids next door and across the street. When I was in P2, I asked to find a tutor to help, which was unheard of in the 1980s. I would take classes in summer school in P2 or P3, trying almost anything to be in the 'normal school,' thinking the teasing would stop. Eventually, I would return to my regular school. Still, for some lessons – English language arts, which is reading, writing, spelling, and maths – I would be pulled out into a remedial class with a special education teacher. In the classes where I was with the 'normal' students, I would always try to show, in some way, how smart I was, excelling in social studies, science, art, physical education, and music. There are elements of this today, as when initially meeting people, I try to find a way to show off my strengths. This drive to be seen as usual dominates my work life today as I tend to push myself hard, be unforgiving for making mistakes, and feel that being not 'good enough' in my workplace has helped me get ahead, but at a cost. Being 'normal' became an obsession throughout my academic years, from primary to secondary school, with some elements persisting to this day.
My relationships in primary school were not close due to the constant change and the feeling that most students in my primary school classes struggled to form bonds, given the numerous emotional and intellectual challenges they faced. In my first year of secondary school, I had no close friends and would spend most of my time with my mother, helping her with our family business in my free time, not for the money, but to be with her. Our family moved to a bigger city when I was in my final years of primary school (Form 1 and Form 2 in Hong Kong), necessitating the need for remedial classes. My attachment style to others was avoidant, as I mainly kept to myself and believed friends would never stick around.
In my second year of secondary school, I attended a typical school with no exceptional educational support. People were unaware of my academic background and did not share it with anyone. There was a strong desire to build new relationships, which felt more clingy to others on my part. I thought I loved the people I was with and would express it in a powerful way. It would make things uncomfortable. If they did things without me, I would get angry and jealous, thinking they might not like me. My thoughts about the people around me were obsessive in retrospect. I did things to fit in and be social constantly, such as drinking and taking on more responsibilities in school and extracurricular activities, as a way to spend more time with them. There was more focus on social activities than on schoolwork, but I could still get good marks without studying. There was a drive to be needed and indispensable in running the school and people's lives. This would extend to my first romantic relationships with females in my second and third university years. Based on my understanding of Bowlby's Attachment Theory, I believe that the transition to a 'normal school' in my second year of secondary school created significant anxiety and worry about forming and maintaining friendships. It became a focus fueled by the normal adolescent tendencies to build relationships outside the family, but accelerated due to the constant changes in my friendship groups.
In 2003, I moved to Korea after working for the Government of Ontario for eight years, serving various politicians and ministers, and following the end of my first long-term relationship. I lived in Korea for eight years, attending several different schools, and experienced constant changes. I moved 13 times and had 14 different jobs. Most of the friendships formed would only last a year due to the continual turnover of people. I would build strong relationships with people, but they would mostly leave within a year or two. I had a few close friends who remained with me during my Korean years, but I generally treated all friendships as temporary and distant for those who were close to me. Most people I was surrounding myself with were ten years younger than me and in their 20s, while my friends at home were getting married and building families. Relationship-wise, I had come to terms with my homosexuality and was exploring this new part of me in a new country. I was dating a lot, and people who became disposable. Some of the people I dated would get frustrated as I wasn't responsive or inattentive to their thoughts and feelings. The constant change in friendships, as well as my previous experiences with continuous shifts in friendships throughout my life, created an internal working model that suggests people do not stick around, so there is no point in investing in these relationships. I was not interested in long-term relationships or friendships and felt I could always find more if I was social, loud and drank. I developed a more avoidant attachment style in my relationships and friendships, extending into my first few years in Hong Kong. My relationship with my mother remained secure, while the relationships with those who moved from Korea to Hong Kong became a bit more secure. Still, initially, I was reluctant to share my true self with anyone but my mother and father.
I met Marco two years after arriving in Hong Kong in 2012. He changed my life. Early in the relationship, we had issues, and I would often find myself looking for the exits. He confronted me by explaining that he would be sharing something personal, and I was paying half attention to what he was saying, but my mind was focused on other things. He would get frustrated by stopping talking and staring at me. I would give a puzzled look. He would ask if I knew what he was talking about, and I could respond exactly to what he said verbatim, but with no emotion. Over the initial months, he would share more about these frustrations with me, often sharing something personal, but I wouldn't seem interested; there would be no follow-up. He sensed from me a feeling of coldness or aloofness, as if I didn't care about what was happening in his life. I began seeing what he saw and started seeking help from a counsellor to look at my behaviours and take medication for my ADD, and understand my path.
Within my relationship with Marco, I learned to extend the secure attachment I had with my mother to him, and in turn, become more open to the close friends I have now. I made many mistakes with Marco, but I never felt these mistakes would jeopardize our relationship. There was a sense of being able to share anything at all. Our relationship grew stronger over the course of eight years. Two years ago, my partner had the opportunity to build a new life in America, as his mother had emigrated there. In his note to me, he mentioned how he had learned that I can be deep and emotional, but it was buried deep inside. At the time, it didn't make sense for me to leave, as I couldn't work in America and study. Marco mentioned the only time he felt happy in Hong Kong was during the time he spent with me. He felt the chances for personal growth were bigger in America than in Hong Kong. It was vital for him to do this, and I supported him, though the change has affected me more than I knew.
Reviewing my path to this point has made me aware of how my attachment styles and strategies have changed throughout my life. These changes were due to trauma when I was a child at my brother's hands, the moving of schools, learning to adapt, and being labelled as different. These experiences have brought out a sense of shame for being different, but they have also created a drive in me to be successful. I believe my 'drive to be normal' made me excel, but at the cost of becoming more self-critical and overly self-reliant. It makes me resist the urge to reach out for help both in my professional and personal life.
Having clients at St. John's Cathedral Counselling Services and completing my counselling courses through the University of Hong Kong have helped me recognize and understand how I have arrived at this point. I am continuing to learn to be more dependent and aware of my thoughts and emotions, which has been challenging. I am a Western man who culturally should be more open to his thoughts and feelings; however, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, emotions were not easily discussed. I moved to Asia when I was 30, lived in two similar cultures, and had relationships with people who, although culturally different, shared a similar outlook on emotions as I had growing up.
As for how I would describe my current attachment style, it remains secure with my mother and Marco, but only via phone, not in person. In day-to-day life, the attachment I feel towards my peers is not as secure as it was with Marco, but it is not as ambivalent as it was in Korea or during my early school years, and it is not as anxious as it was during my adolescent years.
In the year my partner left, there was a point when I felt like there was no secure attachment to anyone around me. I felt lost. With distance and more separate lives, the attachment to Marco is more strained. I reacted to this feeling by becoming more closed off and self-reliant since this pattern had worked before. I have learned there is a strain causing problems that affected me personally and my work life.
Additionally, in the year my partner left, many of my close friends left or are planning to leave Hong Kong, which has made me feel more reluctant to form new friendships. I have become more aware of these issues during this course and also by reviewing the materials for this essay. I am building something with someone who has been helping me regain a more secure attachment than when my partner left. It has helped me open up more, share, and possibly recover the secure attachment I need to grow and improve.
