You know that phrase “out of sight, out of mind”? Well it is not really describing a healthy feature of attachment. In fact the phrase that is true of most humans is “out of sight, in my heart”. This is because of Object Constancy.
When we are born we internalize our caretakers or attachment figures as good or bad objects. So objects refer to people in this sense. Most of the time we internalize our parents as good object. These are the people who soothe us, take care of us, and provide comfort to us. As we get older, while that good object may not always be able to soothe us in the moment, we recall their voice, an imagine of them or even their smell to comfort us. This means that even when someone is out of sight, they are far from out of mind. They are always in our psyche and we can call upon them at any time to feel loved. This is what we refer to as object constancy. Object constancy is the reason why, when someone dies we can still feel them with us or why we can move away from our loved ones and still feel the attachment and connection.
Object constancy perpetuates relationships even though we are not in daily contact with our good objects.
For example, I live on a different continent from my mom right now, but I know she loves me and is thinking of me. I also can remember her and recall my love for her and this comforts me.
So what happens if object constancy does not form and how does it not form? Well, when parents are inconsistent with their nurturing of the child, the child can’t really internalize them as a consistent good object. It becomes like ground hog’s day where each day they have to start over again with the process of attachment. The child just doesn’t know what kind of object they are getting that day. As a result the child cannot have a sense of an internalized object. This leads to someone who is deeply insecure in attachment as they believe the other person will forget them or it leads to deep cut off in attachment where the person can leave others without having any regret or forethought. They simply cannot imagine feeling grief at losing that person because they can’t keep the person as a constant object. By the way, both of these outcomes can exist in the same person. They can be insecure about others leaving and also leave others without much sense of loss. I have found the most effective way to work with this is to actually imagine your loved one inside of you and imagine you inside of them. Some of my clients have actually imagined a mini version of themselves inside of their good objects and vice versa. This has really helped develop a sense of object constancy. Another approach is to create a transitional object. Give someone a card or ask for a letter from them so that you may have a reminder of their caring. This will help your psyche internalize them over time. I have found this also to be helpful for those who struggle with insecure attachment and fear of abandonment. I hope this is helpful, and as usual, from my hear to yours,