Mary Anne Byrnes, BSW, LMFT

01/07/2026

Romantic relationships activate our attachment system more deeply than any other human bond—and this is not by accident.

Why? Because intimate relationships unconsciously mirror our earliest experiences of connection, safety, and love with our caregivers.

This is why, even when you are intelligent, self-aware, prayerful, or emotionally literate, you may still find yourself repeating the same relationship patterns. It’s not a lack of effort. It’s not stubbornness. And it’s certainly not weakness.

Your nervous system does not respond from logic or intention. It responds from implicit memory—the emotional and physiological patterns formed long before you had words, awareness, or choice.

Most people are not in denial about their childhood experiences. They simply don’t realize how emotional neglect, inconsistency, abandonment, or unmet needs quietly shaped their internal wiring. So they keep reacting, withdrawing, chasing, overgiving, or shutting down—not because they want to, but because their nervous system learned that this was how to survive connection.

Until awareness and healing occur, the nervous system will keep choosing what feels familiar over what feels healthy.

Here’s the truth many people miss:
Romantic relationships do not create our wounds. They reveal them.

And that revelation, as painful as it may feel, is actually an invitation. Because what is revealed can finally be healed—not through insight alone, not through positive thinking, and not through “trying harder,” but through nervous system regulation, emotional processing, subconscious reprogramming, and new relational experiences that teach the body what safety truly feels like.

Healing happens when your body learns that love does not have to hurt, perform, or be earned.

That’s not just theory.
That’s the science.

If you’re ready to stop repeating cycles and start building secure, healthy connections from the inside out, click the link in my bio to book a 1-1 session.

NOTE: Educational information only. Not psychotherapy or professional mental health care.

12/01/2025

I work with attachment a lot in my practice.

Here’s the part no one talks about:

1. Your attachment style was shaped before you knew what attachment even meant.

When a child reaches for emotional closeness and the parent doesn’t meet them there, the child doesn’t stop needing love…they stop expecting it.

2. Your nervous system learned to live in “freeze” or “fawn.”

Because in your childhood home:
• expressing feelings got you ignored
• needing comfort got you rejected
• showing pain made you “dramatic”
• seeking attention got you shamed

So you adapted, beautifully, painfully, silently.

3. You became self-reliant too early.

Not because you were “strong,”
but because no one was emotionally available to lean on. You learned to swallow tears, hide fears, and handle everything alone.

4. You internalized the idea that your feelings were inconvenient.

Your parent’s blank face became your blueprint for adulthood:

• you don’t know how to ask for help
• you apologize for having needs
• you choose people who are distant
• you confuse anxiety with love
• you stay where you are unseen

And here’s the most heartbreaking part:

Children don’t stop loving emotionally unavailable parents. They stop loving themselves.

That was the wound.
That was the beginning.

WHY YOU STRUGGLE TODAY (Psychology & Attachment)

This is why you:

• overthink every relationship
• feel emotionally disconnected but don’t know why
• shut down when things get too intimate
• attract partners who make you feel how your parents made you feel
• crave closeness but fear it at the same time
• look “strong” to everyone else but feel empty inside

You’re not broken.
You’re responding exactly how a child responds when emotional needs go unmet.

Everything goes back to the home that raised you. Everything.

If this feels painfully true…

📘 I Didn’t Choose to Be Born
will help you understand and heal the wounds caused by emotionally distant, neglectful, unsupportive, or narcissistic parents, so you can finally break the patterns they created.

📕 Chasing Love That Hurts
will help you unlearn the adult patterns that came from those wounds. like limerence, emotional fixation, trauma bonds, and choosing emotionally unavailable partners.

Choose the book your heart needs.
(Link here: https://linktr.ee/traumatorecovery)

11/23/2025

It’s wild how easily we forget this:

humiliation has never made a human being rise.
Shame has never built cooperation.
Discomfort has never taught emotional safety.

We know this in ourselves —
the last time someone spoke to you with disrespect or made you feel small,
did you feel inspired to do better?
Or did something inside you shut down?

Children are no different.

If anything, their nervous systems are even more tender, their sense of self still forming, their trust in us the foundation they stand on.

Correction is necessary.
Guidance is essential.
But neither require wounding.

When a child feels seen, respected, and safe, their instinct is to meet you — to reconnect, to learn, to grow.

We don’t have to make them feel worse to help them do better. We just have to lead them in ways that honour their humanity, not compromise it. ❤️

Quote Credit: ❣️

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11/20/2025

Connection… then redirection!!

We talk a lot about teaching, correcting, and shaping our children…
but none of it lands without connection.

A child doesn’t follow guidance because we’re bigger, louder, or in charge.
They follow it because they feel safe with us.
Because the relationship matters to them.
Because their nervous system is steady enough in our presence to actually hear what we’re saying.

Connection isn’t the soft alternative to discipline — it’s the foundation that makes discipline meaningful.

When a child feels understood, they’re more open.
When they feel respected, they’re more receptive.
When they feel valued, they’re more willing to trust our lead.

That’s why the real work happens before the instruction ever leaves our mouth — in the tone we use, the presence we offer, the relationship we choose to protect.

Because guidance only really sticks when a child feels anchored to the person giving it. ❤️

Quote Credit: ❣️

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10/26/2025

Every hard conversation carries a choice — to open the door to connection, or to close it in defence.

When our children come to us in conflict, confusion, or emotion, they’re really asking: Is it safe to bring my truth here? And in that moment, our tone, our posture, our words — they answer that question louder than anything else.

If we meet their honesty with judgment, the door narrows.
If we meet it with curiosity, it widens.
If we rush to correct, we teach them to hide.
If we pause to understand, we teach them to trust.

But so often, we shut down these moments because we’re scared — scared of losing control, scared of being disrespected, scared of what their emotions might reveal in us.

Yet fear cannot lead our children. When fear takes the lead, connection takes the fall.

So we have to stop seeing these moments as battles to win or lose. Because when we “win” through power or pride, what we lose is far greater — the trust that keeps the door open.

There’s no victory in silence, no wisdom in fear — only the loss of what could have been understood. Because when fear forces an ending, love never gets to finish its story. ❤️

09/21/2025

I work a ton from the lens of attachment theory. This is a simplified breakdown of work needed to earn your attachment security. It’s not simple or cut and dry like this outline. But this is a wonderful overview to give people ideas about what healing requires, in a nutshell.
It’s important to remember that healing is messy. It’s not pretty. And you’ll never accomplish perfection. Perfection is not the goal!
The goal is to learn about yourself… the good and the need areas. Learn to accept it all. And figure out how to work with it rather than rejecting it and trying to bury it.
A lot of clients want to “stop feeling this way.” We don’t eliminate emotional experiences. But over time we can decrease their intensity and impact by learning how to support ourselves through those emotional experiences in a way that we can be more proud of. In a way where we learn about ourselves and others, leading to growth and connection, rather than reacting to the emotions in ways that lead to regrets, shame, and disconnection.
Embrace being human. We are biologically designed with emotions as a signaling system. We’re all responsible for figuring out how to navigate that system, just like any other skill we develop in life.

04/03/2022

03/26/2022

03/10/2022

Advice for raising children with a narcissist. This is an extremely complicated and tricky issue for those who have children with the narcissist, as a narcissist doesn’t co-parent, they count…