My Approach
Attachment
"Individuals who appear to be efficient in regulating themselves are in fact the ones who have had many opportunities to co-regulate with others." Jan Winhall
After we are born, because we are so dependent on our caretakers, every need expressed is experienced as a matter of survival. We are learning about our environment from the beginning — will my needs be met? Can I trust that I have caretakers around who will feed me, protect me, tend to me? Can I relax into a basic sense of trust and security, or do I need to be on guard? Through thousands of daily interactions our nervous systems developed internal models of what we can expect from the world around us.
As our relational interactions grew in complexity, so did our internal models. From learning if I will be fed when I cry in hunger, we begin to learn how our emotional needs will be met. Is it safe to express anger, or will I be punished, ignored, dismissed? What about sadness, frustration, fear, curiosity, joy, shame?
Can my caregivers be with me in my experience of big feelings?
Because they themselves are human, navigating their own personal attachment histories while living in a cultural context often hostile to caretaking, they are limited in their ability to do so. Parents/caregivers among us may relate to this from the other side.
As babies and children, we learn which of our emotions can be met and held, and which break connection with our attachment figures. As we age this expands from our familial interactions to those with peers, members of our communities, and larger cultural societal norms. Our next interpretation is often that those feelings which lead to disconnect are bad, and we are bad for having them. We grow with parts of ourselves siloed or banished, at great personal expense.
We may be outwardly successful, but inside feel an unease, as if we're on a precipice, a narrow ledge of "okayness."
The strategies we unconsciously rely on to manage that banishment and the consequent dysregulation that comes from being internally fractured (addictions, eating disorders, insecurity, judgment of self and others, difficulty expressing our own needs or hearing others' needs, troubled relationships) become further evidence to ourselves of our badness. We direct a "second arrow" — shame at ourselves for being different than we expect.
If you've ever been struck by "I shouldn't be acting/reacting this way; this shouldn't be so hard for me," then you know about the second arrow and have experienced how that tension between our actuality and our expectations can be so debilitating. A focus of our work together is on that inherited internal sense — something is wrong with me. We practice learning our bodily cues and practice, together, to develop a capacious internal space.
We will never be immune to hardship, but we can learn an inner strength and resilience to hold ourselves kindly through challenges.