Grief and Trauma are experienced by most people in very similar ways.
The most common ones experienced are:
• There are a lot of emotions.
• Most people experience confusion and disorientation.
• Your trust in the world may be shattered.
• You are likely to feel you have lost your understanding of who you are.
What Research Demonstrates About Journalling
Journalling has been shown by researchers to be a powerful approach to use in healing.
The act of putting thoughts, feeling and experiences on paper allows you to experience them differently.
How To Journal
What you put on paper doesn’t have to be coherent. Early on in the experience of grief you may find words impossible to put down.
This is when other ways of expressing yourself in the journal work effectively.
If you can find a Visual Art Diary that is a good note pad to use for journalling. The pages are blank and thicker than a writing diary. This allows you to use other media if you need to.
Drawing, even if it is just squiggles on the paper, can express what you have no words for.
Painting also is effective.
Some people use collage. They draw great comfort from cutting out pictures and words and sticking them on the paper.
Even if you write random words you can find that an effective way to express yourself.
The Benefits of Journalling
This journalling is a way to express and witness your grief. It allows you to see your experience from a different perspective. It can help you to realise things you may not have been aware of. It gives you a greater understanding of what you are experiencing.
Journalling is also a way to share your story with others, should you decide to show another person your journal.
The journal can also be a beautiful legacy of love.
Another benefit of journalling is that it allows you to put your thoughts where you can see them. Instead of having those thoughts playing over and over again in your mind, you can put them on paper. Putting those thoughts on paper is a wonderful way to release them, to allow yourself to look at them from a different perspective and maybe see them differently.
The 6 benefits of Journalling:
It helps you to process your grief.
It gives what you are feeling a structure. You may name what you are experiencing and that naming of the feeling is important for processing it. In addition it gives you permission to experience that feeling, whereas you may have pushed it aside had you not taken the time to put it on paper.
Grief and trauma happen to you and are out of your control. When you put your feelings on paper you gain control over those feelings and your life.
By putting your experience on paper you change the story. I have written before about the stories we tell ourselves in life. You get to write the story of your grief and journalling allows you to do that.
Journalling allows you to step back, even if just a little. This allow you to see the whole story of your grief. It allows you to move on from parts of your story that you may be stuck in.
Journalling helps you to acknowledge and experience your feelings. Putting your experience on paper allows you to feel seen and heard. If you show others they can understand better that you are going through. They can discover things you may struggle to put into words.
Can I Help?
Sometimes you may not have anyone to witness your grief. Or you may find that other people don’t understand. Or you may feel you are not grieving ‘properly’ and need guidance and reassurance. This is where seeing a grief trained counsellor can help.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief and/or trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
There is a lot to talk about in this topic, so the blog is very long. Allow several minutes to read it, or read it in stages.
All people have a major thing in common. We give meaning to everything in life.
We organise events into a narrative, or story, that allows us to form a sense of continuity and meaning in our lives.
Grief is no different.
We assign meaning to losses and these meanings impact the course of our bereavement.
Assumptions about the nature of life, love, suffering, human vulnerabilities and death inform a lot of the meaning we give to life. We source these assumptions mainly from our culture and our life experiences.
One Story: The Assumption They Were The Only One Who Loved Me
One thing I see a lot in my work is where a person loses someone they love and feels rejected by others in the period after the loss.
Maybe that has been your experience? In which case you may relate to the story that forms where the person who died is the only one who loved you.
As a result of this story you may push others away because of your hurt.
Loss Hurts
Loss hurts BUT memories and what the one you loved has left behind will continue and can help you find a meaningful, productive and hopeful path forward.
So much of loss can involve deep despair and it is impossible to express that loss in words, especially early on in your grief.
It is during this time you may find it hard for your story to be heard.
Putting Your Story Together
You may not have a story that makes sense, even to you. You may not be able to put your story into words. You may need to talk about events before you can put together a story that makes sense.
Maybe those close to you are hurting too and aren’t able to hear your story.
Maybe friends are too busy to hear your story.
Grief groups can be helpful but they only work if others in the group are able to listen and not impose their own agenda on your telling of the story.
This is where a counsellor who specialises in grief can be helpful. I am such a counsellor, and my interest is in hearing your story and allowing you to tell it. I know how important that story is.
Questions To Explore During Your Time of Grief
Some questions that can be helpful to consider are:
• What should I do with this sense of meaninglessness?
• What did my loved one’s life mean?
• What did I learn from them?
• How should I make good use of all the love they gave me?
History Of Beliefs Around Grief
At the end of the nineteenth century, when modern psychological theory was born, it was believed that grief had an end point.
The theory stated that to grieve properly you had to sever attachment to the one who died. Continuing to have an emotional bond with the person was considered pathological!
By the 1940s the time limit of 4-6 weeks was suggested as the correct length of time to grieve!
This is where the belief that you had to ‘get over’ grief and get over it quickly came about.
Many people tell me they encounter others who suggest that now the funeral is over it is time to be over the death! The harm caused by that belief is significant.
It is now known that the brain has to make major changes to its neural networks after the loss of a loved one and that takes months.
Missing My Mother
When my mother was alive she used to ring me every week. I lived overseas and was very isolated with no one to share events in my life with. My mother was that person I talked to.
Then she was dead and there were no weekly catch ups. Things happened in my life and there was no one to share those events with. I missed her.
I mentioned this to my brothers and the response was that I obviously needed to see someone because what I was experiencing wasn’t normal. Of course they were wrong, but at the time I didn’t know that.
More Recent Understanding Of Grief
By the 1980s beliefs around grief had expanded the grieving time to two years. Attachment to the dead was seen as being important. There was emotional energy in the relationship and it was believed you had to withdraw that energy and pour it into other people instead.
This slowly transformed to an understanding that memorialising the person instead of withdrawing emotional energy was actually what was needed.
It was still believed that people would “recover” and go back to normal.
How Grief Is Understood Today
There have been great advances in grief understanding since then and the word “recovery” has been replaced by words such as adaptation, re-integration, management, coping or transformation.
Recovery is considered to portray grief as something minor and fails to acknowledge the importance of loss and something that is not repairable.
The main understanding today is that you “don’t get over” grief.
Life never returns to how it was. Part of working through your grief involves learning how to adjust to the new reality without the one you love.
Ways You May React To The Death Of A Loved One
Grief reactions and responses typically involve:
• emotional distress,
• depressed mood,
• confusion,
• difficulty sleeping,
• forgetfulness,
• crying a lot,
• feeling a range of emotions, seemingly with no control over them,
• loss of interest in forming new relationships and goals,
• disruption of sense of self, worldview and life narrative.
Problems can arise when, over a long period of time:
• it is hard to accept the loss,
• there is preoccupation with the deceased,
• loss of identity and role in life
• and loss of purpose and goals for the future.
This is a situation where counselling interventions are required.
Grief Is Not Full Time
When you are grieving, you don’t spend every waking moment engaged in grief. In the initial period when you are likely to feel numb it is more likely you will be preoccupied with what has happened, but over the next few days you will start to spend time living.
You do take time away from grief. Your brain can’t manage if you don’t. You also need to live. You need to eat, drink, sleep, shower, care for others and so on.
You do need time to grieve, but you also need time to:
• learn the new reality
• develop new roles in your life
• develop a new identity without your loved one
• develop new relationships both to your loved one and those around you.
It is important to also understand that grief is not just something within you, it is also something that is between you and other people around you:
It involves:
• your world view and changes you may need to make to it,
• reconstructing meaning in your life
• forming a continuing bond with your loved one
• reconstructing your identity
• making positive changes in your life as you adjust to your grief.
Meaning Making
There are two aspects to making meaning of loss. These are:
• Assimilating the loss into the assumptions you made about life before your loss and the self narrative you had. This approach allows you to maintain a sense of continuation with your life before the one you loved died.
• Accommodate to the loss by dealing with previous assumptions about life by reorganising, expanding, or replacing them. This will often result in positive changes and personal growth that allow you to continue with life.
To do this three things need to happen:
Sense making – you need to make sense of your life now,
Benefit finding – you need to find a benefit either in the death of the person or your growth as a result of that loss. You may find you grow in your knowledge and sense of competence in your life, you gain valuable perspectives about life, develop stronger relationships with others and establish valuable connections.
Identity change – It has been known for thousands of years that pain leads to growth. After the initial disorganisation of grief you go through a long period of growth alternating with the pain of loss. As the pain of loss becomes more bearable you continue to grow.
What Grief Involves
Grief involves you allowing yourself to feel the pain and all the emotions associated with your loss. Then you will start to reorganise your life and develop a new identity. In the process you will change your worldview to incorporate your experience of grief. You will rebuild yourself and develop a new narrative (story) of your life that includes the grief experience.
This is meaning making.
The type of meaning you make will include the culture of your society and family and how these two cultures understand death. There are different ways of expressing grief, different rituals around mourning, different ideas about what is normal and how to relate to the one who has died. This will have a major impact on how you make meaning of the death of your loved one.
Your outlook on life will also have a deep influence. If you are someone who tends to see the positives in life you are more likely to look for the positives in your experience. This doesn’t mean you won’t experience any pain, but it does mean you will seek to find positive meaning in your grief.
Ultimately, how you view grief will depend on your outlook on life, how your family perceives death and how your culture conceptualises grief.
Why Meaning Making?
When your losses challenge or even shatter the meaning you have given to your life you search for new meaning. Making meaning of their loss is how you understand and make sense of their loss. During this process you will reconstruct that meaning through making sense of what has happened, seeking to find a benefit in your new reality, and identifying the way you have changed.
Strategies to Make Meaning
One of the main ways to make meaning is through storytelling. This is why it is important to have someone to tell your story to. This is where seeing a counsellor can be helpful.
As you tell your story of loss again, and again. As you remember details and share them, even adding them into the overall narrative, you start to gain a sense of the loss of that person.
Your story may be about things you would love to tell the one who is gone.
Your story may be about things that didn’t happen, but you wish had. Or it may be about things that did happen that are now causing pain.
In your story you may be able to find an understanding about the things your loved one did.
The story may involve gaining permission to grieve. This is particularly important if you were not allowed to show emotion to your loved one in their life.
It may also involve an exploration about what death is and how you and the one you loved felt about death. You may even tell a story about whether you believed the death was preventable.
It is important to remember that not all meanings are positive. Some people include a lot of regret in their story. They may believe something could have been done to prevent the death.
Over time, even those less positive meanings can be incorporated in a large, more positive meaning. That doesn’t mean all deaths are positive. It is hard to see a positive in death due to murder, or an accident for example. But it is possible to see positives in what you were able to do after death. Maybe being able to honour their life in some way can be the positive that came out of their death.
Who Am I Now The One I Love Is Dead?
When you love someone your identity includes that person. When that person dies part of your identity is challenged.
You exist as a person in a relationship. But if the other person in that relationship is dead then who are you now?
You may have been a partner, child, parent, friend to the one who died. Now they are dead, who are you? What is your identity now?
Your life had plans, hopes and dreams that included your loved one. What is your life now without them?
Telling your story, over and over helps to put your loss in order and start making sense of it. You can celebrate who they were, cherish the memories you have of them, and feel grateful for what you gained from that relationship.
You also can express the negatives about losing that person. In fact that is what you will most likely spend the early part of acute grief focusing on. As time goes on the time spent on the negatives will become less and you will switch to celebrating their life, cherishing the memories you have of them and living your life to honour them.
Over time you can learn to understand yourself better and form an understanding about who you are. This is an important aspect of grieving.
The Importance Of Your Story
Part of being human involves constructing stories about your life.
Your stories will most likely include things that were important to you. They can be negative things and positive things.
All those stories contain meanings. It may not be obvious when you construct them, but telling others can help you to identify those meanings.
The stories you tell around grieving are not simply stories about the death, they are also stories that affirm life, everlasting love and consolation. Also contained in those stories are the pain, anguish and the often daunting challenges you faced in grief.
Recognising what you have been through and survived is valuable for you in recognising who you are and assists you to make further meaning about the loss of your loved one.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, telling your story and finding meaning in your experience please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Experiencing a traumatic event has a major impact on your emotional, physical and psychological health.
Trauma may be long term, such as being in a relationship with a narcissist or an abusive person. Trauma may be a single event, such as something painful or shocking that happens.
Trauma challenges your sense of safety in the world and the reliability of the world.
Trauma challenges your sense of self, of who you are.
Gabor Mate, a Canadian doctor and expert on trauma in his book “The Myth of Normal” writes that “trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”.
In this quote he is talking about the impact of a traumatic event being individual. Some may walk away from an event relatively unscathed whereas others may be deeply impacted.
The age you are when you experience a trauma has an impact on how you are affected. Trauma occurring in childhood, while the child is still developing their sense of identity as well as developing their brain, has the potential to cause more damage than trauma affecting an adult.
The 24 most common signs of unhealed trauma include:
1. Being chronically exhausted
2. Finding it difficult to trust others
3. Compulsive behaviours and addictions, all about avoiding unpleasant feelings
4. Not feeling safe anywhere, at home, out of the home, inside your body
5. Experiencing emotional numbness
6. Experiencing difficulty concentrating
7. Having a heightened startle response
8. Finding it difficult to sleep or having nightmares.
9. Feeling numb and dissociated from what is going on around you
10. Skin issues such as rashes and other irritations.
11. Upset stomach, diarrhoea, bloating, nausea and so on
12. Constantly apologising
13. Constantly thinking about things
14. Gaining or losing weight.
15. Feeling emotionally dysregulated and struggling to contain feelings of rage or anger
16. Feeling Depressed
17. Self-isolating from others
18. Uncontrollably crying
19. Experiencing difficulties relating to others
20. Being frightened of being alone
21. Struggling with memory and processing information
22. Having unrealistic beliefs about other people.
23. Feeling guilty, and experiencing shame.
24. Being hypervigilant.
As you can imagine, experiencing even some of these signs is distressing and challenging to your sense of who you are.
How Do I Recover?
The biggest impact of trauma is your sense of who you are.
The good news is that you can rebuild your sense of who you are.
You can also learn how to trust the world. Part of that learning is identifying what safety for you is, right now.
You also need to allow yourself time to grieve for what you have lost. Without that healing is not possible.
This recovery will not happen overnight. It takes time. Don’t rush. Don’t think you are failing because you are not “over it” quickly. Cut yourself some slack and be patient.
What Do I Need To Do To Recover?
Sometimes, if the trauma had a smaller impact on you, you can recover with the help of supportive people. Other times you need a trauma trained counsellor to help you.
The first thing you need to do is to understand what safety looks like for you.
Once you understand what that is, you can work at rebuilding your sense of safety.
Rebuilding Your Sense of Safety
To feel safe, you need to feel safe within your body. When you suffer a trauma you may want to run away from the unpleasant feelings. You experience these feelings in your body. A major part of coping with the unpleasant feelings is ignoring what your body is experiencing.
To rebuild your sense of safety you need to learn to feel what is happening in your body. You also need to learn to be comfortable with those feelings.
For someone who experienced trauma as a child, there may never have been learning about feeling into the body. For those who learned already, it will be more about learning to feel into the body again.
Regulation Is A Major Part of Feeling Safe
When you experience uncomfortable feelings in your body you need to be able to cope with those feelings.
Many people learn unhealthy ways to do this. Addictions and compulsive behaviours are about dulling feelings. Emotional numbing is also an unhealthy strategy.
What you may need to learn is how to calm your body. Being able to calm yourself down allows you to feel you have control over the feelings in your body as well as the emotions and memories that come up. That is very empowering. When you have control and feel you have power then you can feel safe.
Internal Safety Leads Outward
Once you feel safe in yourself, you can feel more confident to start trusting those closest to you, then those less close and finally strangers and situations you encounter day to day.
When you feel safe in yourself you also can experience greater clarity around the people in your life and can make decisions about what relationship you have that are unhealthy and set boundaries around those relationships.
Boundaries may look like ending the relationship, limiting when you see the other person, or even limiting the type of contact you will have with them and the type of behaviour you will tolerate from them.
Allow Space For Grieving
When you experience trauma, whether it is recent or in the past, you have lost things that are important. The loss of sense of self and sense of safety. What way you saw the world and those around you is lost. You have also lost the life you had. There may be other losses as well.
All these losses need to be recognised and grieved over.
Grief isn’t pleasant. It hurts. You may even feel angry. The pain is deep.
It is important to learn to be okay with those unpleasant feelings. Don’t try to avoid the feelings by getting busy with activities, be they work, social life, hobbies or relationships. Those avoidance activities will only prolong the grief, they won’t solve it.
A lot of the signs of trauma are caused by trying to avoid the pain.
Counselling is helpful here too in learning how to process this grief.
Building Your Connection Back To Self
When you have grieved the losses and rebuilt your sense of safety in the world you can work on establishing a connection to yourself so you can get to know Who You Are again.
This is a wonderful opportunity to explore the things in life that help you feel who you are. The things that feed you.
This is where you learn to listen to your body as it tells you it is comfortable.
This is where you may find that trying new things will help you discover aspects of yourself you didn’t know existed.
Here is your opportunity to learn how to live in the post trauma world.
Space and Time
As you rebuild your sense of self and safety, as well as grieving for what was lost, give yourself the space to grow.
Ensuring you sleep enough hours is important. Take yourself out to the beach of the bush. Sit and feel the waves at your feet, sit under a tree and listen to the sound of wind through the leaves. See a trauma trained counsellor.
Surround yourself with people who support you and will encourage you to grow and try new things.
Most importantly give yourself time. See this as a journey that is best enjoyed and taken at a slow enjoyable pace.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from your trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
So many people who have experienced trauma in life live with the sense of terrible brokenness.
There is the sense that “I am defective”. And so much in your life has told you that.
There is a terrible sense of shame that these things have been done to you.
The Untrue Messages That Dominate Your Life
But those messages and the other negative ones you received are not true. They are the words of the people who traumatised you. If they were dysfunctional enough to traumatise you, then they were too dysfunctional to give you accurate information about yourself.
For many of you, you may be aware of this but are unable to turn off the negative messages in your head.
People Rise Above Childhood Trauma Better Than You Think
Over my life I have read and heard so many people’s stories. Many of them speak of surviving trauma to arrive at the point in their lives where they could share their story.
One thing that emerges from the story is the way they survived.
Some people are fully aware they have achieved a lot and want to share that heartening news.
Do You See Your Strengths Or Your Failings?
Other people are not aware. They may come into my room feeling such a failure, when they have achieved amazing things to just get to my door.
Maybe you are one of those people who sees only the negative and defective and can’t see the truth, that despite the horrible things that have happened to you in life, you are an amazing and unique individual.
Maybe you think that seems insincere. You don’t want to be told by me that you are amazing and unique.
Looking At Your Trauma From A Different Perspective
But what if, instead of seeing the awful things that have happened in your life you saw instead how they have contributed to you being an amazing unique individual.
What if you could see the way you have survived as being a triumph and instead of seeing the defective you see the triumphant you.
The Reality Of You, Here, Now
The reality is you are still here and you are living your life. You might not live it as well as you want to. You might not feel totally in control of your reactions. Those are things you can work on. But the fact that you are here and functioning is testimony to the way you had strengths and abilities that allowed you to function despite the things that have happened to you in the past. And just maybe those things that happened have given you strengths and abilities other people don’t have.
What Might Those Abilities Be?
There is the obvious one about your brain developing more in some areas that often means you are better at reading non-verbal communication than others and are better at spotting danger.
But there are other areas too.
Maybe you are more understanding of others.
Maybe you are more compassionate.
Maybe you have a drive to seek justice for others.
Maybe you believe in honouring your word so that you are reliable and admired for that.
Maybe you have tenacity in difficult situations that allows you to keep going when others give up.
Maybe You Need Help To Heal And See Your Strengths And Abilities
Maybe you can see these things but then that belief in yourself is blown away by all the negative messages in your head.
Sometimes you need assistance to heal. You need assistance to see the real you.
This is where a trauma qualified counsellor can assist you.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your healing and identification of your amazing strengths, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
The definition of family enmeshment is that family members are excessively involved in each other’s lives and find it hard, even impossible, to set boundaries. There is a strong desire to maintain close relationships, which in itself is not bad, but it has negative impacts.
It is like several lengths of wool, each representing a family member. The wool strands become tangled into masses of knots. With an enmeshed family each person in the family becomes entangled and the needs and identities of each individual get lost.
Enmeshed Families And Close Families Are Different.
This doesn’t mean that families can’t be close and healthy. There are families where family members are close. These families have strong bonds. The members of the family care for each other.
The difference between a close family and an enmeshed family is that in the close knit family there is respect of each individual and their personal space and independence. Individuals within a close family are encouraged to grow and make their own choices. There is no pressure for people to do things they don’t want to.
In the enmeshed family there is a blurring of the boundaries between individuals within the family. It becomes difficult for a member of such a family to make a decision or even have their own thoughts and feelings. Members of enmeshed families feel unable to make choices that the family won’t approve of, even when they really want to do something.
Are Enmeshed Families Codependent?
It is often believed that enmeshed families are in codependent relationship with each other. Certainly co-dependency and enmeshment are related and can happen in family relationships as well as other relationships but there is a difference.
Enmeshment is when two or more people become so involved in each other’s lives, relationships and decision making that they are unable to act autonomously. This has a negative effect on the mental health of the enmeshed people.
Codependent relationships are where two people, such as those in a romantic relationship, friends, parent and child rely on the other for emotional support, acceptance or identity.
Co-dependency may exist in an enmeshed family but then again it may not.
Cultural Impact Of Enmeshment.
In different cultures families can act differently. If the culture is one of autonomy and independence (individualistic) a healthy family will have well defined boundaries between family members. If the culture is one where being part of the group and more dependent on others is normal (collectivist culture), then a family that meets the definition of enmeshed is more likely to exist. In this setting, such a family is considered to be normal and healthy.
If the culture the family exists in is collectivist, family members will not suffer negative mental health impacts. However, if the family has emigrated to a country with a more individualistic culture, the family members may be more torn between the culture of their family and that of the society in which they are now living. This is particularly so with children.
When deciding if a family is enmeshed or not it is important to consider the culture of the family and the impact that enmeshment is having on the mental health of the family members.
In Enmeshed Families Roles Are Rigid.
Another thing seen in an enmeshed family is that family members will often have rigid roles within the family. Every family has roles for family members, but in a healthy family the roles can change over time.
Enmeshed families are often very intrusive. There is little privacy and interfering with another family member’s private thoughts and concerns is considered normal. This is because of the lack of boundaries between family members.
How To Spot Lack Of Boundaries
In such a family other signs of lack of boundaries can include:
• Over protective adults who control what children do and prevent them from anything that challenges them and allows them to grow. The adults may believe they are protecting the child but the motivation is often their own fears of something like that happening to them.
• Adults in the family system will micromanage their children and make decisions for them without any consultation.
• Manipulation is used to coerce the children to do what the adult wants. Guilt and Shame are often used to achieve this.
• Not respecting the privacy of children, often seen by going through their belongings, reading private writings, monitoring their activities and keeping tabs on what they are doing.
• Use the children for emotional support and validation.
• Set out to be the child’s “best friend” even when the child doesn’t want it.
• Not perceive the children as individuals who are growing up and striving for independence.
• Enforce family unity and prevent anything that threatens that such as something an individual may wish to do or outside relationships individuals may wish to have.
• Keep a strict cap on any conflict within the family. Individuals within an enmeshed family learn that keeping the peace is essential and there are negative consequences for disobeying that rule.
What Impact Does An Enmeshed Family Have On A Child?
Children in an enmeshed family are:
• Often very alert to their parent’s needs and emotions.
• Have trouble making decisions.
• Struggle to become independent as adults.
• If asked what their interests and values are they will always cite the family interests and values.
• Believe they must keep the family happy.
• Often are loners and don’t make friends because their emotional needs are met within the family.
• Find it hard to voice their own needs, again due to a need to maintain peace within the family.
• Become more emotional then is normal when there are family conflicts or crises
• As they grow older they often become financially and emotionally responsible for the care of their parents.
Why Does Enmeshment Occur In Some Families?
A lot of enmeshment happens because of parents being raised in enmeshed families. This is the only family structure one or both parents know. Parenting is usually based on what was learned during childhood. Unless the parent is aware their childhood family was enmeshed and was able to learn about other family models as well as learn how to set healthy boundaries, the pattern the parent will use in their family will be an enmeshed one.
Another cause could be if there were difficulties in the relationship a child had with their caregivers that resulted in what is known as an anxious attachment style. That style of attachment involves a need for excessive closeness and validation from others. If the childhood wounds are not resolved and the attachment style healed then it can result in the behaviours present in an enmeshed family.
Research has suggested that a parent who has poor mental health and is raising their children alone without healthy adult friendships is more likely to establish enmeshed relationships with her children. People in that situation often experienced their own trauma as children and consequently have a poor sense of self and have difficult regulating their emotions.
Crises in the environment, such as natural disasters and wars will increase the likelihood that the family members with look to each other for support and security. If the crisis is long term or resulted in traumatic impacts that are not healed then enmeshment can develop.
Is Enmeshment Bad?
Yes and no. members of enmeshed family value loyalty, belonging and emotionally supporting others. They also have deep interpersonal connections with other family members.
The negative is that family members, especially children raised in such a family, find it hard to set boundaries with others. They can find it hard to make decisions. They will also struggle being able to express their own needs and desires and set healthy boundaries around their needs and desires.
Another negative is that it can be difficult developing healthy relationships with others outside the family.
For adults in an enmeshed family there can be high levels of stress as they remain constantly vigilant maintaining control and closeness. Adults are also likely to struggle to maintain their own identity which impacts on their own mental health. It also impacts on their relationships with others both within and outside the family.
Conflict is another difficulty for enmeshed families. It may often lead to conflict being buried and these unresolved conflicts result in tension within the family that can become destructive. Family members, especially children, will struggle to learn healthy conflict resolution skills. This impacts mental health as well as impacting on the ability to learn healthy communication skills.
Does Enmeshment Cause Trauma?
Yes it can.
In heavily enmeshed families each family member is very involved in the emotional life of each other family member. This is difficult for children with their developing brains and developing emotional regulation skills. Being overloaded and overwhelmed by adult emotions without anyone to help the child understand what is being experienced, as well as emotionally regulate, impacts the child’s mental well being, both in childhood and later in adulthood.
Not knowing where you end and other family members start is also damaging. This impacts on the ability to form a sense of self. It impacts on the ability to set boundaries.
In a family where everyone’s business and feelings is everyone else’s it is very difficult to learn boundaries and to learn to say no or yes.
If a child doesn’t learn to set boundaries then it is very difficult to do so in adulthood.
Research shows that adults who grew up in enmeshed families and were traumatised by this, struggle with their mental health in adulthood. They may suffer depression and anxiety. They may also find it hard to form healthy, respectful relationships. They are more vulnerable to codependent relationships. They also struggle to separate their emotions and needs from those of others.
The Good News.
As with all trauma, it is possible to heal. It is not easy and it will take a long time for your brain to grow new, healthy connections, but it is possible.
The first step is recognising the enmeshment and what behaviours within the family are enmeshed behaviours and which are not problem behaviours.
• It is possible to learn who you are and learn where your boundaries are.
• It is possible to learn to assert those boundaries in a calm and healthy way.
• You can even learn to say no without feeling guilty!
• It is even possible to learn to set boundaries with your family. It may not always be possible to set boundaries without cutting off contact with your family, that will depend on how mentally healthy individual members are, but you can learn to set limits on contact so that it is healthy and you learn how to heal from this.
• You can learn what is normal family and relationship behaviour and be able to set healthy boundaries around future relationships as well as existing ones. You can also learn to recognise unhealthy relationships that may need to end.
What Other Things Can You Do To Learn Who You Are And Heal?
A competent counsellor who is trained in mindfulness can teach you mindfulness and how to use this to understand the feelings and emotions you experience.
• With this skill you can be taught how to regulate your emotions.
• With mindfulness you can start exploring the things that matter to you, what your values are, what you believe in.
• You can get to know yourself and what you are passionate about. You can recognise the things that really interest you.
• You can learn how to be curious and how to try new things.
• You can learn to connect with others in a healthy way and “find your tribe” who understand you and support you.
• You can learn to be kind to yourself.
Getting Help.
When you have been raised in the difficult environment of an enmeshed family it can be hard to learn what is normal and what is dysfunctional.
It can also be difficult to know how to learn more healthy behaviours.
This is where seeing a counsellor who is skilled in those areas can be helpful.
Can I Help?
I am trained in mindfulness and in trauma counselling. I use mindfulness always in my work with people. If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your family enmeshment, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Most people are taught as children to have good manners, do as you are told and don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Oh and if you can’t hurt anyone’s feelings then you have to accept that your feelings may get hurt, but that is okay because they don’t matter.
Wrong.
What is deemed good manners often involves other people invading your personal boundaries. And if you follow that code, you aren’t allowed to set boundaries. And that is wrong.
The Downside Of People Pleasing
When you people please, not only do you get hurt but you don’t get a chance to do what you want to do because someone else frequently steps over your boundaries and prevents you from being who you want to be.
Sometimes people learn to people please because of the family environment they grow up in. When there is trauma you learn to do whatever keeps you safe. So you people please.
Narcissistic parents cause a lot of harm by making you responsible for making them happy. So you constantly second guess what you need to do to make them happy.
Becoming Addicted To Being Liked Because Your Truth Says You Don’t Matter
People pleasers can also become addicted to being liked by others and may even learn manipulative behaviours as well as people pleasing.
Behind people pleasing is the message that you and your needs don’t matter. That the things you want to do and the person you want to be is unimportant.
People Pleasing And Healthy Boundaries Can’t Co-exist
One of the problems with people pleasing to everyone is that you set boundaries with people that are very small and people don’t necessarily know they are encroaching on your boundaries. Inevitably you reach a point where you explode with frustration and anger. The other person may be shocked and surprised, not having realised they had encroached on a boundary.
Remember, you set boundaries and you only have to gently ask a healthy person not to do that if you want to set a boundary. If you say nothing then you have given permission to that person to breach that boundary.
An Example Of When People Pleasing Became An Issue
A classic example I saw years ago was when I was working in an office. One of the other team members would walk past the desk of another team member and constantly take her pencils and pens to use. The team member said nothing.
Privately she would complain to the rest of us about it. When it was suggested to her that she ask the other person to stop borrowing her pencils and pens she replied she couldn’t possibly. That would mean she wasn’t being a good team member.
One day she needed to write something down and discovered she had no writing implements on her desk. She went to the other person and exploded in anger. The other person was shocked. She had no idea her borrowing of pens/pencils was a problem.
That is the risk of people pleasing.
The Risks of People Pleasing
The team member in my example stayed up at night running over in her mind the way she should have spoken to the other staff member.
She fantasised about telling this team member not to take her pens and pencils. She became irritable and short fused and often snapped at her family and fellow team members. But never to the one she was actually angry with.
Over time she became resentful of this other team member. Far from being a good team member she had become an ineffective team member because she wouldn’t set boundaries. Her hidden anger and resentment, coupled with her irritability, was causing problems in the team. This reflected badly on her, not the other team member.
Over a period of time, it resulted in an outburst at the most unpredictable moment. Her reaction was out of proportion to the issue at the time.
The Cost of Not Valuing Yourself Enough To Set Boundaries
Not valuing yourself will rob you of your self confidence and self worth. It will destroy your sense of who you are. It destroys your relationships with others because you are constantly looking over your shoulder, second guessing people and modifying your behaviour to keep others happy.
How Do I Change From People Pleasing To Setting Healthy Boundaries?
Learn to say no.
Learn it is acceptable to ask someone not to take something of yours, or rearrange your plans to suit themself, and to consider your needs when making a decision.
Learn to understand who you are. Learn your values, boundaries, and worth.
Learn to say no to what you don’t want to do and yes to what you do want to do.
If the fear of speaking up for yourself and setting a boundary becomes too great to overcome then seeking help from a counsellor can be helpful.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your people pleasing, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
I can guide you through the roots of your people pleasing and help you heal the pain there. Then I can help you learn your values, where you want your boundaries to be and to see yourself as worthwhile.
It takes a lot of courage and strength to learn that you are worthwhile, it is okay to love yourself, you are not responsible for other people’s disappointment and you can say no.
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
She had been married nearly 50 years, having married in her teens. It was a very long and seemingly happy marriage.
One day her husband told her he had never loved her.
He left.
She was devastated.
The Impact of a Relationship Ending
It is unlikely what he said was true, but so often I hear one of a couple tell their partner the same thing. It is as if in the moment they don’t love the person any more so it becomes “I never loved you”.
This woman had worked hard all her adult life. She was approaching retirement. They had been planning all the things they would do. Now all that was over.
She was facing retirement and old age on her own without the man who had been part of her life for almost 50 years.
Relationship Ending Cause Grief Too
And there was the pain.
He didn’t part amicably. It was nasty and messy. He left and ignored her. The only contact was through lawyers.
The Pain of Rejection
How do you recover when someone you have spent all your adult life with is gone?
It is hard enough when they die. But when their departure is due to them not wanting to be with you anymore that is excruciatingly painful.
It is an incredible rejection.
She had moulded herself to be the other half of a couple. They had a lifetime of memories together. The children they shared, the places they had lived, the pets they had over the years. Everything was a tattered wreck.
How Counselling Helped Her
The woman who walked into my room was shattered. She was stripped of self confidence, self esteem, self worth and sense of self. She was deeply grieving the loss of her future, her plans, her dreams.
But she was resilient. After a few sessions where she was able to express all her anger, devastation, fear and the desire to get him back, she began to realise how resilient she was.
She determined to reclaim her life. And to reclaim it as it related to her. Not as half a couple but as an individual.
Retelling Your Life Story
To do this she decided to tell her life story. Prior to this point she had been telling it as half of a couple. Now she told it as a single person.
She told and retold and retold the story.
She kept telling it until she was able to develop a fresh sense of self.
Finding Who You Are in the Retelling
With that newfound sense of self she was able to hold a fresh perspective on her life. With this perspective and her renewed sense of self she was able to find purpose and meaning in her life to date and in her life moving forward.
This may sound extreme, but we all tell and retell our life stories. Every time you relate to someone else the hurtful things in your past, or the great things in your past, you are telling your story.
What this woman did was look at her life story from a different perspective. She looked at is from the perspective of being an individual.
You can do this too, not just with your stories of loss, but with anything in your life.
Can I Help?
When you are in the depths of grief and rejection, it can be hard to find your story to tell and retell from a new perspective. At those times it can be helpful to see a specialist grief counsellor.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your loss and rejection, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Do you need other people to validate the things you do?
Do you need the approval of others?
Do you find it hard making decisions for yourself?
Do you find it hard feeling self-reliant?
Do you find it hard to regulate your emotions?
Are you really hard on yourself?
Do you feel you have little or no worth?
Do you do things to numb your emotional pain?
Are you frightened of rejection and abandonment?
Do you feel you are stuck in angry mode?
Do you find it hard to feel joy or peace?
Do you find it hard to get close to other people?
Do you feel lonely and seek out others to compensate for your loneliness?
Do you feel lost, misunderstood or that you don’t fit in and others are judging you for that?
Do you frequently feel anxious or depressed?
Are you frightened of social situations and fear being rejected.
Do you feel others judge you as not being good enough?
Do you feel empowered in your life?
How childhood experiences can impact you as an adult
Did you know that trauma in childhood has a significant impact on your self-worth?
If your sense of safety and belonging in childhood was damaged you are likely to have developed skills to keep you safe in that situation. As you grew up you may never have unlearned those skills, so they trap you in patterns that don’t serve you in adulthood.
Also, poor attachment between your parents and you puts you at risk of suffering from loneliness in adulthood.
Traumatic experiences in your childhood disrupt how you see your self as a person and affect your ability to regulate your emotions. All this impacts on the quality of the interpersonal relationships you have later in life.
My parents didn’t physically or sexually abuse me. I can’t have suffered trauma.
It can be hard to understand you have been traumatised in childhood. The usual picture of trauma is that of being hit or sexually abused. But trauma covers much more than just that. In fact, the worst traumas are emotional and psychological.
Neglect
Neglect is a trauma that is often overlooked. With neglect the child’s physical and emotional needs are frequently overlooked. It may involve not receiving regular meals, not having clean clothes to wear, not having your emotional needs for comfort and support met. A parent who rarely interacts or shows an interest in you is also neglectful.
Neglectful parents are also unlikely to be there to teach you skills of emotional regulation. They may not teach you how to wash yourself, how often to change your clothes.
It is unlikely a neglectful parent will see you and spend time connecting to you. This is known as attunement. A child who is not seen is a child who is not safe. Not being safe is extremely traumatic.
The clear message in this situation is that you have no worth or value. After all, you are not worth having any time or attention given to you.
Narcissistic Parent
Narcissistic parents are also very destructive of a child’s sense of self-worth.
Such a parent depends on the child to make them feel good. The child gets positive attention when they do things that serve the parent. The trouble is, there are no clear guidelines as to what the child needs to do to serve the parent. Consequently, the child lives life second guessing the parent in order to feel that the parent will care for them and they will be safe.
Narcissistic parents will also often shame their children in front of others. They will expect their child to meet their needs, to do things to make them proud. They will never teach their child any skills that will equip them for adulthood and self-reliance.
Narcissistic parents will often hold the child close to serve their needs. They want the child to stay dependent on them because the child is there to serve their needs and that is why they had them.
One classic example is of a woman who would take her child to school. The child would happily run into the classroom and greet her friends. The mother would call her back and make a fuss of her, stating it was okay for mummy to leave now and she would be okay. The child would go back to her friends and be happily talking with them. Again, the mother would call her back. This would continue until the child’s resolve was broken and she would wail and beg her mother not to leave her.
A narcissistic parent is one of the most destructive types of parent and sentence their children to mental poor health and a dependence on validation from others in adulthood.
Complex PTSD and Borderline personality disorder
These conditions develop because of chronic trauma experienced in childhood. The type of trauma most associated with these conditions is emotional abuse and invalidation. It can happen if you are neglected or have a narcissistic parent. It can also happen from other types of abuse and invalidation.
Sometimes parents are not aware that their behaviour towards their children is invalidating and can be surprised when their child develops this disorder in adulthood.
When a parent is emotionally abusive or invalidating during a child’s early years it impacts on the child’s sense of self and the child can struggle to have a strong sense of self.
You may develop self-defeating attitudes and beliefs around yourself and the trustworthiness of the world.
When raised in such an environment it is also difficult to learn to regulate your emotions. This is often due to your parents being unable to regulate their emotions. How can you teach another person how to regulate their emotions if you can’t do it yourself.
For this reason, I encourage people who had difficult childhoods to seek counselling from a trauma trained professional before having children. Many parents who were emotionally abused as children are determined their own children will never have to go through that. But sometimes things your children do can trigger reactions in you that you can’t control and don’t like doing. If you find raising your children triggers behaviours you struggle to control then seek counselling. Seeking help makes you a good parent.
Unstable and intense relationships
If you find that any type of relationship you have with others tends to be intense and over time unstable then you may be experiencing the impacts of chronic trauma in childhood. Sometimes these relationships happen because you are uncomfortable being alone and seek out anyone who looks willing to be in a relationship with you. This can result in you unconsciously choosing the wrong type of person to have a relationship with.
Sometimes when you are in a relationship you can sabotage it by clinging to the person and unwittingly pushing them away.
I think you are the best, I hate you patterns
Another impact of childhood trauma can be seen in meeting someone new and idealising them. This continues for some time then you start devaluing them and finding things wrong with them.
You are too hard on yourself
One of the saddest impacts of childhood trauma is the lack of self-worth and lack of self-compassion.
It is not surprising that children develop these beliefs. When a parent is abusive, or expects you to jump over hoops to gain their approval, the natural response is to believe this is because you are a bad person. If your parent constantly tells you that you are bad then this belief is reinforced.
The reality is that a child is just a child learning how to live life. There is no inherent badness in a child. Sadly a child doesn’t know that. Shame becomes a big part of the life of an abused child.
Ways to dull the pain
If you never learned how to regulate your emotions, and you believe you are a bad person, then you feel great pain that you don’t know how to soothe.
Many people turn to behaviours that numb the pain. These behaviours may be dangerous. A good example of this is children who steal cars then drive them dangerously at high speed. The risk and dangers inherent in this activity help to suppress their pain.
Other things people do include addictions such as substance abuse, smoking or vaping, gambling, compulsive shopping, sex addiction, exercise addiction and eating disorders.
I am lonely
If you don’t feel you are worth anything then you may not feel you are likeable. The result is that you may avoid getting close to others so that they can’t reject you.
Getting close to another person means exposing yourself to the rejection of your parents. If they rejected you, then other people will too.
When you do form relationships with others you may be frightened of expressing your needs or asking for help because your parents failed to meet those needs when you were a child. So you may feel even lonelier because you can’t turn to someone for help.
Many people who suffered trauma in childhood report feeling lonely.
Depression and Anxiety
It is very common for someone traumatised as a child to be anxious. Your childhood was an anxious time of never being sure when you would receive support, or whether you may be abused. Abusers are rarely predictable so hypervigilance was an essential part of childhood.
Hypervigilance leads to anxiety. There is the need to be constantly on your guard because you never know what is going to happen in the next minute. You never know when things will suddenly become dangerous and frightening.
When you grow up and things become safer the fear doesn’t go away because your brain has developed neural pathways that constantly scan for danger. This is why anxiety is a constant companion of the traumatised child.
Depression is another consequence of this type of childhood. Many people report feeling depressed from childhood. The sense of not being good enough, the lack of self-worth, being emotionally worn down with anxiety and fear, the rejection and abandonment of parents and the sense of never being safe all contribute to feeling overwhelmed and hopeless and lead into depression.
I constantly feel on edge
The environment of neglect and emotional abuse is a highly stressful environment. Children in this situation are being impacted regularly by the release of stress hormones in the body. This has an impact on the developing brain and will often result in an adult who is highly sensitive to stress hormones.
The result is that your brain is in a constant state of defending yourself. In other words the fight/flight/freeze response.
It is very difficult to cope with life if your brain is constantly seeing danger and you spend a lot of time with your brain taking over your life and deciding whether you are to fight, run away, or freeze.
When this defence mechanism takes over, your thinking brain switches off. You can’t control your reactions. Sadly, very few people understand this and you may find yourself judged when you get stuck in this defence response.
It is for this reason that it is important to seek counselling from a qualified trauma counsellor.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your childhood trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
As you try to come to terms with your grief it can feel so hard to do. Being able to verbalise what you are feeling and experiencing can be so difficult to accomplish that many people never process their grief to that depth.
Grief is complex, overwhelming and unsettling.
The 5 stages of death belief
Back in the 70s it was thought that grief was processed in a straight line. There was a five stage process that you went through in that order. According to this theory you were supposed to experience the stages of:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Later an extra stage was added:
Meaning
This was a theory formed to describe the process of dying, not the process of grief.
So much harm was done to people who weren’t grieving according to the rigid stages structure. Even today, there are those who adhere to this long defunct theory.
The effects of grief are more complex than a simple linear theory.
The tasks of grieving
There have been many theories of death proposed since then. In many of the theories it was suggested there were “tasks” to be completed during the grieving process.
One of the most popular theories gives four tasks:
Accept the reality of the loss
Process the pain of grief
Adjust to a world without the one you lost
Find an enduring connection with the person in the midst of embarking on a new life.
The tasks in themselves aren’t wrong. But a rigid adherence to them is not helpful when you are grieving.
Oscillating between grief and life
More recently the Dual Process Model has become popular. In this theory you oscillate between loss oriented mode and restoration oriented mode. This model has great validity. You need to keep living so you do have to live in the real world and there are tasks of living you still need to do. Additionally you need to learn how to live in the world without the one you love. You also need to process the loss so you need to spend time and allow yourself to experience and accept the emotional pain of your loss.
But there is more to understanding grief than oscillating from loss and restoration.
Multidimensional Grief Theory
In 2023 a paper was released describing Multidimensional Grief Theory (MGT). This theory relates to children aged 7-18 who are grieving. According to the theory there are three dimensions of grief. They are:
• Separation Distress
• Existential/identity distress
• Circumstance-related distress
Although this is aimed at children, my reading of the theory is that it can be applied to adults as well.
Separation Distress
Separation distress is not just an emotional reaction. It also involves areas of the brain where attachments to other people form. When someone close dies, there is a time of that area of the brain removing and altering neural networks connected to that person.
The big issue with separation distress is finding a way to feel connected to the person you are grieving for, even when they are gone.
Existential and Identity exploration
Every time you lose a loved one, there is a period of redefining yourself. This happens because every person you are connected to helps you define who you are. When one person dies, especially if they were very important in your life, you have to redefine who you are.
Every loss is a challenge existentially. I have found this is greater when it is the first time you have encountered the death of someone you know.
The way they died
The last dimension of grief relates to the circumstances of that person’s death. How do you think and feel about the way they died? How do you learn to accept that?
These three dimensions of grief have a major impact on how well you process grief and incorporate it into your life.
The importance of understanding what is happening to you
You may wonder why I am giving you all this information.
It is important you understand what is happening to you. When people talk about you being in denial or anger you can understand this is an outmoded theory on dying that was misapplied to grief.
If someone talks to you about tasks you must complete you can understand what they are referring to.
You are more likely to hear about the dual process model if you visit me and I will explain how you sometimes are overwhelmed by grief and other times focused on daily tasks and learning to live after your loss.
As for MGT, I am also likely to discuss with you the impact on your brain of the separation from the one you love. I will also at some stage explore the existential and identity aspects of your loss. You may also want to talk about how your loved one died so I will most likely explore your perception of that with you.
To Summarise
Grief is a complicated journey. There is a lot to process and a lot of physical changes in your brain to be completed. You need to learn how to live in the world now they are gone. You need to learn who you are. You also need to process your feelings around the manner of their death. Sometimes you will want to talk, other times cry, and maybe other times process your feelings through expressive activities such as poetry, painting, sandplay, or journalling.
This journey takes time, so don’t rush it. Be okay for it to take as long as it needs to.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief journey, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Attachment is a frequent topic of conversation. You may have heard about it and wondered what it is. In this blog, I will be explaining attachment and the related term attunement. I will describe the impact it has on child development and finish with an explanation as to how this impacts on adulthood. Finally, I will end with the good news for adults who missed out on secure attachment in childhood and how to correct insecure attachment.
What is Attachment?
Many mistakes and much research has demonstrated that an essential need for children is to be held and touched, as well as to feel seen. This need starts at birth.
These two needs are named Attachment and Attunement.
Attachment describes the bond between the child and their caregiver/s. For survival, a baby needs at least one secure adult who will provide the baby’s needs. If the child cries, it needs an adult to pick it up and attend to its needs for food, nappy changes, comfort when distressed and loving interactions. In an ideal world every child will receive that care and will be secure in the knowledge its care needs will be met.
But this is not an ideal world. And children, even in infancy, have to adopt behaviours to ensure their care needs are met.
The securely attached child
For the child with secure adult/s in their life, it is easy to have their needs met. They know there will be someone to look after them, to keep them clean, feed them, comfort them when they are distressed, play with them, see them. The usual attachment behaviours of crying or holding out their arms will result in their needs being met.
The insecurely attached child
For the child who does not have a secure adult in their life, it is not so easy. These children, described as having an insecure pattern of attachment, learn that their carer is not available when they need them. For this child, crying or expressing emotions may be dangerous. They learn to hide their fear and distress. Other insecurely attached children may learn that only when they exaggerate their crying or adopt any behaviour that gets attention will they get their needs met. For these children there is a belief that their carer is not there to meet their needs physically and/or emotionally.
Another group of insecurely attached children may learn that their carer is totally inconsistent in meeting their needs. This carer may be terrifying. That child may be frozen, unable to get any needs met and never being sure of the carer’s response to their attachment seeking behaviour.
The positive impact of secure attachment
When a child feels safe. That their physical and emotional needs will be met. They are able to develop on a normal trajectory.
Before I explain this, I want to talk about Attunement.
Attunement
It is not enough for a child to have its needs for food and comfort met. Children also need to feel seen.
If a child is not seen and visible to its carer/s then it will not get its needs met and will not survive.
Attunement is noticing a child, tuning into them, interacting with them, seeking to understand them.
A child needs to be reassured that if they are upset at something, their carer will seek to understand what the problem is.
Babies are observed to use behaviours to be noticed by their carer. They smile, coo, put their hands out, respond to the carer’s interactions. All these are part of early attunement.
Another aspect of attunement is the carer who hears the child cry and understands that cry is one of discomfort. So they change the nappy and check for anything else causing discomfort.
If the cry is one of hunger, they feed the child. And so on.
As the child grows, the attuned parent plays with the child, interacts with them, looks at things they show them, seeks to understand why the child is upset, seeks to understand acting out behaviours and so on.
Providing the security to explore the world and safety to return to
Attunement is an important aspect of secure attachment for a child.
What a child needs is to have a secure base from which to explore the world while being delighted in, helped and sharing enjoyment. They also need a safe haven that welcomes the child returning and where they can feel protected, comforted, delighted in, and having their feelings organised so they can learn to do that later in life. (Circle of Security www.circleofsecurity.net)
Interacting with a child securely and safely
Once children learn to talk, they learn to ask questions. A lot of them. These questions are vital aspects of learning for the child. It is a child’s interactions with its carers that drive brain development.
It is during the child’s first five years of life that dramatic brain development takes place. During this time the child learns how to self-regulate their emotions. They learn this by being co-regulated by their carer who holds and comforts them when they are upset or hurt, as well as laughing with them when they are having fun.
During these years, the child learns about the world and forms the view of the world as either safe or dangerous.
4 main areas where attachment drives development
Cognitive development. This is the internal belief about who I am and who You are.
Emotional regulation. This is the ability to experience, tolerate, express and regulate all emotions and to learn to seek help when needed.
Exploratory play and allied behaviour. This is the ability to be able to initiate exploration and investigation of the world through play and socialisation.
Pro-social orientation towards others. This means feeling able to reach out to others, to form friendships with others, to be part of a community.
9 positive benefits throughout life of secure childhood attachment
Protects from toxic stress. Toxic stress can be an abusive teacher, a bully, an abusive parent, needs being unmet, a disruption in the family such as divorce or a parent dying.
Allows healthy development. The stress of insecure attachment has a negative effect on child development. It also makes children vulnerable to depression or anxiety in childhood and later life.
Learning to regulate emotions. This has already been mentioned above.
Develop a healthy sense of self. Being related to by others in secure attachment allows the child to develop a sense of “who am I” and “who are you”.
Frees the brain to focus on learning. Insecure attachment involves the child constantly seeking safety which prevents the brain from giving full attention to learning.
The development of self reliance. If the child is secure, they can feel safe to try new things and learn to be self reliant. On the flip side, the child also learns it is okay to ask for help when needed and safe to rely on others when necessary. Insecurely attached children can struggle to learn self reliance and can struggle to ask for help because as a child there was no one to help them.
Healthy self esteem from which confidence grows. A securely attached child learns that there is always someone who thinks they are worthwhile. This is communicated to the child by the fact that there is always a carer there to pick them up, soothe them, play with them, see them. This sends the message “I am here and you are worth me being here”. What message does the child get from this? “You are here and I must be worth your being here. If I am worth you being here then I am worthwhile”.
Social competence. The carer baby relationship is the first relationship a child has. These sets the template for all relationships the child has in life. Secure attachment teaches a child: • it is safe to be close to another person (intimacy) • you can support others and they can support you • empathy • getting along with others in all areas of life (or doing the best you can because it is not possible to get along with everyone)
Good health. This is considered due to lower stress in childhood and into adulthood, which, apart from the lowered exposure to the damaging effect of stress hormones on the body, is shown to lower the need to resort to stress relieving activities such as excessive alcohol intake, comfort eating and smoking.
Secure attachment also leads to healthy relationships which result in good mental health, good physical health, healthy life habits and lowered mortality risk.
How does this relate to me as an adult?
If you had a secure attachment and were well attuned to as a child then you are likely to be able to live life with the ability to cope with the challenges you encounter. You may occasionally need help, but you will be fairly likely to be comfortable asking for help.
You will be able to form secure relationships with other people.
If you didn’t have a secure attachment then life may be more stressful. It may be harder to cope when challenges occur. You may not know who to seek help from or feel safe seeking that help. You may find it hard to do that things you want to do in life.
You may also find it hard to function when you are stressed. And you may notice you are stressed often. On the other hand, other people may comment on how stressed you are and you don’t think you are stressed at all because stress is so much part of your life that you don’t know what it feels like to not be stressed.
You may find you get into friendships and intimate relationships with people who are toxic. You may find yourself unable to speak up at work about problems.
You may find you feel there is crisis after crisis and struggle to feel at peace.
There are myriad ways your childhood may impact on you.
The good news
The good news is that, with the help of a trauma trained counsellor, it is possible to repair those early attachment wounds. It is possible to learn how to be more secure in relationships. It is possible to learn how to use the way your brain developed to serve you well in life, instead of hampering you.
Can I Help?
I am trauma trained and if you would like to talk to me about how I can help you to develop a more secure attachment style, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
