Category / Attachment therapy

by Therapy place uk

Saying goodbye

‘On the outside the emotions are being covered?’

‘Yep, there’s a terrible risk in saying “goodbye” that something on the inside will rupture out of me.’

‘Rupture?’

‘Yes, I remember standing on stage … in my mid-20s. I was addressing the audience and was about to thank a member of my band, someone I’d been really close to since I was a child who was emigrating to Australia after the gig. I was stopped in mid-sentence … a syllable more and I would enter the rupture. I turned my face from the audience. The silence on stage was horrific. I don’t remember what next.’

‘You say “rupture”.’

‘When my mother died, I was stuck. The complex grief of losing a mother that I’d only related with well for part of my life left this dark grey block in my chest and the back of my head. I knew I needed to cry but I couldn’t bear to hear the awful sound that wanted to exit me every time I started. Eventually, I turned the music up so loud I couldn’t hear myself cry. But it’s not what I did … not what it sounded like coming out of my body. My inner ears told me what my outer ones couldn’t.’ [Silence]

‘Rupture?’ [Silence]

‘Yes … rupture. The most guttural gasp and then, and then it vomits this sound. [Silence] I’ve heard it from other people. I think it’s the actual sound of loss?’

‘Is it fearful to lose then?’

‘Isn’t … isn’t it fundamental to loving? To connection? The only way to not experience it as far as I’m wired would be by dying so you couldn’t experience loss.’

‘Do I need to worry about that last sentence?’

‘No, no … God no. Nothing like that. It’s that saying goodbye is so fundamental.’

‘So, as it’s a patient that’s brought this up for you, what do you need from supervision today?’

‘I need to say that I have a daughter. A therapy daughter, you know that. It comes from the fact that she adopted me, as a therapy dad. She led, I followed. I had the space in my life to be that figure for a while.’

‘It’s been what? Four years?’

‘Yes, four. There’s been longer, much longer, but I was “therapy uncle”, “good person”, “repairing therapist”, “the first good guy”.’

‘Never therapy dad?’

‘Never “therapy dad”. You know that bit in the training film for therapists, Gloria … the bit where Rogers says, “Gee Gloria, right now, in the moment, I think I do love you like a father”? It kills trainees. They aren’t ready for how it can work in the room. They think it’s a no-no – like he’s made a mistake. But what’s therapy without love? Isn’t it about a form of love? Safe, ethical, non-erotic love?’

And then it hits.

‘Anny is my daughter. I love her as such because she needed me to. So that the therapy could work, so that she could let go of things, discover, rediscover and then let go.’

‘You have a daughter.’ [Silence] ‘You have a daughter.’ There is another pause as the listening therapist collects himself. ’Okay, so we know you understand the process. You know how to deliver safe, therapeutic love to women and men. It’s been a particular theme for you over the last five or six years. What’s different this time?

‘This is only just in my head but … I think it’s that I have to realise that therapy dad is a foster dad. He has to let go. Fully. No matter how much he loved. He has to have played the full role, a surrogate, but when the job is done … [there is a long silence; the room charges with emotion] … when the job is done he has to make space to receive the next therapy son, daughter [niece, nephew].’

‘It’s part of our work for some patients.’

‘Yes patients – from pati – one who suffers.’

‘Imagine that everyone demanded this from us each session!’

The supervision couple laugh together. Letting go of the tension.

‘We supply what our Ps need; it’s a privilege.’

‘Honour?’

‘Yes, honour.’

‘And I wouldn’t change a moment of it, not for all those projections and transferences we have to hold.’

‘But saying goodbye!’

‘I was once given a wonderful message in a card from an “Anny” of mine.’ The supervisor reaches into a tin that is on the side of the desk. ‘There’s a whole bit before this, but here’s the bit that really showed such deep understanding of saying goodbye for me.’

There are things in this world

that even when they live in the past

and can no longer grow into the future,

retain their beauty forever.

For a moment the therapists catch each other’s eyes and each sees in the other the familiar sparkle of light when it catches water.

Duncan recounts from a ‘therapy daughter’ …

“I feel able to fly, but I am sad to leave”

All rights reserved © Copyright Duncan E. Stafford 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author of this post is strictly prohibited. (This article was originally published in 2020 as part of the Three Men with a Blog project.)

All character-based realisations contained in this post are either of a fictional nature or have been derived from heavily disguised, consensually given information. 

by Therapy place uk

Blue Monday, acceptance and the ‘good enough’ New Year’s Resolution.

bluemonday

This year, Blue Monday* – reportedly the most depressing day of the year – occurs on 16 January. But for a moment, I’m not thinking about why, for so many people, things might get so rotten early in the year. In fact, I’m thinking back to a workshop I ran for therapists who came a from wide variety of theoretical backgrounds, and the theoretical approach I’m particularly reminded of as I write this blog is Winnicott’s ‘good enough mother’.**

Beyond the technical details of theory, there is something almost magical about the simple phrase ‘good enough mother’ – especially if seen as a contrast to the idea of the ‘perfect mother’. I often find the same sort of clarity when I examine the word ‘acceptance’, because both the idea of ‘good enough’ and ‘acceptance’ offer us the chance of freedom or liberation from expectation.

As Blue Monday approaches, imagine how quickly you could realign some of the simple hurdles you have already erected in 2017 if you begin to use the ideas of being ‘good enough’ or ‘acceptance’ rather than seeking unobtainable standards.

Reportedly, more than 30 per cent of people will have broken their New Year’s resolutions by the end of the second week of January. So, I wonder how useful the concepts of ‘good enough’ or ‘acceptance’ might be in helping people to continue with the positive changes commonly set around 1 January each year.

Imagine your resolution is to run regularly. At a packed party on 31 December you announced enthusiastically and publically at the stroke of midnight that you’d run a marathon before the end of 2017. On 14 January, as you put on your running shoes and realise how dark and cold it is outside, you notice your determination and enthusiasm shrinking. Despite wanting to save face, you throw in the towel and return to your sofa – crisps and beer in hand. At some point later, you beat yourself up for being weak-willed or lacking commitment.

But what if you take the option to reframe? Drawing from the ‘good enough’ idea, how would it be if you simply decide that enjoying a bit of running could be good enough? In the following days and weeks, you might discover that 1 kilometre turns into 2km, then 5km, then 10km. It turns out that you can accept where you find yourself right here and now and allow your ability to grow naturally, rather than demand of yourself that you adhere to the unrealistic goal you first chose.

Similarly, if you set yourself the task of losing weight – a popular New Year’s resolution – then be realistic. Don’t set your goal at a huge weight loss in an impossible period of time. At least at first, just try to lose something each week – which is actually going to be ‘good enough’ until you have firmly built the habit. If you focus on the small, the sizeable will quickly grow from it. You will then have a much better chance of embedding the change in your life long term; it will become achievable and, therefore, much more likely to improve, rather than knock, your self-esteem.

As you begin to succeed, come from your continued acceptance of the here-and-now ‘good enough’ perspective. This will undoubtedly create chances for you to grow more, but without that demanding self-expectation.

Let me wish you a happy, ‘accepting’ and ‘good enough’ 2017!

*The concept of Blue Monday, the point at which we are supposedly at our most melancholy, was first proposed by psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall as part of a 2005 press release from holiday company Sky Travel. It is claimed that the date was calculated using the equation: [W+(D-d)]xTQ/MxNA – W is weather, D is debt, d monthly salary, T time since Christmas, Q time since failure of attempt to give something up, M low motivational level and NA the need to take action. See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blue-monday-the-science-behind-the-most-miserable-day-of-the-year-a6816926.html

**Donald Winnicott (1896–1971), a British paediatrician and child psychoanalyst, was the original proposer of the ‘good enough mother’.

Why not visit my therapy website – therapy-space – where you can contact me or find further information about the therapies I provide for women, men and couples.

by Therapy place uk

On being ignored, forgotten or abandoned

AttachmentblogOn being ignored, forgotten or abandoned

1 December 2015

From my window seat, I was enjoying watching the early Saturday coffee addicts flock into the café for their various flat whites, cappuccinos and espressos – or at least I was for the first ten minutes. But, during the next five, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that my friend had forgotten we were supposed to be meeting for a long overdue catch-up. At times like this, there is often a choice of internal conversations to follow, and by the time I’d sat for twenty minutes on my own I began to indulge a few childhood voices. Some remembered being ignored, others the embarrassment of being forgotten; and then came the memory most often worked on in my own twice-weekly analysis: the sorrow of abandonment. So, what are these often strong feelings based on?

In the very early months and years of our lives we build up particular ways of relating to people. This is referred to in the therapeutic world as our attachment pattern. The research into attachment patterns was originally conducted in relation to children and their parents.* These early attachment patterns are referred to as Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent/Anxious and Disorganised. Later research has suggested equivalent patterns of attachment in adults to their significant intimate partners.** In other words, once attachment patterns are established it then becomes the way we relate in our intimate relationships.

People who had the opportunity to form Secure attachments as children also tend to form Secure attachments as adults. The Secure person has a desire for close connections with others and has a sense of a positive view of her or himself. Not surprisingly the Secure personality holds positive views about partners and their relationships.

The adult Dismissive personality is associated with those who had avoidant attachments as children. People with Dismissive personalities are largely characterised by being more separate, inward and isolated. Relationships and emotional life tend to be viewed as relatively unimportant. The cerebral takes precedence and feelings are suppressed – including distancing themselves from others.

Ambivalent/Anxious children often become Preoccupied personalities in adulthood. Self-critical and insecure, the Preoccupied adult seeks approval and reassurance from those around him/her even though this never provides the sought relief from self-doubt. In relationships, this type of personality imagines they will be further rejected which, in turn, creates more anxiety, over-dependence, lack of trust and emotional desperation.

The Fearful-Avoidant personality has its connections with the childhood Disorganised pattern of attachment: i.e. in childhood there was a detaching of feelings at times of trauma, and this persists into adulthood. There is a desire to be involved in relationships until the point at which the relationship develops emotional closeness. This becomes the trigger for the repressed feelings from early life to become live triggers in the here-and-now, which are then experienced as if they are happening in the present moment. This makes it very difficult to have a coherent sense of (your)self with the corollary that it makes intimate connections with others equally challenging.

By the time I left the café, it transpired I’d had quite a mental workout. Assured that I can still rely on my own Secure attachment, I wandered through the already stressed shoppers pondering whether my friend’s lie-in had been as interesting as my own solo coffee encounter. Perhaps, I thought, I should enjoy my own company more – but that might just have been the edge of some Dismissive personality traits talking.

* See Mary Ainsworth
** See Hazan and Shaver

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Why not visit my therapy website – therapy-space – where you can contact me or find further information about the therapies I provide for women, men and couples.