Welcome to Attachment Matters.
Attachment Matters is a conversation between two mothers who are passionate about the subject of attachment, and how in parenting our children, we are offered the opportunity to grow ourselves up. This presents unique challenges to parents of children, adolescents, and young adults who adopt a transgender identity. Our hope is to offer greater insight into how to strengthen the attachment between parents and their children, despite all odds.
In this episode, Rose reviews the six roots of attachment, the primal emotions that are evoked when we’re facing or anticipating separation, along with the necessity of these emotions in our human experience. We explore Neufeld’s idea of the ‘flight from vulnerability’, a phenomenon that happens when our emotional defenses become stuck. And we emphasize the importance of insight; recognizing that by developing understanding of how attachment moves us, we’re more able to make space for all of this messy human experience, both for ourselves and for our loves ones.
Works Cited
The construct of maturation & development we cover in Season 2 is drawn from the Neufeld Institute Intensive 1 Course. Here is an Intensive 1 Preview Video (Part 3 of 3) that gives a taste of the experience of taking Intensive 1 as a live online course with Neufeld faculty. It is full of rich and simple take-aways that reinforce what we cover in our episodes!
Past Episodes
Episode 2: Playing the Long Game we talk about the primal attachment emotions to pay attention to as we move through this material. Rose links attachment to maturation, and describes the first three stages of Neufeld’s 6 stage model of the development of attachment. The important concept of bridging gets defined, and hopefully, we make clear that it’s never too late to grow up.
Episode 3: The Generous Invitation we revisit what to do with “the impulse to fix” and we touch on the way our culture uses leverage to drive behavior. We also explain why we might want to extend abundant grace to our children, Rose introduces the last three, more vulnerable stages of attachment, and we define Neufeld’s concept of collecting.
Questions for reflection
How can you “make space” for this existential experience of facing separation, and all of the emotions, and potentially defenses, that it evokes? How can you make space for this in your child’s experience? What insight, if any, has this episode offered in your own life circumstances?
Say A Little Prayer, by Greg Brown, from One More Goodnight Kiss, from Rose for your listening. A father’s prayer for his daughter to get better soon.
Become a paid subscriber to join the conversation and submit questions for future episodes!
