Attachment Healing Goals

Attachment Healing Goals:

§ Change internal working models of relationship to include health

§ Help shift disorganized story into organized

§ Help grow capacity to connect

§ Help increase window of tolerance for both stressors and nourishment

§ Invite attachment pathways to come on board

§ Look for and grow relational impulses

§ Complete incomplete sequences

§ Help separate confused and overly coupled responses

Internal Attachment Healing Techniques:

§ Creating a healthy internal parent and inviting internal bonding (IFS)

§ Bridging left and right hemispheres of the brain through the practice of using mindfulness and identifying and naming sensations in the body as they relate to attachment related memories and emotional experience (Daniel Siegel’s work)

§ Importing a healthy imaginal attachment figure (someone from their life now or an archetypal character) and tracking what happens.

§ Imaging how it would have been different if their parents had resources (the right team around them)

§ Have them tolerate the “disorienting to health” and new impulses and behaviors

§ Sequence protective responses and allow them to complete

§ Internal attachment imagery model from EMDR (have client imagine attachment experience as if viewing a movie, what do they observe with caregiver and child. Next, have them place themselves in the shoes of the caregiver and of the child so that they can grow their capacity for both attachment and empathy…)

§ Always make sure to help your client track what comes on board somatically and sequence and deepen, as felt-sense awareness is how the new pathways get grooved

External/Relational Repair:

§ Holding a wide field while staying attuned to your client energetically

§ Give the right amount of space and the right amount of contact (track)

§ Using you as source of nourishment (nourishment exercises, titrate, take in one molecule, etc.)

§ Have them track somatically as they receive nourishment or experience something different

§ Reality checking vs. projection of parent onto you

§ Check in with them regarding how it is for you to be with them in this moment (especially if during traumatic material)

§ Help them bridge their past experience with present moment of you with them in that moment (“that’s what it was like then, and what is it like for you to feel me with you right now?”)

§ Respond with healthy boundaries

§ Get curious when you experience what you think is “resistance” from your client and pause to attend to the relationship instead

§ Stay in relationship if conflict arises and model repair and check in with them regarding this new experience

§ Allow them to sequence protective responses, such as boundary setting, with you if appropriate

§ Use repair even around small misattunements (“looks like that didn’t quite land for you, huh?”)

§ Allow time for the connection to be made and for the reorganization to occur

§ Use spiritual source of nourishment if safe

§ Invite the client to connect with the impulse for contact and slowly reach towards you and see what comes up

§ Track, track, track—attunement with your client is what makes relational repair possible (contact statements—“I was a little off there, huh?”)