by Roma | Nov 4, 2020 | parenting, relationships, trauma
I spent the first 5 weeks of my life in an incubator. I must’ve cried as many times as babies do during those weeks, except the nurses would only come every 4 hours. When they did come I imagine it was either to ensure I received formula via tube or to perform sometimes painful procedures. My mother came to visit each day. Apparently I used to become lively as soon as I heard her voice coming into the neonatal unit. She sang to me and held me. This experience of being sometimes so loved and sometimes so neglected left me with what they call an ambivalent attachment status. It has permeated my adult relationships, leaving me anxious and distressed when an attachment figure goes off radar. It was only through my quest to become a better parent that I uncovered the relevance of this. Attachment researchers Mary Main et al discovered something incredibly enlightening in a study they dubbed the Adult Attachment interview. What they found was that they could predict with 85% accuracy, a child’s attachment status based on the coherency of their parent’s biographical narrative. What this means is that the hurts that Life deals us can impact on how coherently we can tell our life story. All the hurts we have endured; physical and emotional, accumulate in the body. When we are holding a certain level of upset from past hurts, we tend to skip around when we tell our story. Feelings come up, we go off on different tangents and remember details in the wrong order. Conversely, when we have processed these hurts, we begin to tell...
by Roma | May 5, 2015 | parenting, trauma
Dan Siegel, in his wonderful book, Parenting From The Inside Out, outlines research that suggests a child’s attachment status can actually be predicted by how coherent their parents’ autobiographical narratives are. Our stories reflect how well we have made sense of our lives and this directly impacts on our ability to parent responsively. I know personally from spending many hours using listening partnerships to make sense of some of the hard things in my life, that the process is transformative. I feel lighter, more authentic, more playful. I experience greater intimacy and uncontrollable belly laughs several times a day! Siegel suggests helping children heal their experiences too, by telling them their story. I had been waiting for the opportunity to do this with my 7-year- old. This morning we were off on an adventure, just the two of us. He was in the back of the car playing with Lego vehicles and one of them represented me. They fought and he said to my vehicle, “Aw, you broke my heart”. “Did I?” I asked. “Nah…” he said. Now was my moment; he was calm and connected and was captive to the car journey ahead. I took a deep breath. “I might’ve broken your heart at some points in your life,” I said casually. “Really?” he was intrigued. So I told him his story. How when he was a baby he had two very devoted parents who were right there with him and helped him with everything he needed. But when he was a toddler Daddy was confused about whether he loved Mummy or a different lady and became unsure if he wanted to...
