Attunement: The Foundation of Secure Attachment

speaker-0: knew it. I knew it. That the world will never know.

speaker-1: Alright, did you press right?

speaker-0: Michael's got the giggles. Yes

speaker-1: I I don't know that I have the giggles as much as I just The chuckles.

speaker-0: Thanks

speaker-1: Have such a joy in being here with you again.

speaker-0: It is good to be.

speaker-1: Back in the saddle again.

speaker-0: in the saddle. Interesting.

speaker-1: in the saddle? On the saddle. Back in I think

speaker-0: I think it's in the saddle, that doesn't make sense.

speaker-1: it's back on I don't know. But who's the singer?

speaker-0: No idea.

speaker-1: The man in black. Back in the saddle again. I walk the line.

speaker-0: huh, Johnny Cash? I just want to see if you keep going.

speaker-1: Red. Red.

speaker-0: All right. Well, we're going to be talking about the five conditions.

speaker-1: Well, we're not really gonna talk about all five, but we're still talking about

speaker-0: the conditions that lead to and the development of secure attachment. Right? Yeah. That's what we're doing tonight.

speaker-1: Yeah, no my pause was thinking, he's talking very quietly.

speaker-0: Am I? I'm afraid I'm gonna be too loud, which I'm never.

speaker-1: It may be one of your core fears of which we've been talking all night about.

speaker-0: But I share my core fear.

speaker-1: No, we don't need to put you out there like that.

speaker-0: I mind, but yeah, I think it's funny.

speaker-1: It's very much partly why I'm giggling.

speaker-0: One of my biggest fears that we were sharing earlier is that I would be watching a segment on the news on obesity and it'd be B-roll and I'm walking across the street.

speaker-1: From not not from the front but from the back. Right. You walking away from the camera. Exactly. And it's

speaker-0: They're quasi like making the identity unknown.

speaker-1: So it's like from the shoulders down, knees up.

speaker-0: But I very much know that identity. so anytime like I hear a news alert, they're like, obesity America. I'm like, crap, I'm going to be on the TV.

speaker-1: They caught me walking across the street.

speaker-0: They caught me. thankfully that hasn't happened. But I do feel like this sense of sorrow and sadness whenever I see whatever people they're talking about. Like,

speaker-1: Yeah, I know.

speaker-0: you got featured. Did you sign consent?

speaker-1: I know. I'm sure they didn't.

speaker-0: So fear unlocked. That is one of mine.

speaker-1: We've done a lot of that tonight. Sorry. I've

speaker-0: I can't feel.

speaker-1: I've unlocked several of your f other fears. so yeah, we are talking about the five we're gonna talk about one of the five core conditions that support the development of secure attachment in childhood.

speaker-0: Yeah, when you say it kind of sounds sweet and a little boring

speaker-1: Is that my new Twitter handle? Sweet and boring. Sweet and boring. Is this my Tinder profile?

speaker-0: as we do that, we've already enjoyed one and we continue to enjoy. Just a classic old fashioned. Because we weren't prepared to be fancy tonight, but I had all the ingredients to make it old fashioned.

speaker-1: You you have all the ingredients for a lot of drinks. But

speaker-0: This is the go-to.

speaker-1: It's your go to, that's for sure.

speaker-0: It's true.

speaker-1: It's never my go to unless I'm around you.

speaker-0: And you just got back from the Bourbon Trail.

speaker-1: This is also true.

speaker-0: Surprise is not your go-to now. Because didn't you learn how to make an old-fashioned?

speaker-1: Already knew how to make an old fashioned. Did you? I mean, one of my core fears is making an old fashioned in front of you because you are notorious.

speaker-0: critic.

speaker-1: Sure. That's not where I was going, but it's a true story. You're

speaker-0: You're not wrong.

speaker-1: not wrong. No, you you are notorious for the amazing old fashions that you made my wife's family. And it was referenced on the bourbon tour.

speaker-0: And still wasn't invited.

speaker-1: You also are still not invited.

speaker-0: They talk about me. They don't invite me. It's fine. I don't have no bitterness.

speaker-1: None registered.

speaker-0: There's none, none that I'm attuned to.

speaker-1: nice little segue, Michael. So what we're gonna talk about is the core condition where parental behavior is characterized by attunement that engenders in children a feeling of being felt, which is a fun sort of redundant, but it's the yeah, it's it's the sense that you someone else feels what you feel and you feel known. You feel understood. You feel seen.

speaker-0: I was gonna say, I think that's how a lot of us talk about it today is like, you see me. when we feel this connection and we feel felt, it oftentimes can be referred to as like, I feel seen or feel known. Yeah, it engenders all of that. seen, feeling known, understood, feeling felt.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. So let's unpack it.

speaker-0: Let's unpack.

speaker-1: So we have we have talked about this concept a several times on our podcast.

speaker-0: of attunement.

speaker-1: Yeah, on attunement and how sometimes people don't quite understand what that means or and there's some important distinctions that we wanna make, highlight.

speaker-0: Right so attunement and what we talked about in some of the other podcasts is I use that Use the metaphor of an old dial-up radio. So those who are in Dallas, Texas Or DFW area we have the channel 106.1 kiss FM and so on a dial-up radio if you have it

speaker-1: You do know that that's across the country.

speaker-0: I do. Okay. Yes, but specifically because I live here and everything surrounds me I just want people to know

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: I thought everyone took Texas history.

speaker-1: I totally I I I appreciate that from a California perspective. Yeah. Much

speaker-0: Everyone did not.

speaker-1: to my surprise when I was raising children in Texas, they were gonna study Texas history and not California history. True.

speaker-0: So but the idea of dialing into radio station like if you have it on the exact right dial like the signal comes in clear you Understand what's going on? but if it's just a little bit off it starts to get static or another station may be coming in and Mudding the waters making it unclear And if we're not fully tuned in we're gonna get an unclear message. Yeah back and forth So the attunement with a child is this idea of can we tune in not only to what they're saying but what they're feeling.

speaker-1: Especially w what they're feeling. Right.

speaker-0: What's going on inside? Because the reality is, is children don't have a full vocabulary. They don't have the, well, even as adults.

speaker-1: Hot take. Many adults don't have much of a vocabulary.

speaker-0: limited on that emotional vocabulary and what's going on inside but they need assistance and understanding what's going on inside them as they're trying to communicate and so this attunement is vital to building that security of that security to explore what's going on within them and security to feel safe to express it as well, to let it be known without judgment, without fear.

speaker-1: Yeah, and the security of of knowing, believing, that their insights are of inherent value, of importance. Right. Yeah.

speaker-0: Gosh, I know as an adult now I have my own insecurities, but as a child, like a new feeling, can you imagine? Like a new feeling coming up and not knowing what it is, what to do with it. How confusing that would be.

speaker-1: Sounds like falling in love for the first time.

speaker-0: interesting. That's lovely. And yeah, but also imagine an insecure parent who isn't connected with their own feelings and then the child's having the feeling for the first time and the parent isn't connected with that. That's just gonna create a very confusing, insecure situation. We'll get back to that. Yeah. For here right now, this idea of attunement, attunement is, beyond just observing. Yeah. Right. It's beyond just like, you're, you're panicking. You're losing your crap.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's more than being noticed. Right. It's more than just being talked at or talked about. As accurate as it may be.

speaker-0: That's sometimes in the therapy world and this isn't to bash anyone or critique. Maybe it is because I'm always critiquing, but this is where I, I find that using the feeling wheel falls short because a lot of people will identify and they'll use this. It's a feeling wheel. So it's like a wheel that has spokes and every spoke. as a different feeling word associated with it. And it's great to bring awareness and to expand some curiosity and expand a vocabulary. But just the knowledge of, yes, that's it, or the observation of, yes, that matches, falls short of really connecting with what's going on, in my experience.

speaker-1: Yeah, because it it's not quite connecting. It's a it's a fundamental building block.

speaker-0: It's an observation.

speaker-1: and that it and an important one, especially if it's accurate. It is part of the the skills, but it's it's an incomplete skill or it's an incomplete capacity.

speaker-0: It's a building block.

speaker-1: It's a building block. Maybe a foundational one. But or in terms of the repairing. We'll more on that later. But but attunement To your point, attunement isn't this identifying and naming and labeling of emotions in someone else. It is the reverberance. It is feeling what someone else is feeling. when we are dialing or tuning that dial to accurately sense know what our toddler is feeling, we then also feel it in ourselves as an echo of the child's feeling.

speaker-0: I'm finding myself giggling because I, all I can think about is my adult patients right now. And what I'm thinking of is there's been numerous occasions where unfortunately it's been the wife who comes in with a feeling wheel chart and once their husband, to identify what they're feeling. and as if this is a magic trick that if the husband can identify the word he's feeling, then we're going to be okay. But unless you can feel with them,

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: it's not going to do any good. It's just going to be a fact.

speaker-1: Sure. Him over there can identify his feeling over there. Yes. And not me with him.

speaker-0: over there, right, but not with me. Exactly, yeah. So again, sorry, I'm preoccupied with my own experiences of, man, people are trying so hard to connect. And it just identifies how they were connected with, or not connected with.

speaker-1: And maybe it's the safest way, the least vulnerable way. Right. And maybe a baby step or a

speaker-0: But it requires that sense of if they can identify that feeling, can you feel it with them? Not just say, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: Okay, check, move on. Are you done with that now?

speaker-1: So okay, so a great example of attunement that can be challenging for parents with their kids. You have your child who's been exploring and playing in the backyard a little bit, and you're inside trying to put the house back together, the perpetual laundry or prepping a meal or what have you. So you're maybe occupied with housekeeping, knowing your child's in the backyard safe, keeping an eye on them, but not hovering, but you're sort of in your housekeeping mode and they're in their exploration mode in the backyard. Mm-hmm. Then the child comes sort of like breaking through the door, beaming with excitement. And wants to share something with you. And you're in the mode of folding laundry or ironing or cleaning up or cleaning up a mess. Yeah, that they made, you made, y'all made together. So there's already this: here's a moment for you to attune to their excitement. They need you to join them in their excitement. And it attuning is tuning into their Affect and tuning your internal affect to the same frequency, to the same channel.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And that can be challenging because you were just sort of in task mode, or but it can be even more challenging when the child comes in with, like, say, a cockroach that they found. And they are so enamored by God's creation and how this insect. looks and operates and what it does and and they want to share that with you. And what attunement requires of us is to set aside on many levels what we were thinking about, what we were concerned about in our own world, what we were attending to, to set that aside temporarily and to set inside us their internal world, especially their affective emotional world. So here it's the excitement and the excitement about a cockroach that they want to share with you. And you've got to join them. Right. And it's the joining across time, repeated these kinds of repeated experiences that is going to leave the child feeling felt, feeling seen, feeling understood, feeling known. feeling that they belong, that they're understandable.

speaker-0: Belong is really good. The word that kept coming to my mind is met.

speaker-1: Yeah, met. But yes. But an exuberance joining met meeting. Right. And this can be a challenge because many of us are gonna freak out at the cockroach is in the house and we're gonna scold or we're gonna start teaching a cockroaches live and belong outside. And there's a time for that, and there's a way to do that that can also still leave the child feeling felt.

speaker-0: Yeah. There's also a danger of creating some shame in there.

speaker-1: That's right. That's right. In our reaction Sure. That's right.

speaker-0: You like gross things.

speaker-1: That's that would be an example of being misattuned. Right. that the child isn't ready to learn what is a good insect and a bad insect, what's a gross insect and not a gross insect. That's not where they're at. Mm-hmm. And if you feel the need to teach those lessons that later bugs are good insects and good out.

speaker-0: Bad inside.

speaker-1: Yes. then so be it. That's I'm gonna leave that to you, even though I have thoughts and feelings about that. But the point is that we can override the misattunment is overriding their emotional world and making them feel what you're feeling when we require the child to attune to us. That's a perversion, that's backwards. And what children need in development across time, especially in those earliest of years, is whole sets of caregiving that can tune their inside world to the infant, toddler, child's inside world.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's lovely. Especially in that moment of surprise. The

speaker-1: She

speaker-0: idea of attunement requires a sense of regulation within yourself

speaker-1: Hundred percent.

speaker-0: so that you can attune. So you're adjusting your own emotional experience and bandwidth for them. Again, because they don't have an established bandwidth. They don't have the capacity. That's

speaker-1: No, their capacity is your capacity in the co regulating.

speaker-0: a hard lesson to learn. And when they're struggling, it's like, well, they're struggling because you struggle. And that's a hard it's a hard thing to tell parents to.

speaker-1: And our hope is always just normalize that. Right. It is hard. We all this is not it's never about getting this perfectly right every time. Right. Nobody does that.

speaker-0: And again, this is beyond just observation. So a lot of parenting has the idea of like, let's identify what your feeling is. You're

speaker-1: You're excited about this cockroach.

speaker-0: excited.

speaker-1: Reflecting back. That's not the kind of reflecting we're talking about. Right. Where it's analyzing, describing, naming, labeling. It's kind of that. It can involve that. But attunement is really affect to affect emotion to emotion.

speaker-0: the extension of can I be with you? It's like one example I see is this idea of like, you're sad.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: End of conversation going on with what we do. The observation alone, just like the feeling wheel, identifying sad, angry, elated.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: The identification alone is useless. Like it needs more building blocks. It needs more. And so the more is You're sad. Hey, can I sit with you in your sadness?

speaker-1: And scene. I'm done choking and almost dying, of which you did nothing other than laugh at me.

speaker-0: I know I was more worried about the podcast then because I know that was going to end. didn't care that

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: I knew that was going to end, but I didn't attune to it. That was a good example. I did not attune to this.

speaker-1: I did not feel like you were feeling the same kind of distress. I was distressed about me dying. You were distressed about the interruptions. I down to attend

speaker-0: I could not put mine down to yours. But yes, the idea is like, you're sad. Can I sit with you for a minute in your sadness? Can we talk about it? I be with you?

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: And not fix it, not solve it. You know, we don't have to be sad. It's okay. Tomorrow we're gonna get to go see, I don't know, we'll get to go to the zoo. It'll be happy then. No, right now you're sad and whatever you're feeling is okay. And I can be with it. And what's amazing is that if you are with that experience, that feeling, it oftentimes moves. It changes. It evolves.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's inherent nature. That's right. Yeah, right. It's inherent nature it's gonna change all by itself.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And sitting with and feeling with is our best bet to let it take its natural course of coming and going. Mm-hmm. And the benefit is that the child learns. That what they feel is feelable by others, it's knowable by others, it's understandable. Which means inherently. That's right. That's right.

speaker-0: Right, it makes it un-strange. not taboo. Yeah.

speaker-1: And they learn that it can be a force of connection. Mm-hmm. A f a f a force of bonding, of support. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah. So an additional way to talk about this is through the idea of mirroring. Are you familiar with mirroring? Yeah,

speaker-1: Yeah, sure.

speaker-0: I'd hope so. Yeah. Therapists should be.

speaker-1: Ha ha ha.

speaker-0: But the mirroring or even the mentalization, so being able to take on the mind of another. So not just our own, but another. And in parenting, it's such an important role. But again, I'm always being pulled back into adults because that's what I work with the most. But this idea that can you reflect the emotional experience of another with accuracy and empathy, which helps organize the other person. that what they're going through is normal, but it helps organize it and make it tangible. makes it digestible. Right. You can work with it.

speaker-1: manipulatable. We can work with it.

speaker-0: In my own experience, instead of just talking about my clients, I went through some testing because my wife is like your ADD. There were signs. But come to find out after all the testing after the long batteries of assessment, I am not ADD. I'm just unorganized.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: Not fixable. Sorry, babe. With a pill at least. But when I was doing the assessments, there's the interview with the psychologist. And there was this really impactful moment where, and I've been in therapy for a long time and my therapist is great. this but there was just this moment that I like I'm meeting this clinician for the first time we're meeting for you know six to eight hours but just the very beginning she's having me tell my life story family dynamics and stuff and I'm sharing the story and she just pauses me and to me it's just like you asked me factual information I'm telling you this happened this happened this happened here this happened there and she just stops me and leans like leans closer and she was like I just need to stop you. that just makes me really sad. And there was something in that moment, I say something, she was mirroring my cognition, but I was feeling it, but I've just learned to make it a cognition.

speaker-1: And learn to not to feel what your body was feeling. Right.

speaker-0: And so she was able to attune with me and slow me down and bring me back to my body and reflect it within herself. that makes me sad. I'm imagining if I'm feeling that, what can you be feeling? I'm like, well, I've been feeling anything for years.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: And now that you bring it up, well, shit. Yeah, that is really sad. But it left this it made this moment that I could now reorganize something. that I once had put away and just accepted as pain, don't wanna touch it, don't wanna be with it. But just that mirroring, that being with me, feeling felt, allowed me to move through it in a whole new way, which allowed me to let it go a bit. In that just very brief intervention.

speaker-1: Yeah, simple.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. which had been there, this locking had been there for years.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: And so, like it's, I say that just to say like I felt the experience of this. How powerful it can be within myself. Right.

speaker-1: And repairing later in adulthood.

speaker-0: And I think the other good news, we'll get to this towards the end, is that the repair that I needed wasn't with the one that ruptured the repair.

speaker-1: sure.

speaker-0: The mirroring in that moment helped to bring that repair, which is, I think, the hope in therapy, one of the hopes that can come with therapy.

speaker-1: So kid infants, toddlers, infants and toddlers are a bundle of emotion. They don't quite have complex thinking yet. Right. And they don't have much of a vocabulary yet, let alone complex sentence structure. And they don't have even conscious memory yet. So the the sort of the dominant kind of developmental need in that infancy toddlerhood is this emotional reverberance, this emotional attunement, the tuning our insides as caregivers to the infants insides emotionally. And across time, when we start adding language to it. to the to the feeling that we're both feeling that leads to what we call metacognition, which is this capacity to understand what's happening on your insides in your mind. And your mind is in your is a relationship that you have with your body. The mind is the brain in relationship with the body. I think a Daniel Siegel quote. And that allows the child to read, to be literate of their own internal world, and allows them, grows the capacity to be literate, have the capacity to understand what's happening in somebody else's mind. It's a mutual capacity. Yes. And it starts with the foundational. asymmetrical caregivers filling up their mind with the child's mind or their mind tuning in their insides to the infant's insides. And across time that gets more nuanced by the caregivers starting to share, this is what's happening in my body, or this is how I'm feeling, not in a kind of responsible way, but in a reflective way. And so that you have metacognition is it sounds cognitive and it is cognitive, but it is the substrates of emotional intelligence. And we can talk about emotional intelligence as the cap the capacity to read your emotions and other people's emotions with accuracy, with effectiveness, and with an embodiedness. Yeah. And all insecure attachment is just problems with that. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: Right?

speaker-1: In in its simplest form. Security of attachment is a capacity for that, not a hundred percent capacity, yeah, a hundred percent of the time. But all insecurity of attachment in one form or another is challenges with being literate with what's happening in your side it in in your insides or in other people's insides. Right.

speaker-0: Again, I want to take it back to adults, couplings.

speaker-1: Yeah, sure.

speaker-0: Like this idea in relationship, like when I hear one partner tell another partner that they need better emotional intelligence. That

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: in itself shows that there's a lack of emotional intelligence between the two of them, within both.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: that I have a hard time leaning and understanding why emotions are hard for you. And not understanding how I impact you.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: As I'm pointing the finger saying you have no emotional intelligence.

speaker-1: Yep.

speaker-0: It's fascinating that we all come at it so naturally and so desire and crave to be felt, known and seen.

speaker-1: Absolutely. A core attachment need. Yep.

speaker-0: Yeah. So this leads us into the negative effects of

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: when we aren't attuned, when we aren't felt, when we aren't seen. And that happens on repeat. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: The amount of confusion that can cause. And that can happen in so many different ways through questioning. a child's emotional experience. Maybe you're scared of it. So like with a cockroach, you try to denounce it and say it's not okay. You can mock it. they just said kind of. And I see, I've heard mocking in so many ways. don't know if people are intending harm. I think it's their own discomfort. And it's the inability to connect and reflect but the mocking of Or you feeling sad, you know that type of thing just like this idea of like I want you to stop feeling what you're feeling Because it's causing me distress Causing

speaker-1: I missed

speaker-0: me extra energy. It's causing me extra focus and like I just don't want to do it right now

speaker-1: Or incredible distress. It's a it's a disaster when that's characterizes the relating. Right. regardless of it of its intention. But No. No no one who is well, no one who is securely attached is ever gonna mock period. That's probably a full state statement, but but mock the subjective internal Emotion. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: world.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so tragic to see.

speaker-0: And it can just cause so much confusion and pain. How I kind of see it developing in the attachment world is that there's continual misattunement. So I can't enter your emotional world as a child. I can't reflect, I can't validate, I can't be with the experience you're having. Well, that leaves the child extremely confused because whether they can name it or claim it, They're feeling it. They're experiencing it. And if we continuously become miss attuned, they have to make sense of that world. And they're going to either make sense of it as I need to go away and figure it out on my own, that no one's going to help me, which is going to create that dismissive avoidant. or I have to keep trying, try harder. And if you keep denying me as I try harder, It's just gonna develop this message that I am too much

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: and I am unconnectable, which is gonna create that sense of preoccupied, anxious attachment.

speaker-1: Yeah, i if I have to go away and independently figure it out, one way I might figure it out is try to just shut it all down. Mm-hmm. Yeah, power it off, turn the volume down, deny,

speaker-0: Completely surrender the body I'm not feeling that I'm okay

speaker-1: dissociate, sever. Right. at at some of the extremes. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: I like this to go back to some of our previous episodes. So that idea of turning the volume down or we have the option of turning the volume up. Yeah.

speaker-1: Far too up.

speaker-0: But just demand to see me. Yes. A man to see this, this distress.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: and if you never meet that, if you never connect with me as I turn the volume up, it's just the conclusion is, is my volume is too loud. I am

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: too loud.

speaker-1: Yeah, and and in that preoccupied, entangled direction, we we become we we are we're rendered almost incapable of being soothed or comforted or regulated. and we sometimes even resist while simultaneously craving. the connection and and calming and soothing and reassuring. Right. Whereas on the dismissive avoidant direction, We we so don't need any comforting and soothing that we're so detached and unreachable and distant and And leaving others feeling so alone and

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Lonely and

speaker-0: As the clinician said to me, that makes me sad. Yeah.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: And I also know it happens, I think maybe in the way we're characterizing it now, it sounds like we're just talking about bad parents. And that's not necessarily true. Life happens, because this can happen in the development of, say you have. an undiagnosed asthmatic child and all of a sudden they require all the medical attention in the world and there's a hypervigilance about their breathing, about how they experience the world and all their classes they're taking and like the world becomes a focus on them and you have the other child who is not going through the physical ailments of that. and they still have their emotional world, but the preoccupation with keeping your child alive, the other child alive, diminishes your ability to connect and enter into the other child's world. And so it's not out of maliciousness, it's out of survival in that case. And so it's these things that happen over time. And what that leads me to say is that these things can be repaired. Hopefully like the best-case scenario is they're repaired within that child's life and that in their childhood. Yes That says you know Brother or sister has taken a lot of attention and it's been it's been hard and you've had needs and I want to be here for you. Yeah

speaker-1: I'm aware that the last couple of months have been Yeah.

speaker-0: than hard.

speaker-1: And I as your parents we've been real distracted and real preoccupied with something else.

speaker-0: Yeah. And oftentimes it's not done. Again, not out of maliciousness. It's just out of survival and getting through.

speaker-1: This is why we need attachment-informed nursing, attachment-informed pediatrics, so that they can help support the whole family system as they're trying to help the one particular identified patient, the in this case the asthmatic child, to help the k the whole system attend to and have a great example of that. Okay.

speaker-0: Let's hear it.

speaker-1: our youngest Sir Caleb. The the dude. The dude.

speaker-0: He is such a dude.

speaker-1: so so he was born with a life threatening heart condition that required open heart surgery. was in the NICU for a good couple weeks. which was terrifying to us as parents and all of a sudden we're in that club of parents n of newborns that are in NICUs and the beeps and sounds and the sterility and the

speaker-0: Horrifying.

speaker-1: the sort of broken promise that you'd be taking your child home and into their crib and into their brand new swaddling clothes and and and being added to this family. Right. Only heightened for us that it was during the ice storm of Dallas 2011

speaker-0: my gosh, yeah.

speaker-1: when the Super Bowl was in Dallas. Everything is is shut down. So the the hospital wasn't necessarily nursing, but the hospital staff, social workers. They had a social worker assigned not to our infant and not to us as parents, but to our other two children. I don't know if we've ever told you this. And so they would meet with Jacob and Emily. And they did art projects and made necklaces and talked about the surgery and talked about their feelings and Because g Gab and I were not present with ourselves, with each other. But it's just a beautiful story of how the medical field has awakened to the attachment needs of a whole family system. Yeah. And helped them make sense of their little brother who just had a big surgery and is gonna have all these tubes and wires connected to him and preparing them to see him that way. Because Gab and I, we did none of that preparation. Like we didn't talk to our kids about what they might see.

speaker-0: Again, so thankful for attachment informed social work right there. It's

speaker-1: Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

speaker-0: huge. Cause it would be so hard to expect you as parents. you're going through a tragedy and pain and questions and.

speaker-1: Fear terror.

speaker-0: Yeah. All on yourself. Yeah. And to expect you to be this perfect attuned parent. Yeah.

speaker-1: To your other kids. So it's it's a it's a an example of how if you're not resourced the way we were resourced, if you're not in a big city with a phenomenal children's hospital with a phenomenal infant heart surgeon like we were and had access, that could have been a disaster.

speaker-0: Yes.

speaker-1: for the whole system, including other kids, where our kids wouldn't receive the collective attunement from multiple caregivers. and so it's understandable how how easily we can lose our capacities to attune to the emotional needs of our kids in core key developmental phases of their lives. our kids were, I don't even know, but they were like four and seven, I think, at the time when Caleb was born. so that they're still heavily in need of parents attuning to them and helping give words to their experience and having them re have having their emotional experiences resonated with their parents and they were getting none of that from us. Sure. but they were getting it from others. But if you're not under those kind of privileged circum circumstances,

speaker-0: Thank

speaker-1: you add poverty, you add war, you add I don't know what else, marital dyst distress. lack of additional family support, job security.

speaker-0: Yeah, job security.

speaker-1: my God, yes. I mean, the million dollars of medical bills that we got and I had amazing healthcare insurance and it was just a couple thousand dollars for open heart surgery.

speaker-0: Even then a couple thousand dollars can be.

speaker-1: Sure for others, yeah, a total disaster. Again, yeah, for us it wasn't and so manageable. So the in there there there are so many ways for us to lose maybe e s a semblance of our adequate attunement. Let alone if you're already starting off on some shaky, insecure ground.

speaker-0: Yeah, which lends to the notion that we talked about before is that it takes a village. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, t the way I often say it to my often conservative evangelical Christian client patient pool that it was a great lie that children need a two-parent home.

speaker-0: yeah.

speaker-1: That a two-parent home is an insufficient home

speaker-0: So insuff-

speaker-1: for raising children. Yeah. and for the most part, my wife and I are well and have a great marriage and we're able to provide our children wonderful environment, but it was always going to come up short if we didn't have neighbor Julie and Eric, if we didn't have neighbor Carrie and James, if we didn't have neighbor Larry and Tracy, if we didn't have

speaker-0: Come on, say it, the Ashenfelter.

speaker-1: you all came a little later in our life.

speaker-0: We came later, you frequently tell me how we're only invited because the kids won us over. You're not wrong. That's right.

speaker-1: You're right. We're like, hey, you guys wanna have a gr fun dinner tonight? Yeah, but are the Ashenfelters gonna come over? sure. Sure. No, a hundred percent. I mean a thousand percent. you guys have been part of that. You just came a little later in terms of the solid security of attachment stuff, but you've only added and and secured the security. A thousand percent. Yes, yeah.

speaker-0: Thanks for letting me feed my ego there.

speaker-1: And it's mainly Tiffany, but it's fine.

speaker-0: God knows it's true.

speaker-1: No, my kids will ask me, What did you do today? Did you did you get to see Michael?

speaker-0: They will.

speaker-1: They think about you. They know you. They you are part of their world because you're part of my world.

speaker-0: Well, and I think that's part of one thing you've shared with me, too, this idea that parenting is such an important role. But caregiving is really the main, main role.

speaker-1: That's the re that's the actual role is caregiving, which belongs to us all. Right. A thousand percent. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's it's I don't know if that's the most anti parenting statement. But it's true because our kids were devastated. Emily, you you didn't go to Emily's graduation party. No, no, you didn't.

speaker-0: I did, my wife didn't, the other didn't.

speaker-1: The other didn't. There's something else. yeah, some other friends. Sorry. The

speaker-0: I know. It's okay. Others exist.

speaker-1: others exist. But the point being is that they were devastated. That people that helped raise them weren't

speaker-0: be there.

speaker-1: able to be there. And by raise them, they didn't pay anything for them. They didn't they didn't wipe any asses and change diapers. Sure. but they were absolutely part of

speaker-0: their experiences.

speaker-1: Yeah, the milieu of the world is safe. The world is reliable. Right. The world is interested in my life and in my insights. Not just what I can do or perform, but they're interested in yeah, like

speaker-0: development.

speaker-1: how I'm making sense of the world and interested in the things that I'm interested in, especially in ways that my parents aren't. And thank God because I can't stand some of the shit they're interested in. But I can count on Michael and Tiffany being interested in it.

speaker-0: So my favorite times is coming to your house and mind dancing. Yes. Caleb and Emily. You just sat on your butt.

speaker-1: Yeah of which I do not want to do. Yes I did. This is not how I this is not how we dance where I come from. Yes. Yeah, you guys are are absolutely extensions of parenting air quotes.

speaker-0: Yeah. And so with that, there's hope not only in just caregiving, but we're never done is a way I might want to say that, that these ruptures happen and sometimes continuously. And if they're not repaired in childhood, there still is hope in the repair later on.

speaker-1: It's never too late.

speaker-0: Right. much like the idea of these wounds that lived with me for so long. And in that short moment, I'm not saying they're all magical like this and they're all instantaneous, but in that short moment of a connection that gave me permission to feel sad about something I felt sad about but never felt permission to feel sad about, gave me room to feel, which then allowed it to move

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: and evolve. And we can do that with our caregivers, with the ones who hurt. ruptured with us. If that's not possible. Exactly.

speaker-1: And if that's not possible, we can do it in community. Whether that's professional community. Right.

speaker-0: social worker, therapist, clergy, or

speaker-1: Yes, yes.

speaker-0: with friends, community.

speaker-1: Yes. Or therapeutic communities like maybe sangas people that join together to meditate.

speaker-0: Okay, I was about to say watch your mouth. I don't know what you're talking

speaker-1: Okay. or I think on some level some people find these in some of the exercise workout communities. They find a new community and that is very relational and affirming and supportive.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: There's so many different ways to find these repairs.

speaker-0: Right, a place to be mirrored or a place to be attuned to. To see you. To be.

speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, to s to be felt. Mm-hmm. To be left feeling f understood. Feeling felt. There's a this is not my quote, but it's never too late to have a childhood. Mm-hmm. Is sort of what we're saying.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: To get what we didn't get

speaker-0: No.

speaker-1: in childhood. It's never too late to have one. Right. And of course we cannot change the past, the facts of the past. But these

speaker-0: They exist.

speaker-1: kinds of deeper understandings and and these kinds of somewhat reenactments or It does change us.

speaker-0: It changes in so many ways. One way we talked about in the past is it changes our capacity to see things differently. So when that is unlocked, it opens up a curiosity and opens up a, I'd say it opens, it's not a guarantee. There's capacity that a curiosity can be unlocked, that you can see things differently, that a flexibility can be introduced.

speaker-1: Yes. A broadening of perspectives. Right. Which can include my my experience and the different experience that someone else may have had about the same interaction. Right. About the same experience. Yeah.

speaker-0: And so I'd say as we close tonight, that's our hope for anyone who's listening. Is that you. Yeah, we do need to stop.

speaker-1: Apparently we have to stop. All right, fine. Yes. And in closing in closing. Yes, this is our hope.

speaker-0: Yeah, the U of I community.

speaker-1: It's the good news.

speaker-0: and you'll find repair and healing.

speaker-1: It's out there. It is. It's there to be had.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: It is perhaps the best part of the world wide web and s f facets of social media.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Is that we can find this community, we can find these experiences. It's there to be had. Well, Michael

speaker-0: Michael, it was a pleasure today, as it always is, but I really enjoyed this one.

speaker-1: particular. I'm so glad to be in the saddle again.

speaker-0: I'll be on it. You be in it. All right. Next time

speaker-1: Right.

speaker-0: we'll continue the five conditions.

speaker-1: yeah, we got two more. One more.

speaker-0: two more, but one episode. Bye.

speaker-1: Okay.