Untying the Knots

It’s all about how we were loved

Do you recognize this: 

• You get nervous when you can’t read your partner’s face, and you want to see signs of feel-good and connection, so your attention stays with them until you know all is good between the two of you. 

• Or you get tired of all this talk and ongoing demands that you should show more care and love. You. Love. Them. They should know by now, can’t you have a break? 

• You get nervous when your partner is not available and your mind starts spinning, rehearsing for the worst case. Which let’s you close up and shut down your internal  window blinds.

All examples have to do with our attachment history, how we were seen and loved when we were infants. Isn’t that amazing? The first year is so crucial for the relationships we build during the rest of our lifes.  These patterns stay with us, and if you work closely with people as coaches do, they play out in the coach-client relationships as well.

We love as we have been loved.
Let's add some names to this fact.
Little Betty was lucky. When she came home from school upset because her friend didn’t want to play, her mom listened with care. “That must have been hard,” she said, offering a hug. Betty felt safe to cry, and over time learned that her emotions were valid and she could trust others for support. But things were different for Anne. When she didn’t get invited to a party and shared her sadness, her dad dismissed her with, “Life’s tough, get used to it.” Anne learned to bottle up her feelings, believing they were unimportant.
Johnny, too, struggled. After being teased at the park, he just wanted comfort, but his mom looked worried at him and wanted confirmation from him that he was OK. Johnny pretended he was getting over it  so that mom could relax. Internally, he felt lonely and kept looking to mom to see how she was doing.
While Betty grew up feeling valued and supported, Anne and Johnny learned that the world wasn’t safe, and trusting others only brought pain.
As adults, we replicate our early patterns. Research shows that early attachment patterns significantly influence what we expect in our adult relationships. They play out in the workplace, in families and friendships, and in romantic relationships, and they are frequently playing a role behind the issues clients bring to the coaching conversations.

So why does this knowledge matter to us as coaches?
From the client’s perspective, working with an attachment-aware coach means you get to experience you are making sense to another human being beyond what is rational and obvious, and you get support to develop a kind loving voice within in the vacuum left by a distant, confusing, or scary caregiver. The coach brings curiosity to patterns that seemed stuck and defining for you, and supports you to disentangle the past from your present relationships. 
Re-modeling the attachment brain
Our approach to working with Attachment Awareness comes from neuroscience educator Sarah Peyton and her framework Resonant Language ® as a gentle, yet efficient way to liberate ourselves and clients from limiting attachment patterns. We develop curiosity about the client’s lived experiences and offer to be a secure attachment figure during the work, modeling the voice of the emerging inner resonating self-witness. 

Connecting to a coach who meets the client through unconditional positive regard and models this rare and immensely valuable welcome of the client in all their complexity and perhaps messiness grows the brain neurons of secure attachment that have been waiting forever for some nourishment. 
This is the true context-independent resource we can all develop, that brings us a sense of true coming home. 
We can all develop a caring inner voice, always ready to support us in our emotional ups and downs. This is how secure attachment shows up.

The result is to earn the secure attachment that some children inherit from their caregivers and others not. This is the state where we are stable in ourselves while allowing our significant other to enter our vulnerable spaces. Where we notice when our boundaries are overstepped, and we naturally protect ourselves without drama. And where we, as coaches, rest in ourselves and don’t depend on the client’s feedback for us to feel ok, and neither do we turn instrumental toward the client when the emotional intensity is high.
The journey toward secure attachment goes through recognizing and acknowledging the multitude and nuances of our feelings. The simple act of welcoming and containing our emotional responses to what happens within and around us grows our stability in ourselves, and we experience freedom to choose how we will act in relationships.
And we get to recognize how our parents looked at us and disentangle it from how we see ourselves. 
As we get to being seen with warm and caring eyes and begin replacing the empty chair of the emotionally missing mother with our internal, self-caring voice, we find our identity and get to experience love again.

In the upcoming, advanced module Untying the Knots - Attachment Awareness in Coaching, the participants will journey through understanding how attachment patterns are formed, identify their own attachment patterns, take significant steps toward mending their own attachment wounds, and transfer this knowledge into practical clinical skills for working with clients.