Welcome to Attachment Matters.
A series of conversations between two moms who love to nerd out on the subject of attachment. We’ll dive into what it is, what it isn’t, what it relates to, what it can mean for parenting, and how it can help us explain the current state of things.
As mothers, both of us found ourselves entangled in the world of gender ideology, following very different routes to get here. What we share in common is how the attachment framework has helped us to untangle the threads, and better understand and fulfill our responsibilities as mothers in both the beauty and the challenge of these times.
In this episode, we explore the strange beauty and intelligence of difficult emotions, and their role in human progress and adaptation. We also compare the rest and protective factors offered through deep spiritual faith to that of secure attachment, where one feels, in the words of Dr. Lisa Miller, “loved, held, guided, and never alone.” That it is through finding how to satiate this need in ourselves, that we’re able to let our love overflow in what Dr. Neufeld refers to as “cascading care.”
Diagram of Neufeld’s Traffic Circle of Frustration model:
The Pathway of Surrender StoicMom mentions this article she cross-posted from the Feed Your Head Substack. Specifically, she references the description of what happens physiologically when we exit the frustration traffic circle at “adaptation.” From the article:
Letting go is like the sudden cessation of an inner pressure or the dropping of a weight. It is accompanied by a sudden feeling of relief and lightness, with an increased happiness and freedom. It is an actual mechanism of the mind, and everyone has experienced it on occasion.
The Awakened Brain Funnily enough, or maybe it’s synchronicity (StoicMom likes to think so) since we recorded this episode, Feed Your Head has also published an interview with Dr. Lisa Miller that is titled the same as Miller’s book StoicMom references in this episode. It is from Lisa Miller that StoicMom came to adopt the phrase, “Loved, held, guided, and never alone.”
Question for Reflection: StoicMom mentions that she found faith in Life’s intelligence and that it was this shift that allowed her to “let go” when she encountered the futility of trying to parent her daughter out of her trans-identity. Rose talks about how her experiences have inspired her to return to Christianity. Do you have something in your life that helps you to feel “loved, held, guided, and never alone”?
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Rose was introduced to Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s attachment-based developmental model when her two sons were very young, and it has significantly shaped her life. She brings a depth of knowledge from the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, having taken a number of courses at the Neufeld Institute. This series offers her the opportunity to share insights from this model with parents who are trying to make sense of their trans-identified children.
You can discover more detail about Rose’s story by reading her (viral) PITT submission: True Believer or listen to her interviewed on Gender: A Wider Lens and on Triggernometry.
Mom of two coming-of-age humans and a former classroom educator, StoicMom has an intense interest in attachment and development. She’s done some serious dabbling into the Neufeld bank of knowledge but also has a knack for scanning the environment for frameworks to discover where they overlap and where they diverge. In her work supporting parents of trans-identified kids, she’s committed to making sense of how we find ourselves grappling with things like gender identity and the other ways that our kids are struggling to find their place in this world.
For more of StoicMom’s reflections along with her philosophy and strategies to navigate Life’s most difficult circumstances, subscribe to stoicmom.substack.com:
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