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UNDERSTANDING ATTACHMENT HELPS US BE BETTER PARENTS OR LEADERS, OR SIMPLY UNDERSTAND OUR OWN NEEDS BETTER.
Our nature and nurture, plus experiences of growing up often establish the (thinking, feeling, being) maps that we use to navigate the world and shape our approach to relationships and parenting.
I recently wrote an article referring to the six stages of attachment help reconciliation and reconnection at home or at work. (Link in Comments)
1. Proximity – The need to be close, to touch you, to be touched by you, to be nearby, to see you, to hear you, to smell you.
2. Sameness – Starting at two people tend to want to be like the people they love.
3. Belonging or Loyalty – A strong sense of acceptance as a family unit. A sense of you ‘belonging’ to your child. This can feel like ‘ownership’ or possessiveness.
4. Significance – The need for a child to feel special, to feel significant to those closest to them.
5. Love – This stage is all about the need to be loved —we’ve loved our children, but this is the stage to make sure that our love comes through in our actions and our tone.
6. Being Known – A sense that the key people in a child’s life know him or her well, and have a deep sense of who they truly are. “Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behaviour.”
I do voluntary work as coach, mentor and mediator for James Ark, a charity breaking the cycle of fatherless homes by supporting fathers and their families suffering from long-term separation to find effective ways to reconnect with their children.
Understanding the parenting experience and styles of both parties can be really helpful to supporting parents individually and together, as they develop their own relationships for their family.
I suspect that any significant compromise or undermining of the 6 stages above will have an impact on the person and their thinking, feeling and being. Possibly to the extent of trauma.
Pat Crittenden’s Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation is very useful to understanding how events as we grow-up influence our attachment style and relationship with the world around us.
In this abridged sequence of models we see the person’s personality developing with each stage of development.
It is beyond this text to outline what circumstances might lead people to being A5, C3, or B3. Or indeed what interventions and remedies may be useful. All I am seeking to indicate is that at each stage of maturation more possibilities emerge, and people may move closer or further away from normal, albeit that there is no such thing as normal!
Our past should not condemn us, but understanding the past can help when devising strategies for improving relationships. As a mediator I was therefore really interested in the model below from The Conflict Science Institute.
It is the vision of The Conflict Science Institute to apply the most scientifically reliable sources of attachment and interpersonal neurobiology, towards the development of optimal conflict management models; and to share these practices with conflict resolution professionals through the facilitation of world-wide dialogue regarding the nature of conflict.
This seems useful to both family and work-place understanding and resolution of conflict.
These models are not diagnostic or prescriptive, but useful to understanding how people might see the world differently as a result of different experiences. I believe they may be helpful as coach, mentor and mediator.
I think understanding attachment is really important to relationships, not just at home but in the work-place too, since many businesses operate like tribes or sometimes dysfunctional families and an understanding of complex dynamic relationships is useful in the work-place as well as at home.
AUTHOR
Tim@ThinkingFeelingBeing.com
ICF Coach, IoD Mentor, Mediation Practitioner, Change Practitioner
Helping people and organisations achieve their goals.
We #facilitate and #support the #thinking, #feeling and #action needed to #resolve and move forward.
#timhjrogers #coach #mentor #mediation #jersey
COMMENTS / REFERENCES
James Ark Jersey, Breaking The Cycle Of Fatherless Homes
Pat Crittenden’s Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation
https://therapistuncensored.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Rudiments-of-the-DMM-PDF-VERSION.pdf
Conflict Model Circumplex
