Last week we concluded the book review of ‘The Myth of Normal’ with Part 5.
In it we also mentioned an exercise in ‘compassionate inquiry’. We would like to take a closer look at this.

The Dutch saying goes that ‘voorkomen’ (prevention) is better than ‘genezen’ (curation). However, there is another approach that precedes prevention: amplition. The word ‘amplition’ comes from the Latin verb ‘amplire’, which means ‘to magnify’, ‘to increase’. Amplition is about giving more attention to what gives you strength and keeps you healthy. It is a very salutogenetic approach: you look at the question of what causes health (saluto-genesis). That’s a different approach than being concerned with what you should avoid in order not to get sick.

An important element of your daily well-being is meaningfulness: you can be physically as healthy as possible and have so many material things around you… when life seems meaningless and you feel no purpose or importance in the things you do, then your well-being will drastically decrease. Meaningfulness is also sometimes referred to by the Japanese term ‘ikigai’, that which gets you out of bed, your ‘raison d’être’, that which makes you happy and satisfied, that which gives meaning to your existence. Therefore, it is valuable to keep a finger on the pulse of your authenticity in this, whether you know and pursue your ikigai, or whether you let yourself be kept away from it for all kinds of reasons. (We will shortly review a book on ikigai soon.)

If you notice that you do not experience enough meaningfulness, you can talk yourself down: “Done nothing useful again, didn’t work hard enough again, what a sucker I am, why can’t I get it done, I can do this no, I’m too stupid/lazy/incompetent for it, this will never work”… and whatever else you can come up with. Many of us have grown up with that voice in our heads of first someone else (often a parent or teacher or boss), which later passes silently into our own ‘inner critic’, the voice that constantly judges your actions negatively – condemns them, an ‘intruder’. With this approach you are not being very kind to yourself. It is probably not the way you would talk to a dear friend. Can that be done differently…? Can you learn to handle that in a more compassionate way? Yes, that is possible!

Chapter 28 of The Myth of Normal provides you with a compassionate inquiry exercise that you can do all by yourself. You don’t need a therapist or expert for it. You can get started with it on your own, with a frequency that suits you and that you may slowly increase if you notice that the exercise is doing you good. How does it work?
You sit down regularly, at least once a week but preferably more often, to answer a number of questions honestly to yourself while writing. These questions are the following six:

Question 1: In my life’s important areas, what am I not saying no to, although I do feel a to?

Question 2: How does my inability to say no impact my life?

Question 3: What bodily signals have I been overlooking? What symptoms have I been ignoring that could be warning signs, were I to pay conscious attention?

Question 4: What is the hidden story behind my inability to say no?

Question 5: Where did I learn these stories?

Question 6: Where have I ignored or denied the yes that wanted to be said?

Ad 1
Where did you feel a no, but did you hold it in or did you say yes, although you did not support it? With whom and where is it difficult to say no? And if you do say no, can you feel comfortable, determined, guilt-free? Do you blame yourself afterwards for your no? What price do you pay for your yes, if you wanted to express a no?

Ad 2
An unspoken, but desired no, can have all kinds of consequences: physical (back problems, insomnia, stomach ache, fatigue, headaches and more), emotional (sadness, fear, boredom, loss of joie de vivre and sense of humour) and relational (resentment towards the other, estrangement from loved ones, aloofness, lack of libido).

Ad 3
The aforementioned physical effects are important to observe. After all, when stress arises in your body, you become more susceptible to illness and chronic social and health problems. The body often tells clearly what it likes and what it doesn’t like, but we often forget or are afraid to listen to it and take the signals seriously. Understandable: their meaning can be intense.

Ad 4
Behind your unspoken no there are often different beliefs, which together form a story that you tell yourself over and over again to explain, justify, and rationalise your choices. Your choices and stories therefore seem ‘normal’ and true. They are also almost always consistent with your life experiences, but they deserve a closer look.

Ad 5
Our self-image usually forms early in life under the influence of how our closest attachment figures interact with and respond to us. We are not born with a negative self-image, so to speak. We often take things personally when they are not. This question invites you to honestly examine where your story has to be maintained and where it is allowed to change.

Ad 6
When you do not dare to show your authenticity, you probably do not say no to certain things, even though they do not suit you. Conversely, you may not say yes to what would feed your happiness in life. Maybe you are afraid of reactions from your environment. Maybe you think you’re not worthy of certain things. Maybe there are beliefs that make you think you shouldn’t do something. However, our ‘ikigai’, our purpose for meaning, wants to be expressed. When it just slumbers inside, it either kills our creativity or explodes in a very clumsy way. Expressing it, putting your goals into the world, saying yes to them, can have a strong healing effect on your well-being and health.

It is a simple yet complex exercise, if only because it demands some discipline: it requires you to make time for it on a regular basis. Above all, it asks that you be honest and that you literally dare to face what you have to say to yourself. You write, you give words to your feelings, you write down what you have observed in your body in the past week or the past few days. You may see certain themes come up again and again and with others you can be relieved to see that you are making progress, that you are taking yourself seriously, that it makes your body happy.
I have begun; I have chosen a nice, inviting booklet in which I have written down the six questions on the first page as a reminder. I experience writing from compassion as a pleasant process throughout the week. It makes me more aware and that is the beginning of all forms of change, including those on the way to more peace and well-being in your life. In other words… highly recommended!

Thursday 29 September was an intensive day with beautiful, inspiring conversations and encounters!

The day started with the first team meeting with colleagues from the IkiBuntu Foundation, with whom ACE Aware NL will collaborate intensively in the coming period.
I met one of the founders, Ilona Schra, during my fieldwork for the master Medical Anthropology & Sociology. We were together at the same meeting about a research project on the concept of Positive Health, where she was present as a student for the master Healthy Aging. We started talking, met a number of times afterwards and turned out to have a lot in common in terms of views on health and what it takes to lay a solid foundation for it through fulfilling the basic needs of children. She and her fellow student Wout Peters subsequently set up the IkiBuntu Foundation, whose six pillars are a supportive network, nourishing food, natural exercise, consciously relaxing, living a meaningful life and waking up well-rested. The name comes from the merging of two beautiful concepts, namely the Japanese ‘ikigai’ and the African ‘ubuntu’.

Ikigai is about meaning. What do you get out of bed for? What drives you? What things are worth living for? Four elements come together in it: what you love (passion), what the world needs (mission), what you can be paid for (profession) and what you are good at (vocation). If they all come together in what you do, then you have found your ikigai!

Ubuntu is a concept that roughly translated means ‘I am because we are’ and is broadly about humanity, about service to the community of which you are a part. You can define this community small and large (your family, your neighbourhood, your work environment – ​​the world!), but the core is that as a person you are connected to humanity as a whole. It is about not feeling threatened by others, but being confidently aware of your own value for the whole, making your unique contribution to that whole and feeling that with the suffering of a part of humanity, humanity as a whole gets damaged and needs healing.

Both concepts, brought together in IkiBuntu, fit in beautifully with the seven pillars of ACE Aware NL: connection, compassion, courage, curiosity, confidence, kindness and resilience. These concepts are both a precondition for and a result of positive life experiences. How do we get there?
The formation of our world view starts very early, much earlier than often thought. When you are exposed to a lot of stress hormones in your mother’s womb, because she is having a hard time and has to endure a lot of adversity, then you, as an unborn baby, already get the sense that the world is a threatening place. Your mother’s stress hormones, reaching you directly via the umbilical cord and influencing your rapid development in the womb, make you establish a stress regulation system that is on alert from the start.

If the living conditions after your birth do indeed turn out to be stressful and worrisome, that early imprint is confirmed again and again; it then becomes deeply ingrained. Your worldview is intensely coloured by traumatic early experiences and probably influences your behavioural patterns as well. Under difficult circumstances this is ‘adaptive’, helping and supporting. However, it often later becomes ‘maladaptive’, hindering and undermining. It takes a toll on your entire organism, on the constant feedback between all your organ systems. That has an impact on the beliefs with which you go through life. Those convictions are not a conscious choice, but a ‘default setting’, a basic attitude that is based on your very earliest experiences. This can lead to beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I can’t do this’, ‘I can’t count on anyone when it comes down to it’. Such thoughts make it difficult to reveal your spontaneous personality and your radiant authenticity. They are trauma reactions to what you had to deal with at the beginning of your development and which left you feeling overwhelmed because of the lack of support.

These kinds of beliefs and the behaviour that can result from them in the form of aggression, defenses, reticence, unhealthy lifestyles, addictions and even crime, therefore have a neurophysiological basis: your brain and your other organs are constantly in survival mode from a deep sense of insecurity. In that mode it is very complicated and almost impossible to focus on things like logical thinking, developing more patience and changing unhealthy behaviours. Your only goal is: to survive, to keep yourself upright, with everything you think is necessary for that and what helps you with it.

That is why it is important that everyone who cares for others, in whatever environment, is aware of these developmental processes. Knowledge about this helps enormously to interpret certain behaviours in a correct way. Why is your child ‘suddenly’ hot-tempered? Why are you jumping out of your skin? Why is your colleague being so snappy? What is the reason the doctor does not listen to you? Where does your customer’s aggression come from? Being aware of possible underlying stressors and then responding appropriately to the other person is the core of what we call a trauma-sensitive approach. You take into account that the other person’s stress system is overloaded by adverse experiences. That can also help explain a person’s behaviour pattern. This is often about behaviours resulting from that early imprint of lack of safety and security: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

This is not a simple matter. That childhood was not as cheerful as we like to remember is often unconsciously present like a pink elephant in the room. Yet we do feel that there is something very great and essential that burdens and hinders us or the other. The emotions that accompany this are often suppressed for all sorts of reasons. They remain unspoken, with all the consequences that this has for the immune system that does feel that stress, even if it is not made explicit. Many people get stuck in healthcare and in therapies due to the lack of attention and recognition for the early childhood trauma they have gone through. They carry that with them and it has (had) an impact on their neurophysiology and stress regulation.

The effects of suppressed emotions… that is the core of what the Emovere Foundation focuses on. After the great team meeting, I took the train to Ede last Wednesday, where in the afternoon and evening Emovere’s fourth friends meeting took place. The plenary sessions, the documentary about the road that Michelle Kraaij took to recovery, the workshops that were given in two rounds… they all had one vision in common: it is important to view pain complaints as signals from the body and to look for the underlying emotions.

It is essential that we recognise that by the time that, as humans, we move into any external setting, we have already spent a crucial formative time in our family of origin. That family was our beginning, the place we depended on as babies, as children. We therefore feel a lot of loyalty to that place and the people who belong to it. That also makes it understandable that a lot of resistance can be felt against looking for the cause of current (emotional and physical) pain in that place and those people. That old, sometimes all-encompassing sadness you feel… holding open or facing the possibility that it originates in your own origin… that hurts.

It takes courage to dive deeply into that, to where it gets dark and uncomfortable, but where also lies the key to insight, wisdom and healing. The injury arose in a social environment where the interaction did not go well. For healing, it is invaluable to build an environment where compassion prevails and an understanding of how the injury can affect a person’s life in an intensely sad way. You deserve to find and gather people around you who understand that, who don’t try to fix you, but just listen to your story first.
That’s what ACE Aware NL is committed to and we think it’s great that the film ‘Resilience’, which explains all this so impressively, is the center of the lunch webinar by Alles is Gezondheid, ProScoop and the Emovere Foundation in collaboration with ACE Aware NL.

Would you like to know more about it and plan a training or presentation for your organisation? Let us know; we would love to talk to you to work out the details together!

In the last week of August, in the run-up to the impending broadcast of ‘Zomergasten’ (‘Summer Guests’, an interview programme since 1988), there was commotion around the core figure of the three-hour conversation. Three academics had a warning for the Dutch people, which led to lively discussions on social media. In the last episode of the season, the stepping-down presenter Janine Abbring would receive as a guest the world-famous psychiatrist, scientist and author Bessel van der Kolk (1943), a man with Dutch roots who has lived in the United States since the early 1960s and has created furore as a pioneer and expert in the field of trauma. He did this, among other things, through his roles as an adviser or expert witness to international investigations and trials, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the end of apartheid and on the road to democracy. His acclaimed book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ (translated into Dutch as ‘Traumasporen’, trauma traces) has as its core message that the intellectual brain is sometimes so overwhelmed by events that it uses the mechanism of dissociation as a survival strategy. The emotional charge of the experiences is deeply buried so that the one who endured the events can somehow continue with life. Conscious experience of the trauma would be too painful, too unbearable. However, the body has gone through all that toxic stress, and those experiences affect stress regulation, brain development, neurophysiology and thus the immune system, resulting in a range of potential social and health problems. The body carries everything with it: the body keeps the score. This view is clearly not yet universally accepted.

The three authors of the Volkskrant article (a professor, an emeritus professor and an associate professor) stated that Van der Kolk might be given room in the program “to spread incorrect and dangerous ideas” about repressed memories (de Volkskrant, 26th August 2022). They stated that he “makes a living popularising that idea” that traumatic memories are repressed and that many therapists who believe this are talking people into believing they went through all kinds of abuse and misery. They tell their patients that the physical and psychological symptoms they report to a psychiatrist “have arisen because they were once abused but the memory of it is hidden in their subconscious mind.” This approach would lead to “fake memories of abuse”. The client does not heal, but is “talked into a made-up traumatic past”, according to the article. The academics said they feared “disastrous consequences (…) for patients and their families”.

And then it is Sunday evening, August 28, and I’m going to sit down properly. I want to hear this man, because I know his work, which is in line with that of other big names in the field, and I am curious about what he will provide the Dutch public with in terms of knowledge, considerations and visual material.
It is impressive, and when I watch the broadcast a second time, I am even more moved. Here is a true expert speaking, a man humble in all his wisdom, who, with humility and self-reflection, tells the story of elements from his field and reveals aspects of his life, and who scrutinises both himself and patterns of interaction. The still ongoing ignorance, despite the extensive research, does not go unmentioned either. Already in the first few minutes he tells that PTSD was still defined in 1980 as a very rare phenomenon. “That says something about how blind we were to the misery in the world”, he concludes. Later in the broadcast, he fears that little has been learned from Harry Harlow’s studies with monkeys in the 1950s and 1960s, based on the work on attachment by John Bowlby, who was a good friend of Van der Kolk. According to him, there is still too little attention for the suffering that many people go through and at two-thirds of the interview he wonders with some fierceness in relation to the Volkskrant article: “Who are those people who are so afraid of the reality about which I speak? Who are these people who don’t want to see how many children are being abused? Who are those people who cannot listen to what is going on in other people’s lives?”

Up to these critical questions, he has mainly been very mild and contemplative and shows film fragments that demonstrate how much the mutual relationships between people are coloured and marked by their life stories. With his first fragment, from the American television series Ted Lasso, he illustrates how important it is that people within groups and teams can tell the truth of their personal history in a safe way, in a secure setting. That history helps to explain why they sometimes behave rudely, lash out at others or build a wall around themselves, for example because their authoritarian father never allowed them to be weak. If attention is paid to this, says Van der Kolk, then people can use their idiosyncrasies for the greater whole and do not have to use them in a negative way against themselves and each other. When vulnerability becomes a virtue instead of a weakness, you can reflect on your own behaviour and learn to behave differently where necessary. However, you need the support of your social environment for that, because loneliness, he later says, is the most important aspect of trauma: “We are members of tribes, we belong together. We have to belong to someone, we have to have a home, especially as children, and if children do not find that protection at home with their parents, then they are alone in the world and then they have to find some kind of adaptation. A child usually says, “This is happening because I’m a bad person.” What arises is a lifelong sense of ‘there’s something wrong with me, or they would never have done this to me’. Not being seen is the most difficult thing for a child. The feeling that everyone is acting as if nothing is wrong, that the interests of the adults are more important than what happens to the child, that those adults cannot find the courage to bring things up: that is the real trauma. The child has no choice, no other reality, no other possibilities and therefore blames themselves for bad events. That leads to deep loneliness: ‘I am different, I don’t belong here, I can’t be here, I am a bad person, I deserve what happens to me.’ Such a belief becomes a major problem as you get older. Such trauma carries on for generations.”

He uses all kinds of fragments to show and explain how traumatic experiences become fixed in the body, how they keep coming back via different sensory perceptions, associated with deep emotions. People get stuck in that event as if it were happening today, instead of the event being experienced as something from the past that no longer poses any danger. That is why, he says, talking alone is often not enough, and sometimes it is just impossible because it triggers too much pain. That is why he has done more experimental research than anyone else into all kinds of body-oriented therapies and why he has also been cautiously enthusiastic about the results that can be achieved with psychedelics for some time now: “Under the influence of them, people can sometimes finally find words for themselves and their story and above all, they experience compassion for what they have experienced. Humans are meaning-making creatures; as a therapist you don’t have to put anything into them. Listening attentively and not judging is enough. When there are people who offer you a safe setting for your story, psychedelics can be extremely helpful. You then see other dimensions of your own life and of yourself.” In line with that, at another moment: “People usually do not want to remember bad things at all and that is why it is very difficult to talk people into things. By really feeling in your body what things have done to you and are doing now, you can learn to see and do things differently. You can learn to let go of the role and the beliefs you grew up with. If you cannot tell your own truth, it all gets stuck in your body and your heart will break. Then you will break other people’s hearts with your anger and bitterness. Connection is indispensable for us as humans.”

There is so much more worth mentioning. We therefore sincerely recommend watching the replay of the broadcast, so that everyone can decide for themselves about Bessel van der Kolk’s vision: is it ‘dangerous’ or urgently needed? You can watch (in Dutch) for a few more weeks via this link.

At least one question has remained unanswered: what would Van der Kolk, led by Ted Lasso, have thrown into the barrel as a sacrifice to exorcise the evil spirits…?! 😉

Recently we shared with you our review of José Al’s book, ‘The soiled nest. Transgenerational Trauma’. There is clearly great interest in this theme, because the blog has been very well read and widely shared. That is understandable, because this is a theme that, often invisible and unspoken, undoubtedly affects many more people than you would think at first glance.

Emotional and physical neglect, abuse by both your parents… these are not topics that can be discussed just anywhere and with everyone. It is not something you happily share. Because of the pain and often the shame that accompany it, such experiences are sometimes shared with close others only after years and years. In this context, what do you actually know about your neighbours, about colleagues, about your children’s friends? What do you know about your brother(s) or sister(s), especially in a larger family, where the experiences of the individual children may sometimes differ enormously? And maybe even… what do we know about ourselves? What are things that we deeply tucked away in order to survive under difficult circumstances? What can we allow into our consciousness only bit by bit, because otherwise we become overwhelmed by the fear, the sadness and the pain?

The stories in ‘The soiled nest’ offer us a glimpse into what it means to grow up in an unsafe and insecure setting. It doesn’t even have to be as intense and dramatic as in the book, however, to leave traces. This is because the perception of insecurity in childhood influences how our brain grows and which behavioural patterns we develop. Many of our reaction patterns are not a conscious choice, but an automatic response. We do not choose to go into fight or flight mode – it just happens. A look, a smell, a choice of words, a posture or something else touches something in us that in a flash brings us back to a look, a smell, a choice of words or a posture of that unsafe past. Much of what seems to be happening in the now is in fact a memory of the then. It brings us back to a phase in our lives in which we still had insufficient overview and independence to regulate ourselves. We did not understand what was happening. We felt anxious, lonely, sad, and could not break free from the circumstances. We depended on the people with whom we felt unsafe and insecure. They said things that made us feel like we were not good enough, that we should not really be there in our most authentic form. We kept quiet and adapted, or we rebelled and freaked out. Left or right, however, we lost an important part of the connection with our true self, with our essence.

The aim of ACE Aware NL is to make more widely visible how these mechanisms work. It is important to understand what goes on in that child’s head when you consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, assert your position of power as an adult. What happens if you fail to assist your child in a calm, but firm and reliable way? A child who seems unreasonable or unmanageable is at its core often angry or anxious or sad. Can you look at your child and see the situation through their eyes? Can you look at your child and try to feel that it is you? How does it feel to be (in) that little body and listen to a big angry voice, see a disapproving face? As an adult you may not come up with your painful story, but your painful story does emerge in your behaviour. Hurt people hurt people. The more you become aware of this, the more compassion you will develop. By looking at your own feelings and sensations without judgment, you can learn to listen to the other person’s story without judgment. José has provided powerful examples of such stories in her book. Together with her, we wondered how we could encourage the sharing of stories about the lived experience. When stories are shared without the teller being judged, this often creates space and a sense of recognition and being heard.

That’s why we wanted to share the book review, about which José wrote us the following:
“I am incredibly impressed by this overwhelmingly pure, intense and valuable book review. The time, effort, energy and utmost care that you have put into this, so much appreciation and loving positivity, to be seen, heard, felt and understood in this way is truly overwhelming. So beautifully done! What an appreciation for my years of studies, work and research… I feel understanding and compassion and that means a lot to me. That cannot be expressed in words.”
Her mission and ours fit seamlessly together and she has made a wonderful proposal, which we gratefully accept with both hands.

Does your story deserve to be heard? Do you want to support and encourage others? Do you want to contribute to discussing early childhood trauma? Then share your story with us!
Write a text of 750-1000 words, in which you (anonymously) describe your experience with (sexual) abuse, (domestic) violence and/or neglect. Even if you think you are not a writer, we invite you to pick up the (digital) pen: we are happy to help you get it on paper in such a way that it does justice to your story. The ACE Aware NL team will look at the entries together with José Al and chooses the ten most beautiful, most gripping, insightful stories. If yours is one of the ten selected texts, we will contact you to draw up a version that can be published as a blog on our website. The authors of the ten stories chosen will receive a copy of José Al’s ‘The soiled nest’.

If you want to participate, send your story with your name, your telephone number from a valid e-mail address to info@aceaware.nl and make sure it is received by 20th July at the latest. You will receive a confirmation of receipt and of course we handle your data very carefully and completely confidentially.

Writing can be very healing, as can reading a story that offers recognition and encouragement. You are therefore very welcome to send in a text to increase social awareness about ACEs. We look forward to your contributions!

P.S.
At a later stage we will make a similar call for healthcare providers. We then put in the spotlight what their motivation is for working with people with early childhood trauma. More information about this will follow in due course.

Recently our  was about the guest lecture I gave at a school in a course where the students themselves are experts in the field of insecure attachment. A lot was exchanged in a great collaboration and the time went faster than expected. The remaining material also deserved attention and we didn’t want to rush it. The solution was quickly devised: a second guest lecture! I gladly accepted that invitation, because a group like this is exactly what we do our work for from ACE Aware NL.*

The second lesson was last Wednesday, June 8. The group was a little different in composition; a few people from last time were missing and there were some new faces.
We started with a short inventory of what everyone remembered from last time. One of the first to speak was the mentor (who, just like the first time, participated intensively and concentrated in all exercises and conversations – wonderful!). The mentor referred to the ACE-score forms completed last time. That there were two people with a score of 8 and two with a score of 10… that those students had gone through (almost) all the sad experiences on that form… that had really hit and touched the mentor. I agreed and explained that I therefore found it very impressive to see that these people have once again taken up the courage to start an education trajectory, to work on their personal development and to invest in their future. That’s no mean feat; that means they probably have a few ‘cheerleaders’ somewhere in their social circle who have encouraged this challenge. That is beautiful; that gives hope. I emphasised that the mentor themselves also plays a valuable role in this by creating a safe climate in the group, so that the courage taken up finds solid ground and strongly supports the learning process.

After the check-in, a body-oriented exercise followed, in which the students could experience what it is like to be close to someone else while walking through the room. How does it feel when you’re standing right next to someone? Is that other person in your personal space? Can you bear that or does it feel threatening? And if the latter is the case… what does that do to your bodily functions? Is your heart beating faster? Do you feel warm and sweaty? Your body often speaks loudly and clearly!
They stood side by side in pairs and reported back what they had experienced. For some it felt fine, someone else felt agitated by so much closeness. One person said that the person next to them made them feel giggly – positive, because feeling giggly and laughing together is wonderful and gives a feeling of relaxation and security, while security is at the same time a precondition for achieving that relaxation together.

It seems so simple: standing next to someone. And yet those simple things can feel very complicated and scary if you’re constantly on the lookout for survival strategies. With someone so close to you, you can’t keep the overview well. You (literally) can’t wait from a distance and see which way the cat jumps and the wind blows. It seems as if the other is pushing against the wall you have built to protect yourself against outside threats. Will your wall stay standing or will it fall over a bit…? And if so… then what?
And if you are subsequently asked to turn towards each other and look each other in the eye, to hold each other’s gaze and not to avert your eyes… then it all comes (again literally) very close. On the one hand, as humans we want to be seen, but can we handle someone really looking into our soul? How long can we keep that up? When does it get uncomfortable? When do we want to break free from that connection? When has it been enough?

The experiment didn’t last very long, but long enough to feel how intense it is to get so close. This, too, was an exercise associated with secure and insecure attachment. The more times you’ve been faced with situations of insecurity and the more you’ve been (literally or figuratively) ‘overlooked’, the harder it often is to make deep and open eye contact. You may feel the urge to hide so that it all doesn’t feel so vulnerable.
As a result of this exercise, a beautiful conversation ensued, in which the students indicated in which situations they found this difficult and how it can be experienced as a test to see ‘who can last the longest’ – who is in charge, who has the force majeure, who is pulling the strings. That is a very different association than: ‘I keep holding your eyes, because I want to hold YOU. I want to know you and see you. I want to be known and seen by you. I won’t let go of you.’ Here too, experiences from the past play a role in the perception of the present.

After everyone had returned to their own chair, I indicated that we would go through some ‘hardcore’ theory. For example, I explained what is meant by attachment, that early attachment styles often stay with someone for a lifetime, and what the difference is between secure and insecure attachment (anxious, avoidant, disorganized). We talked about how important it is that a child can rely on the parent(s) and that signals are picked up and properly interpreted and answered. The video with Edward Tronick’s ‘still face experiment’ shows this in a penetrating way and one of the students broke down as a result – tears flowed. A fellow student put a comforting arm around the classmate and a third handed out handkerchiefs. We were all silent for a moment – ​​we paused to reflect on the grief of this human among us, without fixing, without talking, without judgment, but with a lot of compassion. There were more people who could barely bear these two minutes and I myself choked up, even though I’ve seen this video so many times. I can’t get used to it; it grabs me by the throat every time I watch it. I’m glad about that, actually. When you think about how many children have to endure this not just for two minutes, but day after day, year after year, the video is actually a horror movie. How can we be surprised about social dysfunction if we are not seen, heard, understood, if our questions and needs for attention and connection are not answered? It’s heartbreaking; that this student was so touched by the video means that their heart is open, that this person dares to let themselves be touched, that there is recognition (because otherwise it will not be so deeply touching). That also means that there is awareness and that efforts will be made to avoid the ongoing repetition of this pattern of emotional neglect.

After a discussion of stress, stress hormones, brain development and the short-circuiting that can occur in your mental network if the wiring is not done properly, we discussed how important the environment is. You are not merely individually responsible for your life and the development of your brain: you are part of a much larger system, such as your family, your neighbourhood, your city, your country, your continent. You can also rarely change everything on your own, because it is the interpersonal dynamics that partly determine how well or how badly you are capable of developing and persevering healthy behaviour.
That is why it is important to realise that behaviour is an expression of an emotion, which is an expression of an unmet need. Without insight into and satisfaction of that need, the emotion will not disappear and therefore probably the behaviour probably will neither.

And a very basic need remains: security. If this is missing, because there is no (parental) care or there is a lot of anxiety and aggression in a family, then toxic stress arises: chronic stress that affects all kinds of systems in the human body, including social functioning. We watched a video that impressively illustrates this in relation to a prison population. However, it also applies closer to home: as long as you don’t feel safe and secure, you will be hesitant to tell what touches you and why. Your silence can be difficult for someone else, but it can be part of your self-protection.
We ended by choosing a photo card that reflected something of how people envisioned their own future. Beautiful dreams and intentions emerged there, which is always great to hear.

The on-site evaluation? Inspiring, educational, interesting, informative, gained insight into how their own children function and what they need, became aware of the love for their children, and (for me the most moving): ‘realised that it is okay for me to have more compassion for myself’. That is amazing; that is where it starts, and then compassion for others will follow. Then you no longer have to say: “I have failed; I should have done better”, but you can conclude: “I did my very best with what I could and had, and I wish I could have offered more.” Then self-reproach turns to sorrow; then anger and frustration can turn into grief and a sense of loneliness. Then you can look for support, ‘holding space’ in which you are safe without judgment, so that the sharp edges can soften.
And if after so many beautiful things the question is posed whether I would like to come and teach more often, then of course there is only one possible answer: “Yes, I would love to!”

* For privacy reasons, I use gender neutral terms in this blog.