If You’re Feeling Anxious And Stuck, These 2 Words Will Make You Feel Like You Just Escaped A Cult
This might be the single most empowering thing any of us can do as adults.
by The Candidly Team
Did you know that there are 20 specific questions a trained therapist will ask you about your childhood when formally assessing your adult attachment pattern?
That is if they’re using something called the Adult Attachment Interview or AAI, a tool developed by acclaimed attachment researcher Mary Main back in the 1980s.
The questions can help lay out a story of our lives so to speak. Did we grow up feeling the four S’s that make up a secure attachment to our key caretakers: safe, soothed, seen, and therefore, secure?
Or were we lacking these things in various ways for various reasons that led to us experiencing one of the 3 insecure attachment patterns?
Because our attachment patterns are like invisible forces, reaching into every area of our lives, especially our relationships, knowing which of the four we experienced growing up and which pattern we’re inclined to repeat as adults might feel like a worthy task. Or it might sound like a waste of time … depending, likely, on your own attachment pattern.
But all of this is actually part of a larger task, one that we don’t hear talked about enough - a method that could orient each of us toward more security in all our relationships and completely alter the course of our lives.
And that is to create a coherent narrative.
What is a coherent narrative?
Attachment research has shown that it isn’t necessarily the events that happened to us or the attachment patterns we experienced in our childhood that determines the fate of our lives and relationships. It’s the degree to which we’re able to make sense of those events and feel the full feelings around them, so we can tell a coherent story about what occurred.
But what even is a coherent narrative? How can we piece together our true story from the strange, disjointed folklore of our early family life? The messages we received. The emotions we endured.
So much of how we see ourselves and others as kids becomes foundational for how we see ourselves and others throughout our lives that it might never occur to us to question our own narratives. By the time we reach adulthood, we have a ton of engrained ideas we might even casually rattle off without wondering about their validity.
“I was a loud child. Way too needy. My mom used to go in her room and blast opera music just to get a break.”
“I was a troublemaker. My poor dad had no idea what to do with me. I think he finally just gave up and put all his attention on my siblings.”
“I was responsible – a control freak. I liked taking care of everyone else.”
“My childhood? It was fine. Next question.”
Not only do we not question any false ideas or destructive messages we internalized along the way, but we might struggle to coherently recount the story about what happened to us. About how it felt to be the one who had to parent our mom or feel shut out and complained about by our dad. Whatever our story is, our ability to make sense of it is our most powerful means of escape. It’s a tool for resolving trauma and a path to not repeat the past.
As Dr. Daniel Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and NY Times bestselling author, put it, “The fantastic news is that if you can make sense of your childhood experiences—especially your relationships with your parents—you can transform your attachment models toward security. The reason this is important is that relationships— with friends, with romantic partners, with present or possible future offspring—will be profoundly enhanced. And you’ll feel better with yourself.”
How do you create a coherent narrative?
The process of creating a coherent narrative is something you can do in an ongoing way throughout your life. You can do it anytime a “big or little t trauma” or significant emotional event occurs. It’s a hugely helpful tool in parenting, teaching your kids to process their experiences, so they feel more emotionally regulated. You can do it with your partner as a way to understand and own what each of you bring to the table when you argue or don’t connect.
But making sense of your childhood is in some ways an open-ended venture that’s bound to go deep. This means it’s incredibly wise to do it in conjunction with therapy given the revelations and emotions that might arise.
Siegel along with fellow psychologist Dr. Lisa Firestone actually created an online course to help guide people through the process of creating a coherent narrative. The course is full of prompts and exercises that draw on concepts from the Adult Attachment Interview as well as research in attachment theory and neurobiology, which can help people start to shape their story.
The goal in doing these exercises is to be able to integrate your experience, meaning by adding logical accounts of what occurred with the natural emotion you might feel around them, your right and left brain work together. Your story becomes coherent, so you no longer feel guarded and removed from the facts of what occurred, but you also don’t feel trapped in or overpowered by the emotion of it.
You’re building a sort of balance around your story that allows you to feel more free and more in control of your life moving forward. You start to regulate instead of just reacting to triggers that come up present day but are based on your history.
3 Exercises That Can Be Helpful
The process of writing your narrative isn’t as simple as sitting down and filling out a questionnaire, but it also isn’t as broad and terrifying as being told, “Ok, now go write a story about your childhood, and we’ll grade it.”
Three examples of exercises Siegel and Firestone have used that can be helpful are:
1. The 5 Adjectives Exercise
Choose five adjectives that reflect your relationship with one of your parents or a parent-like person when you were a child. You can literally lay it out like this:
_______, 2. _______, 3. _______, 4. _______, 5. _______
After listing all five, start with the first adjective and try to picture a memory or an incident that would illustrate that word.
For example, say you wrote down the word “erratic,” you might recall a memory where your mother started a task in a good mood, even-keeled, and rational, helping you with your homework or cleaning your room. After one small thing set her off, however, maybe she started to act irritable, provoked, childish, or critical. Be as specific as you can about the memory.
One of the key things about this exercise is to share it out loud with a therapist or someone close to you, as it helps you to gain insight into whether or not the story you’re telling makes sense.
An 8-year-old not knowing how to solve a math problem or forgetting to put her socks away was probably not a rational reason for a grown woman to fly off the handle, but at the time, we may have been all too willing to absorb the message that we were “stupid, lazy, absentminded, or an inconvenience.” And we may find ourselves telling the story from that same embedded point of view as an adult. By bringing it to light with an audience, you can parse out any kid logic and catch any “holes” in your own narrative.
You can repeat this exercise for any parent or key caretakers involved in your upbringing.
2. Identifying Traumas
As kids, we adapt to the best of our ability to even the craziest of circumstances, but those adaptations can go on to limit or hurt us in our adult lives. Shutting down and acting like we had zero needs may have been the best way to survive in a family where our parents had no actual clue how to care for us, but our resistance to relying on others as adults can wildly limit our relationships.
Our unresolved traumas are what haunt us most throughout our lives and determine whether or not we’ll repeat destructive patterns. But bringing them to light and resolving these traumas can disarm them of their power over us.
One exercise in writing your narrative is to write down 10 traumas that occurred in your life, but do this relatively quickly, so you don’t have time to second-guess or undermine your own memory. These do not need to be huge, glaring, or life-threatening events. They can be anything that made you feel bad, scared, ashamed, etc.
3. Making Sense of Your Triggers
In order to connect how your past still influences your present, it’s extremely helpful to know your triggers.
Pick a week where you take note of anything that triggers you - even the petty annoyances. These could be off interactions with your partner, a reaction you had to a specific behavior in your kid, an issue at work, a feeling you got from a text message - truly anything where you felt stung or set off. Write it down when you notice it.
Later on, write a coherent narrative about the event. Reflect on why you felt triggered in the situation, staying open to the reasons why this particular situation was upsetting to you. Don’t hesitate to make connections to your past.
A whiny note in your kid’s voice can stir up an implicit memory of the whirlwind of irritability your parents felt when you whined as a kid, or it might make you feel the panic of having to console that very parent, because he or she was the one who broke down and needed reassurance. Big feelings have deep roots. We don’t have to judge them, but we should explore them.
Tips for Writing A Coherent Narrative
It’s easy to imagine either getting lost in old feelings or wanting to avoid a million things when telling your story, which is why Siegel and Firestone developed this list of practices for how to best approach this daunting task to help it serve you and leave you feeling resolved instead of rattled.
Write autobiographically. First-person, specific memories allow you to have more feeling for yourself.
Maintain an adult perspective as you write your story. Write in the past tense. Old, painful feelings are bound to come up, so it’s important to feel reminded that they’re not happening to you now.
Write rationally. Writing brings your logical left brain online, and if you write with logic and specificity, you’ll feel a sense of resolve when you’re done.
Write intuitively. You don’t need to be 100% certain all your facts are exactly accurate. Memories, especially traumatic ones, can be implicit or hazy. It’s fine to write about things you only think happened. If it feels true, it’s probably a part of your story that’s worth making sense of.
Write with feeling. How did you feel when the event happened? Feeling our full feelings around an event is part of resolving past traumas.
Write about how the past influences your present. Make connections between how events and feelings from your past influence your patterns and relationships today. This is huge in terms of getting to know what triggers you and why, and ultimately, choosing different reactions.
Write with balance. You may be more inclined to write with more logic or more emotion based on your history and the way you adapted. If you notice yourself leaning too far one way, feeling either really shaken up or distanced emotionally, it’s helpful to keep acknowledging the emotions, while maintaining a rational perspective. This is how you find balance and help integrate your brain, which helps you get the full benefits of writing a coherent narrative.
Write with self-compassion. Always treat yourself the way you would a close friend, as feelings get stirred especially. Though your experiences happened to you, you’re not alone in having a painful story. You shouldn’t feel guilty for opening any doors into your own narrative, and you absolutely should not hesitate to seek support from a friend or therapist if you feel shaken up by what comes up for you.
What To Do If You Feel Shaken Up
Anytime you consciously conjure up your past, it’s absolutely critical to have a set of practices in place to help you feel calm and soothed should strong feelings surface. Siegel and Firestone have recommended a “toolkit” that includes specific breathing exercises such as 4-7-8 breathing, easy meditations, and the RAIN approach, a mindfulness process developed by Michelle McDonald.
Recognize
Accept, allow, acknowledge
Investigate
Not over-identifying with the difficult thoughts or feelings
While going through this process, you SIFT through your mind, an acronym that means looking for any sensations, images, feelings or thoughts that come up. All the while, you should be keeping a self-compassionate, kind attitude toward yourself and notice any memories that surface that might help you to make sense of the thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing. This can lead to a sense of relief and understanding.
Having these tools on hand can be a valuable asset in any situation where you’re facing strong emotional reactions. But, most importantly, anytime you feel shaken up delving into a vital aspect of your mental health, you should consult the help of a therapist. Going through a coherent narrative is not something meant to be done alone or without support.
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