Sublime

Developing secure attachments with trustworthy others is important in healing the deficits left by undermothering.

In Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children, authors Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson talk about healing one hole at a time. “There is no quick fix,” they write. “There is no magical, sudden way to borrow the needed skills and to reclaim our self-confidence and self-esteem. We must do it ourselves step by step; we must bui

A secure attachment combined with the cultivation of competency builds an internal locus of control, the key factor in healthy coping throughout life.7 Securely attached children learn what makes them feel good; they discover what makes them (and others) feel bad, and they acquire a sense of agency: that their actions can change how they feel and h

Clinical studies of such children reveal that a preponderance of them have parents who have related to them in either a helpless and fearful way or a hostile and self-referential one. The children of helpless and fearful parents, in particular, have a very difficult time later in life. Their parents tend to be sweet and fragile, not hostile or aggr

improve your skills for taking care of yourself, evaluate the way you were parented, and discover ways to heal from the uneven parenting in your family of origin.

As you can see, working with early attachment issues is very delicate business, and clearly not every therapist or form of therapy is suited to it.

treating our children, not as they are, but as we hoped they would become.