Why do you need to care? This vividly affects people's relationships. People might even pass to next generation, if they are not aware. David goes into internal working models, and details. When people are not aware of it, what can they do about it? In psychology, mentalization is the ability to understand the mental state, of oneself or others, that underlies overt behaviour.) (Also: Mentalization refers to the ability to reflect upon, and to understand one's state of mind; to have insight into what one is feeling, and why. Mentalization is assumed to be an important coping skill that is necessary for effective emotional regulation.)

To the extent that we make it possible for patients to mentalize, we strengthen their ability to regulate their affects, to integrate experiences that have been dissociated, and to feel a more solid, coherent sense of self. p.4 an individual’s discourse about attachment reflects that individual’s internal working model(s) of attachment."

Early experience with unpredictably responsive attachment figures has taught these patients that their best hope for securing the attention and support of others is to make their own distress too conspicuous to ignore. Even if you’re throughly educated to all of the above concepts (as am I), you will still find high value in the clarity, insight and skill that Wallin employs in his explanations, explorations and case study examples.

Progress of this kind hinges centrally on the therapist’s ability to make room for the patient’s responses to loss as they are evoked by separations, including at times even the separation occasioned by the ending of the session. A disciplined attention to the impact of separation fosters the sort of inclusive dialogue that makes integration possible. Working with separation is also a way to ensure that disruptions in the relationship are repaired. Finally, dealing effectively with reactions to separation contributes to the patient’s confidence in the relationship as a secure base. if we are able to bear both our own discomfort at the potential for further devaluation and the patient’s discomfort at feeling “exposed,” we have the opportunity to explore an important relationship pattern (as well as a defensive one) that may shape the patient’s interactions not only with the therapist but also with others. Mindfulness: refers to being explicitly aware and experientially present to the moment to moment arising and falling of sensations thoughts and feelings. a willingness to confront, set limits, and struggle with the patient—as is often appropriate during periods heralding change in the patient’s identity and in the therapeutic relationship. You know how some people secretly feel deeply ashamed, so they tell them selves that they are better than other people, so that they don’t have to feel awful?The therapist assists the client in exploring their relationship history, beginning in early life, with the goal of engendering insight and new perspectives.

Deepening the Clinical Dimension of Attachment Theory: Intersubjectivity and the Relational Perspective The Parent’s Inner World and the Infant’s Behavior: The Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation

In psychotherapy, therefore, if we are to help such patients to strengthen their capacities for emotional balance, self-esteem, and trust, we must offer them a relationship that presents an alternative to their hyperactivating strategy. Effectively, this means a relationship in which patients can come to count on the therapist’s emotional availability and acceptance rather than feeling that they can obtain this quality of responsiveness only by defensively amplifying their affect, helplessness, and/or superficial cooperation. In other words, we need to provide preoccupied patients with a relationship that renders the hyperactivating strategy increasingly unnecessary. I've read well over 100 books around counselling/psychotherapy/psychology/neurobiology/emotional management. In the warm glow of finishing this book and being enormously helped by it, I'm compelled to gush and say that this is the best counselling book I've read so far. Even after I've cooled down and become more critical, it will still easily get into my top 3. Attachment Styles: provide a simple taxonomy of the (largely implicit) strategies people use for connecting and reconnecting in relationship.

an affective as well as linguistic dialogue that accommodates as much of the patient’s subjective experience—feelings, thoughts, desires—as possible; Answering such questions helps us determine what the patient may need from us. Recognizing the feelings, desires, and abilities that the patient has had to deny or inhibit helps to clarify the kinds of responsiveness we might most usefully attempt to provide.Noticing either our discomfort or pleasure at the patient’s admiration can often be a clue to the presence of idealization. The therapist explores the conditioned implicit self and relational structures (schema for CBT folks) and assists in restructuring them in the direction of increase secure attachment. Without a healthy foundation, babies may grow to be fearful, confused, and insecure, ultimately becoming depressed or even suicidal as adolescents. Theoretically, by forming a trusting relationship with parental figures or with the therapist, the client is better prepared to form strong bonds in other relationships. Probably from the first phone call and certainly on crossing the threshold to the therapist’s office, the patient begins to show us his characteristic ways of attaching." Correspondingly, in light of the symmetry between what we provide as sensitively responsive parents and empathically attuned therapists, we should be aiming for: