Healing Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment

Healing Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment

A meditation-based experiential course for doing the work of healing anxious-preoccupied attachment

9 Week Online Meditation Course
  • Date: 2nd May - 11th Jul 2022
  • Instructor: Cedric Reeves
  • Cost: Sliding scale

Join us for this course where we will take a deep dive into working through our preoccupied features. This is an experiential-oriented meditation course.

Who is this for?

  • For anyone who wants to go from insecure to secure attachment.
  • Suitable for anyone new to attachment-work, or is already experienced.
  • People with Insecure Attachment.
  • For anyone who is willing to do the work to get results

Event Date & Time

Start Date: 2nd May - End Date: 11th Jul 2022

This course will run twice in order to be accessible to people in different time zones. The content is exactly the same. You will get the access details for both after signing up.

There will be one live 90 minute class per week.

Class Schedule

This is the approximate format of each class.

Duration Activity
5 mins 5 mins of meditation to settle the mind.
5 mins Review of last week’s class (first class will be introductions instead)
35 mins Lecture on new material
5 mins Break
40 mins Guided meditation related to material just discussed

We will be doing deep work. For that reason please feel free to take a break at any point.

course Overview

This program is suitable for beginners to meditation and healing work.

This program will equip you with the knowledge and meditation practices to start the healing process from Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment to Secure Attachment.

The primary modality is guided, visualization meditation that uses “perfect nurturers” to reparent our inner child. This is done to create emotionally corrective experiences. These emotionally corrective experiences bring about memory reconsolidation, what Bruce Ecker calls “transformational change”.

In addition to the attachment repair meditations with the perfect nurturers, there will be exercises to recognize our particular preoccupied patterns daily life, bring them to consciousness, and repattern them.

In this course we will cover

  • Repatterning the core, unconscious, negative emotional beliefs (Schemas) of:
    • Attachment Domain: Domain I
      • Abandonment & Instability
      • Shame & Defectiveness
      • Emotional Deprivation
    • Impaired Autonomy and Performance: Domain II
      • Dependence & Incompetence
      • Vulnerability to Harm and Illness
      • Enmeshment & Underdeveloped Self
      • Failure to Achieve
    • Other Directedness: Domain IV
      • Self-Subjugation
      • Self-Sacrifice
      • Approval Seeking & Recognition Seeking
  • The recognition and replacement of Dysfunctional Behaviors (”Modes”) such as
    • Surrender compliance modes of not standing up for yourself
    • Avoidance modes, especially around avoiding your own explorations and self-assertion
  • Correcting metacognitive (mentalization) deficits
    • Better emotional regulation techniques especially for difficulty discussions with loved ones
    • Better identification and understanding of your present moment experience (mindfulness) especially as it relates to anxious-preoccupied mental states.
    • Better ability to make meaning out of your life in such a way to facilitate compassion, acceptance, and healing.
    • Learning to balance emotional and cognitive perspectives at the same time
    • Learning to hold the other’s “mind in mind”
    • Learning to hold one’s own self in mind (valuing your own perspectives and desires)
  • Correcting non-cooperative speech patterns – Drawing from the Adult Attachment Interview and Grice’s Maxims of cooperative speech:
    • Learning to monitor what is and is not relevant to the conversation
    • Learning to monitor what is and is not an appropriate amount of time to ‘hold onto the conversational turn’ before turning it over to your conversation partner
    • Learning to monitor your speech so that it is clear and easily understood by your conversation partner
  • Learn to own and value your own desires
    • That “what you want matters.”
    • Differentiation of sincere concern and compassion from self-sacrifice and self-subjugation
    • Breaking free from approval and recognition seeks & feeling internally validated
    • Differentiating shame, guilt, and healthy remorse
    • Healthy Self Development vs Enmeshment

This meditation course draws on:

  • Attachment Theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, et al)
  • Ideal Parent Figure Protocol (Brown, et al)
  • Inner Child Work (Bradshaw, et al)
  • Schema Therapy (Young, et al)
  • Coherence Therapy (Ecker, et al)
  • Mentalization-Based Treatment (Fonagy, et al)
  • Metacognitive Therapy (DiMaggio, et al.)
  • Buddhist Visualization Practices
  • Mindfulness Practice

Course Curriculum

The course is broken up into 9 classes

Lecture Outline

  • Basics of Preoccupied Attachment (causes, presentation in adults)
  • Treatment arc for Preoccupied Attachment (how long it takes, how many sessions)
  • Identifying relationship patterns
  • Frustrated assertiveness and the consequences (helplessness, perseverating anger)
  • Specific qualities of the perfect nurturer for healing Preoccupied Attachment
  • Guided Meditation on experimenting and identifying the preoccupied mind-state
    • Primary meditation: Perfect nurturers for Preoccupied Attachment
  • Homework: first meet with your practice pod + listen to guided perfect nurturer meditation + apply “art of taking action” to daily life to augment sense of agency
  • Please note that the curriculum is subject to change.

Lecture Outline

  • Difference between a stable attachment style and a momentary mental state of attachment
  • Understanding and recognizing primary schemas of Preoccupied Attachment
    • Domain I: Disconnection and Rejection (Attachment Domain)
      • Abandonment
      • Shame
      • Emotional deprivation (lack of attunement, guidance, empathy)
    • Domain II: Impaired Autonomy & Performance
      • Dependence/Incompetence
      • Vulnerability to Harm and Illness
      • Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self
      • Failure to achieve
    • Domain IV: Other directedness
      • Subjugation
      • Self-Sacrifice
      • Approval Seeking/Recognition Seeking
  • Guided Meditation: experiencing the schemas and repatterning them
    • Primary meditation: Schema Repatterning Meditation for Preoccupied Attachment
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation + investigate schemas in daily life (“I am in memory” exercise)

Lecture Outline

  • Understanding & identifying the Modes
    • Surrender to others
    • Avoidance of self-assertion and exploration
    • Exercises for recognizing the surrender modes in daily life
    • Exercises for recognizing the avoidance modes in daily life
    • Starting to develop the healthy adult mode
  • Healthy anger -vs- helpless anger exercise to know the difference in real life
  • Guided Meditation: recognizing and repatterning the Preoccupied Modes
    • Primary meditation: Mentalizing the Modes Meditation for either surrender modes or for exploration avoidance modes
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to mentalizing the modes of meditation + recognize the modes in daily life

Lecture Outline

  • Features of Preoccupied Attachment on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) Scoring System
  • Guided Meditation
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation + monitor collaborativeness of speech in daily life

Lecture Outline

  • Corrective exercises for those diagnostic criteria Preoccupied Attachment
  • Preoccupied as it relates to Metacognition
  • Preoccupied as it relates to Mentalization
  • Guided Meditation: Didactic Metacognitive Meditation with “pro-symptom position” of Coherence Therapy
    • Primary meditation: Mentalizing the Modes Meditation for either surrender modes or for exploration avoidance modes with emphasis on Meta-cognitive deficits of Preoccupied Attachment
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation

Lecture Outline

  • Working on collaboration, & boundaries setting
    • Exercise about setting a boundary and being supported by the PN’s about boundary setting
    • Experiencing that “what you want matters.”
  • Helplessness as a non-collaborative frame
  • Holding others in mind from a place of security
  • Relating to the dismissing avoidant, the secure person, and the disorganized/fearful person ⇒ developing compassion for those with a different attachment style from yours.
  • Investigating behaviors that are problematic and that block secure functioning relationships (all of these coping strategies that made perfect sense in your family of origin. But we want to bring this into conscious awareness and allow for a different and more responsive/flexible way of behaving in our adult lives)
    • Helplessness
    • Clinginess
    • Need for constant reassurance (dependence/incompetence and abandonment)
    • Putting up with abuse/poor treatment (subjugation schema and surrender modes)
    • Helpless anger
    • Demanding that the other person fix you and presenting problems to get attention and connection
    • Excessively care-taking the other
    • Disclosing too much to people are not the right people (or right stage in the relationship). This comes from the yearning for closeness. But there is a metacognitive deficit in terms of seeing if the other is ready for it or not. None of this is your fault. But it’s your responsibility to fix it.
    • Correcting the inclination to infer hostility and rejection in others. (negativity schema)
    • Recognizing “oh I’m in memory.” in real-time: “I am reacting to my early conditioning, not the present moment.”
  • Guided Meditation:
    • Primary meditation: Visualizing satisfying interpersonal relationships
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation

Lecture Outline

  • Experiencing that you will not be abandoned for being upset or for having needs
  • Anger/protest behavior is ok and you will not be rejected for it
  • Experiencing unconditional love and support to reconsolidate the expectation of abandonment
  • Contrasting compassion vs guilt, compulsive care-taking, self-sacrifice and subjugation
  • Self-sacrifice and self-subjugation (guilt) are unhealthy and cause codependence and relationship burnout
  • Guided meditation: working through guilt
    • Primary meditation: Confronting Guilt Inducing Parent Voice
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation

Lecture Outline

  • Types of trauma
    • Big T
    • Small T
  • Developmental Trauma -vs- Non-Developmental Trauma
  • How to work with trauma using attachment visualizations
  • De-personalization and de-realization issues
  • Exercise where you feel real – “What you want matters” – “You have agency” – “Your body is your own.”
  • Guided Meditation: working through the Schema of Mistrust and Abuse (trauma)
    • Primary meditation: Schema Repatterning Meditation for Impaired Autonomy
  • Homework: meet with pod + listen to meditation
    • Based on Morita Therapy: Taking action to lessen anxiety and fear and to build greater agency

Lecture Outline

  • Exploration
  • Assertiveness
  • Purpose
  • Self-agency
  • Self-esteem
  • Qualities of best self
  • Intimacy
  • Trouble Shooting
  • The path ahead to secure attachment

Main Meditation: strengthening the healthy adult mode + Developing the Qualities of the Healthy Adult Mode specified for Preoccupied Attachment

Miscellaneous Notes

The course is cohort-based and interactive. We have a slack group where you will be able to discuss, share experiences and consolidate what you are learning.

There will be time for Q&A and spot coaching.

We will be doing deep work. For that reason please feel free to take a break at any point.

Who is this for?

This program is for those of us who...

  • People who have Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment or anxious-preoccupied features
  • Are looking to improve our psychological health, especially if we have tried other healing modalities with disappointing results
  • Have problems with emotional independence, exploration and sense of self (working through enmeshment)
  • Want to work through clinginess
  • Learn to set better boundaries
  • Difficulties with intimate relationships
  • Want to understand the early foundations of our psychological development
  • Have had trouble consolidating gains in meditation practice in spite of dedicated meditation practice
  • Have difficulties with emotional regulation
  • You identify as “codependent”

Healing Together

Shared interest and social support can make meditation practice, study, and healing much easier.  Make friends in the course on the slack channel and invite friends who you think could benefit to participate in the course.

Benefits

These are some of the benefits you will have by the end of the program

Theoretical Understanding

  • A basic understanding of attachment theory.
  • Much better understanding of anxious Preoccupied Attachment
  • The importance of attachment repair and how to start doing it
  • The importance of your personal explorations as a source of meaning in your life and more clarity on how to proceed in life towards those explorations and goals.
  • Understanding how insecure attachment forms an important foundation of adult mental health
  • A plan for attaining secure attachment
  • More understanding of the modes/parts from a schema therapy perspective like:
    • Demanding internalized parent voices
    • Overcompensation modes like “workaholic mode”, or “self-aggrandizer mode”
    • Avoidance detached modes like the “detached self-soother” and the “spaced out fantasy mode”
    • Compliant surrender mode
    • Vulnerable child mode (which we reparent with the SRM)
    • Healthy Adult mode (which results in the vulnerable child getting its needs met)
  • Understanding the core schemas of anxious Preoccupied Attachment:
    • Abandonment & instability
    • Shame & defectiveness
    • Emotional Deprivation
    • Dependence/Incompetence
    • Vulnerability to Harm and Illness
    • Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self
    • Failure to achieve
    •  Subjugation
    •  Self-Sacrifice
    • Approval Seeking/Recognition Seeking

Psychological

  • A better ability to observe your mind with meta-cognitive awareness as a result of the mentalization exercises peppered through the guided meditations.
  • Better able to do emotional regulation on the spot in your daily life with ‘micro-hits’ of meditation
  • Less blame of self or others
  • Greater understanding and compassion for psychological problems and vulnerabilities that affect you and others.
  • Less identification with your psychological maladies and quirks (ego-dystonia with your maladaptive schemas).
  • A better ability to observe your mind with meta-cognitive awareness as a result of the mentalization exercises peppered through the guided meditations.
  • A very effective way to do emotional regulation on the spot in your daily life with ‘micro-hits’ of the SRM meditation
  • Understanding of and compassion towards your parts/modes and needs.
  • A more coherent and realistic understanding of the role your childhood experiences had in producing your adult personality.

For your relationships

  • Understanding how attachment conditioning unconsciously drives your relationship behaviors
  • And how to remedy them.
  • Greater valuing of attachment itself.
  • Better understanding of relationship dynamics
  • Feeling more empowered to set healthy boundaries

Support Structure

  • A sense of camaraderie as a result of seeing how our psychological difficulties are rooted in common experiences that affect us all.
  • Weekly attachment repair meditation that will start moving you towards secure attachment conditioning.
  • Opportunities to find accountability partners to meditate with during the week.
  • A sense of camaraderie as a result of seeing how our psychological difficulties are rooted in common experiences that affect us all.
  • A Slack group to continue discussion during the week.
  • Extra guided meditation session on Friday mornings at 8 am Eastern Time (bonus)
  • Attachment related book club meetings on Friday mornings at 9 am Eastern Time (bonus)

 

“The slack group enhanced the experience and learning for me, maybe quadrupled the benefits I got. Reading and learning about other people’s experiences and also how you spent the time answering questions to help people with their practice” — Michelle

Frequently Asked Questions

About Participation

Once you sign up, an email will be sent out to you with a Zoom link. It will allow you to access the live classes. A free Zoom account is necessary, and Zoom needs to be installed on your computer before the event starts.
No, this course is open to anyone, regardless of your familiarity with attachment theory or prior meditation experience.
Yes, there is homework every week. Optimally you should listen to the meditation recordings (30 min) daily or every other day. However, while it is optimal for you to do it, the value of coming to class and doing meditation in class does not rely on you having done the homework. You’ll be assigned to a practice pod of 3 to 5 fellow students. It’s recommended that the practice pod sessions be spent listening to the meditation, discussing practice, and challenges.
Signing up late is perfectly fine. Because the course is practice-oriented, you should catch up by doing the practices in your own time. The recordings of the sessions you were not able to attend will be made available to you. You will be able to catch up on the material and do the meditations in your own time.
Yes, and in fact we highly encouraged you to do both.
The course has been designed for live attendance. All recordings are made available to you every week. It allows you to watch the recordings at home and do the meditations in your own time.

Payment Questions

If for any reason you aren’t satisfied, simply contact us and we will send you a full refund.
If you are experiencing troubles with your payment, simply contact us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
There are other payment methods listed on our donations page. Otherwise contact us for other options. If you lack any ability to make online payments, let us know and we can sign you up for free.

Technical Questions

The recordings will be available for two more months after the course ends.
The recordings will be made available as video and also as audio-only.

If you are experiencing any technical issues relating to accessing the material or live sessions, please get in touch with us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

We can be reached with our online contact form.

Testimonials

This is what participants of prior courses have to say:

Johnny

I love your offerings. Keep them coming. You have a good capacity to make people feel seen – and also show great respect for us as individuals – in itself that is an healing factor in being in courses of yours! Your humbleness and humour – make every call a killer. Rock on. I like learning about these subjects! Feels very helpful in understanding my problems/reason to part of my suffering. I feel I have grown during the course so far – and or moving in a better direction.

Anon

I’m sure this will seem out of the blue to you, but I was just thinking of things I am thankful for and thought of you and the two Attachment Repair courses of yours I had the pleasure to participate in. I just wanted to say a very heartfelt thank you. I want you to know I really appreciated the kindness and effort you put into that work, and into responding to all of our questions. My exposure to your teaching has been immensely helpful for me.

Stu

I’m knowing myself better which allows me to connect in a more authentic way. I am also recognizing the attachment styles better in people I interact with and hammering out what I am really seeking in a relationship. I didn’t realize how important unconditional exploration and expression was for me until this class.

Allison

I am enjoying the Healing Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment course so much! It's blowing my mind, and that's after decades of amazing therapy, EMDR, attachment couples therapy, neurofeedback, inner child nurturing, self-compassion, and many other profound growth experiences. I’m so delighted by how much I'm getting out of the course. Feels like it's a missing piece for me that is so healing. Thank you !

Dani

Thank you for continuing to make these classes. When I am able to attend, they make a really positive contribution to my mental health :)

Antoine

I’m very happy about the Embodying Secure Attachment Course. It’s good to have a course for people who are well on the way of healing their wounds. Comes at the perfect time for me.

Chelsea

I gained an ability to self soothe, meet my needs for validation and feeling seen/heard (which were often unmet in childhood), an overall feeling like I am less alone in my work of healing my attachment. I realize I benefit greatly from an 8 week course with a weekly meeting, I am able to do daily meditations on my own and feel supported in this routine with the weekly meetings. I feel I am actively and consistently working on my attachment repair by being part of a longer course (as opposed to a weekend workshop).

N.P.

Loved the course and loved this kind of emotional work. Look forward to doing more that you offer. Content was excellent. Meditation around Schema modes went quite deep and uncovered difficult emotions. Doing micro hits has improved some situations that would have gone worse.

Allyson

THANK YOU!! this is powerful for me, so thank you thank you for sharing your insight. I like how you really balance the “just do the work” attitude with sooo much compassion and empathy for how hard it is. Now I know how to use the immense power of my imagination to heal my most fundamental body-mind-soul mechanisms and have a more joyful, loving life.

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Healing Anxious Preoccupied Attachment

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This Post Has 7 Comments

  1. Kay Mullings 30 Apr 2022 Reply

    I look forward to taking this course.

  2. Louise 1 May 2022 Reply

    Thankyou

  3. Noor Khan 6 May 2022 Reply

    Looking forward to taking this course And improving myself.

  4. Jennifer Sims 7 May 2022 Reply

    When does the next course begin? I’m not sure that I can make it this time.

    1. Attachment Repair 10 May 2022 Reply

      Hi Jennifer,
      It will most likely start a month or so after this one ends. You’re also welcome to join this one part-way or watch it on your own time with the recordings.

Leave a Reply

Please note: This program is offered for educational purposes only and is not group-therapy, counselling or any kind of other psychotherapy, nor is it a substitute for the aforementioned. The instructor Cedric Reeves is a meditation teacher, not a psychotherapist, counsellor, or otherwise therapist.