This program will focus on working through negative early attachment conditioning especially as it relates to codependency and other-directedness. We will approach this from attachment theory and attachment repair perspectives.

We see insecure attachment as a pattern of beliefs made by emotional memories. We will explore these beliefs and how we can set new patterns through meditation.

Attachment Theory

Attachment Theory describes one of the earliest phases of our psychological development. It describes the behaviours of the infant from ages 6 months to three years of age when it ventures away from the caregiver to explore and then goes back to seek safety, affection, and care from the ‘secure base’. These early experiences imprint on us forming emotional memories (schemas) that go on to condition many aspects of life thereafter.

Schema Therapy

According to Jeffery Young “An early maladaptive schema is a pervasive self-defeating or dysfunctional theme or pattern of memories, emotions, and physical sensations, developed during childhood or adolescence and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, that often has the form of a belief about the self or the world.” Jeffrey Young also calls the schemas “life traps”.  These negative beliefs/expectations/schemas are core features of insecure attachment

Meditations (the primary experiential healing intervention in this course)

We’ll do guided meditations that address these traits of insecure attachment which cause us to be overly concerned with other people. These will include:

• Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement – Visualizing loving imaginary figures that model secure attachment.  This meditation overlaps largely with Ideal Parent Figure Protocol
• Schema Repatterning Meditation – Bringing up and disconfirming relevant schemas (limiting beliefs), including those of:
  • Self Sacrifice
  • Self Subjugation
  • Approval Seeking and Attention Seeking
    (These 3 schemas comprise the Other-Directedness schema domain of Schema Therapy which is the core of ‘codependency’)

Chairwork

Additionally we’ll do “chairwork” (a type of parts-work similar to Internal Family Systems (IFS)) on our self-sacrificying parts to understand them better. We will see how based on our deeply held “emotional knowings” that there is a part of us that believes that “compulsive care taking” is necessary. Then we’ll have an emotionally corrective experience so that we no longer experience the self sacrifice as necessary.