Healing the Core Beliefs of Insecure Attachment
A guided Meditation Course Focusing on Developing the Core Skills of Metacognitive Integration
7 Week Online Meditation Course- Date: 8th Jan - 19th Feb 2024
- Instructor: Cedric Reeves
- Cost: Sliding scale $120 ~ $400
Join us for this course where we will seek to understand and then heal the negative beliefs of insecure attachment (schemas). This will be meditation practice oriented course with minimal focus on lecture, but with time for Q&A and practice report.
The intended outcome is to work through these deeply held beliefs that underlie much of insecure attachment. Please note that only the first two classes will have much in the way of lecture. In the last five classes, we'll focus primarily on guided meditations.
This program is for people who have insecure attachment.
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.
Format
- Program: One live 60 to 90 minute class per week
- Live Online Sessions: The live sessions will be hosted on Zoom. An email with the zoom links will be sent to you after you have registered.
- Q&A: There will be opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A section.
Attendance & Recordings
- Partial attendance is fine - however you get best results if you attend all sessions.
- Late Starts: You can join even after it has started.
- View at your own pace: The event will be recorded and sent out to registered participants for viewing on your own schedule.
Event Date & Time
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 60 to 90 minute class per week.
Option 1 Monday |
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+12h
|
Daylight Savings finishes in the US on Nov 5th, but in Europe on Oct 29th. As a result, participants in Europe should note that classes will start an hour earlier on Oct 30th.
Class Schedule
This is the approximate format of each class.
Duration | Activity |
---|---|
5 mins | Short meditation to settle the mind |
5 mins | Review of last week’s class (first class will be introductions instead) |
30 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.
What to Expect
Guided meditation will be the main focus of the program. There will be ample opportunity to ask questions and share whatever you feel comfortable with. There will be no pressure to do so; passive participation is perfectly fine.
We will systematically work to understand, attune with, and heal these schemas which largely compose insecure attachment.
The negative beliefs (the Schemas of Jeff Young’s Schema Therapy) are:
- Emotional Deprivation (the expectation that no one will understand you or be there for you emotionally)
- Defectiveness and Shame
- Social Isolation and Alienation
- Abandonment and Instability
- Emotional Inhibition (the tendency to repress and not express emotions or needs)
- Mistrust and Abuse
We will focus a full class and a meditation on each of one of these schemas with a greater emphasis on reflective integration (metacognition) than in previous attachment repair courses.
It is recommended to do the meditations daily or every other day during the week
course Overview
This program is suitable for beginners to meditation and healing work.
This program focuses on repairing early attachment conditioning through a series of guided meditations. We will go after understanding and healing the core schemas (beliefs) that partly under-gird insecure attachment. This course will be very light on psycho-education and very heavy on experiential work/meditation. (the first two classes will have more theory, the last five will be less theory and more meditation.)
Attachment Theory describes one of the earliest phases of our psychological development. It describes the behaviors of the infant from ages 6 months to 3 years when it ventures away from the caregiver to explore and then goes back to seek safety, affection, and care from the ‘secure base’. This goes on to impact us for the rest of our live.
Attachment conditioning is foundational to our psychological health. When our foundational attachment strategy is insecure then we experience developmental problems with our exploratory abilities, self-development, emotional self-regulation and relationships with others.
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”. We will work towards healing and dismantling them in this program!
Details about modalities
Research into Schema Therapy indicates it is effective at treating grave psychological disorders like complex PTSD, personality disorders, treatment resistant depression and anxiety, and substance abuse issues.
To this point, schema therapy was developed by Jeffrey Young in response to seeing how traditional Beckian Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) did not yield satisfactory results for patients with more serious disturbances like personality disorders.
Said differently, the techniques and frame works used in this program are very effective even for difficult cases.
Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, developed by Dan Brown, has been found to be effective for moving people with insecure attachment to secure attachment after repeated sessions.
We’ll also draw from Coherence Therapy. We’ll take the position that there is coherent reason for our ‘neurosis’ and negative beliefs. We won’t fight those against those. Rather we’ll seek to understand the problematic beliefs and resulting ‘neurotic’ coping mechanisms.
Additionally, we’ll also integrate some elements of Metacognitive Inter Personal Therapy, Mentalization Based Treatment, and the Core Conflict Relationship Themes Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.
Course Structures: Schemas, Psycho-Education and Guided Meditations
Schemas
We will do psycho-education and reparative meditations on each the following schemas:
- Defectiveness & Shame (dismissing schema)
- Social Isolation (dismissing schema)
- Emotional Deprivation (schema common to all types of insecure attachment)
- Abandonment & Instability (preoccupied schema)
- Emotional Inhbition
- Mistrust & Abuse (disorganized schema)
Moreover we’ll investigate how each of these schemas manifest as behaviors (schema modes); particularly the coping modes of surrender, avoidance, and overcompensation. We’ll see how within these schemas there particular models of self, other, and world. We’ll investigate these structures within the schemas. Then we’ll regress back to the vulnerable child mode and feel into the schema, studying how it was brought about through difficult childhood experiences. Then we’ll reparent the vulnerable child in those difficult experiences.
Psycho-Education
We will start the first two weeks with a brief lecture on attachment theory, attachment repair, and Schema Therapy. Then, before each Schema oriented meditation guidance, we will do a brief psycho-education on that particular schema drawing both from Jeffrey Young’s Schema Theory and Attachment Theory.
Moreover, in this course we’ll focus more on metacognitive integration within the guided meditations
- Metacognitive skills
- Mentalization of Fonagy & Bateman, et al.
- Metacognitive skills of Dimaggio et al.
- Reflective Integration of Crittenden & Landini
- Core Conflict Relationship Themes of Luborsky et al.
Guided Meditations
Guided meditation will be the primary means for working through the schemas. We will be taking an attachment theory based re-parenting approach in the guided meditation. These meditations will give us a corrective emotional experiences. The “perfect nurturers” will reparent our inner, vulnerable child in the meditation. These meditations will help us remap the ‘internal working model of attachment’.
We will apply each of these meditations to each the five schemas listed above:
- Schema Repatterning Meditation, a meditation in which our “perfect nurturers” reparent our inner, vulnerable child with a heavy focus on metacognitive integration.
- Tong Len, a Tibetan Buddhist compassion meditation. This will help us cultivate compassion generally and also particularly around the schema in question. Moreover, by considering how others suffer with the same schemas we will see how we are not alone in our difficulties. This helps to normalize the painful experience of the schemas. Moreover, compassion around our shared difficulties further builds solidarity and a sense connection with others.
Course Curriculum
The course is broken up into 7 classes
Lecture Outline
- Introduction
- What is attachment theory and how it affects us in adulthood
- Attachment repair:
- How to do it?
- Is it worth it?
- Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement Meditation as a foundation
- What it is
- How to use it
- How and why it heals
- The instrumental value of the perfect nurturers and how they will help us work more effectively in the rest of the course’s meditations
Meditation
- Guided meditation to establish the Perfect Nuturers
Homework Assignment
- Listen to the guided meditation 30 mins between one and 6 times during the week, as you have time, and also doing “micro-hit” of the SRM meditation in stressful situations as a means of emotional regulation
Lecture Outline
- Review of first class & Q&A
- Schema Repatterning Meditation (SRM)
- Deepening our understanding of how and why it heals
- Emotionally corrective experiences (dis-confirming knowledge)
- Role of the ‘responsive other’ to dis-confirm toxic belief
- Compassion
- Attunement as dis-confirming of the negative schema
- Sympathetic joy
- Unconditional positive regard (equanimous love)
- Compassion
- Role of the ‘responsive other’ to dis-confirm toxic belief
- Difference between transformational change and counteractive change (Ecker et al)
- Metacognitive skills that bring about ‘reflective integration’/healing
- Emotional learnings or felt-beliefs (schemas)
- What are they
- How do they form
- How do the schemas and resultant schema-modes comprise our attachment style
- How to bring them into awareness them (sentence stems) (Ecker et al, 2012)
- How do we use Schema Repatterning Meditation to heal them by having an emotionally corrective experience that dis-confirms the old, negative schema
- Dealing with ‘resistance’ and other difficulties:
- Resistance is our friend and guide not our enemy
- Resistance points us to the most fruitful schemas to focus on
Meditation
- Guided SRM Meditation on the Schema of Emotional Deprivation
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
Lecture Outline
- Focus on guided Schema Repatterning Meditation on the Defectiveness and Shame Schema
Meditation
- Guided "Mentalizing the Modes" Meditation
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
Lecture Outline
- Focus on guided Schema Repatterning Meditation on the Social Isolation and Alienation Schema
Meditation
- Guided Mentalizing the Modes Meditation
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
Lecture Outline
- Focus on guided Schema Repatterning Meditation on the Abandonment and Instability Schema
Meditation
- Guided Schema Repatterning Meditation calibrated to Dismissing Attachment
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
Lecture Outline
- Focus on guided Schema Repatterning Meditation on the Emotional Inhibition Schema
Meditation
- Guided Schema Repatterning Meditation calibrated to Dismissing Attachment
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
Lecture Outline
- Focus on guided Schema Repatterning Meditation on the Mistrust and Abuse Schema
Meditation
- Guided Meditation on Fearful Self-Parts
Homework Assignment
- There will be an optional homework assignment
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 during the live event. The Q&A recording will not be made available thereafter. If you do not attend live, you will not have access to the Q&A.
We will be doing deep work. For that reason please feel free to take a break at any point.
Measure your Progress With Before/After Assessments
Attachment Repair is offering this course that not only is entirely focused on healing the root of your attachment issues but also provides objective tools to measure and track your progress.
Attachment & Schema Assessment
Participation in this course will give you the option to enrol into our Attachment & Schema Assessment. This Assessment is designed to measure some of the most relevant markers of your attachment style and emotional health.
Before, After, and 3-month Follow-up
The Assessments are a valuable tool for measuring and tracking your progress in the course. By taking a Before measurement at the start of the course and an After measurement when the course ends, you will be able to see the effects of the course and the meditations on your attachment style and emotional health.
Additionally, there will be a Follow-up Assessment 3 months after the course ends to see if any changes have persisted or increased. These objective measures can increase confidence in your ability to direct your healing process and deepen the habit of doing inner work.
These assessments give you a ‘handle’ on your current psychology. This augments the capacity to self-reflect (conceptualize where you stand relative to the measure), and to measure progress which equips you with more self-agency around your self-driven pursuit of greater mental health.
Seeing real change with an objective measure helps build up a real and palpable self-agency about knowing that you can change. Doing Before/After helps fortify this primary objective of self-agency around your own healing.
PDF Report
The results of your assessment will be delivered to you in a PDF report that gives you your scores for each of the measures as well as an explanation of what they mean.
You will get a new report for each stage of the Before/After/Follow-up, to easily compare the results and see how your measure changes over time.
Practice Pods
Participants in this course have the option to join a practice pod. This is an informal group of 3-5 students who meet, usually once a week, to listen to a guided meditation, discuss difficulties in practice, and share insights and progress. Connecting with peer learners in this way can keep you motivated, consolidate learning, and create a sense of community.
Who is this for?
This program is for those of us who...
- Have insecure attachment
- Are looking to improve our psychological health, especially if we have tried other healing modalities with disappointing results
- Have troubles with expressing vulnerability and needs
- Difficulties with intimate relationships
- Want to optimize our psychological health
- Want to understand the early foundations of our psychological development
- Have had trouble consolidating gains in meditation practice in spite of lots of dedicated meditation practice
- Have difficulties with emotional regulation
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
- Understanding the path to “earned secure attachment”
- The importance of your personal explorations as a source for meaning in your life and more clarity on how to proceed in life towards those explorations and goals.
- Understanding of how attachment forms an important foundation of adult mental health
- Familiarity with Jeffrey Young’s core Schemas
- More understanding of the modes/parts from a schema therapy perspective.
- Understanding of metacognitive skills
- Mentalization of Fonagy & Bateman, et al.
- Metacognitive skills of Dimaggio et al.
- Reflective Integration of Crittenden & Landini
- Core Conflict Relationship Themes of Luborsky et al.
Psychological
- A better ability to observe your mind with metacognitive 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 more coherent and realistic understanding of the role your childhood experiences had in producing your adult personality.
For your relationships
- Understanding of how attachment conditioning unconsciously drives your relationship behaviors
- Greater valuing of attachment/connection itself.
- Better understand of relationship dynamics
- Less social anxiety
- Greater ability and permission to be vulnerable and admit wanting closeness (dismissing/disorganized)
Support Structure
- Join a weekly practice pod
- 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 8am 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
Payment Questions
Technical Questions
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:
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).
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.
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.
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.
Christine
Cedric is an amazing meditation teacher, and this course really changed a lot for me. I really liked his authentic, refreshing approach and the way he combines scientific research with A LOT of practical exercises to reprogram the mind. Over the time of the course, I could literally watch my self esteem and my motivation to get things done grow. The course really motivated me to get going with my business and get things done, because I started to believe that I can actually do it.
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.
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.
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Please note: What is on offer here is meditation coaching, not psychotherapy or counseling.