Attachment Theory & Repair
Digital Self-Paced Course
Simply purchase and download the zip Lifetime access to course material
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9 video lectures, 5 hours total -
35 guided meditations, 10 hours total
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Useful For
- Dating Issues
- Depression
- Executive Dysfunction
- General Anxiety
Overview
This Digital Self-Paced Course will cover:
- The basics of attachment theory
- How it forms much of the developmental foundation for adult mental health
- How attachment conditioning is made up of attachment schemas which together form an “internal working model of attachment” (Bowlby)
- We will re-pattern and work through these attachment schemas systematically
- How insecure attachment usually implies deficits in mentalization capacities (metacognitive, perspective taking abilities)
- Which we start correcting in the guided meditation
- How to heal our early attachment conditioning in order to have much improved well-being, better romantic and platonic relationships, and a stronger, healthy sense of self
This is a practice oriented course.
Doing the work (meditations in this case) is what brings about the results. The learning content of the course is intended to guide and encourage the meditation practice.
Why is focusing on attachment repair especially relevant to people who have struggled with other healing modalities?
- Attachment conditioning sets the foundation for much of psychological development thereafter. The foundation, optimally, should be healthy before further work is fruitful.
- Attachment conditioning happens between 6 and 20 months of age: before there is much narrative or cognitive functioning.
- For this reason doing work at a later developmental level (cognitive/narrative approaches to healing (CBT etc.)) is not as effective without a solid base. Healing attachment conditioning should come first. Then other healing modalities (talk therapy, mindfulness, meditation, etc) can more easily have their desired effects when built on the foundation of secure attachment conditioning.
- In order to fix attachment conditioning we must have lived, emotionally corrective experiences.
- This is the core focus on this course: Having emotionally corrective experiences that open up new possibilities for greater happiness and ease, better relationships, and more self-efficacy.
What is the primary practice/ healing modality in this course?
We’ll focus on ‘Schema Repatterning Meditation’ (SRM). SRM is a guided visualization in which we:
- First identify our problematic, negative schemas (emotional learnings/beliefs) and modes (problematic, symptom producing behaviors that result from the schemas/beliefs)
- Investigate these beliefs with interest and openness, bringing them fully into awareness using sentence stem completion exercises (based on Bruce Ecker’s work)
- Discover their origins in childhood, adolescence, and earlier adulthood seeing how these negative learnings were helpful and adaptive at the time, but now no longer adaptive to our adult life
- Have a calibrated and attuned emotionally corrective experience in the guided meditation that juxtaposes the old negative learning (consistent with Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy)
- This juxtaposition experience creates a “prediction error” which then initiates the process of memory reconsolidation.
- All along the way, the meditation guidance helps us develop our metacognitive capacities, correcting executive function deficits that often accompany insecure attachment
This lived corrective experience opens up new possibilities freeing up the narrow, fixed views of our old way of seeing ourselves and the world (schemas) thereby making our ‘symptoms’ unnecessary. These changes are permanent without need for continuing maintenance work.
Drawing from the insights of modern neuroscience, SRM gets right to the root causes of unwanted behaviors by reconsolidating the emotional memories (Ecker et al., 2012).
This course and the guided SRM meditation draws from:
- Attachment Theory
- Jeffrey Young’s Schema Therapy
- Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy
- The Work of Byron Katie
- Shirley Jean Schmidt’s Developmental Needs Meeting strategy
- Laurel Parnell’s Attachment-Focused EMDR
- Dan Brown and David Elliott’s Ideal Parent Figure Protocol (IPF) / Three Pillars Model
- Mentalization/Metacogntive therapies (Fonagy, DiMaggio, Liotti)
- Buddhist Visualization Meditation
- Buddhist Heart Practices:
- Loving Kindness
- Compassion
- Appreciative Joy
- Equanimity (Equanimous Love)
Measuring of progress (before and after)
You will have the option to take an in depth assessment before the 8 week course and then again after you’ve completed it. The purpose of this is to determine your baseline attachment security, schemas (limiting self-beliefs), sense of safety, anxiety and mood. Moreover this will help you monitor these qualities to assess your improvements over the course. The assessment is free and you will get the results within a few days of completing it.
This anonymized information will then help us complete a pilot study on this attachment repair meditation modality.
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 problems with emotional independence, exploration and sense of self (enmeshment)
- Have troubles with expressing vulnerability
- 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
Benefits & Outcomes
These are some of the benefits you will have by the end of the program
Theoretical Understanding
- A basic understanding of attachment theory
- 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 18 Schemas
- 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 out of the vulnerable child getting its needs met)
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 itself
- Better understanding of relationship dynamics
- Less social anxiety
- Greater ability and permission to be vulnerable and admit wanting closeness (dismissing/disorganized)
Course Contents
Using Meditation to Heal Attachment Conditioning |
|
---|---|
Using Meditation to Heal Attachment Conditioning
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47 mins |
Soothing and Attunement #1
|
17 mins |
Soothing and Attunement #2
|
17 mins |
Delight and Exploration #1
|
9 mins |
Delight and Exploration #2
|
9 mins |
Understanding Schema Repatterning Meditation (SRM) |
|
Understanding Schema RepatterningLecture
|
21 mins |
Basic Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement #1
|
12 mins |
Basic Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement #2
|
7 mins |
Schema Repatterning Meditation #1Meditation
|
24 mins |
Schema Repatterning Meditation #2Meditation
|
29 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes (Understanding our Parts) |
|
Mentalizing the ModesLecture
|
35 mins |
Motivation #1Meditation
|
6 mins |
Basic Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement
|
6 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes #1Meditation
|
36 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes #2Meditation
|
34 mins |
Going Deeper with Metacognition |
|
Going Deeper with MetacognitionLecture
|
30 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes #3Meditation
|
41 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes #4Meditation
|
36 mins |
Dismissing Attachment |
|
Dismissing AttachmentLecture
|
41 mins |
Motivation #2Meditation
|
7 mins |
Motivation #3Meditation
|
6 mins |
Mentalizing the Dismissing ModesMeditation
|
23 mins |
Mentalizing the Detached Protector ModeMeditation
|
26 mins |
Preoccupied Attachment |
|
Preoccupied AttachmentLecture
|
33 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes on Anger and Helplessness #1Meditation
|
22 mins |
Mentalizing the Modes on Anger and Helplessness #2Meditation
|
27 mins |
Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement on the validity of needing comfortMeditation
|
7 mins |
Disorganized Attachment |
|
7.1 Disorganized AttachmentLecture
|
22 mins |
7.2 Disorganized AttachmentLecture
|
22 mins |
Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement on wanting safety and comfort #1Meditation
|
8 mins |
Perfect Nurturer Reinforcement on wanting safety and comfort #2Meditation
|
6 mins |
Schema Repatterning Meditation on mistrust and abuse #1Meditation
|
37 mins |
Schema Repatterning Meditation on mistrust and abuse #2Meditation
|
35 mins |
Secure Attachment and the Healthy Adult Mode |
|
Secure Attachment and the Healthy Adult ModeLecture
|
37 mins |
Tong Len on the need for protection and soothing #1Meditation
|
10 mins |
Tong Len on the need for protection and soothing #2Meditation
|
9 mins |
Best self meditation on self-definition and self-agency #1Meditation
|
20 mins |
Best self meditation on self-definition and self-agency #2Meditation
|
32 mins |
Delight and self-esteem #1Meditation
|
7 mins |
Delight and self-esteem #2Meditation
|
12 mins |
Acknowledging the need for safety and soothing #1Meditation
|
9 mins |
Acknowledging the need for safety and soothing #2Meditation
|
9 mins |
Review of the course and what you learned #1Meditation
|
14 mins |
Review of the course and what you learned #2Meditation
|
13 mins |
|
Frequently Asked Questions
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Payment Questions
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Payment
$179
Where did you hear about this Program?
Description
This program will cover:
- The basics of attachment theory
- How it forms an important foundation of adult mental health
- How attachment conditioning is made up of attachment schemas which together form an “internal working model of attachment” (Bowlby)
- We will re-pattern and work through these attachment schemas systematically
- How insecure attachment usually implies deficits in mentalization capacities (meta-cognitive, perspective taking abilities)
- Which we start correcting in the guided meditation
- How to heal our early attachment conditioning in order to have much improved well-being, better romantic and platonic relationships, and a stronger, healthy sense of self.
- There will also be an experiential quiz at the end of the first class to help you get a sense for what your attachment style maybe.
This is a Practice oriented course.
Doing the work (meditations in this case) is what brings about the results. The learning content of the course is intended to guide and encourage the meditation practice which will bring about the desired healing.
Why is focusing on Attachment Repair especially relevant to people who have struggled with other healing modalities?
- Attachment conditioning sets the foundation for much of psychological development thereafter. The foundation must be healthy before further work is fruitful.
- Attachment conditioning happens between 6 and 20 months of age: very early before there is much narrative or cognitive functioning.
- For this reason doing work at a later developmental level (cognitive/narrative approaches to healing (CBT etc)) is not as effective without a solid base. Healing attachment conditioning should come first. Then other healing modalities (talk therapy, mindfulness meditation, etc) can have their desired effects when built on the foundation of secure attachment conditioning.
- In order to fix attachment conditioning we must have lived, emotionally corrective experiences
- This is the core focus on this course: Having Emotionally Corrective Experiences that open up new possibilities for greater happiness and ease, better relationships, and more self-efficacy.
What is the primary practice/healing modality in this course?
We’ll focus on ‘Schema Repatterning Meditation’ (SRM). SRM is a guided visualization in which we:
- First identify our problematic, negative schemas (emotional learnings/beliefs) and modes (problematic, symptom producing behaviors that result from the schemas/beliefs)
- Investigate these beliefs with interest and openness, bringing them fully into awareness using sentence stem completion exercises (based on Bruce Ecker’s work)
- Discover their origins in childhood, adolescence, and earlier adulthood seeing how these negative learnings were helpful and adaptive at the time, but now no longer adaptive to our adult life
- Have a calibrated and attuned emotionally corrective experience in the guided meditation that juxtaposes the old negative learning (consistent with Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy)
- All along the way, the meditation guidance helps us develop our meta-cognitive capacities, correcting executive function deficits that often accompany insecure attachment.
This lived corrective experience opens up new possibilities freeing up the narrow, fixed views of our old way of seeing ourselves and the world (schemas) thereby making our ‘symptoms’ unnecessary. These changes are permanent without need for continuing maintenance work.
Drawing from the insights of modern neuroscience, SRM gets right to the root causes of unwanted behaviors by reconsolidating the emotional memories (Ecker et al., 2012). Moreover, the practice is gentle and non-pathologizing.
This course and the guided SRM meditation draws from:
- Attachment Theory
- Jeffrey Young’s Schema Therapy
- Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy
- The Work of Byron Katie
- Shirley Jean Schmidt’s Developmental Needs Meeting strategy
- Laurel Parnell’s Attachment-Focused EMDR
- Dan Brown and David Elliott’s Ideal Parent Figure Protocol/Three Pillars Model
- Mentalization/Meta-Cogntive therapies (Fonagy, DiMaggio, Liotti)
- Buddhist Visualization Meditation
- Buddhist Heart Practices:
- Loving Kindness
- Compassion
- Appreciative Joy
- Equanimity (Equanimous Love)
Course format:
The course is broken up into 8 classes with each class focused on guided meditation. See below for details.