Disorganized Attachment
When we had finally eaten in the breakfast room, with Daddy presiding, it was off to school with a high probability of arriving late, for which, of course, I was regularly scolded, and sometimes punished. It was only after this milestone that I could begin to relax into the new day. It is difficult to convey the quality of domestic chaos which kept me in a constant state of tension, anxiety, and hyper vigilance…
Fawning
Fawning is an unconscious attempt to manipulate the reaction of others to ward off danger and maintain connection in an unsafe environment or relationship. This behavioural pattern can become habituated, appearing like personality, without us ever being aware of its traumatic origins. The term fawning was coined by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma (synonymous with developmental, relational or childhood trauma). Walker saw fawning as the “Fourth F” of trauma reflexes: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. It is particularly common among people who have had, or are experiencing, long-term, developmental trauma…
Healing Wounds
On holidays with the extended family at his beautiful holiday home in the west of Ireland, I was tagging along behind Grandpop, effervescent, eager for connection, wanting to learn from and share some emotional intimacy with this great man.
Unluckily for me, the great man must have been somewhat agitated on this sunny summer’s morning. At some point, as we were walking along the riverbank in the bright sunshine, he turned on me suddenly and, looking down from the heights of a six-foot man, told me that I was a case of verbal diarrhoea, instructing me to put a plug in it. Perhaps 6 or 7 years old at the time, I was devastated…
Solitude, Community, Service
Community is, in essence, solitude greeting solitude. The Great Spirit in me speaking to the Great Spirit in you. To be in community means to build a home around the essence that rests at the core of each of us. This beautiful translation of the Sanskrit term „Namaste“ expresses it best: „I honour the place within you where the entire Universe resides; I honour the place within you of love, of light, of truth, and of peace; I honour the place within you, where, when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us“…
