Table of Contents

Secure relating is a state of mind, not an attachment category.

Lullabies are co-regulation in action.

Co-dysregulation is also a thing.

Sometimes you and your therapist must figure out what to talk about while that deeper implicit right-to-right syncing and relating takes hold.

When in high defense, we are working outside in, but the process of secure relating is learning to work inside out.

One reason we all get so worked up at times is that we need one another, and our bodies know it!

Humans crave closeness, trust that evolutionary wisdom.

Security can’t just exist within our own epicenter – we have to confront systems that create insecurity.

We can’t impose even the best Western ideas of good parenting on the whole world.

What we think of as solid science shouldn’t trump indigenous knowledge.

Just using someone’s preferred pronouns makes a huge difference in their sense of safety. Refusing to does the reverse.

We are born with a sensitive alarm system with no off switch or volume control.

Trauma is, to the nervous system, what a concussion is to the brain.

“It had not previously occurred to me that one might look within oneself for some explanation of how one felt and behaved, rather than feeling entirely at the mercy of external forces. What a vista that opened up.” (Ainsworth, 1983, p. 202)

An exciting takeaway is that coherent life stories stem from secure attachment but they are also a path to getting there!

It’s not what we say about our history that matters, it’s how we say it (our narrative style).

Secure relating is not about changing other people, it’s about regulating ourselves.

It’s not me it’s my amygdala.

It’s not them it’s their amygdala.

It’s not my amygdala, it’s the impact of a dysregulated, regressed system