Attachment Theory & Repair

13:00
14:30
19:00
20:30
17th Jan 2022
Monday
Monday
Multi-week Online Course
$400 $200 $80 $1-40

Attachment Theory & Repair

A Deep Dive into Healing our Childhood Conditioning with Schema Repatterning Meditation

8 Week Online Meditation Course
  • Date: 17th Jan - 7th Mar 2022
  • Instructor: Cedric Reeves
  • Cost: Sliding scale
This event has ended

This meditation course is aimed at people with insecure attachment. Many people with insecure attachment have tried other healing modalities, like psychotherapy and mindfulness meditation, with disappointing results.

In this course, you will be equipped with the knowledge and meditation practices to specifically help you build the core foundation of solid mental health (secure attachment). These meditation practices are visualization practices that use "perfect nurturers" to reparent our inner child.

Format

  • 8 Week Course: One live 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

Start Date: 17th Jan - End Date: 7th Mar 2022

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 90 minute class per week.

Class Schedule

This is the approximate format of each class.

DurationActivity
5 mins 5 mins of meditation to settle the mind.
5 mins Review of last week’s class (first class will be introductions instead)
35 mins Lecture on new material
5 mins Break
40 mins Guided meditation related to material just discussed
30 mins Depending on time, there can be an optional thirty minutes extra Q&A after the 90 minute class ends for those who want to stay on.

Course Overview

This program is suitable for beginners to meditation and healing work.

In this course we 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.

Week 1 Using meditation to heal attachment conditioning

Attachment Theory & Attachment Repair

  • Intro
  • What is attachment theory
    • How & when is attachment conditioning learned
    • What is the Internal Working Model of Attachment
    • How attachment conditioning is the core of your mental health
    • Internal Working Model of Attachment
    • The value of attachment
  • Attachment repair:
    • How long does it take?
    • How much work is necessary?
    • Is it worth it?
  • What does the path to earned security look like?
    • How long to expect
    • How much work
    • Examples of others who’ve done it
  • Schema Repatterning Meditation (SRM)
    • What it is
    • How to use it
    • How and why it heals
  • Primer on the four major attachment styles
  • Guided meditation to establishing resources (resource parents, or other figures that soothe, support, and help to disconfirm negative expectations of schemas)
  • In-class experiential self-assessment quiz to help you figure out your own attachment style.
  • Homework assignment (optional) (usually consists of listening to the guided meditation 30 mins as 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)

Week 2 Understanding Schema Repatterning Meditation (SRM)

  • 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)
    • Difference between transformational change and counteractive change
  • 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
  • How is adult attachment assessed?
    • AAI
    • Assessing attachment pre and post-treatment
  • 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
  • Guided SRM Meditation on the Schema of Emotional Deprivation
  • Homework assignment

Week 3 Mentalizing the Modes (Understanding our “Parts”)

  • Introduction to the “Early Maladaptive Schemas” and “Schema Modes” (self-parts)
  • Overview of Mentalization (meta-cognition) (Liotti, DiMaggio) (Steele, Steele, Fonagy)
    • Understanding your own and others mental states as mental states
    • Proper discounting of indeterminacy of mental states
      • Mental states as a ‘guesstimate’
    • Understanding causal relationships between mental states
    • Ability to take skillful postures towards mental states in order to bring about emotional regulation
    • Meaning Making
    • Recognition of developmental aspects like how past experiences present experiences
    • How to make reasonable and accurate mental attributions to others
    • Planning in the face of limited informal
    • Understanding the impact of context on decision making
    • Foster the ability to view things from the other’s perspective
    • Recognition of interdependence
    • Developing a sense of purpose greater than self
  • How Mentalization abilities correlate with attachment conditioning
  • Guided “Mentalizing the Modes” Meditation
  • Homework assignment

Week 4 Going deeper with the Modes and Meta-Cognition

  • Forgiveness Meditation with emphasis on perspective taking (Meta-cognition)
  • Going Deeper with Meta-Cognition
  • Further investigating the modes/parts from a schema therapy perspective like (Young et al., 2006):
    • 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 their needs met)
  • How schemas (beliefs) and the schema modes (behaviors) feedback and interrelate
  • Guided Mentalizing the Modes Meditation
  • Homework assignment

Week 5 Dismissing (Avoidant) Attachment

  • Further description of dismissing attachment in adults
  • Causes of dismissing attachment
    • Rejection of attachment needs
  • Strengths and weaknesses and remedies of dismissing attachment
    • Turning on the attachment mechanism
    • Dealing with shame and rejection
    • General Mentalization exercises
      • Opening up to feelings
    • Exploration behaviors they are 80% well developed – focus on collaborative sharing
    • Importance of seeing ineffectively substituting exploration for attachment needs.
  • How to treat dismissing attachment
    • Encouraging to turn on the attachment mechanism
    • Support for vulnerable expression through corrective emotional experiences that SHOW that it is ok to have needs
    • Experience attentive attunement
  • Schemas, coping modes, and schema modes associated with dismissing attachment.
  • SRM guided the Schema of Shame and Defectiveness
  • Homework assignment

Week 6 Preoccupied (Anxious) Attachment

  • Further description of preoccupied attachment in adults
  • Origins of preoccupation
    • Role-reversal – involvement in the mental states of the parent.
    • Parental distractedness
    • A form of rejection: your authentic, child presentation self wasn’t actually received. Instead you learned that you could get your needs met if you tended however you did learn the painful lesson that
  • How to treat preoccupied attachment
    • Building confidence in self and ability to explore
    • Show how there is not reason to feel guilt about having needs
    • Give permission to stop compulsive caretaking all for personal needs to be met
    • Experience full attention of caregivers
  • Schemas, coping modes, and schema modes that correlate with preoccupied attachment.
  • The false self and self-development
  • Guided SRM Meditation on abandonment and self-development
  • Homework assignment

Week 7 Disorganized (Fearful) attachment

  • Further description of disorganized attachment in adults
  • Origins of disorganized attachment
    • Fearful experiences with the caregiver
  • How to treat disorganized attachment
    • Emphasize safety and trust
    • Experience attunement and consoling
  • Fearfully preoccupied
  • Fearfully avoidant
  • Cannot Classify
  • Guided SRM Meditation on Schema of Abuse and Mistrust
  • Homework assignment

Week 8 Secure Attachment and Review of Course

  • Detailed discussion of secure attachment
  • Life purpose
  • Guided SRM meditation with emphasis on exploration and cooperation
  • Wrap Up
    • Review
    • Support for healing attachment conditioning

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.

We will be doing deep work. For that reason please feel free to take a break at any point.

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 optimise 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

  • A basic understanding of attachment theory.
  • The importance of attachment repair and how to start doing it
  • 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 insecure attachment forms an important foundation of adult mental health
  • A plan for attaining secure attachment
  • 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 meta-cognitive 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 better ability to observe your mind with meta-cognitive awareness as a result of the mentalization exercises peppered through the guided meditations.
  • A very effective way to do emotional regulation on the spot in your daily life with ‘micro-hits’ of the SRM meditation
  • Understanding of and compassion towards your parts/modes and needs.
  • 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
  • And how to remedy them.
  • Greater valuing of attachment itself.
  • Better understand of relationship dynamics
  • Less social anxiety
  • Greater ability and permission to be vulnerable and admit wanting closeness (dismissing/disorganized)

Support Structure

  • 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)
  • Attachment related book club meetings on Friday mornings at 9am 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

Are there any prerequisites to attend?

Is there homework?

What should I do if I sign up for the course late?

Is the course compatible with therapy/counselling/psychotherapy?

I am not sure I can commit to following a 8-week long course. What should I do?

Technical Questions

How do I access the online event?

How long will I have access to the course?

I’m having technical issues accessing the event

What is the refund policy?

My payment didn’t go through / I’m having payment issues

I don’t have Paypal / Card / are there alternative payment methods?

In what format are the recordings?

I have technical issues accessing the course or recording. What should I do?

Who should I contact if I have further questions?

Testimonials

This is what participants of prior Courses have to say:

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.

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.

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).

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.

Anastasia Chebotaryova

I want to say thank you for giving this opportunity and I recommend this course because of the huge impact it is making on my well-being. It is easier to self-regulate emotionally and I have a deeper understanding of attachment and compassion and it’s place and impact in life.

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.

Stu

I’m knowing myself better which allows me to connect in a more authentic way. I am also recognizing the attachment styles better in people I interact with and hammering out what I am really seeking in a relationship. I didn’t realize how important unconditional exploration and expression was for me until this class.

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Please note: This program is offered for educational purposes only and is not group-therapy, counselling or any kind of other psychotherapy, nor is it a substitute for the aforementioned. The instructor Cedric Reeves is a meditation teacher, not a psychotherapist, counsellor, or otherwise therapist.