• Responsiveness (attunement to another’s emotional state)
• Repair after rupture (making things right after conflict)
• Emotional safety (feeling seen, soothed, and understood)
• Mutuality and regulation (both partners can calm and co-regulate)

As you watch, actively identify:

• Scenes where one character offers repair or attunement
• Moments of emotional regulation versus avoidance
• Examples of how secure connection supports growth and resilience

Movies

• Lion (2016)
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
• Boyhood (2014)
• The Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)
• Secondhand Lions (2003)
• We Live in Time (2024)
• Inside Out (2015) and Inside Out 2 (2024)
• Hope Springs (2012)
• The Vow (2012)
• Marry Me (2022)
• Gifted (2017)
• Begin Again (2013)
• About My Father (2023)
• The Ultimate Gift (2006)
• Mary Poppins (1964)
• A Dog’s Journey (2019)
• 12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
• Remember the Titans (2000)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• Onward (2020)
• Turning Red (2022)
• Coco (2017)

TV Shows

• From Scratch (2022)
• Ripped (2025-Current)
• Parenthood (2010-2015)
• Good Doctor (2017-2024)

News Platforms for Resourcing – these platforms report on kind acts, triumphs, and world records that benefit humanity (small scale and large)

• Good News Network – subscription option for Good News Instead: a 5-minute daily news report via email
• Positive.News
• Daily Good is one beautiful offering from ServiceSpace, a volunteer ecosystem
• Clips of SomeGoodNews from John Krasinski during the COVID Shutdown
• Optimist Daily
• Reasons to be Cheerful
• 1000 Awesome Things is a blog demonstrating the choice to focus on one positive thing each day

News Platforms for Fact-Based Global News will still cause hyperarousal due to reporting on tragic events around the world; however, the removal of opinion will limit the emotional swing of feeling interpersonal conflict with the writer or others who would disagree with your interpretation of the facts.

• Associated Press
• Reuters
• National Public Radio (NPR)

If you feel you have watched a movie, show, or play, or listened to a song that fully resonated with you as displaying secure attachment — feelings of knowing and being known and loved within the reciprocity of connection — I would love to hear your recommendations.

The post Media That Inspires Secure Attachment appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Core Language is the verbal expression or nonverbal expression (physical sensation, behavior, symptoms of an illness, emotion, impulse) of clues left behind from fragments of past trauma playing out inside us, a trauma that may or may not belong to us. 

• Examples:
  • being woken up at the same time each morning to a startle

Unconscious Memory

Longterm Memory

1. Declarative Memory (also called Explicit or Narrative Memory) – the ability to consciously recall facts or events, depends on language to organize, categorize, and store information and experiences that will later be retrievable memories
2. Nondeclarative Memory (also called Implicit, Sensorimotor, or Precedural Memory) – allows us to automatically retrieve what we’ve already learned without having to relearn the steps, without conscious recall (ex. riding a bicycle)

The post It Didn’t Start With You: A Book Summary appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Responsible children often became skilled at reading the room. They learned to notice subtle shifts in mood, tension, or tone—and to adjust quickly. This kind of attunement helped preserve connection and reduce conflict, especially when caregivers were stressed, unpredictable, or emotionally unavailable.

The nervous system learned that safety came from anticipation.

Anxiety as a Protective Strategy

Anxiety rooted in early responsibility isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a form of protection. The body learned to stay alert, prepared, and responsive because it needed to. As an adult, this can show up as:

• constant mental scanning
• difficulty relaxing, even when things are “fine”
• tension or urgency without a clear cause
• worry that feels disproportionate but persistent

These patterns aren’t failures of will—they’re nervous system habits shaped by early experiences.

Listening to the Body

Anxiety is often most clearly felt in the body. You might notice:

• tightness in the chest or throat
• shallow breathing
• digestive discomfort
• a sense of internal pressure or readiness

Rather than trying to eliminate these sensations, somatic work invites curiosity. What is your body preparing for? What does it still believe is needed?

Attachment and Hyper-Awareness

When emotional safety wasn’t consistent early on, the nervous system may continue to monitor for signs of disconnection or danger. This can look like over-attuning to others, needing reassurance, or bracing for something to go wrong. This back-and-forth, unpredictable pattern of what connection will look like is the breeding ground for an anxious attachment stance.

These responses are understandable. They reflect a system that learned to stay close by staying alert.

Creating More Space Inside

Somatic EMDR and attachment-focused work help the nervous system differentiate between past and present. Through tracking sensation and supporting regulation, the body learns that it can:

• notice activation without being overtaken by it
• settle more easily after stress
• respond from choice rather than reflex

This doesn’t remove anxiety altogether—it helps it soften and become more informative rather than consuming.

From Survival to Choice

When responsibility and anxiety have been intertwined for a long time, healing isn’t about getting rid of these parts of you. It’s about helping them relax. As your system learns that safety can exist in the present, vigilance no longer has to lead the way.

Dating, relationships, and everyday life begin to feel less like something to manage—and more like something you can participate in, believing that even you can receive care and love too.

The post When Being the “Responsible Child” Shows Up as Anxiety appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Many people who grew up as the “responsible child” learned early that paying close attention to others was a way to stay connected and safe. They often became dependable, calm, and helpful, tuning in to what was needed around them. Along the way, their own feelings or body signals may have been noticed mainly as reminders to do something or take care of someone, rather than as experiences that deserved time and care. In families shaped by stress, unpredictability, or emotional absence, taking on responsibility was not a flaw—it was a wise and caring way to maintain closeness and create steadiness in an uncertain world.

These adaptations made sense then. They helped you belong. They validated your importance.

When Holding It Together Becomes Heavy

Over time, that early responsibility can show up in adulthood as a kind of emotional flattening or heaviness. You might notice:

• low energy or persistent fatigue
• a sense of numbness or disconnection from pleasure
• self-criticism or feeling like you’re never doing enough
• a quiet, prolonged sadness that’s hard to name

Rather than something being “wrong,” this often reflects a nervous system that learned to turn the volume down on feelings in order to stay safe. When emotions weren’t welcomed or supported early on, the body adapted by conserving energy and minimizing expression.

How the Body Carries This Pattern

From a somatic perspective, these early adaptations live in the mind and body. The “responsible child” pattern is often accompanied by sensations such as:

• heaviness in the chest or belly
• shallow or restrained breathing
• a sense of being compressed or pulled inward
• difficulty accessing spontaneity or rest

These sensations are meaningful signals. They reflect a system that learned to stay contained and self-sufficient, often resulting in an avoidant attachment stance.

Depression as an Intelligent Response

In somatic and attachment-informed trauma work, depression is understood less as a personal failing and more as a whole-system response. A body that learned to be vigilant, reliable, and emotionally contained may also learn to quiet joy, desire, and play—especially if those states once felt unsafe or disruptive.

This is why insight alone doesn’t always bring relief. The body needs its own experience of safety in order to soften.

Healing Through Gentle Reconnection

Somatic EMDR and related approaches work by slowly reintroducing choice and flexibility to the nervous system. Rather than pushing for change, we listen to what your body is ready for—tracking sensations, allowing movement, and supporting regulation at a pace that feels manageable.

Over time, the system learns that:

• emotions can move without overwhelming you
• rest and pleasure are allowed
• aliveness doesn’t require collapse or overfunctioning

Healing here isn’t about forcing happiness. It’s about creating the conditions where your system can naturally open back up to vitality.

The post When Being the “Responsible Child” Shows Up as Depression appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

In somatic therapy-oriented Parts Work, we understand that the thing that makes a terrible experience trauma is that the nervous system doesn’t believe the event is over–the body cannot separate past from present. Tracking sensation is one of the gentlest ways to begin creating change, because it meets your system exactly where it is in the present moment, beginning to untangle reflections of the past as observational, emotional, and thought experiences, not as being in the past itself.

Sensation Is How Parts Communicate

Before thoughts form, the body responds. A subtle tightening. A wave of heaviness. A pull to look away or lean in. These sensations are not random—they’re meaningful signals from parts of you that learned how to protect you.

When we track sensation, we’re not trying to get rid of anything. We’re slowing down enough to notice:

• • Where does your attention naturally go right now?
  • Is there movement, temperature, pressure, or stillness?
  • Does this sensation feel steady, shifting, or uncertain?

In Parts Work therapy, this kind of awareness helps protective parts feel recognized rather than challenged. Many parts relax not because they’re forced to, but because they’re finally being listened to. We will listen for names, ages, rules, and any known needs that each of these parts is willing to share with us as we attune.

Why Trauma Healing Involves the Body

Trauma often includes moments where the body wanted to act—move away, speak up, reach for help—but couldn’t. Those incomplete responses don’t disappear; they stay held as tension, shutdown, anxiety, or numbness. And in a parts perspective, perhaps a new rule was learned that the existing parts didn’t know how to manage–the origin story of a new part.

By gently tracking sensation, we allow the nervous system to complete what was once interrupted. This may happen very quietly. A breath deepens. Muscles soften. There’s a subtle sense of more space inside.

Nothing needs to be pushed. The body knows how to pace itself when it feels safe enough.

From Protection to Internal Safety

As you continue to notice sensation with curiosity, something important begins to happen. Parts that once had to stay on high alert start to sense that the present moment is different from the past.

You may notice that:

• • Reactivity gives way to choice
  • Tension becomes information rather than alarm
  • Self-criticism softens into concern or care

This is nervous system regulation from the inside out. Not by overriding parts, but by helping them feel supported by the adult Self you are now.

Healing Happens in the Present Moment

Tracking sensation is not about reliving trauma or diving into painful memories. It’s about staying connected to now—to what your body is experiencing in real time, at a pace that feels manageable.

In somatic Parts Work, sensation becomes a bridge:

• • Between mind and body
  • Between past experience and present safety
  • Between survival strategies and new possibilities

Over time, your internal system begins to feel less fragmented and more cooperative. Healing doesn’t come from forcing change—it comes from sustained, compassionate attention.

And slowly, your body learns something new:
It doesn’t have to carry everything alone anymore.

The post Why Tracking Sensation Heals Trauma: A Somatic Parts Work Approach appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Such a beautiful attribute about somatic therapy is the attunement to the exact right words or sounds that fit your in-the-moment lived experience as it unfolds. This means that the words we use one session or even one minute might be different than what fits for you in the next. 

For those who are interested, this post offers a sort of glossary of complex concepts underlying what might seem simple in a somatic session. 

Somatic Psychotherapy is sensing into the body in the here and now, offering healing through attuned awareness of sensation, embodied emotion, and physical movement. Somatically oriented therapy moves more slowly. Bessel van Der Kolk teaches “Don’t press the gas in trauma therapy until you can push the brakes.”

Pushing the gas (processing traumatic pain) would be jumping straight into your trauma story, almost as if you were reliving it since the present doesn’t feel different enough.

Pushing the brakes (regulation) looks different for different nervous system orientations. Some people start therapy from a more depressed, low energy, no motivation, freeze-like state. For them, the brakes actually sounds contrary where we are looking for some activation, something that feels different in the body and signals possibility for change. And, for others prone to higher activation, fight-flight states, we might be starting with grounding, soothing, relaxing the nervous system. 

Either way, the body needs to know that different is possible to begin offering new experiences as evidence against the negativity bias shaped by our traumatic past. Without resourcing, without brakes, it’s not trauma therapy.

Once we know different ways your systems respond, different ways of pressing the brakes, then we push the gas in the pacing and direction that best supports your growth.

This metaphor naturally introduces, I think, the two terms that differentiate talk therapy and trauma therapy the most:

• Titrating means that we are going to take the right bite-sized bits of information, not overwhelming your system. I might say something like, Is it okay for us to be with 1% of this black hole feeling in your stomach right now?
• Pendulation is the oscillation between pain and resource. Again, the focus of trauma therapy is offering the physiological memory of trauma in your body, and the traumatic narrative in your mind, the possibility that things are different now, that if something happened at all similar to what happened back then that should not have, that you would be able to handle it with the support and resources you need to get away or move through it adaptively. We do this by bringing resources we practice together–imagery, posture, movement, and role-playing relational boundaries–into the processing of activated painful material as it comes up in our therapy sessions.

When we tune into your body, we may be tracking the moment-to-moment experience through:

• Interoceptive Awareness: your visceral sense or the conscious awareness where the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body (Craig, 2009).
  • What we are tracking: Breath, heart rate, temperature, pressure, tightness or release, visceral sensations in your gut, chest, or throat
  • Why interoception matters? This is how we learn to feel safety returning, rather than attempting to think our way into it.
  • Potential in-session activities: Polyvagal Ladder Mapping, Vagal Toning, EMDR resourcing
• Kinesthetic Awareness: your awareness of your body’s movement in space
  • What we are tracking: impulses to move, push, pull, run, curl, reach, tremors, shaking, stretching, micro-movements, completion of interrupted action patterns
  • Why kinesthetic sensation matters? This is where fight-flight survival responses finally get to complete–without overwhelming the system.
  • Potential in-session activities: EMDR processing, somatic movement
• Proprioseptive Awareness: your awareness of your joints, your posture, your balance, and your body’s position in space.
  • What we are tracking: orientation to your limbs, sense of grounding, uprightness versus collapsed posture, weight distribution, center of gravity
  • Why proprioception matters? Proprioception restores a sense of physical agency and coherence, often disrupted by trauma. The result sounds like: “I am here, I have a body, I take up space.”
  • Potential in-session activities: Using the therapeutic relationship for safety resourcing, boundary work
• Exteroceptive Awareness: your awareness of the external environment through your senses
  • What we are tracking: visual orientation, sounds, light, spatial awareness, perception of safety in the room/space
  • Why proprioception matters? Exteroception anchors the nervous system in the present moment, counteracting trauma’s pull into the past. The result sounds like: “I am here, now, and I am safe enough.”
  • Potential in-session activities: Using the therapeutic relationship for safety resourcing, boundary work, DARe Support Team exercises, using visual focus, eye gaze, eye stretches
• Affect Sensation Awareness: your awareness of emotion tracked through the body, not through analytic narratives.
  • What we are tracking: emotional energy as heat, pressure, texture, expansion, contraction, shifts in intensity, emotional waves without story attachment 
  • Why tracking affect sensation matters? Feelings are experienced as information, not something to manage or suppress. This allows for emotion to move without cognitive looping or retraumatization. 
  • Potential in-session activities: using imagery, textures, and color to describe the sense of emotion. I may assign emotion coloring or emotion-as-color journaling as homework.
• Meaning Making: After we have sat with all that arises naturally from within you and around you, then cognitive insight offers new interpretations of the situation after somatic completion of the body systems.
  • What we are tracking: new realizations, perspective shifts, spontaneous reorganization of belief, increased sense of choice
  • Why meaning-making after somatic relief matters? Meaning follows regulation. Wisdom emerges once the body believes the danger has passed.
  • Potential in-session activities: Highlighting the difference between inner wisdom and intuition. Then using EMDR-Future Templates to see yourself bringing this inner wisdom into future situations and environments.

Right pace, right depth, right kind of support—so the body can recover and the Self can reorganize.

I appreciate Scott Lyon’s sort of golden rules for somatic sessions. We are:

• Tracking capacity, not pushing content
• Following impulse, not narrative
• Supporting completion, not catharsis
• Prioritizing regulation before insight

In my personal self-regulation and growth practices, I enjoy qigong retreats at the start of each season. Qigong has an understanding that energy flows in these four complementary ways:

1. Expand ↔ Contract regulates boundaries and capacity

• Expand: Qi moves outward—opening, expressing, radiating, reaching.
• Contract: Qi returns inward—closing, containing, consolidating, protecting.

2. Rise (Up) ↔ Sink (Down) supports nervous system regulation and balance

• Rise: Qi lifts—clarity, alertness, inspiration, lightness.
• Sink: Qi settles—grounding, digestion, rest, embodiment.

3. Gather ↔ Disperse (or Release) governs vitality and flow versus stagnation

• Gather: Qi collects and concentrates—building reserves, focus, cohesion.
• Disperse / Release: Qi spreads or lets go—circulation, expression, clearing excess.

4. Receive ↔ Give echoes relational concepts of reciprocity, related to attachment and relational patterns

• Receive: Qi is taken in—listening, nourishment, being supported.
• Give: Qi is offered out—expression, effort, contribution, care.

In qigong the goal is to move fluidly between both sides of each pair, restoring choice, responsiveness, and internal safety. And, the same can be true for trauma healing. We know that one of the ways we see resilience the most is through the flexibility to adapt to situations, events, and changing circumstances.

• Expansion without contraction may feel like burnout or blurred boundaries.
• Rising without sinking may feel like anxiety or dissociation.
• Gathering without dispersing may feel like holding, tension, or stuckness.
• Giving without receiving may feel like depletion or people-pleasing.

Utilizing Window of Tolerance and Polyvagal Theory Ladder

Likely, we will map your fight-flight-freeze-collapse tendencies and the regulation strategies that prove the most helpful to use, utilizing these two graphics. 

Polyvagal Theory shows us that someone moves through fight-flight activation before landing in a freeze-collapse stance, believing there is no way out of harm’s way. We will identify what hypoarousal and hyperarousal look like for you, identifying what tends to send you there, and which upregulating and downregulating strategies work best for you to move back into your Window of Tolerance. In this space, you are able to connect with yourself and others. 

We will know we’re meeting your goals for therapy when you spend more time in your Window, and when you are pushed out, that you are able to move back into your Window through compassionate attunement and permission to move and gather in the ways your systems require, in the moment, allowing the next moment to exhale, expand, and begin anew.

The post Introduction to Somatic Psychotherapy appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s often an attachment and nervous system response.

Why Relationship Decisions Can Feel So Hard

When early relationships required you to manage others’ emotions, anticipate rejection, or earn closeness through performance or caretaking, decisions in adult relationships can activate old survival patterns.

Your system may ask:

• Will this upset them?
• What if I’m asking for too much?
• What if I lose the relationship?
• What if I choose wrong and regret it forever?

In these moments, decisions aren’t being made from the present—they’re being made from the nervous system’s memory of past relational risk.

Survival-Based Decision-Making

When survival strategies are in charge, decisions tend to feel:

• Urgent or all-or-nothing
• Driven by guilt, fear, or obligation
• Focused on preserving connection at the expense of Self (what I call self-abandonment)
• Followed by second-guessing, resentment, or self-doubt

This can show up as people-pleasing, avoidance, over-functioning, or staying too long in relationships that no longer fit.

Again, this makes sense. These strategies once kept you safe, and we like safety; our brains prioritize remembering what keeps us safe.

Secure Decision-Making Emerges From Internal Safety

Healthy decision-making in relationships doesn’t come from forcing clarity or pushing yourself to “just decide.” It comes from internal safety.

When your nervous system feels regulated and supported, a different quality of choice becomes available. Decisions slow down. Options expand. You’re able to hold multiple truths at once—care for the relationship and for yourself.

From this place, decisions sound more like:

• I can take time with this.
• Both my needs and the relationship matter.
• I’m allowed to change my mind.
• I trust myself to respond as things unfold.

This is the voice of inner wisdom, not survival, and is the basis of interdependence, or as Daniel Siegel calls it, ‘mwe.’

Decision-Making as a Relational Practice

In therapy, decision-making becomes something we practice together—not something you’re expected to master alone.

We pay attention to:

• How choices register in your body
• Which parts of you feel afraid, protective, or urgent
• What old relational rules are shaping the decision
• Whether the choice supports connection without self-abandonment

Over time, clients often notice they’re less reactive, more discerning, and better able to tolerate the discomfort that sometimes accompanies honest choices and conversations.

Choosing From Alignment, Not Fear

Secure decision-making doesn’t guarantee certainty or ease. It does offer something more sustainable: alignment.

You begin to choose in ways that respect your limits, your values, and your capacity. You’re better able to recognize when a relationship invites growth—and when it requires too much bending.

Trust in yourself is rebuilt not by getting every decision “right,” but by staying connected to yourself through the decision.

When decisions come from safety rather than survival, relationships tend to become clearer, more reciprocal, and more resilient—whether that means deepening connection, renegotiating patterns, or letting go.

And from that place, your life begins to feel like it truly belongs to you.

The post Decision-Making in Relationships: Learning to Choose From Safety, Not Survival appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Understanding the distinction between them can be deeply relieving—and profoundly stabilizing.

Intuition: Fast, Protective, and Shaped by the Past

Intuition often shows up quickly and with intensity. It may feel urgent, charged, or absolute. For many trauma survivors, intuition developed as a survival skill—an early-warning system shaped by childhood environments, attachment ruptures, or moments when safety depended on reading subtle cues.

Intuition might say:

• Something isn’t right—get out.
• Don’t trust this person.
• I need to fix this now or something bad will happen.

This doesn’t make intuition wrong. In fact, it is often incredibly intelligent. It has learned from real experiences and is trying to protect you. But intuition is also state-dependent. When the nervous system is activated, intuition may speak from fear, hypervigilance, or old relational expectations—especially if closeness once came with unpredictability, neglect, or harm.

Intuition is fast. It’s reactive. It’s shaped by what was.

Inner Wisdom: Slower, Grounded, and Oriented Toward the Present

Inner wisdom feels different in the body. It tends to arrive more quietly and with less urgency. Inner wisdom doesn’t shout; it steadies. It emerges when the nervous system has enough regulation to sense the present moment rather than scan for threat.

Inner wisdom might sound like:

• I can slow this down.
• I don’t need to decide right now.
• Something feels off, and I trust myself to explore that gently.
• This doesn’t align with me anymore.

Inner wisdom holds complexity. It can acknowledge fear without being driven by it. It allows room for grief, nuance, and choice. Inner wisdom is not about certainty—it’s about alignment.

Where intuition often asks for immediate action, inner wisdom invites discernment.

Why Trauma Blurs the Line

For clients with attachment trauma, chronic stress, or complex PTSD, intuition may have been the primary guide for survival. When caregivers were inconsistent or emotionally unsafe, the body learned to stay alert, anticipate shifts, and manage risk in relationships.

Over time, intuition can become fused with anxiety, people-pleasing, or self-protection strategies. This can lead to self-doubt:

• Am I sensing truth, or am I overreacting?
• Can I trust myself?
• Why do my instincts feel so loud—and so confusing?

This is where therapy becomes less about “trusting your intuition” and more about building the internal safety required for inner wisdom to emerge.

Therapy as a Bridge Between Intuition and Inner Wisdom

In our work together, we won’t try to silence intuition or override it with logic. Instead, we get curious about it.

We slow down.
We listen to what intuition is protecting.
We notice how it shows up in the body.
We offer it respect rather than judgment.

At the same time, we build the conditions for inner wisdom—through somatic regulation, parts work, imagery, and attuned relational repair. As your nervous system learns that the present is safer than the past, inner wisdom has space to surface.

Over time, many clients notice a shift:

• Intuition becomes less reactive and more informative.
• Inner wisdom becomes easier to access.
• Decisions feel clearer, steadier, and more self-trusting.
  

Moving Forward From Alignment, Not Fear

Healing doesn’t mean choosing between intuition and inner wisdom. It means helping them come back into relationship with one another.

Intuition offers valuable data.
Inner wisdom helps you decide what to do with that data.

When these two begin to work together, clients often describe feeling more anchored in themselves—less pulled by urgency, less disconnected from desire, and more able to move through relationships and life with confidence and care.

This is not about becoming fearless.
It’s about becoming self-led.

And from that place, positive change tends to unfold naturally.

The post Intuition vs. Inner Wisdom: Learning to Tell the Difference appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Attachment Styles are on a continuum, they are not fixed states

Islands, the Anxiously Avoidant individuals 

• have a difficult time shifting from being alone to interacting and do not have difficulty shifting from interacting to being alone (reunion sensitivity)
• have a preference towards autoregulation, coping mechanisms where it is easy to lose time and space (movies, tv, gaming, reading, puzzles, fixing up the house, hiding in a ‘man cave’ or ‘woman cave,’ masturbating, sex in a way that views other as an object rather than a partner of engagement)
• have a tendency towards perfectionism, care about ‘looking good,’ task-oriented, success-driven
• don’t like asking for help, being emotionally vulnerable 
• passive aggressive (cold anger)
• when in conflict, wants to move on, gets dismissive: “The past is in the past, get over it!”

Waves, the Anxiously Ambivalent individuals

• have a difficult time shifting from interacting to being alone and do not have difficulty shifting from being alone to interacting with others (departure sensitivity) 
• have a preference towards one-way external regulation where someone else helps them feel better 
• have a tendency towards codependency: driven by need to maintain connection
• don’t like feeling like the problem 
• critical attacks (hot anger)
• when in conflict, gets preoccupied: “I’m not done with this yet…”

Anchor, the Secure individuals

• capable of flowing back and forth between alone time and social interacting
• have a preference for self-regulation, responsive to co-regulation
• driven by guilt: standards of mutuality, sensitivity, fairness
• effective verbal and nonverbal social skills
• when in conflict, stays collaborative 

Kinds of Regulation

• Autoregulation is when someone eases their nervous system through an activity on their own where it is easy to lose a sense of time and space (movies, tv, gaming, reading, masturbating, sex in a way that views the other as an object rather than a partner of engagement)
• External Regulation occurs in a one-way interaction where someone else calms a person (Mother nursing baby, nurse bandaging injury, being read to, being sung to, being fed)
• Interactive Regulation, also called co-regulation is an experience we begin at birth and is our ability to correct our connection with others after a relational injury or misstep (friendly gazing, attuned touch)
• Self-regulation is something we learn as we age and requires impulse control, frustration tolerance, emotion regulation, and patience (maintain out breath in stressful social engagement, friendly eye contact, ability to modulate tone)

Universal Emotions (Eckman)

• Anger : arousal up
• Surprise: arousal up
• Disgust: arousal up
• Joy: arousal up
• Fear: arousal up
• Sadness: arousal down
• Shame: arousal down

Arousal “Tells”

• Going up into a Hyperaroused State:
  • Skin and muscle cues: tensed muscles, clenched fists, curling of toes, cooling skin, flushed skin
  • Facial cues: increased muscle movement and contraction, tightening around mouth and cheeks, jutting/clenched jaw
  • Eye cues: dilated pupils, glaring
  • Breathing cues: rapid in chest
  • Postural cues: Straightening, lengthened neck, raised chin, increased limb movement
  • Gestural cues: increased, faster, sharp, bird-like jerky head, holding stomach (dyspepsia, from undigested food)
  • Vocal cues: loud, shrill, booming, fast, staccato, high pitch, pleading sound
• Going down into Hypoaroused State:
  • Skin and muscle cues: striated muscles loosen, digits relax, warming skin, pale skin, leaning to a side or forward or back
  • Facial cues: decreased muscle movement and tone, mouth and cheek pads remain still, droopy expression
  • Eye cues: constricted pupils, dimming 
  • Breathing cues: slow from diaphragm
  • Postural cues: slumping, head down, elbows resting on knees, body tilting to left or right 
  • Gestural cues: fewer, slower, holding stomach (nausea, from digesting fluids), holding head (headache, ringing ears), wiping spittle from nose
  • Vocal cues: monotone, muffled, inaudible, slow, low pitch, resignation sound

The post PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) with Dr. Stan Tatkin (author of Wired for Dating and Wired for Love) appeared first on Upward Roots: Relational Therapy.

Anxiety is the feeling of your amygdala siring the fire alarm in your brain.  It can be the over-active nervous system or hyper-aroused state of feeling unsafe. When anxiety feels stuck, it has likely settled into a freeze, parasympathetic nervous system state of not knowing what to do with the uncertainty.

The Three Types of Anxiety

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