Mary Jo Sue's 7th Session- Attachment (Seen)

Welcome back! Life happened and Mary Jo Sue wasn't able to come in for a session. We are firm believers that we are here to support and so we extend grace when this happens. If clients miss quite a few sessions in a row, we take a pause to allow life to settle back down and pick back up when they are able. 

Due to the nature of my business, I only get paid when client's attend sessions, so it is key that people reschedule or let me know in advance so someone else can take their spot. That being said, life happens and we extend grace as much as we can.

Coming into session we caught up on life and what has been going on for Mary Jo and her daughter and revisited Safe (in the 4 Ss of Attachment). Mary Jo has been paying attention to opportunities for repair and has tried on the skill a number of times. We talked about how this felt very unnatural and ways to adjust the verbiage to make it feel more "like her". We ran through a few scenarios and Mary Jo was feeling much better.

We were excited to jump into Seen as this is an area that many people struggle with. Seen is the ability to connect with the person's emotional experience as they see it, rather than how you are experiencing it. Mary Jo had a cry at how hard this has been for her due to the expectations that society has on people and how she "is harder" on her daughter than she would like to. We talked about what things would look like if she were to affirm her daughter's feelings rather than criticize her responses.

Being seen means to connect with the inner mind of the other person, not just the externalization of thoughts and feelings. We had a large conversation about "low hanging/high hanging fruit" and that if we take people's words/behaviors at face value we are picking low hanging fruit. Many people have a whole world and ideas in their mind that they would like to share but don't know how. That is the high hanging fruit we are after. 

After a number of examples, Mary Jo tried the skill on for herself. She acknowledged that it will be tricky, but that she wants to try.

Mary Jo's homework for the week is to try to come up with 2-3 different internal experiences her child *may* be having when demonstrating a negative behavior. She doesn't need to do anything about it, but rather just see if she can come up with other things that may be at play.

I can't wait to see what comes up for her in this next week!

Until next time