Mary Jo Sue's 8th session- Final Attachment Session

Happy days! Today is the wrap day for the attachment psychoeducation. While we are wrapping up attachment, this content will flow through all of Mary Jo Sue's sessions with The Foster Lane.

Today Mary Jo came to session excited. She had tried on the "seen" skill of connecting with her daughter's emotional experience. Mary Jo was blown away by how well it worked to diffuse "the bomb" as she called it. 

Mary Jo had just picked her daughter up from school and her daughter was fuming! Her teacher had "singled her out" for talking when there were other people talking too! Mary Jo wanted to go in and talk to her daughter about owning her part in the problem, but instead she took a deep breath and empathized with her daughter's frustration. BAM! Her daughter settled down quickly and was able to say that she knew she shouldn't be talking when the teacher was talking.

Mary Jo was completely shocked. She would have never thought a conversation could go like that. We talked about Mary Jo's pride in herself and her daughter. We also cycled through how the conversation would typically have gone.

This was a great segue into the rest of the 4Ss of attachment. We used this story to build on and get to the 3rd S - which is soothed.

Soothed is when we help a person move from a state of dysregulation to a state of regulation. 

I pointed out how Mary Jo had intuitively done that in her interaction with her daughter. One she saw and connected with the emotional experience, she was better able to connect with her daughter around regulation and what to do next. 

Soothed is the part of the 4Ss that people want to jump to first. It is the part where we attempt to support a person from a point of dysregulation to a point of regulation. Mary Jo was able to see how much more effective her regulation techniques were once her daughter felt seen and understood.

We talked about a few other examples where Mary Jo had "missed the mark" and the subtle shifts she could make by adding in the "seen" step. Mary Jo was ready to get back out to her life to give it a try.

We wrapped the session talking about how the 4S is really a culmination of the first 3. Security comes from building a felt sense of safety, helping a person feel seen, and soothing.

While we didn't get to perfection, we did get to a point where Mary Jo can start to see where her strengths and struggles are and start to figure out how to course correct. That is the ideal! That is what we are shooting for.

This is the end of your journey with Mary Jo. She does continue to come to sessions to work on discipline and regulation. The best part is that she continues to come back to these skills to build her new skills week after week!

Until next time!