Welcome back everyone. Today let's finish off our series on attachment by understanding what lessons we can learn from attachment theory. Now the first thing that I think we can learn is that all attachment strategies make sense and are adapted for different types of environments. And so if you live in a world that's neglectful or abusive in some way, then it makes perfect sense to avoid relationships, to numb out, to suppress feelings because they just get you in trouble because then you know that you need other people. Or to keep begging and fighting to get things done, to get your needs met because maybe finally someone will wake up and take care of you better. And I think that we can learn a lot from the way that secure babies live in the world. We can know that deep down inside we deserve to have our needs met. And we have a right to ask for our needs to be met and to say what our needs are and to know what our feelings are. And it doesn't necessarily mean that someone's going to be there for us to take care of us or take care of our needs all the time. But we still have a right to ask. And then even if someone can't meet our needs, we still know how to take care of ourselves to go out into the world and do things for ourselves and feel good about that too. The most important thing to learn from attachment theory is this notion of reflective function and mentalization. And it's these capacities to understand that another person has a mind of their own and you have to be really attuned to the other person to understand what's going on in their minds. That lays the foundation for being able to be empathic and attuned to the other person's needs. And even in the adult attachment interview, they talk about how some people can have had really abusive childhoods. And yet they've earned a secure classification on the AAI. And they do this because they talk about their childhood abuse in a way that still is reflective and mindful. Like they'll say things like, my childhood was really hard and it always makes me upset whenever I think about it. But this is important so I'm going to try to tell you what I can and do it in a brief way and make sure I get to the point. And what you hear in that is that as this person is thinking about their childhoods, they're aware that in their mind it feels upsetting and painful. And yet they're still aware that there's another person in front of them, this interviewer who's doing the AAI, and that they have needs of their own to do a good job of getting data. And so they're trying to meet both their own needs and the other person's needs at the same time. That's why they say, I'm upset but I'll go on and I'll try to be short, brief, and to the point for your sake as well. I think that so much of trauma work is about establishing a capacity for mentalization and reflective function, both in ourselves and in the person who has trauma. Because what I really believe happens for a person with trauma is that trauma robs their capacity to stay present and mindful in the moment. Now you have to remember that trauma and the fight or flight alarm system makes this hyper vigilant to threat and it makes us think that everyone's a threat and it makes us filter our world in terms of safety and harm. And so we can't really see what's happening in front of us. Now how to actually do mentalization and reflective function is really, really tricky to teach. But I really think that two key things that I always end up doing when I'm trying to be reflective and mindful of another person is that I'm always trying to understand what the core emotional experience is that the person is having while they're saying something or what the core emotional experience is that they're trying to describe to me. And then the other thing I'm trying to understand sometimes is what is the intention of the communication that they're saying? Because a lot of times people are saying something, but to really understand it, you can understand why they're saying it in that very moment. And what I'd like to do is to create a lot of future videos where we talk about specific interactions between two people, maybe watch some video together of two people talking or will roleplay various scenarios, and then we'll all try to practice understanding what is the emotional content of that communication and what is the intention of that communication. In the meantime, keep practicing tracking your own mindful awareness of your states and now start practicing being mindful of where of what other people's states of minds are and what their emotional experiences are when they're talking and what their intentions are when they talk to you. Okay, I'll see you next week.