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BABI Handout

The document discusses attachment theory and how insecure attachments can impact mental health and relationships. It describes how people seek security from others and how childhood experiences shape expectations in relationships as adults. The therapy addressed in the document involves exploring domains like security, loss, anger and triggers to help clients better understand their difficulties and strengthen secure attachment.

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david smith
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33 views2 pages

BABI Handout

The document discusses attachment theory and how insecure attachments can impact mental health and relationships. It describes how people seek security from others and how childhood experiences shape expectations in relationships as adults. The therapy addressed in the document involves exploring domains like security, loss, anger and triggers to help clients better understand their difficulties and strengthen secure attachment.

Uploaded by

david smith
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Almost everyone feels anxious or depressed at some point in their lives.

There are many reasons for


this: stress, separation from or loss of someone or something that is dear to us, loneliness, difficulties in
our close relationships, worry about the future. The way we react to difficulties may take us back to pain
or trauma in childhood. Some people have a built in tendency to worry or to want things to be perfect or
to find it hard to cope; others have had difficulties or disrupted childhoods, which in itself can
sometimes – but not always – predispose to vulnerability in later life.

When we are in difficulty we need support: we try to draw on our own inner strength, seek help from
friends or family, or turn to professionals whose job it is to help. BABI is a brief therapy based on the
principles of attachment. Attachment theory, which is based on some very simple and obvious ideas,
was developed half a century ago by the psychoanalyst John Bowlby and has been extensively
researched and extended since then. Bowlby realized that as children we feel safe and good about
ourselves to the extent that we have trusted and reliable adults to whom we can turn at times of need.
These attachment figures provide a secure base, which allows us to relax, have fun and feel able to
explore the world. As babies the secure base is usually the main care giver, father, mother but as we
grow the range extends to the other parent, grand-parents, brothers and sisters, and then to friends,
who provide comradeship and companionship as well as security. Good self-esteem is bound up with
secure attachment.

Although everyone has had some protection through their childhood – and would not have survived to
adulthood without it – our attachment figures have not always been reliably secure. Sometimes our
parents have themselves been depressed, distracted, ill, intoxicated or unavailable. This can lead to
insecure attachment. Here we can get some measure of security, but at a price. If we are fearful that our
attachment figures will lash out at us in words or physically, we will warily keep our distance from them,
and may also harbor secret feelings of resentment which we take out on others – brothers and sisters or
companions at school. If we worry that our parents will forget us, we may cling to them, sacrificing our
capacity to have fun, make friends, stand up for ourselves and explore the world. Sometimes everything
becomes so confusing we just can’t find any reliable way to feel safe, and retreat into ourselves and a
world of make-believe.

Loss is another universal human experience. What is lost may be a loved pet, an intact family, the death
of a close family member, a job and with it the sense of being worth something. How we cope with loss
depends in part on how secure or insecure our attachments have been. People whose attachments were
insecure tend either to switch off their feelings or, at the other extreme, to be overwhelmed with pain
and misery.

One way in which we react to loss or to the threat of loss is with anger and protest. Again, if we have
been insecurely attached we may be unable to express appropriate anger or to assert ourselves when
the occasion demands it. Either we explode with rage or bottle up our emotions, turning anger in on
ourselves, which sometimes ends up with feelings of depression.

As adults we don’t outgrow our need for a secure base – we still need someone to turn to, talk to, to be
a source of succor at times of trouble. We also need to find a secure base within ourselves – a reassuring
thought, religious or political beliefs, an image or an activity to comfort us when we feel bad (eg. Hot
baths, a favourite book, food or drink, a warm duvet). And we need hobbies, interests, fun and pleasure
too, especially if we can share them with others.

All of this is true in theory, but in practice relationships are often far from helpful. People let us down,
abuse us, are neglectful and selfish, are not there when we need them, or are there when we don’t. It is
easy to blame others, but the curious thing is that we are in part the authors of our own problems: we
seem to be unconsciously attracted to people who fit in with our previous picture of the world. Our
maps of the world are based on previous navigation. If our attachment figures in childhood have been
insecure-making, we will seek out similar types in adult life. If we have been rejected in the past, we will
expect rejection in the future and so either avoid close relationships or cling to our loved ones in a way
that may eventually drive them away. It is as though we have a series of triggers or buttons built up from
‘outside’ experience and ‘inside’ expectation which are just waiting to be pressed.

Finally, we vary in the extent to which we are able and inclined to talk about ourselves and our feelings.
Some avoid it at all costs, others just can’t stop. Yet research shows that the ability to reflect on ones’
situation and to express oneself – using words, pictures or music – may make all the difference between
survival and going under in the face of adversity. This is called autobiographical competence or reflexive
function. In therapy, we hope to find a theme or guiding metaphor arising out of the clients life-story
which brings together some of their difficulties in one image.

In this ten-session therapy, we will touch on all these aspects of psychological functioning and in
particular the six domains of:

 Secure base – within oneself and with others.


 Exploration – fun, pleasure and happiness.
 Loss – and how we have dealt with it.
 Assertiveness and appropriate anger – as opposed to rage or inhibition.
 Triggers and buttons – what trips us into states of depression or worry?
 Reflexive function – the ability to stand back from difficulties and think about them.

After one or two initial assessment sessions the client will come to a formulation with their therapist
that will probably identify two or three of these domains which are particularly relevant to them and
their difficulties, and together they will begin to understand the overwhelming need for security and
self-protection may at times be self-defeating, and expose the client to the very dangers which he/she is
trying to avoid, and (b) to begin to strengthen his/her sense of secure attachment so the he/she will be
better equipped in the future to cope with the problems with which everyday life present us.

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