Library Resources with attachment

We each hold an internal model or set of expectations about how caring and comfort could be accessed in relationship. The ability to reflect upon and challenge our own dominant model of perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors --and to experience discomfort and vulnerability-- is a key feature of "security". If not, an "attachment reactivity" arises -- where sense of insecurity, separateness, and belief that love, and acceptance can't be trusted nor accessed reliably. Thus change would require intensive support. Here's a guide to help you reflect and access change.

Sitting with uncertainty can be very uncomfortable and evoke anxiety. Or it can be a practice that brings in the curiosity and inner spaciousness that allows for creative solutions to emerge, and that help us to relax our attachment to outcomes.  Here's a closer look...

Many believe it's only a true NVC request when we can ask for what we need without urgency or insistence. But what if we're the target of oppression and hate in a world with systemic inequality? Is it still nonviolence to abdicate power by allowing the person enacting harm to be the one to decide whether harm continues? The intensity of the need, degree of harm, and how chronically unmet the need is, are factors to guide us for when to apply force and demand within NVC. We can be attached to outcome, without being attached to strategy.

Ingrid shares about the three primary keys of parenting & NVC, two child rearing models, developmental needs for children and how to foster secure attachment.

Children need our love, unconditional acceptance, and care, else they’ll chase after it by acting out. Listen in as Ingrid shares activities that support the practice of engaging in connective behavior.

Confidence, flexibility, creativity and equanimity may become more possible when you would like someone to meet a particular need, can trust that you can meet that need with someone else, and can accept a “no” to your requests. You can allow grief or disappointment to arise, and naturally turn towards a relationship in which those needs can be met. In some cases this may lead to the dissolution of a partnership or friendship.

How to get past the sting of a painful comment? Get empathy from self or another. Then connect with the commenter's feelings and needs. The more you can do this the less personally you may take it. Then work together on specific, do-able, authentic agreement about doing something differently next time, the kind that will enable you both to shift out of reactivity. Three things need to be in place for that to work.

We can use anger as an important signal to let us know that we perceive a threat to a universal need or value, directing our attention to something so that we can take effective action, and avoid harmful thought patterns. For example, instead of dwelling on a "should," focus on addressing unmet needs through boundaries and effective communication.

When we ask something of a person and threaten negative repercussions if she doesn’t comply, we're making a demand. Demands limit the possible responses and reduce joyful participation. Instead, look to find mutually satisfying resolutions. And look for ways to change your demand into a request. Read on for more.

We can ask for what we want but if we repeatedly don’t get it from one source, it's our responsibility to find a new way to get it. We don’t honor our relationships when we insist that people who are unavailable or unwilling to support us meet our needs. Read on for related a parable about a woman persistently asking to get milk from a hardware store.