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AM S3 Ep3 In Service of Survival · Attachment Matters Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Attachment Matters.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast is a conversation between two mothers who are passionate about
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: the subject
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: of attachment.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm StoicMom.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Rose.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The two of us found each other amidst the stormy waters of culture,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: politics, and parenting trans-identified children.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Though our paths were different,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: we each used the lens of attachment as a guide to find our way through.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Our hope for this podcast is to offer greater insight into how to strengthen
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: the relationship between parents and their trans-identified children,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: despite all odds.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, listeners.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Attachment Matters.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: we are.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Episode 3, Season 3.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 3, Season 3.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And today, when we're recording, is a special day.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because this evening,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: listeners who are not a part of the Attachment Matters community yet will hear this
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: a week after today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: But today we're recording on November 2nd and tonight is our first live Q&A for
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: the Attachment Matters community, which is super exciting.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's exciting.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I'm really looking forward to it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I know we've put this out on the Substack a few times,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: and we've mentioned it on our first two episodes,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: but again,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: this is a new offering this season for parents and or family members who have
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: a relationship,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: have a child or are related by family to a child who has come into
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: a transgender identity.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just really providing a space for deeper reflection,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: question, answers, insights, connection around this content of attachment.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're going to dive into today, also the experience of facing separation.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what that evokes in us.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you put out a note.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was this morning.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: And.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: You used this phrase amidst all the noise, you know, and I just, that really landed for me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much noise in today's world.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: I love, you know, that our intent is to offer a different sort of space.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: The term agents of attachment that we talked about a lot last season came to mind for me.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we can represent something different in the world.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: We can work toward this
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: other orientation.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: That is just steadier, more connected.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Peaceful, really.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when I wrote that phrase, amidst all the noise, I have it inside me.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm so noisy, but it's also surrounding us.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so just, I don't know, just this feeling of the late fall.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think it does offer us this opportunity for quieting some of that noise.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we're busy,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: the holidays while also,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, having the potential for connection and love and delight.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can also be extremely painful.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that we're walking in troubled waters,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and the path isn't always clear and bright.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's not always that warmth at our fingertips or accessible in our hearts,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: but I do feel I don't know, it just feels like to me, I want this.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am existing in too noisy of a space,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: and I yearn for what we hope to cultivate with this community space and a place
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: for kind of focus and insight and heartfelt connection.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: That just feeds me.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: That gives me the nourishment that I yearn for.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Walk in this world.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something there, though,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: that I think is important to consider is when we do quiet the noise,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: we start feeling things.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the noise is a way to
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: avoid those feelings,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: which is another, I think, purpose of this community is to provide a place for that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to...
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And just another little part of that piece that I wrote that we just published,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: it's,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: just considering how much more grace we can give ourselves with that,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think it just naturally then extends to our children.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: and hopefully vice versa,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: as we have done two seasons of this content and we've We always walk that dance,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: of like,
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  SPEAKER_00: how does this theory,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: how does this model of attachment and the developmental approach apply
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: to our relationship to our child,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: their relationship to us, but then also how we understand ourselves.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think they're mutually beneficial, you know?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the better relationship we have with ourselves.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the more, I'm going to say equanimity, we can bring into our other relationships.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: it's that
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: relationship with a child that is the motivator for all of this as well,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: you know.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Driven, you know, too.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Be in relationship, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Be attached to our kids and to feel that connection.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I am super excited for our conversation today because we are going
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: to explore more deeply another Neufeld construct today.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this has been kind of,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: we've started to talk about it in the past,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: especially in season two,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: when we delved into the model of human development and that attachment side of
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: that three-sided triangle.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: All triangles have three sides, but just to give you the image of a triangle.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And attachment being one side of that aspect of human development and growth
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: and reaching potential.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: We did start to discuss this kind of two sides to this coin of attachment
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  SPEAKER_00: where attachment is this survival force that attachment serves human survival.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, however, when attachment is threatened, it is an existential threat.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're going to really dive into today is setting the stage
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: for talking about throughout season three,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: this experience of facing separation and the primal emotions that
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: that experience evokes in us.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And as I stated somewhat in our first episode of season three,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: In the past,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: we've really taken our starting point from understanding,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: looking at this developmental approach for our children.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe in season three,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: we'll kind of be taking our starting point and understanding and looking
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: at this experience of facing separation for parents.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And with our specific audience,
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: who are parents who have a child of any age,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: including adult children,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: who have adopted a transgender identity and how that evokes that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: This experience of facing separation in us and therefore all of the emotions
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: that are moving us, how to understand those better.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as we go,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: it is going to also bring us around to a better understanding of our child.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: As they too are experiencing likely these emotions, their own facing of separation.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And You know,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: potentially the defenses that can be layered on top of that,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether for us or for them,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think all around is just going to provide us with a greater grace and insight.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Again, mutually, mutually for ourselves and for our children.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is my hope.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you say
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: existential,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know, That's the level we're talking about here.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've said it maybe before,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: how once you start seeing this,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: you realize how attachment seems to underlie everything.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when Neufeld speaks to attachment as being...
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So serving survival, he talks about this in a few different ways.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: He lays out this idea of in a natural disaster, what's the first thing that a child would do?
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  SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing that a parent would do?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking for your loved ones.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my mom?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my dad?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or vice versa, where's my child?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're not thinking like, how am I going to get clean water?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, the first thing is like, where is Where's my child?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my parent?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my brother?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my sister?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're just hardwired to seek that proximity immediately in a crisis.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he lays that survival aspect out through those examples,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: but he also references a lot of research and studies on mammals and all
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: of these things or children in orphanages where all of their basic needs of food,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: shelter, water, everything is provided for them.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to fear starving.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're provided for but without contact and closeness, without warmth, without connection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of the lack of that heart connection,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: the lack of the warmth,
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  SPEAKER_00: the lack of the human, those attachment needs being met and how devastating that is.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: there's different ways to go about coming to this,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, thesis,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: so to speak,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: of attachment serving survival,
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  SPEAKER_00: attachment being as a,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: As deep as survival is for us as human beings and for all mammals, arguably.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: But those are just kind of some of the ways that he'll lay it out as he speaks about it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I recently watched East of Eden.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that's like a hot topic right now online.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is it?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know why.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is there like a redone movie or something like that?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a miniseries.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a limited series.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it everywhere.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've never watched it or read it.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Based on a John
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Steinbeck book.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where my mind went as you were discussing.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, survival and attachment.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't even remember the exact line.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: There were bits of it, though, that just, yeah, made me think of attachment right away.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but one of them was
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: about rejection.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: just how it's like it is the worst thing a child can
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: experience is being rejected
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: by their parent.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because the parent is their son.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: the sun that the planets, S-U-N,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: revolve around,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: and that attachment is so bright, so dazzling, you can't see it necessarily, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote this piece that I believe I linked into that recent post I did
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: on Substack, but that's staring into the sun.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's too much.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's too big.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's too powerful.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can't look at it directly.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: But boy, oh boy,
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: if it gets cut off,
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  SPEAKER_00: If we feel shunned,
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  SPEAKER_00: rejected, boy, oh boy, is that the deepest wound
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: that we can experience.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And especially as a child, though we carry those with us into adulthood so often.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that's exactly kind of...
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where we're going is if attachment is so deep,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: so powerful that it is tied with our very survival,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: then therefore it correlates that the flip side to that is that being cut off
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: or being separated from proximity, from closeness
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: is our biggest threat.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we face that separation,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to dive into that more in just a moment,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: but just to kind of lay this out there initially,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: when we are facing that threat,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: whether it is anticipated or we're actually experiencing a loss,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: right, or a rejection, primal emotions are evoked.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when we say primal, this could mean primate.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that all mammals share.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Neufeld takes the approach of this as being very evolutionary.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: From a theological perspective,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: this could have its own whole explanation as well in terms of us existing to be
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: in relationship with God, with one another.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I...
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, the reality is that we get stirred up.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We get stirred up.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And these primary emotions are what he would call separation emotions.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, if attachment serves survival, then emotions serve attachment.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so when that attachment is threatened, we are going to be moved by emotion.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our emotions are going to be,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: needing to,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: moving us,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: needing to become out or potentially even being stored and built up for the moment
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: when they can erupt.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because they will need
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: to move at some point.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Emotion.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so those three primary separation emotions are what Neufeld has deemed intensified pursuit.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we can imagine the whole kind of that,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: what would we call it,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: that classic scenario of a parent needing to leave the playground.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the three-year-old is like, no, I'm not leaving.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leaving.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leaving.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then you kind of are like at your wits end.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you go for the You go for the big one.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, I'm going without you.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, why do parents do that?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's to get their child to respond.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And their intensified pursuit is triggered, right?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that is to close the gap.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: My parent is leaving.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm facing this separation.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to reach them again.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to pursue them.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to catch up, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to close the gap.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Such a literal example.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Very vivid.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: That panic in the child as they...
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: That gap.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So really you can see the gap physically, you know, like you're saying.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's a child or it's us and we're like, what are we going to do to close it?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: We got to get back to that loved one who's turned their back on us, who's leaving us behind.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's Alarm.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot wait to dive into these because just so folks know,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just laying them out briefly now,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: but this is kind of the rest of season three is just deep dives into whether it's
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: the Intensified Pursuit or here with Alarm.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So much material to cover with Alarm.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially what Alarm moves us to do is it moves us to caution.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're scared, you know, we're going to be moved to be more cautious.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's kind of,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: it's almost,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: instead of that reaching and that pursuing,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: it's almost like a holding back,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: a stopping,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: a pausing,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's a different energy doing it,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that caution seeks to preserve
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: whatever separation is being faced.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, interesting.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that it's landed for me that way before,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: you know, to really consider what the emotion is driving us to do.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: And with pursuit driving us to close the gap,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: it's like a move toward...
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then alarm is moving us to hold back.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Preserve, you said.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Caution.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: That is almost like the opposite movement.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Am I tracking that right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm kind of just riffing here,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: so we're going to go way more into it, you know, over the next episodes.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the image that pops to my mind is like a child with proper alarm,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's not defended against alarm.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you're about to run out in the street to chase a ball,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's gone across the street, like, You hear a car, you stop.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your alarm moves you to caution.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I could get hit by the car, I stop.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't run out into the street.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like putting the brakes on.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Putting the brakes on.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third is one we've talked about a lot already on this podcast,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: which is frustration.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is also a primal separation emotion.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what frustration moves us to do If we're facing that separation,
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: something is broken and it needs to be fixed.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the frustration just moves us to fix, moves us to effect change.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's triggered when something's not working.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if that something not working is related to An attachment,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: whether to a person or a thing or an identity.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we will go there,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: as we move through this season because it's so incredible the implications of this.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: But when it
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: is connected to a deeper attachment or something more attached to
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: a person or a thing, It becomes so intense.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that primal nature of just taking over, being primary.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: and that's as we kind of wrap up this review or maybe for some introduction
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: to these three primal emotions,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: that's something to understand about them is that they are so intense.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: That they are often just able to be felt one at a time.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of what we talked about in season two around the integrative process,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: around the importance of mixed emotions as a way of growing up,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: as an aspect of maturity, that integrated prefrontal cortex.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm angry,
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: but I also love my child,
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: so maybe I don't yell at them because I can hold both the tension
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: of those two conflicting emotions and it helps kind of Temper me.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: When these primary emotions are evoked, that becomes very.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because they are so intense, they kind of take over everything.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can, as you talk through them, I can, you know, imagine them in my body.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think listeners probably can too, you know, each of them.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the physicality, right, of that emotion.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I just read,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think, this morning somewhere that Dr. Neufeld talks about, they happen to us.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Emotions happen to us.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the experience.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're one at a time,
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: most of the time, two, you know, these primary separation emotions.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they're able to be stored or displaced.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what that essentially means is that,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: let's say in the example of my life,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: when I hear they're able to be stored,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: the first thing that comes to me,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I've shared,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: with longtime listeners,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: you'll be familiar with my story of estrangement from my parents.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And how I,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: my heart was that armored heart and I didn't,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: While I had a lot of dreams about the futility of trying to get them
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: to see my perspective,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was not happy that we were estranged,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: but in terms of actually feeling the grief, I really didn't for years.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And once it cracked open...
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I believe, I think I cried for months.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not like using hyperbole here.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just, it was like a overwhelming dam bursting of all of the stored grief and loss
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: and experience of loss of those years of our proximity.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what I couldn't go back and change.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't get those years back.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of been one of my most impactful and humbling experiences
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: of my life in general,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: overall,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: but also of this idea
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: of what Neufeld speaks to as emotions being able to be stored,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: almost like a battery.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: He compares emotions to electricity, not steam.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they can be stored like in a battery And it's not till they move
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: that we feel them, that we know they're there.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: We
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: talk a lot about the inner springs.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he talks about emotions as nature's answer.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're there for a reason.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, they serve attachment.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Attachment serves survival.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you said that they're there for a reason.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is the perfect,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: mantra or just motto reminder for all of the conversations we've had and
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: that we're going to have is like,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is not to pathologize,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: wanting to fix or create change or close the gap or alarm.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is to say, wow, these are here for a reason.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this deeper reason is that I am facing this profound separation.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the case of,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: a parent's experience with their child who's adopted a transgender identity,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: it is just baked into that experience.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, these emotions are here.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're in us, they're moving us, and they are here for a reason.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: And what are they inviting from me?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Coming around to that insight.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right, right.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, with all that being said,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: let's kind of take ourselves Take a turn,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: or not so much a turn, but almost like a step back a little bit.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want us to talk about this, what Neufeld calls a construct.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm such a nerd that I'm like, oh, I love that word, a construct.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's, you know, essentially like this is a concept that he uses in a very specific way.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's worth it to kind of break down why he calls this facing separation.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the construct, facing separation.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Facing separation.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what he says is that to face separation is to either experience or anticipate
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: the lack or loss of proximity in the context of attachment.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So right there,
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why he says facing separation and not just separation is
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: because it can be simply anticipated.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it can still evoke the same response in us.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: It can still threaten our survival.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Just anticipating it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Simply the awareness of loss.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or potential loss.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Potential loss.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like he talks about the four-year-old who comes into the awareness for the first time.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: He calls this that mom and dad don't control the universe and that bad things can happen.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing bad needs to have happened,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: but just the realization and the consciousness
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: that bad things can happen
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: evokes These primal emotions.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've encountered that experience recently with
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: clients even
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: whose children are coming to that awareness.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Of the limits of mom and dad's power to stop bad things from happening.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's brutal.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Existential.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times driving to my son to drop off at middle school.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's better this year than it was last year.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he will ask me, have there been any school shootings?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then he asks, is there going to be a school shooting
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: at my school today?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, no.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because at that moment, for me, knowing my son, it's a fake it till you make it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know I don't control the universe, and I'm certain he does too.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: But in that moment,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: he just needs to hear that he's okay.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying everyone needs to do that or that's the right thing to do.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but there is this sense of
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: my confidence.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have to project a sense of confidence and security that hopefully will be enough
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: to get him through.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, say it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: I just, I'm one of those people that when I watch a movie or something and I hear
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: an adult promise,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: you know, make a promise that they can't, that it's beyond their capacity to ensure.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I cringe.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: I have a hard time.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: I hear the reason that you're doing it, you know, and that...
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: we're trying to
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: provide that sense of safety that your child needs to venture into
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: the day, to face the day, to survive.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: But exactly.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the whole thing, right?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: What you're saying is the whole thing.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't guarantee it.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: But my choice is to, in those times,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Say, you know, say, no, there will not be.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of have to feel it in myself to project it because I do,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know we can't guarantee it all,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: but I have enough confidence in me to be able to project that confidence outwardly.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't always, I don't always, you know, and that's what I think
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the moments that are the most difficult.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm having
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: a moment.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go for it.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm thinking about what you said about those years you lost.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I've just had so many of those moments lately where it just lands.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think the futility of, yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: That might have been something for me to understand sooner.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I have this compulsion toward honesty, I think.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess, you know, as I'm speaking this, and I might have us a little off topic
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: here, but.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: School shooting, existential, you know.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: But.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to put words to what I'm,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: this awareness that's sort of landing for me too,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: that like most things,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: I can see what you did working and I can see what
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I did working.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Something also to maybe just the,
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I can guarantee what,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: you know what I mean?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's, I have little, I can guarantee for you and
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: We'll tackle it.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you're saying makes total sense.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ready?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is a good example of having a solid framework and being flexible in the approach.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you give an example of saying like, hey, I'm going to be honest.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can't guarantee.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But no matter what, we're going to get through it together.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's a confidence there.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even say that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't say no matter what.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's more, we will meet it.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: We will meet it as it comes, I guess, is kind of what I'm trying to instill or convey.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what I might have said is, well, there's a protocol for it, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know what to do.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know what to do if that happens because they practice it, which devastates me.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a topic that I've got to really restrain myself on just because I have
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: so many thoughts and feelings
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: and struggles.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: With that whole scenario and that that's a possibility.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because it is.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's a possibility.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's also what I encourage or want to emphasize is that
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: my storytelling,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: when I'm telling it about my son in this kind of a topic,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is very much curated to knowing who he is and what he needs to go to school,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: to exist in the world, period.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because of his high sensitivity,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: alarm is his absolute default and it can get locked in for months at a time.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Around one incident that scares him around these topics.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: So anything you're hearing me saying and I'm like,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: this is what I do doesn't mean anybody else has to do it but I know in me
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: that this is the best I have to offer at that moment for
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: my son. Yeah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that you bring that up,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: because part of what gives them that sense
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: of security is this
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: psychological intimacy, maybe, right?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I know you, and I can get ahead of your needs.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting ahead, yeah.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I guess that could be what I'm doing,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: but it is knowing,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: this is a child who threw up at Thanksgiving at five years old and like feared,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: literally was put into a state of alarm for like four months.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's just knowing that.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: My child and having built up that muscle over time of exuding confidence and
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: that alpha safety enough
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: that it will hopefully give him some protection around alarm.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't change the reality, which is that I don't control the universe.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not a smidge.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at a level we're both aware of that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: To get on with the day,
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: that's where I need to be.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I need to be in that confidence.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: I could hang us up here, so let's.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: We'll save it for the community conversation.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, there we go.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, hey, that's a teaser.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so moving, continuing on with facing separation.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: So
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: that anticipated or experienced separation can be with anyone and it can be or anything.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Neufeld really tries to drive this point home.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: Can I say anyone or anything that we're attached to?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think why he says it like that is because in the dominant culture,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: there are these assumptions or this cursory or superficial understanding
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: of attachment.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where we think the default is the parent is going to be attached,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: or I'm sorry, the child is going to be attached to the parent.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about children.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Child's going to be attached to the parent.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's where attachment should be,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: then we can totally overlook,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: for example, if the attachment drive is oriented towards, let's say, a routine.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: For an autistic child or a hypersensitive child that they attach to routine.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if the routine is altered, they have a total explosion of frustration.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that doesn't make sense to people.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what is wrong with this child and this is a meltdown and all of these things?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was separation from an attachment and the attachment was to the routine.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I just, so attachment serves survival.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's where the connection is here, right?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: That routine feels like survival to this child.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're attached to it.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So when you throw off the routine, it's going to create primal separation emotions.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this example of frustration, you know, but there's also going to be alarm.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's also going to be pursuit.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to,
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: it's all going to be,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you're going to be moving around those three primary emotions.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Another example,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: and I think you have so much intuition around You know,
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: let's say your teenage son or daughter's girlfriend or boyfriend.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as a parent, you may not see that as important.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying anybody,
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: hopefully many of us would understand, whoa,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: we can't mess with that best friend or that boyfriend or girlfriend
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: because that's this very profound attachment for our teen.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes,
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Neufeld just speaks to the fact that sometimes parents can sort of see that as not
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: as important necessarily.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's going to be, it's just a teenage love affair.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to grow up,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's not,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: they're not going to get married or it's not as important as their attachment to me.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you, but if,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: they face separation within it, these same attachment emotions can be profound.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all to say that this experience of separation,
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: it is where the attachment is,
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: and that that's not always something that's obvious to us culturally or
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: within our perspective without this greater insight going into seeing it.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I'm recalling that story that you told at the beginning of the season.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: Of your friend's child's video game.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: That is another thing that our children can be attached to.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: And when faced with separation, it looks just like separation from...
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else that is survival-oriented.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the big one that comes up for me when I think about this is the stories
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: and my own experience of taking away a phone
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: from an adolescent or a teenager as
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: a form of punishment or as a form of really wanting them to help them.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: To get them out of that peer-oriented,
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: to lock on their attachment or to limit their social media or whatever it may be.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: You see the phone is not doing them well,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know, is taking them down roads we don't want them to go down.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if you just take it away,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I mean, you've probably heard stories like this too, but long before.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I did it.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, go ahead.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Long before entering this world of gender and all of that,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had a coworker who took a phone away from her 13-year-old daughter and had to lock
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: the knives in their drawers.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: I even want to rewind on that circumstance with the video game and the phone
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: and highlight things.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: What's happening in the parent or authority who's doing it,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: you know, that we're being driven by that same feeling, right?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: That same emotion, that same threat to attachment.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly what I was doing, right?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't get my daughter to listen to me.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it seemed like the only way I could would be to...
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: Take away her phone or shut down her internet.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those, right?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Where I was going to take away her access to her world, you know?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it did some damage.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: But it was my own alarm.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to think which one it was, right?
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Which primal emotion drove me?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: I know I was afraid.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was afraid.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that felt like the solution.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't understand the attachment.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think I had an intuition, to be honest.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: I knew.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: I knew this wasn't going to go down well.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: But I also felt like it was all I had.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: It felt like all I had.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was driven to close the gap.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I did to close the gap.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what did I do?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I made the gap wider.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe I don't know this, but I'm hearing you and listening.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking that,
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Neufeld does talk about this in terms of like, quote unquote, discipline.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: That all too often...
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: The discipline that we are taught to use culturally,
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm not saying this is why you did it,
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that your reasons were different,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: but to take away something the child is attached to as a form of leverage,
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know, is pushing their face into separation.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's essentially what we take away.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: We take away something they care about.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because it works, again, right,
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: as leverage, you know, it works in the moment to get them to do what we want often.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: But ultimately, it's
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: wounding to their attachment.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: To their attachment to us,
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: and then it's also that we're playing upon this primal,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, emotion.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well it's that word leverage that I think is pretty key here.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's why it's wounding.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't have this insight, it's also what we learn to do.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's what was done to us.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's baked in.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's baked into
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: the culture.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it works right now.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Until it doesn't.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: But when we're in frustration, and that's the tool we have in our toolbox, you know.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's all you know.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's all you know.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, just kind of continuing down some of the aspects of facing separation.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Facing separation can be a physical separation.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: It can be emotional or psychological.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I said this already,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: but the experience of facing separation,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: it can be just anticipating the separation, not actually having a loss.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it...
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a,
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think goes along with what we're talking about here in terms of especially
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: the experience of a child is it can include sort of the lack or loss
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: of this warm invitation to exist in another's presence.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So a child can, and I think we do too as parents.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not,
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can look at this both ways,
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: even though we should be in that alpha responsible role in our,
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, hierarchy of relationship situation.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we can imagine it both ways,
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: that all of a sudden,
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: or if we feel a loss of warmth,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: for a child,
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: if that child doesn't experience a sense of delight or a twinkle in the eye
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: to just be in another's presence,
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: the presence of a grandparent,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: a parent,
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: even if they're physically together,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: all their needs are met for food,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: shelter,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: and clothing,
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: all of that,
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: if they're not Kind of taking for granted that invitation,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: that delight,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: that warmth,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: that mattering,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: that is an experience of separation,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: of facing separation from that invitation to exist, as Neufeld puts it.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I hear you touching on this.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: Again, as you're describing this,
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: my mind goes immediately to the And
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: it's creating those primal emotions
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: because we are not experiencing the twinkle in our child's eye.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: The child is not reaching for us or desiring us or having that warmth toward us.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's incredibly threatening.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're not even receptive to ours sometimes.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Super alarming.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: Super alarming.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, let's hit on that again.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that so alarming for us?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: We just think our feelings are hurt.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Can you, yeah, just reiterate that.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so a lot of this is,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: we've been,
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: by the nature of the Neufeld content,
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: where he is really looking at this from the child,
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: the perspective of the child,
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: but I think You know,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: this is a good point in the conversation to kind of focus in on the experience
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: of parents.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing that I want to say just on that list that I was covering,
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: the last one is that these experiences are incredibly subjective.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Extremely difficult to assess.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Extremely difficult to do research in this area
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: because what someone anticipates versus experiences,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, there's so much subjectivity in I can confirm that.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have to just kind of try to do our best to break down The ways
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: that we can anticipate and experience separation.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I think about this from the perspective of parents listening
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: to this podcast and I think about,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's similarities across a lot of parents' stories,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: but I know there's also unique aspects.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to just, I don't want to overgeneralize, but
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think about
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: The announcement,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: the adoption,
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: the coming into a transgender identity,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: having your child tell you this,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: ask for a different name,
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: ask for different pronouns,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: being this incredibly profound experience of facing separation.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we could go down,
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: kind of going back to that developmental aspect of attachment
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: where we have these different roots and stages.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we could talk about this at the level of the physical.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: We could talk about it at the level of the one that comes to me immediately with this.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just the announcement.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Of a different identity, which is like the essence of a person.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is this.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, question.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's not.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: But it feels like it is.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go ahead.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what they're expressing, you know, that they're experiencing it as.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to then, you know, to me, it's just boom, sameness right there.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: My child is telling me they are not the same.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Existential.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it calls into your entire history of them since the womb
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: a stable identity
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: in their biological sex.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is unbelievably provocative.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so much so that when I think about this,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: I go back and I remember when I was in my two,
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: three years of just churning over trying to figure out had I made a mistake
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: with my son with thinking he was transgender before we rolled back social transition
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: for him.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just search on the internet, search.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously had so many separation emotions moving me.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, I think, I mean, again, they had a reason.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much, I'm grateful for them.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I was looking to find information,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: find information, to think all the pieces through that I might be missing.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember finding this slideshow from one of these famous pediatric gender doctors.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of them have a similar slideshow where it's like,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: for the parents, you will experience grief.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's right there in the materials that the affirmative doctors give to parents
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: because they want to say,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: you are experiencing the loss of who you thought your child was.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't know,
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: I find it so fascinating that Even from that side of this experience,
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: they are coaching parents through grief.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And on the side, quote-unquote side, I'm kind of using scare quotes around that.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, for parents who are not going to go down the path of affirming,
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: there's also that huge existential experience of grief.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say more so.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because now you're occupying
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: different worlds even.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: A different world puts you in a whole different world.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're on a different planet.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: How do you stay close to this child,
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: this person you brought into the world, if they're living on another world?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you maintain influence?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do you guide them?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where that panic, right?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: That alarm seizes you.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's all perfectly natural.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: As uncomfortable, painful as it is.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this,
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: if we start at kind of the top,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: the senses,
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: if we're facing a separation at the senses,
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: that could be,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: a child who has medicalized and their physicality has changed, sight, smell,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: also estrangement, you know, I think is like one of the most extreme things.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Experiences of separation, obviously.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: No more contact.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: No more proximity.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Also, and I know that this isn't unusual for families with adolescents,
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: but so many of these kids stop
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: hugging us.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: Stop reaching us.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's sort of, right, the lack of physical contact.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, now there's a void.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: A gap.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so huge separation at that level of the senses and that proximity,
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: and thank you for that example that's... Primal.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just saying again, from the womb, the physical contact has been a thread.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the senses,
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: the sameness,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: and the sameness, I mean, the sameness of our relationship to our child changing.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: The sameness of how our child, you know, has thought of themselves through their lives changing.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: The sameness of, you know, like you said, the worlds that we inhabit together changing.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we could riff on that facing separation at that level of sameness, of stability.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how our world has existed being turned upside down.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I thought of sameness in that
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: sense of stability.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's also really landing for me today.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because that involves all of our attachments of the
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: daily world.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: What we can take for granted, no longer being something we take for granted.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was just ripped away from us.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then what you were speaking to earlier about living in different worlds,
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: then we get to that level of belonging and loyalty.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of the sense of belonging as a family together, how this can disrupt that.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for a lot of what I understand from parents' experience is
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: that also it doesn't just impact the relationship to our child or our family unit,
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: which in and of itself is profound.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: But then if we take a non-affirmative approach,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: what that means to our relationships with friends and the community,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: other extended family at times,
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: and all the ripple effects of that sense of belonging and people being against,
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: instead of that loyalty being intact, that sometimes loyalties can be reversed.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: So frightening.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful that
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: you're taking us through these roots from the parents' experience.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course this is destabilizing and existential.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like, I mean, right in this moment, I'm just like, all is forgiven.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: that's just my,
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: all of the messiness, all of,
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: even the stuff that we see online,
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes it's just like so hard to, but it's like, no wonder.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: No wonder parents are,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: it's just,
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: this is
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: one of the most profound threats to our survival,
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: threats to our
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: existence, to our very being that we could experience.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean we can't get through it.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that there's not, you know, beauty and joy to be had.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the spring, you know, winter,
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll hopefully have a springtime coming, but
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: in the midst of all of it?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is a natural response to the level of separation.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: As you're pointing out, not just with our childhood.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: With our communities,
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: sometimes family members,
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: it's like one minute you were,
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: you did belong and now suddenly you're on this weird island.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: And everything is confusing and everything's been ripped away.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I know we've been throwing around that word existential, but... Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what more do you say?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, devastation doesn't even seem to...
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like an understatement.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think we can kind of,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: go down those other routes and kind of,
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: extrapolate from those as well and just,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: thinking about if we're no longer feeling a sense of belonging,
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know, are we going to get that sense of mattering?
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And being significant.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be clear that it's not up to our children.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: when we think about that hierarchical attachment,
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: from the Neufeld perspective,
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: we are there to provide that sense of mattering and significance to our children.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: They should not be put in the position of being in charge or responsible to give that to us.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the ripple effects.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Of, you know, the friendships,
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: the community,
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: the culture, you know, and then being seen as like, my experience does not matter.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what I'm trying to convey is not being heard.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, being shunned or rejected.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all of those things that can come with this
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: are huge.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's no wonder,
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: that we,
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: as we talked about earlier,
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: these emotions happen to us,
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like that pursuit happens to us and we're trying to close the gap.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so, again, understandably,
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: is what.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: I want to bring to the table,
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: and we've said that before,
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: and learning about this
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: and having this insight can
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: hopefully afford us some alternatives.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else that jumps out to you just about bringing this to the parents
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: and this experience of facing separation?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've said a lot.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've done,
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: hopefully, justice to what this experience feels
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: like in a parent's system, in their bodies.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I like knowing that we're going to go deeper into each of those emotions.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: Intensified pursuit, alarm and frustration and what those will
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: drive us to do.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you're interested in conversations around the topic,
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: I do really want to invite listeners to really consider joining the community.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can unpack these concepts together and you can ask questions
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: because I'm certain we're missing things.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling some level of guilt and responsibility that we didn't get to
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: the parents' perspective until the very end of our episode today.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we had to go where we did first and then end up there.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, yes, come join.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can really, you know.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like there's so many threads.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: Even I think just being able to say, this is
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: what was happening.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: Would this be a primal emotion or would this be just really being able to connect
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: the concepts to your experience?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you can do that,
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: you can start applying some of the other concepts we've discussed too
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: in ways that feel soothing, I even want to say.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's the word that comes to mind when we're dealing with criminal emotions and
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_02: the destabilization of this.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_02: To have some solid ground to stand on can be so comforting.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that was a big theme in our last conversation.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in this construct, going to use that word, know, there's the potential for some rest.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and what it brings up to my mind,
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: something I wrote in that last post,
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: which is that while kind of what we laid out here,
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: this is applying this construct of facing separation to the very specific
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: Aspects of being a parent whose child has adopted this identity and all the dynamics
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: that go in there that are so specific to that experience.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, these emotions are universal.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: we are experiencing separation in these very specific ways,
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: but the pursuit,
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: the frustration,
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: the alarm,
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Having greater insight to those and how they're moving us
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: through this specific experience, I think can be very helpful.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it does help us take a step towards being kind of more of that eagle on
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: the perch where we're saying, wow.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can see from outside of this a little bit more.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can look at myself with compassion.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: I can say the dynamics that play,
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: it makes so much sense for me to be going through what I am going through,
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: for me being struggling with what I'm struggling with forgiveness.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, grace for ourselves.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing that comes to mind right now for me is just how little
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: of this is understood and
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: fostered in the world we live in today.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: that really we do have so much stacked against us,
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_02: that there's little insight out there as to these inner forces that are moving us.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: Almost places a higher demand on us.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because as we say in our
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_02: intro, you know, against all odds, that's where we are.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, attachment is in our favor.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, now I'm getting all like epic heroic here, but it just breaks.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: Brings me to this agent of attachment.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: It takes me to Tolkien.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't remember which of the trilogy of Lord of the Rings he says this in.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: He writes this in, J.R. Tolkien.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like that there could be,
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: he probably said men,
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: or there could be people who in the face of such times could try to be valiant.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, And maybe think it made one small bit of difference, essentially.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like despite the challenge and the pain and the struggle
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: that you can still choose
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: to be that agent of attachment,
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: to do the good of the work of the heart and of connection,
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: will bring its own reward.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: I love that word agency.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_02: I love the idea of becoming an agent.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it does feel different.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Attachment is also rewarded, you know, with oxytocin, right?
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: All those good feelings,
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: that when you can use the insight and respond in a way
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_02: that truly nurtures attachment,
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It builds us up.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Calms that alarm.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Helps us feel more on more solid ground.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this has been great.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I hope listeners can take something of value from our conversation today
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: and Just like you said a few minutes ago,
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: just want to say by the time this is published,
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: hey, the Q&A about this episode won't be till the first Monday in December.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's time still to join live when we discuss this content today,
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: the Facing Separation content live.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: But until our next connection,
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: whatever that may be, episode, writing, Q&A, we wish you all well.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you take something of value from our conversation today.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe to our Substack to have new episodes delivered to your inbox.
• 1:12:15
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• 1:12:20
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• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you are the family member of a trans-identified child,
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: you might find yourself craving more ways to understand
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_02: and apply attachment concepts within your family.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_02: If so, consider becoming an Attachment Matters community member for access to
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_02: a private platform with live Q&A sessions with the two of us and a place
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: to share insights and breakthroughs with one another.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: As always,
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_00: we encourage you to share your feedback and takeaways in the comments
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_00: and hope you will join us for the next episode of Attachment Matters.