Attunement Lab: Healing from chronic emotional mis-attunement

How to stop covering your ache of emotional aloneness with self-sufficiency and achievement

"It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a family, workplace or society that requires abandonment of needs, authenticity and spirit."

Many people walked on eggshells around a parent growing up, and are puzzled as to why they are struggling in adulthood. When caregivers are consumed with their own anxiety or triggered reactions, they fail to meet their child’s needs of attention and care. This little ‘t’ trauma is a trauma of omission. It is about what the child did not receive, so they don’t know what they are missing. “How are you feeling?” “It’s OK that you are sad,” “Sorry I just hurt you,” were hardly uttered in these homes. When this failing happens repeatedly over years, the child eventually goes numb to their longing for co-regulation and to be known. Many cope with relentless self-sufficiency, making sure to hide when they are feeling emotionally overwhelmed. It’s just not safe to be vulnerable when struggling. The go-to strategies of achievement and perfectionism at the cost of self-abandonment become the norm.

Since this trauma is about the witholding of attention or care, it is hard to detect. On the outside, some of the families of emotional neglect look enviable, with cars in both garages, kids staying out of trouble and performing well at school. So when repeated comments from parents like: “What, that bothers you?” “You don’t really feel that,” are common-place, the child resorts to thinking: “What’s wrong with me? Why is this so hard, this is nothing compared to real abuse.” Denying they feel gut-punched when dismissed by their Mom. Resisting their healthy yearning to feel felt. These early wounds of emotional abuse can then be re-triggered in adulthood in marriages with partners who are less attuned, being single for much longer than one wants to be, dealing with aging parents not noticing their drain on you, and toxic team cultures at work too.

The great news is that adults can heal from this attachment trauma. In the last twenty years many new therapies and techniques have come on the horizon like co-regulating in the midst of emotional overwhelm. As well as attuning to one’s inner wisdom that inherently knows how to heal itself.  The process of ATTUNE combines the best components of these therapies to help one heal from chronic emotional mis-attunement.

A         Acknowledge that you were emotionally mis-attuned to (psychoeducation)  
T         Tend to your emotional needs (self-soothing/emotion regulation strategies)
T         Tune into higher self (connect to your non-egoic core self/awareness)  
U         Undo emotional aloneness (co-regulation & corrective attunement with another; heal exiles from higher self)
N         Narrate your life from an updated perspective (shift from a story of self-blame to one of emotional needs poorly met by unskilled others; own your unique value)
E         Empower yourself to take up emotional and relational space (foster constructive dependency; say what you think; express love)