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."

We all need to be known, attuned to and co-regulated with. Emotional attunement soothes our distress, helps us connect to ourselves and allows for the felt sense of belonging with others. In life, everyone experiences mis-attunement at times. It's normal to have emotional misses with partners, parents, colleagues, friends and social media. It even builds grit. But some of us have felt the pain of misattunement too much. It's been chronic. In a upbrining or a marriage, it's happened tens of thousands of times, and taken a toll on our wellbeing, sense of self and relational intimacy. For example, in childhood we might have been struggling and a caregiver didn't notice or made us feel worse. “How stupid” “Get it together” “I would have never let that happen,” are uttered or implied. When this invalidation or dismissal happens repeatedly it creates a trauma of omission. It's about what you did not get so you don't know you are missing it. One learns: “No one is going to help me when I feel like a failure, excluded or down. I have to turn my feelings off on my own.” Abandoning our inner emotional life in service of what others are comfortable with or what professional cultures reward. Some turn to relentless self-sufficiency and achievement at the cost of self-abandonment to gain approval as a poor substitute for co-regulation and feeling felt. Yes, you sound impressive and are admired at a dinner party, but at what personal cost?

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)

Here is an initial draft of an article on Chronic Emotional Mis-attunement

TO ATTEND AN ATTUNE WORKSHOP Sunday March 3, 2024, CLICK HERE