Mother’s Day
Dr. Cunningham gives an overview of the significance of the mother-child relationship and provides reflective prompts to explore.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the United States. And although we can recognize the holiday has origins in commercialism and capitalism, it’s a day that often influences our mental health. It’s a day that can heavily influence our mood, the thoughts we have, and the emotions we feel.
It makes sense, right? Even if you yourself are not a mother, the day can bring about whatever (resolved or not) is included in your relationship with your mother. It’s a day that also has pressure and expectation- because good ole’ social media is alive and well displaying perfect and romanticized content celebrating motherhood. It’s a day that can be filled with love, festivities, and smiles for some; while also a day that can be filled with longingness, anxiety, anger, grief, and immense sadness for others.
As a psychologist that works in trauma, grief, and attachment, I have the privilege of working with all kinds of mother-child relationships. From difficulties with fertility/conception, to bonding with your baby in the NICU, to grieving the loss of your child, to finding your identity as a mother, to working through your childhood trauma with your own mother- I am grateful for the many ways in which I get to work with you mothers. It’s an honor to be invited in to such intimate and important relationships.
One of the many things I take away from this work is that how we are mothered matters. How we were loved, seen, spoken to, disciplined, celebrated, or the lack thereof matters. It influences how we see ourselves, how we process our emotions, and the internal voice we carry with us throughout our lives. Sometimes we benefit from and keep these influences, while at other times we redesign and create new ways of mothering. Whether the way we were mothered was helpful or hurtful; how we were mothered matters. Because it matters, it is worth exploring, acknowledging, and understanding.
So today, if it feels safe to do so- explore the prompts below:
What words describe the relationship I have/had with my mother?
What does motherhood mean to me?
How was I influenced by my mother?
How does the way I was mothered influence how I mother/my relationships?
Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.
Dr. Cunningham
Attachment Styles: The Blueprints We’ve Had Since We Were Babies
Dr. C discusses how attachment styles are formed very early on in life. She invites readers to consider the influences to their “blueprint” and highlights how they are designed through interactions with our caregivers when we are babies.
One of the many reasons I am highly interested in attachment work is the concept that so much happens in our very early years of life. We literally come into this world ready for and dependent on relationships. Take a moment to appreciate the significance of that; during a time of complete vulnerability, our brains are being influenced by our relationships in a way that has lifelong impact for our developmental, physiological, and neurological health. Our society can fall into a terrible coping mechanism making claims that little ones do not remember or understand what is going on around them. That could not be further from the truth. During infancy, we look to our caregivers for signals to make sense of not only ourselves, but the people and the world around us. These signals define what is safe and what is not safe. Interactions with our caregivers build up, one at a time, resulting in a blueprint for our nervous system. Before we are even ready to talk, our brain is collecting data and filing it away.
So, what is this blueprint I’m referring to? Our nervous system collects data procedurally to establish expectations and processes for the world around us. Through the relationships with our caregivers we receive crucial information about the importance of our physical and emotional needs, the availability of the caregiver to get them met, what those needs activate for them, and how well they are able to regulate stress in the process. In turn, this data also informs us on things like our ability to trust others, regulate our own emotions, and even the behaviors we engage in when we are upset. These are all ingredients used in the recipe of our attachment style(s). And although we have the capacity to change our attachment styles, without conscious effort and safe relationships to do that work-we are left navigating the world through the data that we took in from our early years.
Attachment conversations are not easy, and in fact are quite fragile for all parties involved (for this conversation let’s use caregiver vs care-receiver). For the care-receiver it can be quite uncomfortable revisiting moments of unavailability, let down, isolation, fear, shame, anger, or disappointment to name a few. It can be emotionally overwhelming to connect with earlier versions of the self when our needs failed to get met. We can also be bombarded with the desire to protect our caregivers so fiercely that we neglect acknowledging our experiences. For the caregiver, it can be equally (yes equally-not more, not less) emotionally intense to sit with, face, and process the influence one’s own behavior had on another. To revisit those moments in time and what was going on that contributed how the caregiver showed up can include processing trauma and other difficulties with mental health. I cannot stress enough that these conversations are not about blame, they are about learning, understanding, and identifying what ingredients went into each of our individual blueprints. Because remember, that caregiver has a blueprint from their childhood too.
Today is not about how to have those conversations (let’s bookmark it and revisit it in a way that it gets the space it deserves). Today is about understanding the influences to your blueprint. It’s about exploration. I invite you to take sometime getting to know your blueprint. Our attachment styles are processes we’ve had our whole lives, yet we can live life never getting to know them. Despite them being so important for our relationships, mental health, and physical well-being- we can be completely unaware and detached from the data our nervous system continues to use today. So, if it feels safe to do so, I invite you to start exploring.
Who was involved in your caregiving system?
What did your caregiving system relationships teach you about your emotional/physical needs?
What comes to mind when you think about the words you would use to describe how your caregivers responded to your emotions?
Does your blueprint look different with your caregivers vs other relationships in your life? (For example are you more avoidant with your caregiver but more secure with friends or partners?)
Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.
Dr. C