Bethany Saltman returns to our show to go a little deeper into the science of Attachment Theory and how it impacts adults navigating relationships. She also introduces some simple techniques to start to heal the attachment wounds that often keeps people from having the relationships they want and need. Our discussion about her book, Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment, also covers how the understandings gained from the Strange Situation Protocol are being introduced to caregivers in typically underserved communities to help build relational resilience from the beginning of life.
Bethany Saltman returns to our show to go a little deeper into the science of Attachment Theory and how it impacts adults navigating relationships. She also introduces some simple techniques to start to heal the attachment wounds that often keeps people from having the relationships they want and need. Our discussion about her book, Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment, also covers how the understandings gained from the Strange Situation Protocol are being introduced to caregivers in typically underserved communities to help build relational resilience from the beginning of life.
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For more information and to contact Bethany Saltman go to:
www.bethanysaltman.com
For more information or support contact Kevin or Niseema at info@thepositivemindcenter.com, or call 212-757-4488.
These are challenging times and we hope this episode served to validate and ease your anxiety about what you may be experiencing.
Please feel free to also suggest show ideas to the above email.
Thank you for listening,
Kevin and Niseema
www.tffpp.org
www.kevinlmhc.com
www.niseema.com
www.thepositivemindcenter.com
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Kevin O'Donoghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
Hi everybody. This is Kevin O'Donoghue licensed mental health counselor, and I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer licensed massage therapist and trauma specialist. And this is The Positive Mind where we bring you some ideas, concepts, and guests to help you lead a more positively minded life.
45s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So here's a question. Is it good for your children to ask you if you're in a bad mood or if you're having a certain feeling, "Mommy, are you angry at me or are you just angry in general?" How's that for a question? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, my guest today is Bethany Saltman who's come back for one more visit to talk about her book, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science Of Attachment." And we had her on last week and had a fascinating conversation about a study in psychology years ago that Bethany has really studied and updated called the strange situation.
1m 25s
Kevin O'Donoghue
It was a study done back in the fifties where two chairs were put in a room and a mother was sitting in the chair and there were toys on the floor and the baby, the one-year-old or two-year-old was on the floor playing with the games and toys on the floor. And a stranger would come in the room and then the mother would leave the room. And so here we have a strange situation. So how does the baby react when the stranger's in the room and when the mother comes back in the room? Is the baby angry at the mother for leaving her? Well, we're here to talk about that today, but I wanted to start with grownups, you know, children, as they get a little older and asking their parents, their mother, their father, "are you angry at me?"
2m 13s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Or "how, what are you feeling, mom? What are you feeling, dad?" Bethany, welcome back to The Positive Mind. And there's the question. Is it good for children to ask their parents if they're having a bad day, how they're feeling, what the feeling might be at the moment, et cetera?
2m 30s
Bethany Saltman
Sure. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. You know, it's a question that, you know, I'm not a clinician and I'm not a so-called expert in child development. I've studied attachment for a lot of years. And what I've surmised is that based on the science of attachment, to be able to ask your parents about their state of mind and their feelings is actually an indication of the child being aware that the adult has states of mind and moods, rather than everything is just an onslaught of victimized, kind of a feeling or an effect.
3m 10s
Bethany Saltman
You know? So, so if a kid feels permission and empowered to say, "Hey, you seem like you're in a bad mood" that's a great thing. And the parent can then say, "actually I am in a really crappy mood and it's not you. And I'm sorry, and let's start over. And you know, sometimes you might have bad moods too. How are you feeling today?" Or, from an attachment point of view, being aware of our minds, our states of mind, this is called mentalization or reflective functioning. Other people call it mind mindedness. And this is what we get when we are grown. When we develop with a secure attachment in our home.
3m 53s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Yeah. I mean, it just makes practical sense if you're a six year old and you can ask your mother, "are you frustrated?" That shows a certain emotional intelligence. I mean, I think it's a way for the child to say, "I have feelings myself. I know I have different moods." What permission, what a nice gift to be able to look at your parent and name the feeling and ask them if that's the feeling. I can't imagine how my life would have been different if I could have turned to my father and asked him, "Hey dad, are you angry at me? Or are you angry at something else?" Because as children, you make it up, you make up what they're feeling. And sometimes you'll internalize it and think, well, they're feeling that towards me and what a gift to the child to say, "wait, no, this goes out into the world.
4m 42s
Kevin O'Donoghue
My anger is going out there. It's not going towards you. So you don't have to take that in."
4m 48s
Bethany Saltman
Right? And then the child learns that they have moods and thoughts and feelings also. And so when they are feeling an onslaught of sadness or despair or frustration that they can't go to school, they can't see their friends, they can't have Thanksgiving. Maybe Christmas is canceled. I mean, this stuff is so intense for all of us right now that we have some space around our feelings and we can say, Oh, I'm feeling this because of this. Therefore it will change. And therefore, I am not this feeling. And therefore I have some power over this feeling and I'm in a relationship with this feeling and that's the liberation of what a secure attachment has to offer.
5m 27s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And I don't have to walk around with this feeling for years. I can have other feelings as things go. So sometimes you get over identified with your father, your mother's anger, and you take that in. And then you just become this sullen child for years, because you're not allowed to have any other emotion. You're not to have any other feeling.
5m 46s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
And children are masters at just thinking that everything is their fault on some level. So they're absorbers big time. And they don't like mentally have the capacity to understand that it might be, you know, if it's not in the relational field to share and to say things like, you know, "are you angry at me? Or is it something else?"
6m 9s
Bethany Saltman
Right. So it's really the adult who has to model that to the child. And by having that mental, to having the capacity to mentalize on their own and to be able to say, "honey, I'm sorry, I'm not angry at you. I'm frustrated at the situation. "
6m 25s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
And it was something that you said in our first show, and you say in the book about mothers being human, women being human in the sense that we have these emotions, like I think there is a cultural sense that you're not supposed to show this. You're not supposed to show your anger or your sadness or even hysteria when it happens, you know, it's called hysteria so-called. But that it's kind of a mission to sort of normalize our internal experience as human beings.
6m 56s
Bethany Saltman
Exactly, exactly. And you know, this is a very subtle point. I'm not suggesting that it's okay to vent on your kids for you to be raging at your kids. That's in fact, absolutely not the point. But the way that we become more in control of our emotions is by metabolizing them in our own bodies and minds. So when I'm feeling rage, when I'm feeling resentment, when I'm feeling frustration, I have to admit that to myself and I have to feel the feelings. Otherwise they come out all over the place.
7m 37s
Bethany Saltman
So it's this ironic thing. When we think we need to be protecting our kids from the worst parts of ourselves, we do the opposite because they become a shadow self. And they, we act out all over the place. Instead of when we say, you know what, I'm human. I feel rage. I feel resentment. I feel frustration even about my beloved child. And so I can find the grown-ups space to have those feelings and to take care of myself because I matter because I'm a human being and then I have a much more, a cleaner kind of engine if you will, when I'm relating to my child.
8m 17s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Yeah. Because it makes sense. You're actually not saying acting things out. You're actually staying engaged in a dialogue.
8m 25s
Bethany Saltman
Well, I'm not suggesting that our kids are taking care of us are curious. I don't want kids to feel like, "Ooh, mommy's upset. Let me inquire." I'm saying if there is those, when there are those cases where our emotions spill over and our kids can feel it, then they should also have the mind mindedness to say, "Ooh, I noticed a shift here. Let me figure it out." But ultimately it's our job as the adult to take care of our feelings. And the way that we take care of our feelings is by knowing that we have them and by taking care of them, not with our kids necessarily, I'm just saying that it will happen occasionally.
9m 7s
Bethany Saltman
And that's okay.
9m 9s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So in my intro, I mentioned the famous study about this strange situation and the title of your book is called "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science Of Attachment" and last show we talked about the three styles of attachment that are really international across countries, across the world. And we talked about 65% of children feel that they are securely attached, that they have a secure base in the mother. The mother will come back into the room in this procedure and the child will be able to self-soothe, get back to a condition of soothing and feeling okay.
9m 52s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And the 35% don't, the 35% are changed and their nervous systems are on alert or whatever it is. I want to talk about those the 35% and use a good portion of today's show talking about what we can do, what parents can do, what mothers and fathers can do to maybe alter that change, that they get the information. Yes, your child is insecurely attached. It's either an avoidant attachment or a resistant slash ambivalent attachment. Now, what do you do with that? So can you talk about how valuable this information is because I'm going to be an advocate for many parents to actually go through this procedure and is this procedure happening and can you sign up for it?
10m 43s
Kevin O'Donoghue
You know, and if not, why not? Because it's obviously such a pervasive international situation and condition. Why wouldn't you be able to go to a place and try this out and get some results from it? So go ahead. You talk,
10m 58s
Bethany Saltman
Well, there's a lot there. First of all, in the strange situation, we remember we talked about last time, the most important moment is the reunion. When the caregiver returns and the child is soothed back to whatever state they are, their kind of resting state. And the caregiver, so it's not that they self-soothe it's that the parent helps them soothe. And eventually we grow into a state of being able to self-soothe. But the strange situation is looking at the parent's ability to soothe the child and the child's ability to use the parent to soothe themselves.
11m 41s
Bethany Saltman
So that's a really, really important point, especially in the United States where we love these concepts of independence. And we like it when our babies are independent and actually, from an attachment point of view, that's something that you want to be careful of, you don't want a one-year-old to appear independent because trust me, they're not independent. If they appear to be independent, there's something going on, where they feel like they need to, they're not getting their needs met, so they're going to appear like they don't need you, but they need you. So that's one thing. Is the strange situation available for parents. And no, it's not, it's a clinical, it's a research tool, right? It's not a clinical tool.
12m 22s
Bethany Saltman
So it's like getting on a treadmill to test your heart for everybody in the world. Like that's, that only really is indicated when there is trouble. And it's generally used for research. It's not used clinically. And it's certainly not used to just give parents this information and why, because it's complicated and it really won't do most people much good. What are you going to do if you learn that your child is insecurely attached, as I've said before, the most important thing that any of us can do is to become more aware of attachment.
13m 5s
Bethany Saltman
So reading this book is a great first step, and that's not just me trying to sell books. It's really the truth of the matter is the more interested we become in ourselves and our relationships, the more secure our children become. There's this big web, this matrix of insight that we, once we just start to see it, it starts to work its magic. It's an incredible thing. And avoidance happens when we don't see the matrix, if you will, we don't see attachment because we've been conditioned by our parents and by our culture, largely also to think that relationships don't matter.
13m 46s
Bethany Saltman
Why, because we've been so vulnerable and we've been hurt. The resistant child is conditioned to think that we need to work really hard. And you know, it's that push/pull kind of experience. And so they're aware of attachment, but they don't trust it. And so the solutions are the same. If you're a parent and you think that your child is insecurely attached, for whatever reason, then get therapy for yourself, bring attachment to mind, bring your own mind to mind. It doesn't really matter. You don't need to go through the strange situation. We could all benefit from becoming more secure in ourselves,in our states of mind, in our feelings, in our bodies, by learning how to think about what we're going through.
14m 32s
Bethany Saltman
You know, especially these days, we all need support and it's going to be good for all of us. Mindfulness practice, meditation, yoga therapy, friendship, relationships. Orient toward relationships, and your children will become more secure in the light or the light, right? So if your
14m 53s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Child starts to develop this resistant pattern, this avoidant pattern, whatever don't treat the child, treat yourself. You get in touch with feelings, you get in touch with your own avoidance, your own resistance, your own adaptation and attachment style that you learned from your
15m 11s
Bethany Saltman
Yep. And there's nothing wrong with it. You know, it's a perfectly reasonable, coherent pattern strategy, right? To be avoidant or resistant. It's not, there's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a, really good strategy for protecting yourself, right? And so to remember that we're so vulnerable, our feelings, you know, it's really important to think about this attachment system has developed not just to keep us safe from predators or fed, but to keep us feeling felt. And when we don't feel felt we have to protect ourselves because it hurts that much.
15m 47s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So it makes sense to let's say, okay, since mommy doesn't feel me, and my feelings aren't felt, it makes sense for me to go out and focus on succeeding or achieving or getting things, being materialistic or whatever. It would make sense. So feelings aren't worth anything. I'm going to go do something else.
16m 8s
Bethany Saltman
And you may be of the mind that that's fine. And so this idea of taking kids through the strange situation really doesn't make any sense. Like if you are someone who's really concerned about your child, that's enough. Just start there, bring yourself into view, consider yourself, ask, become curious about your feelings, become curious about the way you do things, why you do what you do, don't pathologize yourself or your child. And you know, you're not going to know if your child is resistant or avoidant. Trust me, it's very complicated. And it's a really, really nuanced kind of thing that you have to learn to observe.
16m 53s
Bethany Saltman
It's not, there's nothing obvious about it. And so just hang tight with the feeling of, wow, I'd like things to change. You know, I'm not feeling good about our relationship. That's an amazing thing to start with. If you're not feeling good about the relationship between you and your child, then develop a better relationship with yourself. The first person who you talk to every day is yourself. Notice your tone of voice. Notice your expectations. Notice the standards that you're holding to yourself. Notice how you beat yourself up. Notice how you insult yourself. Notice how you don't want to get close to your own feelings.
17m 37s
Bethany Saltman
And lo and behold, your child will mirror that. And that's okay. That's why you can keep taking care of yourself. We need to give ourselves permission, particularly women in this culture, to be curious about ourselves, to be gentle with ourselves, to not feel like we have to live under this fear, that if we're not tough, that we're somehow going to destroy our children. It's there. There's such a fear of, and that's why I have such a beef with Dr. Sears because he's taken something that I hold so dear, the science of attachment, and he's completely hijacked it and turned it into another shame-based fear-based shtick that women are supposed to align themselves.
18m 22s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So if you're a mother at a party, let's say, and you're talking about your fears that you're not doing it right. Or you're worried about your child. Like she doesn't react to me a certain way, or she's having a hard time in second grade or she's this or that. You know, you can pretty much assure that person, that the fact that you're even concerned and even talking about this is a chance that she's probably in the 65%.
18m 46s
Bethany Saltman
Yeah. Right. Avoidant people don't talk about their kids at parties. Sometimes preoccupied people do, right. And that's fine. You know, the classifications are really for the scientific study of how these things shift and change over time and over the lifespan from like a personal parent point of view, it's best to assume we're all secure and we're all insecure. We all come from a state of perfection and we've all got what it takes and there's always work to do. So, if you're worried, then try to be more curious about yourself and take it easy on yourself, because it's those edges that get conveyed to our kids.
19m 30s
Bethany Saltman
We talk to our children the way we talk to ourselves. So think about, notice how you talk to yourself and that if you just do that for the rest of your life, pay attention to the way that you talk to yourself, you will transform your life. And that is not just me as studying attachment for 10 years, but my life as a Zen practitioner for 25 years.
19m 51s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So if you're, if, I mean, it just strikes me as being a parent is an opportunity for you to learn for the first time in your life, how to take care of yourself. I mean, a lot of new and a lot of new parents just think, Oh, I have a child now. I don't have time to take care of myself. I never focused on myself. I never do nice things for myself. I always, all my energy goes toward my child. You're saying self care. I think you say in some ways, self care is other care or life care is childcare. Self care is childcare.
20m 21s
Bethany Saltman
Yes. Manis and pedis are great. Baths are great. All that kind of stuff is great. I'm talking about the deep internal way that we treat ourselves on an energetic level moment after moment after moment, you know, I'm all for girls' trips when we can be together again, I'm all for wine and TV and all those fun things. Trust me. I'm a big fan of all of that, but we can still do and be beating ourselves to a pulp.
20m 49s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Right. And so one of the tools you use and you've written about in your blog as well, is this idea of delight. Now, we imagine that every mother looks at their child, newborn would come home from the hospital and it's just an endless delight. I mean, we know that there's changing the diapers and getting up in the middle of the night, but there's clearly many, many moments of delight for sure. And, and so one of the tools that you recommend, that you talk about, is this practice, deliberate practice of delight.
21m 29s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And so even fathers, let's say who can access feelings, are busy succeeding and doing their professions and whatever, and mothers and mothers as well. Of course. What, how did, how did, how did they get the delight back or how did they
21m 47s
Bethany Saltman
I think about it is, and the reason why I love delight so much is because it delight and mutual delight was the one thing that Mary Ainsworth, the creator of the strange situation, it's the one thing that she found between mothers and babies of the securely attached pairs was this feeling of mutual delight. And so I like to sort of retroactively work that into the system. So if securely attached pairs exhibit mutual delight, I believe that if we start to exhibit delight, this will move us towards security. And certainly it's true from a mindfulness point of view.
22m 29s
Bethany Saltman
And so for someone who doesn't find it, whose delight is not super available to them then it becomes a practice of, you know, where do I find delight? I remember when I lived in New York City and I would take the subway, I loved the subway. I loved just sitting there. I had nothing else I had to do. This is way before phones. And I would sit there and I would just like watch people. And it was delightful. There was nothing to it. It's no big deal, but I just wouldn't allow myself that time on the subway to just enjoy my experience, enjoy my state of being and just delight.
23m 10s
Bethany Saltman
And so I would get off the subway and go off about my business and do whatever I had to do, which may or may not have been delightful, but that kind of orienting toward the thing that you love, it's so simple. We don't even, we can't, we can't appreciate how impactful it is. And if we start to do that intentionally, it will grow. So it let's say, you love your new shoes. You love your shoes to be like super shiny and you love to brush them and do whatever people do with their new shoes. If you're some guy who is really into this and loves to get dressed up, of course, these days, nobody cares about your shoes cause no one can see them. But you know, to just really give yourself that experience of taking care of your shoes or doing the dishes, or hugging your dog.
24m 0s
Bethany Saltman
It's an awareness practice where we become more in touch with our senses, right? That's where delight lives. It lives in our senses and we are all having sensory experiences all the time. We just aren't aware of it. So delight enters through the senses and that's something that we can all practice all the time, no matter who you are, if you have a desire to feel closer to your child, to feel closer to your spouse, practice feeling. Just make it as simple as possible. I want to feel close. I want to feel connected. Okay. Great practice feeling.
24m 37s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So it's Fall here in New York and I can attest to this driving on the highway and seeing the leaves change. It's like, wow. It's like, I can't get enough of it this year. Other years, I'm like, ah, it's fall. And it brings on a little depression, but this year, in the last year as well, it's just an endless delight and you can't get enough of it. You can try. I try to get one thing is when I feel delighted as I try to get as up close to it as possible. So I'll pick up leaves and I still can't get enough of it. So that's a good sign that you have these natural resources for senses of delight. But it strikes me that when it's not there, what do you do?
25m 18s
Kevin O'Donoghue
There are things you can do. There's musical pieces that will always elicit something from you.
25m 23s
Bethany Saltman
Well, it depends on the person. That's what I mean, whatever it is that you, you know, you have to work the edges, you know, some people love a TV show. Great. Then watch the TV show, walk, watch football, watch, whatever it is that you are drawn to, just begin to notice what you're drawn to give yourself the credit for loving that thing even. Okay. So it's making tons of money. Maybe it's success. That's fine. But just begin to feel where you are feeling the draw to do that thing that you're drawn to do.
25m 50s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
Right. So, I'm wondering, we might have a really strong sense of delight in one thing. How do you sort of translate that feeling to maybe what is a difficult relationship you have with a child? You know, it's like there might be a temperament clash or something that just it's like, you can love your child but not like them. I'm just sort of figuring it out there. Some people have that experience and it can be really hard to maybe translate that same sense of delight into something that's been a painful situation for you.
26m 31s
Bethany Saltman
Yes. And so, not just make this sound simple, but the practice of delight is actually simple. So I completely understand that some relationships are fraught. And I know this from experience. Of course my point with this practice of delight is simply that by opening our own hearts to this feeling of pleasure and delight, it can help us even in the most fraught relationships, because we can enter that fraughtness,that difficulty has a little bit more space around our hearts. And so when we get into sort of an enactment with someone, and it's the same thing, again, whether it's your child or your spouse, or your neighbor, or whomever delight, softens the heart.
27m 20s
Bethany Saltman
And when we continue to delight, whether it's in the leaves or the TV show or the shoes or the dog or whatever, it creates more of a space for those fraught relationships.
27m 32s
2
So it's like that self care being childcare. Like if you can, if you can cultivate delight, you can have a little more space for maybe the tough parts
27m 40s
Niseema Dyan Diemer & Bethany Saltman
Of childcare. And that's exactly right. And
27m 43s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
I wanted to bring up, I found it so interesting and something that might feel counterintuitive about crying and how crying I used to teach infant massage. The thing at the parents needed to really start to is like to not get reactive to the cry, because that can trigger sort of the internal infant in you, your infant is crying. You suddenly want to be crying or screaming, because the sound, I mean, I, you know, people on planes are like, don't sit me by the crying baby. You know, it's just like crying is such an intense trigger.
28m 23s
Niseema Dyan Diemer & Kevin O'Donoghue
And in your book, you're like, this is a signal for attachment. Like the baby needs you, it's a need. And like, again, if you don't have that space, you might make that, but you don't want to say that it's in the book that mothers who respond to the child in the first six months of their crying, don't cry as much. The second six months doesn't mean you have to respond to every time to the child's crying, but it is a good thing. And we're going to be talking more about the good things that these attachment styles do. When we come back with Bethany Saltman, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science Of Attachment." We thank her for being here and we will be back after this musical break.
29m 55s
Kevin O'Donoghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
We are back with The Positive Mind and Bethany Saltman author of the book, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science Of Attachment." Before we broke, we were talking about the value of crying, which I know as an adult is one of the best things that a person can do for themselves is crying. But Niseema was asking Bethany about the importance of the infant crying. There's something about the cry that the baby's saying, "I can't manage how I'm feeling right now. I need your help. "
30m 26s
Bethany Saltman
Exactly. Which is oftentimes the reason we cry too. But you know your question about being triggered by cries that is so true. And that is exactly why this practice of delight is so important and a practice of mindfulness and being able to tolerate our own feelings. In a podcast with Sharon Salzberg, the Buddhist teacher, when the book first came out, we were talking about what makes us able to tolerate our children's rage. And I said, the thing that will help you tell her about your child's rage is you tolerating your own rage. So exactly when a child cries that experience of being demanded of is so overwhelming, because we can feel overwhelmed by we're going to get consumed by this child's need.
31m 18s
Bethany Saltman
And then annihilated it's terrifying, right? Like what is going to happen to me? If all, if I don't know how to soothe this baby, if I have to soothe this baby for the rest of my life, I don't know how to do it. I don't have it in me. It can be terrifying for a parent and for a stranger to hear the cries of a child, it is all consuming and it's supposed to trigger that in us because the purpose of the child's cry is to get someone to stop the crying.
31m 46s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And I, I wonder the extent to which a mother or father could feel guilty about their child crying. I mean, I remember when I was babysitting back when I was young and in high school maybe, and there were kids crying and I couldn't get them to stop. I felt so terrible. I can't get this person to stop crying.
32m 7s
Bethany Saltman
Yeah, it's huge. You know, it doesn't get much more basic than this. It's so raw. It's so primitive and, developing our, growing our capacity to experience our own emotions is the way to grow the capacity to deal with our child's emotions. Crying is a great example of that.
32m 26s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So let's talk about the value of this because I'm, you're, you're making a great case here, but again, 65% of children, babies are securely attached. They feel as mom is a secure base from which they can go home or dad go out and explore and then come back and then be okay, and then go back out again and 35% can't but these have remedies
32m 49s
Bethany Saltman
Or less. So it's not so black and white, but it's just yeah. Less.
32m 54s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Okay. How does this show up as an adult? You talk about in the book, the adult attachment inventory. Can you talk a little bit about that and how this insecure attachment shows up?
33m 7s
Bethany Saltman
Yeah. You know, it's very much like a child in the strange situation. So an avoidant adult, when you're an adult, it's called dismissing, they, as we've been discussing, a dismissing adult really focuses on externals. I'm much more interested in success and external accomplishments, then relationships. And then they're bound to, with a 75% predictability, raise an avoidant baby who doesn't depend on relationships and will then become more oriented toward externals. The resistant baby becomes a preoccupied adult, can become a preoccupation adult. One who has a lot of push pull in their life who seeks relationships very, almost desperately, but then can never actually be soothed by them.
33m 57s
Bethany Saltman
So there's this state of heightened anxiety.
34m 1s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So I guess in the book you talk about how this shows up. As let's say, young people as teenagers, drug abuse versus being a good student versus having normal pleasures rather than seeking out wild experiences in order to get in touch, maybe with a feeling. Imagine being a teenager and not knowing what you feel and not being able to feel this. This can be the result of your attachment style from your younger days. Talk a little bit about that because to be a securely attached child has great predicted factors of success in life.
34m 38s
Bethany Saltman
It really does, but it's so not simple. So for instance, I am an interesting case study. I had a very sort of delinquent teenage years, experimented with pretty much everything, but looking back, and then I have, you know, as you'll see if you read the book, I am considered securely attached, which surprised the heck out of me. I never thought that in a million years, but all the signs show that that is the case. And we triangulated the data in every possible way. So there's really no doubt about it, which continues to sort of astonish and delight me. So I was by no means a poster child for a secure attachment.
35m 22s
Bethany Saltman
I did terribly in school. I experimented with drugs and alcohol. I was a delinquent in many ways and I lived a pretty dangerous little life, but looking back at it, I realized that a lot of what I was doing was seeking connection. I really valued relationships. I was looking for intimacy and there's this whole other aspect to attachment that we haven't really gotten into about disorganization and disorganization can happen in cases of trauma and neglect. It's not usually a classification in and of itself, but it is an aspect of other classifications.
36m 8s
Bethany Saltman
So you can be securely attached and have pockets of disorganization. You can be insecurely attached and have no disorganization, or you can be very, very disorganized when in extreme cases of neglect and abuse, which is tragic. I had a pretty complicated life as you know, my family system was not perfect. And so I believe, and this is what some of the experts have helped me see, that I might've had some pockets of disorganization that I was working through, but the security, my fundamental attachment security really helped me work that through in a healthy way. And so I got through it all.
36m 49s
Bethany Saltman
So I'm a textbook case and God, I'm knocking on wood here. My daughter who is almost 15, is pretty textbook secure. She is great in school. People consider her a leader. She is incredibly able to metabolize her emotions. She's emotionally intelligent. She has all the feelings and she is confident she can experience her insecurity, but she can work through it. She has great peer relationships. This is what we want in a secure attachment. Now, has she had a perfect life? No, I had a lot of difficulty when she was young.
37m 31s
Bethany Saltman
I have a temper, I can be super edgy and she has learned how to deal with it. And I think it's because she has a secure attachment. So I really want people to understand that this is not some kind of black and white. Like you get bequest with a crown of security and then you don't suffer. You know, we all suffer and we will all suffer. A secure attachment is just a wonderful way to be held within our suffering, where we have perhaps more of a belief in ourselves and more of a belief that the world is going to show up for us. And if you don't grow up with that, you still have all the tools that the world is still available for you. You just have to work perhaps a little harder to trust, a little harder to be nice enough to yourself when you hit adversity.
38m 18s
Bethany Saltman
And the secure attachment really helps with grit and the ability, like the marshmallow test, a securely attached child will keep working at something. And that's something I've really worked on with my daughter is I don't want to just trust that she's securely attached. I'm helping her hone in on certain tasks. You know, she has a math test tomorrow. She's learned how to piece that apart and say, okay, I'm going to study this much on this day and this much on this day. And I'm going to get help from this person. I'm going to get help from this person. And I really, really want to do well on this. And if I don't, at least I will have known I did everything.
38m 55s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Okay. You also talk about tenacity, which I think is great. I just remembered that standing out when I first read it. And that makes all the sense in the world that you have a certain sense of agency yourself, and you're willing to apply yourself that having coming from a secure attachment, you value in some unconscious way, myself and my relationships and I value my presence and my future. And so I'm going to work at it. I'm going to stick my nose to the grindstone and not give up. I will,
39m 25s
Bethany Saltman
I have goals. And then my, my goals and the tools that I use to reach my goals were perhaps not ideal, because I was in kind of a weird environment and I didn't have a lot of parents checking in on me and it was a weird time and I am who I am. And so the tools that I was using for my tenacity were certainly not the tools that I would hope my daughter would use to prove herself in the world. You know, she has a much healthier toolbox than I did, but the goal was the same. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be engaged. I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to be a poet. I wanted to explore myself, you know, and looking back, I realized, that's the thing.
40m 9s
Bethany Saltman
That is the biggest indication of my security is that I was really interested in myself. Not just in like the teenage narcissist way, but in my mind, I wanted to know what was making me tick. And I wanted to know what made other people tick. That's what we get when we have the security to be curious, instead of just like, Oh wow, I'm suffering. And Oh, you know, I hate this. Let me, you know, drink and do drugs and try to numb myself. I was never trying to numb myself. I was exploring, I was experimenting. Big difference.
40m 42s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Which is surprising to hear because you had a rough time with your mom in many, many ways. And I remember you being shocked when you were listening to your mom answer the AAI adult attachment inventory where my mom's a good informant.
40m 57s
Bethany Saltman
Part of what this book is about is my reinterpreting my entire life through this lens of attachment. I assumed I was insecure. I assumed my mother would be insecure based on my history. And then once I started to really learn what attachment means, what security means, and I got my own AAI done and was secure. And then I didn't believe it. So I had my mom do her AAI and she came out more secure than I was. And so it just shifted everything. I thought I knew about what that means and what it means to be loved. That's why this has been such a radical journey
41m 36s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And whatever we believe. I mean wouldn't it be a great treat? If you imagine most adults, many adults maybe would think if my parents were having to answer questions about how they felt raising their kids, they would lie. I mean, would they be truthful? Would they be a good informant or would they be a bad informant? And you know, I can imagine the variations that, that you would get. And so I could also imagine, like if they turn out to be a consistently good informant to the person who's administering this thing, that you could feel tremendous relief, like, wow maybe I distorted a lot of it.
42m 16s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Maybe I didn't see the real truth of my upbringing or my relationship with them.
42m 22s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
Well, I think also our bias will tend us towards, well, I don't feel secure, it's like you said, he really discovered what secure attachment means. I don't feel like I'm achieving the way I should in my life. And I don't feel like so secure in my relationships sometimes. And so I would assume that I would be an insecure attached or avoiding, and it's like, actually, you know, the chances are higher that you are securely attached. Right. And that, that doesn't mean we don't feel insecure. Exactly. And
42m 55s
Kevin O'Donoghue
You're doing the show. So we're, we're pretty good cases that were pretty securely attached. We wouldn't be doing this show if we weren't. Right. So we've got that going
43m 6s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
They're interested surely interested in all this stuff. And I was thinking like, I've dug out some of my old journals and I was just thinking about the content of those. It's like, yeah, I was exploring and interested in what made me tick. And so there was enough there. And also to say that it, like you keep saying, it's not a lot that you have to do in order to create a secure attachment with your child. And I think it's kind of the natural thing that you would be interested in, curious, about your child. And that's the core of it, I'm in a relationship with this child. And it does sort of buck some of the old traditions of children are to be seen and not heard and all this stuff where there was such a line drawn between adults and children.
43m 55s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
And we've really, it's nice to hear how we've evolved.
43m 58s
Kevin O'Donoghue
I wonder if there were, there were historical periods that were defined by insecure attachment or secure attachment.
44m 8s
Bethany Saltman
Yeah. Culture is certainly, but Niseema what you're saying is so important and so beautiful. And so the core of this whole thing, the core of my study of the of my book and the core of attachment theory, which people really aren't aware of. That when you think about us human beings, we're so complicated and yet we keep going. Think about what our culture has been through this year. And somehow we're managing. It's incredible how resilient we are. And, if you think about how screwed up most of us are, and yet we still manage to raise children who can raise children of their own.
44m 54s
Bethany Saltman
And yes, we all suffer that. I mean, the Buddha says that is the nature of life. We are are suffering beings because we have a mind, we hunger, we are dissatisfied. Everything is impermanent. It hurts to be alive. That is the basic truth of the matter, but we can supply our children with just enough of that "you're the apple of my eye," like that feeling in and of itself, will protect children against really driving themselves to the ground. That's all we need to do. And it's so important. And it's so accessible for every single person, regardless of your state of mind, your state of health, your state of economics, your state of stress.
45m 38s
Bethany Saltman
Now all of those things will make it more difficult because obviously your system is consumed, but we can do it. We can do it.
45m 46s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And parents are doing it every day here in this country, especially now. Imagine how hard it is to have a kid in first, second, third, fourth, fifth, these grades imagine, and you're a parent and you have to negotiate your schedule with, totally changed your schedule. It's just amazing what parents are doing now.
46m 5s
Bethany Saltman
And you're a poor single mom living in a tiny apartment, and you've got a bunch of kids under 10, and you don't have the internet. And the world is telling you that the schools are closing, but the restaurants are staying open. Are you kidding me? Right. Right. I mean, don't even get me started.
46m 21s
Kevin O'Donoghue
So there are a couple of other things we want to get to. One is tools, more tools caregiver's sensitivity. So what can a parent ask themselves? Like, am I sensitive? Am I insensitive? You've mentioned four, four items of caregiver sensitivity. Do you have them cooperative versus uncooperative cooperative parenting,
46m 47s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
You might sort of look at how you were parented to in sort of answering these questions, or seeing these distinctions between sensitivity or insensitivity to baby's cues, cooperation versus interference with baby's behavior, physical and psychological availability versus ignoring and neglecting acceptance versus rejection of baby's needs, even in the crying baby. Like, am I able to set aside what I'm doing right now to take care of this individual? Can I understand the cues that my baby is giving me. This was something that was very big in the infant massage teaching, to know when the baby was saying, yes, give me touch or no, I don't want touch.
47m 32s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
Like babies can say no, they get overwhelmed. And to not take that personally, it's like, no, they're just kind of done. Or this is just not the right time. And that doesn't mean I don't like you or not want you to touch me. So it's like, just again, that adulting of can I be sensitive to the cues my child is giving me about what they really need and what they don't?
47m 54s
Bethany Saltman
Those are really those. So that's from Mary Ainsworth's sensitivity scales. One of the most profound descriptions of love I've ever read in my life. It is so beautiful. And so intricate. She is just such a genius. And nobody knows about these scales. They were mimeographed for years and relatively recently published. But you know, one of the things that I want to point out here is that it's not a matter of, I am accepting or I'm neglecting, it's a scale, a nine point scale. So you can be really rejecting and then you can be really attuned in other ways. And, and so these are good questions to ask ourselves, not to get to some end game of like, wow, I'm a parent.
48m 38s
Bethany Saltman
But like, these are things that I can think about. And these are ways that I can enter this relationship. These are doors. These are windows of entering, not these are ways to judge myself.
48m 52s
Kevin O'Donoghue
There was a couple of things in the book also at the end, talking about this couple that works with vulnerable populations, populations that you would think could create insecure attachment. I think the Steels are the name. So they did this really innovative thing with filming the parents with their kids where, most parents would worry, Oh, how am I coming across to a stranger or a videographer taking this video and seeing how I am with my child. Talk a little bit about that because I thought that was really useful.
49m 26s
Bethany Saltman
They do amazing work on video interventions. And so they do work with vulnerable populations, families who are at risk of losing their children because of abuse or neglect. And so one of the ways that they work with these families by and helping them become better parents, more sensitive parents, instead of doing one-on-one interventions, they work in a group, they do video where people are videoed with their child and then reflected back with one of the social workers or one of the researchers to sort of help them through that and give them support because that's a very, that can be a very painful experience to see yourself in that way.
50m 10s
Bethany Saltman
But that' how we develop reflective functioning or mental evaluation, the capacity to see ourselves. We have to be able to tolerate, like we were talking about before, when our child cries and we have some negative feelings, we have to be able to tolerate that and expand our level of tolerance. Bob Marvin is Mary Ainsworth 's executor, and someone that she worked with and he does this incredible work with vulnerable mothers who are at risk of losing their children. And they all work. They do this group video project together with the mothers and the babies and he and his team take episodes or clips from where the mother and the baby had these like moments.
50m 58s
Bethany Saltman
And these are mothers who did not have secure caregiving and their history. So they don't know it hasn't been modeled for them. So they don't really know how to do it other than they're human. And so they have the capacity for delight. And so what Bob Marvin's team did was they go through and they video these mothers and babies together and they take the clips where they're getting it right, where there's like a smile, a shared smile, a balloon going up, you know, any kind of tender touch. They edit this video so that every mother is seen in her best, most delighting experience with the baby.
51m 37s
Bethany Saltman
And they create this, they pull it all together and they show it to the mothers with the soundtrack of You Are So Beautiful To Me over it. And they show it to the mothers and the mothers get in their body. I mean, I dunno if you're feeling this right now, but in my body right now, I'm feeling tingley and excited and so warm to think about that. You know, these women seeing themselves in the best light with their child. And that's a way of imprinting them to give them the experience of seeing what it's like to delight. And then they can start to practice that, but we have to see it and we have to be able to see ourselves. And that's where the video work comes in.
52m 17s
Bethany Saltman
And it's a very handy, but painful tool. Imagine it, I don't know if I can handle it.
52m 23s
Kevin O'Donoghue
I remember being a high school teacher and was dreading when I'd be observed by the principal or the superintendent. Imagine if they put me on film. I mean, because frankly there's not enough training for teachers until they get into it. You don't learn it in grad school or anywhere other than by doing it. And so to see yourself on film, doing it and making it up as you go along can be really excruciating, but very valuable, very valid.
52m 48s
Bethany Saltman
You're a marginalized mother, single mother. I mean, it's just, of course they have to do the hardest things all the time. Right.
52m 55s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
And, and you're sort of pushing against the negative, the natural negative bias of the brain. Like mother's going to think she's doing it wrong all the time. And to sit down and have her watch two or three minutes of her doing it right. It's absolutely brilliant because it just opens that door.
53m 11s
Kevin O'Donoghue
What is it you think about Mary Ainsworth that drew Bethany to her so passionately. Can you close out the show, talking a little bit about Mary Ainsworth and the value of her contribution and what she means to you? I'm sure.
53m 27s
Bethany Saltman
Gosh. Well, Mary Ainsworth, you know, when people think of attachment theory, they think of John Bowlby and then they often will say, Mary Ainsworth was his student, which was not true. She was not his student. She was his colleague. She worked with him in London and she did not believe the work that he was doing on attachment. She thought that he was full of it and wrong. And so when she went to Uganda with her husband, she thought, well, l me study mothers and babies and see if what he was talking about was real. And she quickly discovered that it was in fact real. And so she did the first empirical study of attachment because she was trying to understand what this man was talking about.
54m 7s
Bethany Saltman
And she's an unsung hero of science. And so I love her for that. She was just so smart. And so human, really loved people and had incredible relationships with the people that she studied. She would stay over to people's houses for dinners. She became really close with some of these people and she was really a woman of her time. She simultaneously took to task the Johns Hopkins provost for not giving her the same amount of money as men. She staged a sit in in the men's faculty lounge so that women can be allowed to go there. But at the same time, she took a back seat to her young husband's work all the time.
54m 53s
Bethany Saltman
And she struggled with that and they ended up getting divorced and she went into psychoanalysis, which really helped her become more alive to herself, create her own sense of delight. And so she was really living in parallel with the work that she was studying. And so I just find her a fascinating figure and someone that really taught me how to delight.
55m 14s
Kevin O'Donoghue
And this book is a real tribute to her. And to you, I have to say it was a really enjoyable read. It's not a tough, difficult science text read. And of course it's valued as one of the best science books of 2020. That's going to wrap it up for us, Bethany. We thank you so much for being here. Bethany Saltman, the author of the book, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science Of Attachment." It is a terrific read folks.
55m 43s
Niseema Dyan Diemer
And if you want to get in touch with Bethany or check out her blog, which is really wonderful blog, it's on Bethanysaltman.com. She's also a book coach and is doing some coaching circles right now. So we'd like to think our affiliates airing the positive mind. KACR in Alameda, California, KAOS in Olympia, Washington, KXCR and Florence, Oregon. KYGT Idaho Springs, Colorado. KPPQ Ventura, California, WGRN Columbus, Ohio WRWK, Richmond, Virginia, our producer, Connie Shannon, our chief engineer, Jeff Brady.
56m 24s
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You can contact us at info@tffpp.org.
56m 27s
Niseema Dyan Diemer & Kevin O'Donoghue
That's short for The Foundation For Positive Psychology.org wiith questions, comments, or suggestions for the show coming to a radio station near you. Bethany Saltman, thanks again for being with us. Look forward to your future.
56m 41s
Kevin O'Donoghue
Bye-bye
56m 41s
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