We teach the skill of mentalizing/reflective functioning by practicing how to reflect on things that happen in everyday life so that you can practice mentalizing more in your everyday life.
If you can think and talk about what you are thinking and feeling, then you can manage the thoughts and feelings, especially ones that can be hard (e.g. anger, sadness).
Our approach strongly emphasizes attachment relationships (e.g. between mother and child), to improve and strengthen the bond.
We practice reflective functioning together by promoting a mentalizing attitude. This is done by being curious, asking questions, and using our imaginations.
When we keep an open mind and question things more than look for answers we are mentalizing!
When you THINK or you TALK you are able to keep other people’s minds in mind.
When we think we know what has happened we STOP MENTALIZING because we stop looking for other points of view.
This means that mentalizing requires asking questions NOT looking for answers.
We want to mentalize but we do not want to overdo it or underdo it!
We want parents to have their child’s mind in mind.
We want parents to think about their own thoughts and feelings as they take care of their children.
How do these parental thoughts and feelings affect caring for your child? Everything you do affects your child.
Mentalizing helps parents to be reliably available to meet their children’s needs.
These skills promote secure attachment between parents and children.
When stress or conflicts happens people can lose the ability to mentalize effectively.
When you are stressed, you need to mentalize the most to manage your emotions but this is when people stop mentalizing and they actually need to mentalize the most.
We want parents to improve their ability to tolerate negative feelings and thoughts.
We do this by reflecting on how you and others think and feel about problems or situations.
We will reflect on a hypothetical or made up situation to practice reflective functioning.
AND we are going to focus on tolerance when we discuss your real-life experience.
If you are interested in participating in the ATTACH™ Program, please contact your agency to see if they provide this program.
If you have any questions about the program, please contact us.