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I’ve written here before about emotional
constipation, a kind of unfinished business
left over from childhood which makes it
difficult for us to feel and function like
grownups.*
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For recovering people, though, there’s
another kind of unfinished business —
another unhealed emotional wound —
that is important to understand.
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And this wound is not one we’re likely
to discover on our own.
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It is rooted in how our mothers responded
to us when we were infants.
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Mark Epstein describes it in his book
The Trauma of Everyday Life, drawing
on the seminal work of British child
analyst D.W. Winnicott.
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Here’s a simplified version of how Epstein
explains it:
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One of a mother’s most important jobs is
to teach her child how to identify and
handle feelings.
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She does this by modeling a combination
of empathy (Oh, you’re having a feeling)
and reassurance (Everything will be fine).
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Anyone who spends any time observing
mothers with their children sees this happen
over and over.
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Oh, you’re wet?
Here, let’s get you changed.
Oh, you’re hungry?
Let’s warm up your bottle.
Oh, you hurt yourself?
Here, let mama kiss it.
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And so on. This ability to pay attention
to and respond appropriately to the
infant’s experience is called attunement.
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When attuned to the infant, Winnicott
writes,
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mothers become able to put
themselves into the infant’s shoes,
so to speak. That is to say,
they develop an amazing capacity
for identification with the baby,
and this makes them able
to meet the basic needs of the
infant in a way that no machine
can imitate, and no teaching
can reach.**
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Mom’s attunement is essential to the
infant’s emotional development,
because it models for the child how
to attune to itself.
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She is teaching her child Here’s what
you do with a feeling: You notice it.
You respect it. You pay it attention.
You decide what it’s trying to tell you,
and you respond accordingly.
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An attuned mother provides a kind of
emotional container — an experience
of holding, attention and safety —
which the infant absorbs and learns to
provide for themself.
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But what if the mother can’t attune to
her infant?
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What if something else is occupying
her attention or draining her energy?
What if she is sick, or exhausted, or
depressed, or frightened, or angry, or
being abused, or self-medicating with
some substance?
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“An infant who is held well enough
is quite a different thing from one
who has not been held well enough,”
writes Winnicott.
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You see two infants: one has been
held…well enough, and there is
nothing to prevent a rapid emotional
growth, according to inborn tendencies.
The other has not had the experience
of being held well and growth has
had to be distorted and delayed,
and some degree of primitive agony
has to be carried on into
life and living.**
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What Winnicott calls primitive agony is
the experience of being left all alone to
deal with incomprehensible and
uncontrollable feelings.
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This is not an agony that simply fades
away over time.
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Instead those afflicted carry it into
adulthood, where can take in two forms.
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The first form is a chronic background
anxiety, which occasionally erupts as a
fear of breaking down, “losing it,” or
going crazy.
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The other form is a damaged ability to
deal in healthy ways with their adult
emotional life.
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(To be continued.)
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**All Winnicott quotes from The Trauma of Every Life by Mark Epstein (Bantam, 2014).
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