Elzan Frank

The tricky matter of emotions: Attunement as “mind-mindedness”

Mind-mindedness is a concept in developmental psychology. It refers to a caregiver’s tendency to view their child as an individual with a mind, rather than merely an entity with needs that must be satisfied. Mind-mindedness involves adopting an intentional stance towards another person. Individual differences in mind-mindedness have been observed in the first year of life, and have been observed to have important developmental consequences.

Wikipedia

Meaning making and emotion regulation

“Seeing ourselves from the outside and others from the inside”.

How do we make sense of our own feelings and the behaviours of others? How do we learn to soothe others and ourselves? Our understanding of an event and our capacity to deal with it are two sides of the same coin. Much personal distress and relational difficulties are the result of distorted meaning making.

Through the experiences that we had of being understood and being soothed in our earliest care-giving relationships, we learn to mentalize (to have in mind, to make meaning of) our own reactions as well as those of others. The ways in which we experienced this “having in mind”, will comfort us, or scare us, or make us anxious, or make us want to run away from it. How we respond today is very much imbedded in the early reactions of our caregivers.[1]

Authentic experiences of being are undermined when parents and partners lose sight of us, when we have to appease them or when we – or they – are idealised. It is the psychological essence of feeling lonely. Of feeling uncared for.

When a parent says to a baby, “Hey, I am sorry that I am irritated with you. It is not your fault. I am worried about work, and now I take it out on you; you are just a baby”, the baby gets to understand that feelings have reasons – even if they are sometimes unreasonable. The child learns that the emotional world, and its problems, has its own meanings, and that these can exist separately from the self. Combined with humour and compassion, powerful tools of distress management are thus being developed, as humans learn that people have separate minds and can use meaning making as tools to use when we need to cope with our own problems and the difficult behaviours of others.

Adults, who were not sufficiently kept in mind as children, can fail to keep others in mind as separate, meaningful beings. They do not check in with the other, but respond in terms of their own overwhelming feelings, and tend to negate the realities of the other.  In depressed persons, a history of the negation or oversight of their feelings (not necessarily with ill-intent), can lead to the cognition that ‘I do not really matter’, with a type of existential nihilism settling in. In an ironic reversal, they may tend to overvalue the feelings of others, whilst undervaluing their own.

This is not only a personal development; whole societies can act like this. Having your mind in my mind has as much to do with how we think of others, as about ourselves. It plays itself out when we meet people who are different from us, and wherever we find expressions of power. 

Having your mind in my mind

A little girl of six, two neat brown plaits standing away from her head is brought to my practice because of her bed-wetting. Her mother is having an affair. The parents are whispering behind their bedroom door, clearly in distress. When the little girl asks about this, they reply that she should not worry, this is a grown-up problem, and they will sort it out. The little girl continues to worry. I understand her bed-wetting to be her inability to cope with the tension that lives behind the closed bedroom door.

“Little girls worry when their parents argue behind closed doors, “ I say.

“Yes”, she replies. “But what does it mean? Does it mean murder?”

The capacity to see things from the child’s perspective is an essential ingredient of sensitive caregiving. This means that the child can be safely held in the parent’s mind. For a child to experience ‘thinking about’ as a safe and inherently useful experience, the parent has to sufficiently often name the child’s experience appropriately without criticism or judgment; just accepting and naming the child’s mind, as it is. Parents who react in ways that a child cannot make sense of, or cannot have in mind, or are unsuited to the child’s developmental stage, creates unknown anxiety and an avoidance to keep things in mind. In extreme cases, a state of “mindlessness” is created.

A few years ago I visited a woman who worked in our house when I was a child. I was curious about why I had felt so safe and free with her, and had cried such bitter tears when she left. We were having tea in her lounge, when her granddaughter, aged about six, and whom she looks after during the day, was called in from outside where she had been playing with others. She stood at the entrance to the door of the lounge, sulking. “What is the matter?” asked her grandmother, with a note of slight concern in her voice. Then promptly remarked, “Oh you are upset because you have to come in already.” The little girl’s posture relaxed (grandmother was right, and had read her mind correctly, and accepted this without fuss, and without blame or the need for a sermon). “Come”, said her grandmother in a soothing voice, “let me fetch you a yoghurt, and then I will tell you who this lady is who is having tea with us.” They left for the kitchen, hand in hand. When they returned the granddaughter joined us, sitting on the carpet, closer to me now, eating her yoghurt, curious about the stranger.

I understood that this woman has the wonderful ability to see a child, and to care about what she sees, and to name what she sees in such a manner that it contains the child, and to take ordinary practical steps to ‘make things better’.

The little girl in the first example, the one whose parents were experiencing problems, has parents who love her, and who care about her. But they did not feel safe to name her fears. Unnamed they lived inside her. She tried to make meaning by thinking of the worst thing she could think of – did they commit an act of murder? Would this mean they would have to go to jail? What would happen to her? Not coping, she wets her bed.

I have seen two extremes: Not talking about  and bizarre, sadistic manipulation.

The most extreme case of not talking about that I ever saw was of a 17 year old girl who had to have a mastectomy because of breast cancer, and nobody in the family was allowed to talk about it. Not even one conversation took place between mother and daughter. Unsurprisingly, the girl became mute and refused to leave her bedroom. This is extreme, I know. In my experience ‘ not talking about’ makes its appearance in some form or another in most (possibly all) families, but for sure it plays a substantial role in the lives of all persons with depression, and must be taken into consideration as part of a road to recovery.

Mind-mindedness is easiest understood as reflecting the other person’s experience back to them, and them agreeing that is how it is. In this way the person feels real and validated. Experiences of being understood grounds us, and has the world make sense. Having our feelings or our realities regularly denied, leads to mistrust and confusion – in ourselves and in the other.  I once saw a young woman who grew up with this double-bind: “Don’t be shy, say what you think”, she was admonished. The moment that she spoke up she was criticised, followed by “don’t be so sensitive.” What was she to think of herself and her opinions? How was she to make sense of her own mind and the minds of others?

Let met make clear that attunement does not have to happen 100% of the time. This is not necessary, at all. It is not even recommended. Too much attunement is intrusive. Normality is what we are striving for.  80- 70% Of the time would be great, 60% of the time would be fine. Less than that, and you will be picking up some trouble.

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[1] There exists a vast field of research on t