The Neurobiology of Relationship

In the context of fear, attachment failure is inevitable, leaving behind a lasting imprint on all future relationships. Rather than experiencing closeness as a haven of safety, traumatized clients are driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationship. In this presentation, we will address the impact of traumatic attachment on affect regulation, exploring how to understand the effects of trauma on attachment from a psychobiological perspective, and how to work with the somatic legacy of attachment. Using interventions drawn from neuroscience and attachment research and from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body-centered talking therapy for the treatment of trauma and affect dysregulation, this workshop will present a neurobiologically-informed understanding of the impact of trauma on attachment behavior and describe how to use “co-regulation” rather than interpretation to help our clients tolerate their emotional and autonomic distress. Co-regulation is not dependent on words: it is a relational exchange of emotional and somatic communication in which every adjustment in bodily or affective state in one participant helps to calm, soothe, regulate or dysregulate the other. When we “co-regulate” our clients, they often experience a safety in relationship they may never have felt before.