“May I Get a Copy of the Refrigerator List?”

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Robert

This request arrives by email after every presentation when I run out of handouts. The most desired handout is the Refrigerator List.

It is called the Refrigerator List ever since some of the first foster parents to receive a copy — while attending my talk in Indiana — told me later they stuck it up on their frig for quick reference. It helped them in the heat of the moment when they struggled to maintain understanding and empathy for newly arrived foster children.

The Refrigerator List suggests that acting out behaviors are a coded language — the best the child can do to communicate given the insecurity of their inner thoughts and feelings. Sometimes the child is simply testing the waters — as children need to do to find out for themselves where the rule are. But an emotionally struggling child is often saying as best they can, “This is what I was given, and this is the safest way I learned to ask for help — to just dump it on you and hope you can figure me out…..please? PLEASE?! Nobody has gotten it yet, and I’m going crazy trying to regulate my awful thoughts and feelings. Here, have some….show me how to manage them!”

And next thing you know you are feeling frustrated, resentful, even furious and despairing. But it didn’t come from you. You weren’t feeling those feelings before. They came from the child as a desperate gift to you, in hopes of getting help they have been asking for since their development was left behind.

And the catch is — their horrible paradox — they have to reject, refuse and hide from whatever direct help you offer, until you have been tested to the bone for about three months longer than you can possibly stand it. Hang on to your sense of humor, your supports, and your capacity to consult for outside help!!

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The Refrigerator List

Suggestions for decoding behaviors — possible explanations

by Robert Spottswood, M.A., LCMHC Norwich, Vermont

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Violence, picking fights



— (Chronic fear of being deserted. Feeling abandoned usually triggers rage in humans and primates.) The surest way to prevent desertion is to keep you mad and angry at me for fighting.
— Please stop me! I’m begging to feel contained and safe!
— I need closeness but I do not deserve it; hitting is the safest way to be close, while disguising both my need and shame.
— My endless fear, sadness and loneliness only gets a moment of relief when I put it into other people and then laugh at them for feeling it for me. That temporarily numbs my own anguish — when I can laugh at seeing others feel my pain for me, outside of me.




Bizarre goofiness, endless pestering, whining



— I have to be in your thoughts all the time or I’m afraid I’ll disappear! (I feel empty inside; don’t yet know who I am.) Are you thinking of me now? How about now? Now? Still? What about now?….
— I didn’t have much for role models, so I provoke other people to react so I can observe them and try to learn.
— I’m so under-socialized, this is the best I can do. I’m so used to being called ‘weird’ it feels normal.
— Closeness, intimacy — terrifies me. This behavior keeps people annoyed and at a safe distance. Not hard at all.




‘Hiding’ behaviors: (sneaking, tricking, lying, stealing, hoarding, cheating, shoplifting,……….all very annoying!)
— I know I’ll be kicked out of this home, so I have to practice hiding and sneaking for when I must survive on my own.
— I don’t deserve to have my needs met. You don’t realize that yet, but I realize it. Nobody will give me anything I need after they realize how bad I am. Sneaking will be my only way to survive.
— Depending on adults is like volunteering for a concentration camp; not possible, not on radar, can’t happen ever again!
— Since I am a shameful being, but you think I’m good, I’ll try to preserve our doomed relationship as long as possible. I will sneak around and lie to protect you from the horrible reality of who I am; because you are so nice.
— Lying is my way of trying to tell you about my past; it’s what I had to learn in order to get along in my old life. Can you talk to me about that, or are you just too freaked out by lying to help me integrate my past nightmare life?

Oppositional defiance



— I need to feel safe by maintaining control. So whenever you suggest something, I immediately say NO, to create some safe space to think it over. Then maybe I can say Yes. This is me coping. And it starts over every time. Sorry. Help!
— Saying ‘I’m not coming!’ and then screaming ‘Don’t leave me!!’ recreates an early conflict drama, over and over. I’m trying to work it out, and need help, but can’t accept help. (If that doesn’t make sense, welcome to my world.) All my shame about this I must project onto you: you’re wrong, you’re mean, you’re stupid; I have to make my failure be about you. (It hurts too much that it’s really about me.)




Letting adults down, disappointing them



— Positive adults make no sense to me. All I can do is humor them until I run away or fight again, and watch their fragile dreams for me crumble over and over. Are they stupid?
— The horrors I lived through (including neglect) are not even in the middle class vocabulary of conceivable experiences, so what do I do with these nice people? Let them think their big thoughts and make their big plans for me, until I have to act out my real shame, letting them down over and over. Sorry, nice people.
— Get over your disappointment and stop caring about me. I did.




Avoiding



— You’re moving too fast. First I need emotional safety. Second I need you to co-regulate my huge emotions. Lastly I might talk about all your great ideas….. But make me feel safe first.
— Getting involved with closeness or even with conversation means getting vulnerable. Can’t happen ever again, thanks to my past.
— I never learned normal conversation, so I feel stupid when you talk to me. Just leave me alone so I don’t feel stupid.





Blowing up when told No; zero frustration tolerance; big rages when limits are set



— I’m stuck back in the Toddler’s Dilemma, back when kids normally come to accept that grown-ups who love us can also say No, and may set limits. I never was helped to resolve that back then, and I’m still trying to intimidate and terrify people into always saying Yes. I need help learning this lesson late, sorry. Please help. (But remember that I have to reject your help. Good luck, and don’t give up!)

— Too much choice, freedom, and independence! And too soon! I can’t handle it, but I can’t refuse it either – just like if you let me drive the car. I’m stuck! Please step up to the plate, take charge, and don’t let me intimidate you out of it, because I’m really stuck. Did I mention that I’m stuck? Need more Momma! Need more Papa!

— Though I can’t ask for help, I need help – it is scary to be aging with only infant skills to handle frustration. So please be confident, be in charge, figure me out, and set loving yet firm limits I can struggle against without being shamed; early and often until I am done with that struggle and can move on. I don’t need screen time, electronics, or stuff. I need parents and I need them to be in charge. I’m just a kid trying to figure out complicated stuff. (This is so frustrating….)

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Reflections on shame and rage in the office

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Robert

I feel badly that I cannot ever publicly credit some of the more rageful children for showing us so painfully how shame works. From their hard work we can see how past shame can explode into the present, greatly confusing everybody who expects to live happily ever after in real time. For me it is like being handed an x-ray of how the child’s early experiences of neglect or abuse were stored as shame, back when they were very small and unable to integrate their nightmare experiences.

In the safety of the therapy session things usually begin calmly. Hiding the shame works.

After a bit I may allude to the child’s history, at which point the shame begins to rise to the surface. Early signs of dysregulation include avoiding, distracting, interrupting and changing the subject.

Finally, when I reflect on how hard this appears for her, the shame may sense that its cover is blown. We may see a sudden switch from mild dysregulation to a rage by someone trying to be the worst person in the world — which is how shame feels. Shame tells the child that the only hope for relief is to try to make people to whom she feels vulnerable — usually family members — feel the shame for her. Swearing and spitting, hitting and hurting, she tries to give away some of the terror and disgust of her shame — tries to put it into others. (Strangers and those farther away pose much less threat of seeing under her surface defense.)

Parents often say something like, “He just changes all of a sudden, like a switch turning on with no warning!” (Similar to complaints from sweethearts of controlling adults.)

What helps in the heat of the moment? Two observations have helped some caretakers.

1 — It’s not about you. Shame rages are more like a time machine showing us a film about her past maltreatment from others; a film about surviving betrayal and ambush, despair and abandonment, but ‘surviving’ only physically — the child’s emotional despair required a huge IOU of shame be stored deep inside.

2 — She is stuck in a desperate paradox: she needs help with shame, AND shame cannot accept help. (Wow!)

Those observations can help us adults mentally step out of the situation long enough to get our bearings enough to help. We can put on our emotional oxygen mask and go back down to sit with her, trapped as she is in her septic tank of shame. There we can share the survival supplies we brought — which are common relationship gifts. They must be rejected at first, as the paradox cycles through, but that is okay because the power of relationship increases with its ashes.

What does that look like?

Beginning with acceptance, curiosity and empathy for where she is stuck, I try to model a counter-intuitive response for the parent to take home with them. For instance if the child is name-calling, I might reflect based on knowing that name-calling, like most projecting, is rooted in her fears about herself. “Somebody used to call you a ‘fucker’ — was it your first parent who called you names? You seem afraid that you might be ‘stupid’, and that is always such a big worry!”

If that fails — because shame hates empathy — I may shift to singing. Anything with a rhythm, because it is the rhythm which struggling children hear. “When I, waza sailor, upon, the high seas, Singin’ Oh, row, blow the man down,….”

But if that makes it worse I may shift to reflecting on my experience of her and articulating our relationship in this moment. “You’re doing your best to let me know how awful it feels inside. Thank you for helping me understand how hard it was when you were so little! You’re doing the best you can to help me be a better helper…such a big heart!….etc.”

And perhaps around again.

During a recent session the raging child (age six) told his adoptive father, “I’m going to run away from you!” (Shame’s deepest desire.) The father quickly responded with the hard steel of logical reality — “I won’t let you!” But I jumped in with a story before father could continue down that emotional dead end.

“Oh my gosh, you would start walking all the way home [80 miles] and your dad would drive back and tell your mom, ‘I had to come home without Seymour because he decided to walk home.’ And your mom would SCREAM with panic and make your dad come back with her in the car to look for you!”

Using the rhythm of slow repetition, I would continue. “First they thought they saw you…….but when they got close, it was just a baby deer.

“Then they thought they saw you…….but when they got close, it was just a mailbox on a post.

“Then they thought they saw you……and it was YOU! And your mother started crying and crying, she was so glad to see her son, and so happy to find him when she thought he was lost, she just cried for joy!”

At that point the boy was quiet. He could see that my eyes were welling up as I described his mother’s love for him. (Of course I was imagining the scenario with my own children, so I could better tell the story.)

And when it was time to go, he wanted to stay. We had connected through his shame-rage.

Behind the Rages of Disorganized Attachment Style

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Robert

Many caretakers begin the first session with heartbreaking tales of rage, rejection, betrayal and violence from the child in their care. “She said she wants to hurt the baby!” “She said she is stronger than any of us — and she’s five!” “He can’t be alone for two seconds without trying to destroy the upholstery.” Sometimes understanding the normal thoughts and feelings under those behaviors helps the adults to see things with less discouragement and personalization.

It is easy to forget how ego-centered children can arrive. Knowing nothing about the outside world, they assume that things happen because of them. Good things happen because I am good. Bad things happen because….I must be bad…

From there a child surrounded by neglect, chaos or other maltreatment may logically conclude that they are so bad no sane person would really like them, care for them or want them. Along comes a new caretaker, full of love but ignorant of the child’s ego-centered beliefs… Trouble.

For one thing, being hugged and loved by a new person can feel like that person just doesn’t know who I am. As someone put it, “It’s like having to rub noses with a stranger.” Sorry, nice person, but you don’t know how bad I am or you would not get half this close to me. Maybe I am smarter than you. (Always a scary thought for a child.)

Then if the child is given choices and independence normal for their chronological age, but premature for their emotional age level, they can feel overwhelmed with too much freedom for their thinly-formed social skills and regressed defenses. “What if I can intimidate these nice people?” may be a thought which both terrifies them and which they cannot let go of.

Finally, if they try something intimidating and the parent hesitates and appears to lose confidence, the child can feel compelled to recreate this drama over and over — both trying to resolve the problem of getting the parent to parent them, and exploring the first interpersonal theme over which they seem to have complete control. Their little fight-flight amygdalas (survival brain) are working overtime, triggered by more and more situations to go for control, because it makes the something predictable (intense conflict) happen over and over, on cue.

What helps caretakers is to realize the need of an out-of-control child for the parent to be in charge instead of be intimidated. This may bring up old issues for the adult, and that can become an early focus — how to remove old feelings of intimidation, of being bullied, for instance, in order to be the best parent this suffering, desperate child needs. As Dan Hughes points out, bullying children often have a constant fear of desertion. Acting violent can be their fastest route to forcing us to come to them, to think intensely about them, to feel strongly about them, to say their name and say it with real feeling…..

Inside the child is often an ongoing conversation something like this, “Are you thinking of me now? How about now? Are you looking at me? Don’t leave me! I can make you grab my arm, say my name, show me some feeling,…”

What can help is to find our confidence, move in, be close, say their name and show our deep feeling for them early and often — way, way, way before they become desperate for it.

Crossing Adult with Child Attachment Styles — some thoughts

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Robert

While preparing for an upcoming conference presentation, I created a matrix which crossed the four adult attachment styles (Autonomous, Dismissive, Preoccupied, and Unresolved) with the four childhood attachment styles (Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent, and Disorganized.) You may recall that each childhood style tends — without intervention — to lead into the corresponding adult style.

From this Vermont therapy practice, I have collected examples to fill each of the matrix blanks — Dismissive style parent seen with Avoidant style child, etcetera. I don’t have much to fill the Securely attached child column, as they rarely have need of services. But the other columns are busy. A brief look at the patterns:

Dismissive style adults seen with Avoidant style children shows a combination in which both adult and child are working hard to avoid relationship and emotional vulnerability. They seem to benefit most not only from acceptance and empathy, but also from my “speaking for” them to each other. “Sorry, Dad, about what happened yesterday — I just didn’t now how to approach you to fix it, so I didn’t say anything…” That makes sense, as all their practice has been at avoiding sharing their own inner awareness with another person. “I’m fine.”

Dismissive style adults seen with Ambivalent style children are another matter. The adult is trying hard to avoid conflict, while the child is busy seeking conflict in a bid to feel safe through control of the people and objects around them. They tend to present with the parent intimidated and the child frequently dysregulated. They benefit most from support for the adult to find their voice, step up to the plate and be in charge again. Kids need parents (safe parents) and they need the parent to be in charge. Because of child development realities, that’s the only way kids are going to be okay.

Preoccupied style adults, on the other hand, are looking for conflict, due to so much difficulty resolving issues from their earlier years. Through no conscious fault of their own, the presenting problem is often one of drama. One parent who daily clashed with his nine year-old asked me in hushed tones whether I thought that his daughter might need an exorcism. (I didn’t.) Unfortunately the dramas are rarely resolved, because they tend to be emotionally founded in unspoken hurts from the past. Only when this is interpreted do the problems in the present lose their power and people become less stuck.

Combine a Preoccupied parent figure with an Avoidant style child, and you have a chase-and-evade dyad, not unlike some unhappy marriages. But a Preoccupied style adult raising an Ambivalent style child will be a dyad often in flames — each person trying aggressively to force recognition and appreciation from the other, while both were denied these things long ago.

Not to paint too bleak a picture, the Autonomous style adult can usually make gradual headway with both Avoidant and Ambivalent style children. Why? They can rely on their own “secure emotional base”, and their own positive “internal working model” to carry them through long periods of the child’s dysregulation — while continuing to project their image of the child as capable and important. That is an important image which children need from adults — a projection of themselves which they can absorb, test, push-against, even reject, but gradually internalize.

The Disorganized style child is usually the most challenging of the childhood styles, due to learning few ways to survive unpredictable maltreatment other than creating immediate chaos in the moment. Parenting this style requires some skill and many outside supports.

What are the four attachment styles of children? 1978 and 1986

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Robert

The perplexing relational behavior of alienated children was first demystified by the insightful research of Mary Ainsworth. Her brilliant Strange Situation study findings were published in 1978 and remain relevant today. She correctly identified the various responses of different toddlers upon seeing their parent walk out of a room and then return. Additionally a strange woman simply came in, sat, and went out — at two specific times.

Ainsworth identified three childhood attachment styles, eventually called Secure, Avoidant, and Ambivalent. Her explanations were later enhanced by Mary Main (1986), who, with her assistant Judith Solomon, recognized that a leftover, chaotic fourth group (10%) had developed no patterns to make sense of themselves or their world: “Disorganized” style.

Knowing the four attachment styles of children does not guarantee an emotional connection — a quick fix. But it does provide a useful explanation of what may be going on in the child’s head — their inner life of thoughts and feelings. This in turn lets us parents and helpers feel accurate empathy for the struggling child’s difficult inner life. (There is empathy, and there is accurate empathy.) It also allows us to set limits and name our expectations with some degree of confidence that we are doing no harm. We now know how to understand and repair the child’s shame when it becomes triggered. The combination of accurate empathy plus safe limit-setting gradually unlocks emotional doors to trusting. Still, the path to close, intersubjective connection with a child may be easier for some adults than for others.