Right now when we're talking about safety in a really unsafe time, when we don't feel safe ourselves because our neuroseption is constantly being pulled for danger and threat,

is all of us as mental health people have significant and I think valid concerns about the mental health implications of this time.

And there is something we can do that is so simple that I think is so powerful and that is this, to be thinking about our messaging.

So with our kids, when we say things like, we're not going to the playground or you can't go to school or, you know, you can't see your friends because it's not safe.

It's dangerous to do that, people can get sick and we use threat-based, danger-based messaging and we do that repeatedly.

We know that the brain is making these neural associations and my fear is that we are creating neuroseption of danger around things like going to school being with friends.

So what we want to do with this idea of creating safety and our children relying on us as being safe harbors and safe havens from the storm is to focus all of our messaging from a safety-based place.

Therapist Uncensored brings you decades of experience with interpersonal psychotherapy, relational neuroscience, modern attachment, and anything else they think will be helpful in healing humans.

Now, hear your co-host, Dr. Anne Kelly, and Sue Marriott.

Hi everyone, this is Anne and we are doing replays of some of our most important episodes and timely episodes throughout our five seasons.

Today's episode was originally recorded in May of 2020, during one of the most intense times of the coronavirus lockdown.

And in this episode, my co-host Sue Marriott talks with Dr. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson about strategies for showing up for yourself and your children, especially why under significant stress.

Now, given the recent rise again across the world in cases from the variant and the increase in fear and restrictions, we decided that this episode was extremely relevant today.

So, Dan and Tina, as well as Sue, are all experts in attachment and interpersonal neurobiology, and together they discuss ways to help us all engage in our more secure part of our attachment system.

So, remember, we all have secure ways of relating. Some of us live there more, some of us based on our history, you have more preoccupied or dismissing or just organized ways of living more than we want.

But we all have secure ways of connecting to our attachment system, but when we are full of fear, distress, chronic threat, and stress, we can shut that completely down in ways that hurt us all.

Now, this episode really brings home ways we can focus our attention to boost our secure attachment system and engage our children as well as other loved ones through the power of showing up from our more secure centers.

So, I think you guys will get a lot out of this episode. Let's jump in.

Well, welcome back, Dan and Tina. I can tell you how excited we are to have you back and to have you guys together is just such a delight.

Well, we're delighted to be here with you, Sue. Great to see you.

And always, you two are some of my just favorite people. So, I've been looking forward to this. I told Sue in an email that I wish I had looked a few days back and my calendar about today because I would have had so much joy just anticipating this conversation.

That is so sweet. You're always so warm. I want to take notes about how to be warm. So, because I'm working on that.

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