Show Notes
You took the quiz, you got the word, and nothing changed. This is about why — and about what the research actually says, which is considerably more careful than the version that reaches most people. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Ireland. In-person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Topics: why a label produces recognition without producing change, and the category error underneath it — that an attachment pattern is a state arriving in a body faster than conscious thought rather than a belief available to argument; what the research genuinely claims, including that attachment is relationship-specific rather than a personality trait, that adult measures are dimensional rather than categorical, and that stability over time is moderate rather than fixed; the observational origin of the categories in Ainsworth's Strange Situation, and how far an online quiz is from the instruments researchers actually use; each pattern treated as a protection rather than a defect — the reaching that developed because connection was uncertain, the withdrawal that developed because closeness meant losing oneself, and the mixed pattern in which longing and bracing run simultaneously; the somatic signature of each, since an unanswered message is a tightness in the chest rather than a thought; the systemic view of what a family field made possible and what it could not hold, without blame; and earned security — the finding that a coherent account of what happened predicts security better than the events themselves do.
More from Blissful Evolution
I can see my pattern. I know exactly what I do. I know where it comes from. I have read enough books to write the book myself at this point. And I still do the thing. If that sounds like you — you are not broken. You are not failing your healing. You are running into one of the great open secrets of inner work: self-awareness alone doesn’t change much. It is the door through which everything else becomes possible. And the entire self-help industry has been selling the door as if it were the room.
A morning practice for people who wake up already tense. Not relaxed. Not neutral. Already a little tight in the jaw, already a little high in the shoulders, mind already running. You are not failing your mornings. Your system has been online since 4am, scanning. The most useful place to do nervous system work is before the day starts. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. In-person sessions across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Drawing on polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges), the cortisol awakening response research (Clow, Fries, Hucklebridge) and Somatic Experiencing. Work more deeply with morning anxiety, chronic activation, or burnout: somatic therapy in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare, or online globally.
What if you didn't have to be your tiredness, your anxiety or your anger? In this Sacred Talk, Abi Beri offers a single phrase that changes how you meet difficult emotions: "the one inside me who is tired." Drawing on parts work, Internal Family Systems and centuries of contemplative practice, but without the jargon, Abi explores why a small shift in language creates real space between you and what you feel, why being with an emotion often helps more than fixing it, how to use the phrase in everyday life, and when inner pain needs skilled support. The talk ends with a short guided practice of turning towards the one inside you who needs attention. Abi Beri is an IPHM-accredited integrative somatic therapist and family constellation facilitator based in Ireland, working with clients online worldwide. One-to-one sessions:https://somatictherapyireland.com Family Constellation groups:https://familyconstellationseurope.com
You could read a room before you could read a book. And people praised you for it — which is the part that makes this so difficult to see. You were not a child who was neglected. You were a child who was employed. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Ireland. In person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Topics: parentification and the distinction the research draws between its instrumental and emotional forms, and why the second does the deeper damage — practical burden completes, and responsibility for an adult's inner state does not; the three factors that determine whether childhood responsibility was developmentally fine or harmful, of which the most consistently significant is whether it was ever acknowledged, since being needed and recognised is survivable while being needed and invisible is not; the adult presentation, which is not a childhood complaint but a personality and usually an admired one — the impossibility of rest, the genuine absence rather than indecision when asked what you want, over-functioning followed by unvoiced resentment, attraction to people in difficulty because difficulty is a legible situation, the flinch at being helped, and a low persistent guilt with no identifiable object; the family ledger of giving and receiving running across generations, and what happens to an account that is never settled; invisible loyalty, and why understanding the pattern perfectly changes nothing, because it was never a thinking error; the systemic account of a child standing in a place that was not theirs, which never looks like power; a fair treatment of the parents, who were in the overwhelming majority of cases drowning rather than malicious; and why over-functioning in adult life is so often still an attempt to build retrospectively the family in which somebody was looking after you.
A trauma-informed somatic practice for the minutes and hours after something difficult has just happened — an argument, a piece of bad news, a moment that landed hard. We are not trying to fix what happened. We are giving the body the conditions it needs to begin coming back. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. In-person sessions across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Drawing on Somatic Experiencing(Peter Levine), polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges) and the trauma-informed somatic tradition.