How Understanding Secure Base Can Help Your Relationships in Narcissism Recovery

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about attachment styles and secure base, and how having a parent with narcissistic traits affects your ability to have an inner secure base of your own. We’ve seen how the way parents talk to and treat their children becomes the way children talk to and treat themselves. And we’ve looked at how, in an ideal world, parents self-regulate when their child is dysregulated, and help the child re-regulate. This experience of co-regulation teaches children how to self-regulate, and leads to a secure attachment style.

What we haven’t explored yet is how, in an ideal world, that ability to self-regulate and secure attachment affects adult relationships. In adult relationships, the ideal relationship pattern shifts to one of co-regulation. In healthy co-regulation, both partners are able to self-regulate most of the time. But when one partner becomes dysregulated, the other partner is able to stay calm, confident, compassionate, and connected, and help their partner re-regulate. Instead of the parent being the child’s secure base, as we see in the parent-child relationship, partners become one another’s secure base in friendships and romantic relationships.

If you had a parent with narcissistic traits, part of narcissism recovery will include working on inner secure base, and exploring how to be a secure base for others. Your childhood experiences were with a parent who wasn’t able to be a secure base for you. When that’s the case, it’s hard to develop an inner secure base. If your attachment style is insecure, it’s hard for you to be a secure base for others.

So, today we’ll take a look at how understanding secure base can help your relationships in narcissism recovery. It’s easy to be someone else’s secure base when they’re regulated. You only have to focus on keeping yourself regulated! It’s more challenging being someone else’s secure base, because now you’ll have to be your own secure base, even when the other person becomes dysregulated.

Ultimately, it’s not whether you have an anxious style and the other person has an avoidant style that matters. What matters is whether you can be a secure base for yourself when your partner is dysregulated (and, of course, whether they can be a secure base for you when you’re dysregulated).

An anxious or avoidant attachment style tells me about how you’ll react when you’re dysregulated. But the fix isn’t to change up your attachment style—it’s to shift from an insecure attachment to a secure one, so you can be a secure base for your partner, and they can do the same for you.

So, talking about your attachment style, while predictive, is really only a small part of the attachment picture. In emotionally focused couples therapy, a part of the therapist’s role is to help partners learn how to self-regulate, so they can help their partner re-regulate. It doesn’t matter whether you’re anxiously or avoidantly attached if you can’t be present to your partner!

Whether you anxiously pursue your partner, or you distance, ultimately the goal is two-fold—for you to get better at noticing what’s happening, so you can be your own secure base more often, and for your partner to get better at noticing what’s happening, so they can be a secure base for you in those moments when you get stuck. When both partners are securely attached, they can be a secure base for one another.

Inner Secure Base=Secure Attachment=Secure Base for Others

What does it mean to be securely attached? Being securely attached essentially means you’re a secure base for yourself. People with a secure attachment have a positive view of themselves, and they feel confident in relationships. They don’t feel the need to rush the relationship, and they feel safe setting and maintaining healthy boundaries.

This makes sense, because when you love yourself unconditionally, you enjoy your own company, and you don’t feel a desperate need to have a partner or a BFF. You enjoy the relationships you have, and feel confident you can establish new relationships over time.

You aren’t worried about having a partner or establishing new relationships in a hurry, because when you love yourself unconditionally, it’s easy to see yourself as someone others could love.

And you see boundaries as a healthy part of relationships. So, whether you need to set and maintain a boundary, or your friend, family member, or partner needs to set and maintain a boundary with you, you don’t see boundaries as uncomfortable in and of themselves.  

Clearly, building a secure inner base is key to a healthy relationship with both self and others. As you work on your secure attachment to self, what can you do to enjoy a healthier relationship with others? Whether your current attachment style is anxious, avoidant, or disorganized, here are some skills you can practice in all of your relationships. These are skills you can use as a friend, parent, or partner!

ARE You a Caring Parent/Partner? Is Your Partner There for You?

In emotionally focused couples therapy, we use the acronym ARE to describe the characteristics of a caring parent/partner. ARE stands for available, responsive, and engaged.

In ARE, available means they are there when you need them. When a caring parent/partner isn’t able to be available, they express concern, and the desire to connect.

A responsive parent/partner does their best to meet your needs. If you need someone to listen, they don’t try to solve your problems. If you need help solving a problem, they don’t shrug you off.

An engaged parent/partner makes it clear through their eye contact, body language, voice tone, and voice volume that they care about how you think and feel.  

It’s easy to see how, if you have a parent who has narcissistic traits, your childhood wasn’t like this. Instead of available, responsive, and engaged, your parent was self-centered and unempathetic. You may not have learned how to be as ARE as you’d like to be with friends and family.

Or, you may struggle to maintain connection and compassion to your own thoughts and feelings, and be generous and kind to others to a fault. This tendency makes you wildly attractive to people with narcissistic traits, whether it's in the workplace, friendships, or partnerships.

Regulate-Relate-Reason

ARE is a great acronym for explaining what it takes to be a secure base for someone else. When it comes to putting it into play, I use Dr. Bruce Perry’s Regulate-Relate-Reason model.

I like Regulate-Relate-Reason for several reasons. First, it’s sequential—that is, it’s grounded in how the brain responds to being dysregulated, and explains how you can best address dysregulation.

Second, Perry’s work was designed for parents and children. If you’re in narcissism recovery and you’re raising your own children, Regulate-Relate-Reason is a powerful tool to help you parent your children differently than the way you were parented.

Finally, Regulate-Relate-Reason is just as useful in other relationships as it is in responding to trauma or in parenting. The gist of Regulate-Relate-Reason is that we meet people where they are in their brain, emotionally speaking.

Think back to the last time you were feeling emotionally out of balance, and someone tried to talk you out of your feelings. Did it help to be told “Don’t be so emotional” or “I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of things”? Would it be more helpful to hear “I’m sorry this is happening to you” or “How can I help?”

You’d probably prefer to know someone could see and hear you were unhappy, and they were going to stay with you until you felt better! Regulate-Relate-Reason gives you a tool to do this in your relationships, so you can be a secure base for others. (If you’d like to learn more about Perry’s work, here’s a link to his most recent book.)

Regulate – I’m Calm, and I’m Not Going to Leave You

Regulate is both the most important, and the most often ignored, aspect of secure base in relationships. Regulate is key because without it, it’s difficult to get to Relate and Reason.

Why? Regulate-Relate-Reason is neurosequential—that is, it addresses how the human brain works when it’s dysregulated. When you’re dysregulated, your entire brain—the brain stem, limbic (feeling) brain, and cognitive (thinking) brain are all overstimulated.

You can try to relate or reason with a person who’s dysregulated, but when you do, you’re speaking to their thinking brain, which is largely off-line. You’re also ignoring their upset brain stem and limbic brain, which is where the action’s happening when someone is dysregulated.

Until you get their brain stem and limbic brain calmed down, you’ll make little headway.

So, what you want to convey in Regulate is that you can see the other person is upset, and you care about how they’re thinking and feeling—but you’re calm, and you’re not going to leave them because they’re upset.

What Does Regulate Look Like?

One of the common themes I hear working with people who have a parent with narcissistic traits is the parent sending the child to their room because the child is angry or sad. “You’re too emotional!” very commonly begins in childhood, because a parent is unable to regulate their own emotions when their child is upset.

If this describes your childhood, imagine how different your childhood would have been if your parent had been able to compassionately say, “You really wanted that toy” or “I can see this is a big deal for you.” Just knowing someone else sees and hears and cares about you, even if they’re not able to make things different, creates safety and connection.

How can you do this in your relationships now? Here are the components of Regulate you'll need to demonstrate:

• I am feeling love, not fear

• I am calm, connected to both you and me, and compassionate for both you and me, and I express this with statements like “I’m sorry,” “You really wanted that toy,” “You sound sad” or “I can see you’re upset," or by singing, rocking, clapping, or modeling taking deep, calming breaths

• My body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and voice volume all say I am available, responsive, and engaged with you

  
  

Relate (I see you, I hear you, and I care about you)

In this stage, the other person has moved from being in their brainstem to being in their limbic brain. They’re not as dysregulated, but they’re not in their thinking brain, either. Your role is to continue to be a calm presence, and begin to communicate to the other person you care about how they’re feeling.

Here are the components of Relate:

• I am feeling love, not fear

• I am continuing to feel calm, connected, and compassionate, and express curiosity with statements that like “Tell me more about that,” “I feel the same way,” “Do you want a hug?” or “I’m here if you want to talk”

• My body language, facial expression, tone of voice and voice volume continue to express that I am are available, responsive, and engaged

Reason (I Want to Hear What You Think, and I Want to Tell You What I Think)

This is the stage that parents, friends, and partners often jump to, skipping over regulate and relate. That’s unfortunate, as former President Theodore Roosevelt’s quote “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” is wildly applicable to relationships of all kinds.

In this stage, the other person is beginning to reregulate. They are calmer, and have shifted from being stuck in their brainstem or limbic brain to their cognitive brain. This means you can shift from focusing on their feelings to focusing on their thoughts. You can also begin to share your thoughts and feelings about what’s happening.

So, the components of Reason include:

• I am feeling love, not fear

• I am continuing to feel calm, connected, compassionate, and curious

• I share that I am feeling courageous, confident, clear-minded, and creative with statements like “What do you think?” “I was thinking…” “I wonder what would happen if…” “Let’s talk about what happened"

One last thing: We’ll talk more about this in an upcoming post, but for now...If you’re a parent, it’s important to remember that discipline (defined as teaching your child the right and wrong things to do, how and why to do the right things, and how to avoid doing the wrong things) can only happen in Reason. If your child is dysregulated, they can’t learn!

Think back to the last time something scary happened—say, someone cut you off in traffic, and you nearly avoided an accident. While you were slamming on your brakes, would that have been a good time to learn a new word in a foreign language, or learn how to do a new task at work? Of course not, because you’d be busy trying to keep yourself alive.

The same is true for children. It can be challenging to wait until a child is regulated to talk about what happened, and what the child can do differently next time. But it’s imperative. Your child can’t think logically and learn from you when they’re in their brain stem or their limbic brain, emotionally speaking. It's up to us as parents to have an inner secure base, stay regulated, and be there for our child when they're dysregulated. It's only when they're regulated that they can put their cognitive brains to work.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of attachment style and secure base, and how they impact self-esteem and relationships. If you’d like to learn more about how to strengthen your inner secure base, or how to be a secure base for your loved ones, I encourage you to work with an attachment or emotionally focused couples therapist. You can learn to be more securely attached to yourself, and create healthier relationships with the people you love. You deserve a lifetime of thriving!

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