This document discusses developing intimacy through acknowledgment. It addresses attachment behavior and survival strategies formed from early experiences. Key concepts are the space for encounters, bridging problems, and acknowledging intimacy through dialogue. This dialogue involves mirroring, acknowledging, and empathizing with the other. The goal is to establish safety, structure, and a calm pace. Developing the capacity for mentalizing, or acknowledging intimacy, allows one to better understand others and regulate emotions.

1. THE VIBRANT RELATIONSHIP
Developing Acknowledging Intimacy
Kirsten Seidenfaden & Piet Draiby
LONDON
20.-21. Oktober 2012

2. My Baggage:
Attachment Behavior
Brain development
Survival Strategies
My stories

4. We can free ourselves from
old habits
and
survival strategies

5. PROBLEMS
- may not be solved
- but they may dissolve

6. Key concepts:
The Space
The Bridge
The Encounter

11. Appreciation ------ Acknowledgment
Sympathy ------ Empathy

12. Key concept:
Acknowledging Intimacy
(in-to-me-se)

13. Key processes:
The Acknowledging Dialogue
Mirroring
Acknowledging
Empathizing

14. Purposes of ”The dialogue of
Acknowledgment”:
Establishing
- a safe space
- a clear sturcture
- contact
- Calm and easy going pace

16. When Mirroring
- the listeners responsibility is to be
1. aware of what is said
2. attentive through the whole process
3. curious as to your partners experience
4. willing to let go of own thoughts and feelings
- The storytellers responibility is to
1 talk about her-/himself : ”- I am/feel - ” etc..
2 avoid criticising your partner
3 express him/-herself as precisely and briefly as
possible
4 talk about one theme at a time
5 listening attentively to your partners mirroring – no
interruptions

17. Attachment
Emotional attunement and mirroring
being
attentive and predictable 17

18. Our Bio-psycho-social destiny
We are born in connection
We suffer in solitude
We develop in relation
cit. Anne-Lise Løvlie Schibby

19. Attachment Theory:
The ways we form
attachments to other people

21. The Securely attached child will
develop more competence
The Insecurely attached child will
develop more survival
strategies

24. Attachment possibilities
Secure Attachement: Child – grown up
Acquired secure Attachment: Grown up – Grown up

25. Mentalizing
– or in plain language:
Acknowledging intimacy
- is a capacity we can develop throughout life
Seidenfaden & Draiby
25
www.relationsterapi.dk

26. By Mentalizing you simultaneously draw on
your ability to:
-regulate stress – regulating the
intensity of your emotions
-keep up your attention
- empathize and understand
As well as furthering the development of
these core functions

27. From The London Parent Child Project:
” - given the range of evidence …. we are drawn
inevitably to suggest: In order to help children
grow from their earliest childhood forward toward
their full social and emotional potential, a central
aim of intervention and prevention work must be to
encourage reflective functioning in parents or
parents-to-be.”
From:Howard Steele & Miriam Steele In: Mentalization, Frederic N.
Busch (ed.), The Analytic Press, London 2008.

31. The Cogwheels and the Gear shift
Breakdown
and
Restoration
of the Acknowledging Intimacy
Seidenfaden & Draiby
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www.relationsterapi.dk