Validating emotional bonding psychotherapy: what is it and how does it work?

Validating emotional bonding psychotherapy, a child therapy approach.

Validating emotional attachment psychotherapy is a treatment model applied in social education for children who have problems, especially those who have grown up in environments of neglect.

This model has many components and is complex, addressing aspects such as attachment style, mentalization, parenting style and, of course, emotions. Let's take a closer look.

What is validating emotional bonding psychotherapy?

Validating emotional validation psychotherapy (VEV) is a treatment framed within the integrative models in psychotherapy and is conceived as a specialized methodology of intervention in juvenile justice and child protection systems. It is a model that works on the relational aspects of the minor and is applied in the psychoeducational and psychosocial field..

It is a psychotherapeutic approach of limited support that intervenes in several aspects, giving a greater sense of control to the context in which the person has been raised, treating and improving the possible serious egosyntonic disorders that he/she suffers through intervention in emotional dysregulation, relational disorder and aspects related to the environment that have contributed to the minor's dysfunctional and pathological behavior.

The main objective of validating emotional attachment psychotherapy is to validate the emotional experience of value by creating a container environment, i.e. a safe and growing environment.. For this purpose, we try to mobilize the necessary resources to modify the child's attachment style when he/she begins to be attended by a social educator in order to convert it into a secure attachment, using a methodology that can vary in modality, being able to be individual, family, group and/or community intervention.

Aspects that are taken into account in this type of therapy

As we mentioned before, one of the main groups with which this type of therapy is used are This type of therapy is used with minors, especially those under the care of different social protection systems.. These minors, who can be both children and adolescents, may find themselves in a situation of severe neglect, having been victims of dysfunctional parenting styles and other problems that are the origin and possible cause of their mental health problems, maladaptive behaviors and addictions.

This modality of therapy takes into account the following:

• Explanation of behavior from the etiology of psychic suffering.
• Possibility of dual pathologies, with concomitant consumption of toxic substances that aggravate the picture.
• Relational problems or bonding disorders.
• Educator as modulator of the environment, context and elements of containment.
• Self-regulatory capacity of the individual to know what he/she thinks and does.
• Reflective capacity to order, process and organize information.
• Decision making and responsibility

The social educator or social psychologist acts as a source of change for the child.The child is a key and controllable element in the life of the person he/she is trying to help, especially in residential and state assistance contexts. It is possible that the minor does not want to collaborate, or does not feel able to change his own life, for this reason every educator working from the validating emotional bonding psychotherapy should have the following specific objectives:

• To become a supportive psychotherapy device and generate adherence to the helping relationship.
• To establish foci based on relational pathology.
• To approach involuntariness through a container and validating bond.

The educational intervention link

As psychotherapy applied specifically with individuals with adjustment problems, it should be taken into account that the quality of the staff working with the minors will have a significant influence on their readaptation. As in all educational relational processes, the most stable factor in the life of children in distress, sometimes the only one, is the educational care figure, which is why it is so important for the educator himself to keep an eye on his personal characteristics and what he shows when carrying out the intervention.This is the reason why it is so important that the educator himself watches his personal characteristics and what he shows when carrying out the intervention.

The model applied is so important because, if it is effective, it can make the child leave behind the negative self-identifications, due in large part to havingThe model applied is so important because, if it is effective, it can lead the child to leave behind negative self-identifications, largely due to having been subjected to a failed parenting style.

Although the educator or social therapist does not intend to replace the child's parent, it should be said that the educational link between the educator/therapist and the child is very important, something which, if positive, will contribute to the performance and progress of the child.

This bond should try to be built on the basis of the following aspects:

• Individual factors that guide the way of establishing the relationship of the minor with a non-pathological basis.
• Container link, insofar as it collects what the other puts on oneself in an unconscious way.
• Validating bond, helping the other to recognize his emotions and helping him to connect them with what makes him suffer.
• Stability.
• Generation of pleasant relationships.

Understanding circularity

During the establishment of the educational link in the framework of this therapy, it is a matter of making the individual aware of how these relationships influence him/her and others when relating to other people.. It is necessary to help him understand how we relate to each other ("when you do X, I feel Y" and vice versa). This type of influences in human relationships is what we call circularity, whose name is due to the infinite character of human relationships, insofar as the behaviors of one or the other are reciprocally conditioned.

The problems of homeless children can be understood not as a cause-effect relationship, but as a circular relational dynamic, insofar as someone in their environment is conditioned in a reciprocal way.When someone in their environment does something bad to them, they do not know how to respond in an adaptive way, they carry out some dysfunctional behavior, someone else responds negatively, and thus a circular relational dynamic is established.

All family dynamics can contribute to the generation of different types of relationships, of which the members themselves are not necessarily aware of their influences. These relationships can be functional and validating, in which emotions are more or less well accepted and in accordance with what the family members experience, or invalidating, in which emotions are oppressed or there is no awareness of what should be felt and done, promoting regulation problems in the short and long term.

Within the psychotherapy of validating emotional bonding, several basic aspects in the relationship are taken into account, which if identified, allow us to to work on the way in which the child bonds to other people and make it more adaptive.. Among these aspects we find the attachment style, the relational style, the experience of basic emotions, the mentalization capacity and their roles in the family and social environment. All these characteristics are shown differently from person to person, giving each individual his or her idiosyncrasy.

As we have mentioned before, validating emotional bonding psychotherapy puts the emphasis on getting the child to have a secure attachment style, considered the most functional and healthy of them all. We can speak of four main types of attachmentthree of which are more characteristic of children in situations of risk and neglect.

• Secure: comfortable with intimacy and autonomy. Good image of others and of him/herself.
• Worried: too dependent. Good image of others and poor self-image.
• Resistant: denial of attachment. Bad image of others and high self-image.
• Fearful: fear of attachment, avoidant. Poor self-image and poor image of others.

It is also important to know the parental style. Each individual has been raised in a family with a truly unique parenting style, but it can fall into one of the following four categories.

• Democratic: high control, high affection and communication.
• Authoritarian: high control, low affection and communication.
• Permissive: low control, high affect and communication
• Neglectful: low control, low affection and communication.

While it is to be expected that homeless children will have been raised in authoritarian or neglectful environments, there is also a possibility that they will have been raised in more permissive styles. It would be very rare to find a homeless child who has been raised in a democratic parenting style, and if so, one should try to elucidate how the child ended up in the situation he or she is in today if he or she had a thriving family environment.

VEV therapy and emotions

As its name suggests, validating emotional bonding psychotherapy focuses on emotions. This therapy is based on the idea that there are six basic primary or innate emotions: fear, sadness, joy, anger, surprise and disgust.The first one is the primary emotion: fear, sadness, joy, anger, surprise and disgust. Secondary emotions would be of a social nature, appearing in such contexts as, for example, panic or shame.

There is a tendency to think that social emotions are mostly determined by cultural formation, such as family or school, however, although this is partially true, it is not entirely correct. Actually, culture can modulate the expression of these emotions and guide their manifestation, which can make them end up being used well or badly depending on whether the individual has acquired the correct social norms, but the innate Biological component is still present and is what allows him to feel them.

Sometimes it happens that the capacity to express emotional states is altered, and a specific primary emotion can be felt.Sometimes it happens that the ability to express emotional states is altered, being able to feel a specific primary emotion but acting as if it were another one. For example, a person who really feels sad instead of crying starts yelling, destroying objects and hurting other people, showing the behavior of anger. This type of problem would be common in homeless children, and validating emotional bonding psychotherapy would try to redirect these emotions, making it valid for them to show the signs of the emotion they really feel.