But, the truth is that in order to help children hard wire for safety, parents have to provide what Gary Sibcy calls "Safe Haven" experiences, which occur when people are able to experience the regulation that comes from a parent's emotional and physical availability. In fact, these very experiences are what enable children to develop into emotionally healthy adults. Without it, they are wary, volatile, and quick to interpret rejection or abandonment even when none is intended or even implicit. They become angry, defensive, or detached, instead of patient, understanding, and connected.
What parents say is the fodder for the hard-wiring of their children. Our words are so potent that when people feel understood, their brains create a limbic calming similar to the effect of benzodiazepines. When they are invalidated or denied, their brains react as they were intended to: they go to red alert.
When Janie's father speaks to her using Verbal First Aid, he has not only reassured and calmed her, he has given her a new point of view, a new way, as my husband puts it, "of handling it." And it really is a skill to last a lifetime. When a child knows they can participate in their own healing, in their own soothing, they learn self-reliance, self-confidence, and compassion. And they learn it forever.
