My favorite psycho guy, D.W. Winnicott, thought about families as holding environments. As spaces populated by people who facilitate (or not) development. That’s what families are, right? Groups that occupy space that is supposed to make it safe to grow and develop.
I think of classrooms as holding environments. I think of schools as holding environments. And I think of our country as a holding environment.
Right now, it’s a failed holding environment. An extremely frickin’ unbelievably unhealthy holding environment.
What makes for a healthy holding environment? Here are a few crucial elements:
limits
boundaries
good-enough parenting
attachment
Limits
These are the things that contain people’s actions. Often they begin with “No.”
“No, you can’t speed in a construction zone.”
“No, you can’t eat an entire blueberry pie every day and not gain weight.”
“No, you can’t cheat or steal.”
You get it. These are a pain in the ass for people who want to get their way all the time, but people who get their way all the time tend to lose touch with reality. (Or die.) So limits help us develop a strong and survivable relationship with reality. They also, weirdly, can unleash creativity. Like “No, you can’t use oil forever to run your cars.” But the limits have to liberate desirable activity, like healthy development or inventiveness or physical and psychic safety, not control people by abolishing their human rights.
Boundaries
These are the things that keep individuals psychically safe. They differ by person and even by circumstance. I might be perfectly happy exchanging intimate details about my life with my partner or close friend but NOT with a co-worker, a mere acquaintance, or the guy who’s changing the oil in my car. Permeable boundaries with my partner or a close friend. More solid boundaries with people I don’t know well.
Boundaries are like our psychic skin. Anger can (and should) occur when our boundaries are violated. Trauma is the worst-case scenario, and I don’t think many of us have escaped some sort of trauma. Our boundaries are supposed to be inviolate. They’re supposed to be respected and honored, and we’re supposed to have the last say on where they are at any given moment. Boundaries are the membranes that separate and connect us at the same time because, if we’re safe within our Gardens (which are defined by our boundaries), then we can relate safely and effectively with others.
Good-Enough Parenting
This is what it takes to be an effective developmental partner to your child, student, and anyone else you’re in relationship with, actually. Good-enough is not perfect. You don’t have to do everything right. In fact, making mistakes is welcome in the good-enough world. And repair is powerful. Circling back after a transgression or hurt and revisiting with genuine interest and desire to connect can be more important sometimes than the original harm.
Good-enough is not fused. That is, you don’t have to act with everyone else’s needs always in mind. Rather, you can act with your needs in mind. And model what it takes to negotiate multiple legitimate and precious existences in respectful, well-bounded ways that might not prevent disappointment but involve mutual understanding and care.
Good-enough is a relief. Which allows us to relax and relate to each other without fear of error or reprisal or self-recrimination.
Attachment
The ideal type of attachment is (duh) secure attachment. When you trust your parent enough to be able to totter off and do your own thing but race back when you need comfort, reassurance, or a Band-Aid. Consistent, reliable, attuned (but not perfect) response coupled with a willingness and ability to repair makes for a healthy attachment figure. And we all need these! Perhaps that’s why psychotherapy is so popular these days. (It’s apparently reached an all-time high.) Most therapists recognize this is the type of person they’re supposed to be for their clients.
Perhaps the worst type of attachment is disorganized attachment. Where your parent confuses the hell out of you all the time, making it impossible to know when you’re safe and loved and when the world is real and reliable. They’re fun and accessible one minute, intrusive and demanding another, then distant, withdrawn, and punishing the next. Holy shit. What a nightmare to have a parent like this.
Our country is not a healthy holding environment
Let me count the fucking ways:
Limits: There are plenty of new limits that have been placed on US citizens. Abortion is illegal; immigration is, basically, illegal; voting rights are being severely curtailed; books are being banned; free speech of citizens and the press is being attacked; the freedom to be oneself in all one’s glory is being rescinded; religious plurality is being reduced to a single white Christian male point. These limits do not liberate creativity or growth. They crush. While the people imposing the limits lift limits from themselves. Emoluments and self-enrichment? Bah! Corruption and self-dealing? Hah! Unrestricted sexual exploitation and abuse, especially of young women? Of course! We may sometimes wish there were no limits on us, but check it out: This is what that’s like.
Boundaries: If you’re not white, you’re not safe in your home (doors and walls used to be effective boundaries) or anywhere else. (The same is becoming true if you’re a protester exercising your First Amendment rights.) If you’re a woman, you don’t have autonomy over your body. If you’re a political enemy, you’re not protected from illegal harassment. Our administration flows like algae-infested waters into every aspect of our lives they want to. No boundaries means no safety. Living in a permanently unsafe environment is terrible for the human body and soul.
Good-Enough Parenting: It might seem odd to think about our nation’s leaders as parents, but that is precisely how I see them. They are the holders of our country; they are the setters of the limits and respecters of our boundaries by making and enforcing laws that are good for us. They are supposed to care about our well-being and safety. They are supposed to model maturity, decency, self-restraint, and high moral virtue. Is that happening right now? Oh fuck no.
Attachment: Our main attachment figure right now is a malignant narcissistic psychopath. Not your ideal attachment figure. Trying to make healthy use of such a man (and all his minions — isn’t it amazing how many of them there are? And how they flock to each other like fuckin’ flies to shit?) is impossible. (And it makes you wonder what sorts of parents the people who voted for this man have.) So we’re floating in a world where our parents are self-obsessed, have no perspective (or limits) on themselves, have no interest in helping or taking care of us, and are actually sadists who prefer, apparently gleefully, to inflict harm on as many people as they can. Oh and — they’re bald-faced liars. Gaslighters. If the definition of insanity is having an inaccurate relationship with reality, and it is, then they want us to be insane. They are driving us insane.
You simply cannot fabricate more despicable attachment figures.
And so here we are. Living in the most dysfunctional family I, personally, can conceive of. With bottomless coffers that our holder-in-chief is spending by the billions at his malevolent whim. There is so much about this that is crazy-making it is amazing that any one of us has held on to our sanity. Let alone our civility. (The current situation might help explain the current epidemic of assholism. Just sayin’.)
The good news? We might be ready to change things up in this nation in ways that are way past due: universal health care and childcare, revocation of Citizens United, enshrined voting laws that cannot be revised, solid rights for women to control their own bodies, maybe the ERA? Let’s look ahead to the kind of holding environment we want and need and begin working towards it now.
Love this post somethin' fierce Betsy!!
Love love love this!