Mentalization and Authenticity    85

Further Defining Mentalization

Mentalization primarily involves reflective thinking and emotional authenticity, the ability to
feel and be genuine with ourselves and others—an ability that’s also vital to mental health.
For example, if Geetha had come in convinced I was a sadist, that could be evidence of a
dissociative collapse (a more severe form of dissociation), which is the opposite of mentaliz-
ing. In dissociative states, not only are we unable to access the minds of others and recognize
how they may differ from ours, we also can view others as bad actors and assume that any
suspicions of ill intent we have had about them are true.
The principle of being authentic can help you remember the importance of having a
relationship with your own mind and knowing and owning your own real and true voice.
This is vital in fighting the identity theft that can be a part of surviving trauma. Part of this
is knowing what we don’t know. By this I mean two things. First, we need to approach emo-
tional situations by understanding that we may not always know the answer to particular
dilemmas and that we may need time to understand and reflect on our emotions, thoughts,
and behaviors to figure out what to do. Second, in a general sense, we need to realize that
there are aspects of our minds and our psychic lives that we may not always understand.
Being curious about how our minds work is also a key aspect to genuine interactions in which
we can be humble about our limitations. As a part of this, we often need to pause in our
assessments and judgments of others, and ourselves.
This is why I emphasize that we try to increase our focus from the outside to the inside. As
trauma survivors, the pull is to analyze the external world. In part we do this to assess safety.
Sometimes, the focus on the outside is also a way for us to avoid knowing what is going on
inside us. And sometimes, we focus on the outside because we can be fooled into thinking
that anything that does not look like our past can keep us from becoming like where we came
from. Without an internal focus though, we can’t have an awareness of our emotions, and we
lack the genuine curiously and empathy that we need for relating to ourselves and others.
And finally, comfort with imperfection is vital to our emotional health. Many people with
CPTSD find solace in the imagining of a perfect world, one in which no one disappoints and
one in which we get everything right. As we know, in reality, this is impossible—and under-
standing that is another key aspect of mentalization.
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Secure Attachment and Mentalizing

The ability to mentalize is often defined by our early attachments, which leads to our indi-
vidual attachment styles, as defined by John Bowlby and others. For instance, when infants
feel unsafe with their caretakers, meaning they cannot predict how their parents will act and/
or their parents act inconsistently, they may go on to develop a disorganized attachment style
as they grow older. Disorganized attachment is also described as fearful/avoidant attachment;
it’s linked with the confusion that results when caretakers can be gratifying but also terrifying
at the same time. This specific attachment style is common among survivors of trauma, as
well as people who struggle with suicidality and substance abuse. If you have some aspects of
a disorganized or fearful/avoidant attachment style, you may notice that you may have genuine
trouble knowing if you are secure or safe in any given situation and that you often worry that
rejection, disappointment, and disillusionment are always on the horizon.
In contrast, people with secure attachment styles have a sense of security and safety
growing up enough of the time—since no caretaker is perfect—that they assume that people
will be relatively consistent in their behavior. As a result, they are not as disoriented by the
disappointments and limitations in others. For example, an adult with a secure attachment
style may be frustrated, angry, or disappointed when her partner is distant for a few days, but
she can soothe herself by knowing that her partner will come back. Temporary abandon-
ments do not lead to feelings of terminal neglect or devastating despair. Problems and frustra-
tions in life can be solved independently or with the help of trusted and vested others.
Additionally, people with secure attachment styles don’t struggle as much with the idea of
dependency, having learned that we all must be interdependent in order to survive and thrive
in the world. For those of us with trauma backgrounds, dependency is much more fraught—it
causes intense anxiety and fear.
Some researchers have described aspects of secure attachment that influence their
approach to mentalizing. These aspects represent what we should strive for in our relation-
ships, and involve some of the following:

• Reflectiveness

• Lively consciousness

• Freshness of dialogue
 Mentalization and Authenticity    87

• Empathy

• Humility

• Little self-deception

• Ability to alter one’s views

• Compassion

• Comfort with imperfection

These concepts sound reasonable enough, but they can be difficult to incorporate. There
is not an external roadmap as such, but I always suggest that mentalizing and developing a
good relationship with one’s mind starts with being authentic. Being genuine and real, though,
is easy to say and harder to achieve—especially for survivors of complex trauma, you can shift
to become who others want you to be. This action is adaptive and protective. It also can be
associated with great career success. Consider the case of someone I will call Jeff:

Jeff grew up in developing countries outside of the US as his parents had jobs that required
them to provide medical services in different parts of the world. Dangers were present both
outside and inside of the family. Externally, there were worries about the impact of
sectarian violence. Internally, there was a parent, Jeff’s father, who expressed rage and
helplessness through violent means to Jeff and his sibling. And there was an ongoing yet
silent knowledge that his father engaged in all kinds of extramarital relationships, often
with those much younger than himself. Yet perhaps because Jeff was sent away to boarding
school in junior high, he developed a great deal of resilience. He also proved to be quite
skilled in computer sciences. Jeff went on to become a very successful adult who
eventually led major companies and he was sought after as an expert in his field. Yet Jeff
decided to seek therapy because he felt he had little sense of himself and who he was. He
found he was certain of how other people felt, though. And while this led to some good
decision-making early in his career, as he aged, he got feedback that he seemed remote and
unavailable to his direct reports; they felt he judged them with little data. This troubled
Jeff a great deal, but he genuinely had no idea what people meant when they referred to
him as judgmental, distant, and remote. He was left bereft and confused by these
complaints.