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The Child, Adolescent, And Adult Depend On The Containment Essay

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“In normal development, the child, adolescent, and adult depend on the containment provided by their attachment relationship to achieve developmentally appropriate regulation of somatic, cognitive, and emotional experiences and accumulate memories (Candace Saunders, n.d.c).” This paper will discuss my experience with and my hypothesis regarding a 16-year-old Hispanic girl living in a therapeutic group home. Due to the traumatic events in her childhood and her inability to repair attachment to a caregiver negatively impacted her brain development, her ability to self-regulate and her ability to feel contained. Saunders (n.d. a) containment is the ability to return to homeostasis in times of stress by seeking others comfort or one’s own internalized regulating. Within three weeks of working in the group, home Anne had become upset with another girl living in the house. At the time of the incident, we were sitting at the dining room table alone and the other girl was talking really loudly in another room. Anne assumed the girl was talking about her and “called her out on it.” The girl calmly denied the accusations and continued her conversation. After it was denied, Anne started yelling and looking through her bag for a weapon, verbally threatening the girl while doing so. She eventually came upstairs with me where she grabbed a perfume bottle and threatened, “bash the other girl’s head” in with it. After about 15 minutes she stopped threatening the girl and about 30-40

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