Attunement: the most important word you’ve never heard of

Chances are you’ve never heard the word attunement—my spell checker constantly tries to convince me that it’s not even a word!—but you’ve no doubt experienced it and it’s absence in countless ways in your most intimate relationships. So what is attunement and why is it one of the most crucial ingredients in secure relationships?

Consider this scenario.

In a moment of unplanned vulnerability, you’ve confessed to a friend just how worried you are about your daughter’s recent behavioral problems at school. Before you know what’s happening, the words cascade out of your mouth like a waterfall. You may not even realize how quickly you’re talking, let alone the fact that your voice went up an octave and your face is flushed and contorted. At this moment, you’re not just communicating information to your friend about your anxiety—you are experiencing the anxiety with all it’s adrenaline and increased heart rate in the moment. 

What you witness on the face of your friend, however, is not anguish or anxiety or judgment, but empathy. She doesn’t look away from you, but gives you her attention, nodding or verbally communicating that she hears you. She sees your pain—the concern you have for your daughter and the anxiety that it is causing you—and doesn’t look away. 

After the moment of venting you notice your anxiety subsiding. Your physiology is changing. You take a deep breath and your heart rate returns to normal. You wonder if you’ve shared too much. “Not at all,” she says. You apologize for venting. “No need,” she smiles back. You thank her for listening and giving advice, but looking back you can’t remember a single thing she said. In fact, you wonder if she even said anything at all?

What just happened? Your friend attuned to you. She tuned into your inner world. She stayed present with you. She paid attention to what was said, what was unsaid, and the manner in which you said it. If you’re lucky, you have a friend that can practice attunement like this with you. They may offer good words of counsel and perspective, but if you’re honest, it’s their presence that helps the most.

Now consider another scenario.

You get an email from your daughter’s teacher describing her destructive behavior. You become flooded with anxiety and its physiological symptoms. You hear the phone ring. It’s your mom. You pick up the phone and when she asks how you’re doing, you spill the beans. Instead of listening she interrupts. “You let her run all over you. You need to reinforce your boundaries better at home and she won’t have this problem!” Perhaps she responds with more grace, but tries to fix the problem: “You need to read this article I saw on social media. I’ll send it to you.”

What happens in your body at that moment? You may become defensive of yourself and your daughter. You may fawn and thank her for the advice. You may quickly clam up and reduce your communication to monosyllabic responses until you get her off the phone. But chances are, the anxiety is still in your body and you haven’t felt relief.

In both the negative blaming and the positive resourcing of this scenario, your mother has failed to attune to you. She missed you. She could not stay present with your anxiety. In some cases, she may even change the subject or bring up her own problems because she is so afraid of your inner world that she cannot bear to hear it.

We can all think of people who have disappointed us in times of need. Perhaps you have vowed to never share anything vulnerable with them again. Perhaps you think there’s nothing better and you continue the harmful practice. Hopefully, though, you can also think of people or times when you felt seen and heard; times when someone stayed present with you in your distress and your desire. 

Dr. Dan Siegel explains attunement this way: 

“When we attune to others, we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships. Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected.”

Do you understand how important that is? Attunement is necessary for close relationships. It’s a basic human need. It’s not icing on the cake, it’s daily bread. We need attunement in our friendships, our marriages, and especially our families of origin. No one can attune perfectly all the time, but we need our caregivers who are capable of attuning to our inner worlds. 

Now, what happens when a parent consistently fails to attune to a child? What happens when a parent provides for the physical needs of a child, but neglects their emotional needs?

When our parents fail to attune to us as children, we are forced to regulate our emotions by ourselves. We often keep our inner world locked up and guarded. We may even turn on ourselves and curse those emotions of fear, anger, or sadness in an attempt to avoid any vulnerability.

If you had a parent that was halfway decent at attunement, you are fortunate. If you are like most of us, though, you’ve looked for it in other places. Perhaps you found it in a friend, a mentor, a spouse, a pastor. Perhaps you are still looking for it. 

I believe one of the primary benefits of counseling is having a dedicated time for someone to attune to your inner world and name what they see. The attunement of another helps us to learn how to attune to ourselves and process our emotions. If you are still looking for attunement, reach out to Good Shepherd Soul Care or someone else. It’s not too late.

*Disclaimer: this post doesn’t cover everything about attunement.

Up next: When attunement is used against us.