Trapped by what feels familiar

I'm working with a family at the moment who are so frightened of what might happen next that they can't let go of what feels familiar, even though what's familiar is the very thing holding them back.

I recognise it because I've felt it myself, in smaller ways. The fear of the unknown has a particular kind of grip. It doesn't feel like fear when you're inside it. It feels like sense. It feels like control. You keep doing the thing you've always done, not because it's working, but because it's known, and known feels safer than better, when better hasn't happened yet.

For this family, that grip looks like a routine they built in the hardest, most frightened weeks of their baby's feeding, and they're still holding it, months later, long after it stopped being the thing keeping their baby safe and became the thing keeping them stuck. I understand exactly why. When everything else feels uncertain, the one thing you can control becomes the only solid ground you've got. Letting go of it doesn't feel like progress. It feels like losing your footing entirely.

What I see, again and again, is that the moment a parent finds enough steadiness to let go, even slightly, is the exact moment they start to notice their baby again. Not the routine. Not the numbers. Their actual baby, in front of them, doing something small and real. A pause. A look. A moment that was there all along, just obscured by how tightly they were gripping onto the one thing they thought was keeping them safe.

I don't think this family is doing anything wrong by holding on the way they are. I think they're frightened, and frightened people hold on tightly to whatever they can reach.

The challenge is that feeding restoration is something that takes a time, and letting go of what feels familiar is rarely the first step, it's usually somewhere in the middle, once enough safety has been rebuilt that the unknown stops feeling like free-falling into nothing.

Laura xo