**⏺️ With:** [[Attachment]], [[Attunement]], [[Developmental Needs]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Psychology #Relational #Developmental > **🌱 Planted:** Mon 24 Feb 2025 --- ***Our caregivers don't need to be perfect, they just need to be good enough.*** [[Donald Winnicott]], an [[Object Relations]] psychoanalyst, didn't expect parents to be perfect either. Instead he said what actually helps us to develop in a healthy way is having a "good enough mother", meaning a mother [^1] who is not too hot (overbearing, controlling, devouring), and not too cold (distant, rejecting, neglecting). When mothering is good enough, this creates what Winnicott called a "holding environment", which is not just a reliable physical space but also a safe emotional space where our [[Developmental Needs|normal developmental needs]] are adequately met, yet are also balanced with manageable moments of natural misatttunement. I like to think of the holding environment as like a being wrapped in a warm blanket while curling up into pure safety. It is a space that is reliable, predictable and attuned enough so the child doesn't need to manage the adult's needs and instead can relax into their own being. When caregiving falls significantly below the "good enough" line, whether that be due to illness, chronic stress, emotional unavailability or generational [[Trauma]], the child's needs go unmet. And yet, the child still depends on their caregiver for survival. This places them in an impossibly painful situation where their needs aren't getting met, but they also still need to secure whatever love, care and safety they can from their caregivers, and in order to do that, they respond to this pain by developing protective strategies and repressing their spontaneous and natural expression. These protective strategies become what Winnicott calls the "False Self", which keeps us safe through pleasing or withdrawing, but disconnects us from the vitality of the True Self. On the other hand, when we do receive this "good enough" mothering, our caregivers are able to provide us with [[Empathic Attunement]] most of the time while allowing for natural rupture and repair, and when this happens, our "True Self" (what we fundamentally are in our [[Presence|True Nature]]) emerges as we develop the capacity to be authentically ourselves while openly expressing our needs and maintaining healthy connection to others[^2]. # See Also - [[Narcissistic Wounding|When our normal developmental needs go unmet, we are left deeply wounded]]. - [[Object Relations]] explains how [[Self-Concept|Our sense of self unfolds intersubjectively, not separately]], showing us how important our early relationships truly are. [^1]: The mother doesn't necessarily mean a child's biological mother. Rather it refers to mothering as a role, which could be fulfilled by another woman (who isn't the child's mother) or even the father or another male figure. [^2]: [[The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment by Donald Winnicott]]