Helen Gogarty: Charlie Vagus and The Bubbles

by Gogarty, Helen

ISBN: 9781912612161

Published: 2023

This book has been written for children, their parents, teachers, counsellors and therapists. Its aim is to help children to understand and befriend their own nervous systems, so as to better manage the normal stresses of life. It is based on Attachment and Polyvagal theory. The attachment behavioural system motivates infants to seek proximity to parents at times of stress in order to be soothed and comforted. Through repeated soothing interactions with parents, children gradually learn to regulate and manage their own stress-responses. The capacity to maintain a state of emotional calm can be difficult in the modern world. Depending on their attachment profile, children who are stressed tend to become overwhelmed by emotion or so frightened by it that they become silent and withdrawn. This book describes the three basic attachment patterns, secure, anxious and avoidant in a simple way, using animal characters.The inspiration for the book came from watching children's use of...