“unformulated experience.”* It’s basically the feeling that something’s not right, without a clear explanation of what’s happening. Unformulated experience is terrifying to a child, because that “something’s not right” feeling free-floats around the body without an anchor of safety. Plus, when kids are left to make sense of a scary change on their own, they usually rely on the methods that give them control: self-blame (“I must have done something to cause this. I’m bad, I’m too much”) and self-doubt (“I must have misunderstood the tension around me. I am not such a good feeler of things. If
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