Safety in relationship, when danger is predicted.
The Yellow Frog metaphor began in Sally's therapy room, with a complex trauma client brought to Carolyn for consultation, whom they both supported over a period of time. The client had experienced chronic and extreme childhood abuse resulting in disorganised attachment, and this aspect of his story is told here with his permission.
For Sally, the core of the work with this client was to tune into his frequency, to meet him where he was at so that he would ‘feel seen, and feel heard, and feel felt’. But no-one can do this perfectly, and indeed rupture and repair are foundational to working with complex trauma. Sally's mind, unlike the client's, is associative and non-linear, and she would often jump ahead before the client was ready. To the client, Sally appeared like a frog leaping from lily pad to lily pad. It became a metaphor to understand difference, to promote mentalising, and to repair these ruptures. A yellow frog beanie toy was later used as a transitional object between sessions, to help the client to hold Sally in mind. The ‘Yellow Frog’ became a key resource in building the relationship that the client needed from Sally.
But in nature, a yellow-bellied frog is dangerous; the soft toy transitional object was intended to be safe. This so aptly captured the nature of disorganised attachment: the way that trauma survivors often learn to stay safe in ways which keep people away, predicting that closeness is dangerous when in fact it can be safe. Sally had to prove to the client over time that she was indeed safe.
But of course the Yellow Frog itself was not what made the difference. It was Sally's willingness to become the ‘somebody who is there’, even imperfectly – which the frog represented.
And that is the bedrock of our approach and our training: how to become the safe person who comes close and stays close and never abandons, the secure base which helps to address and heal deep-rooted attachment trauma – and how what appears at first dangerous can be trusted over time to be safe.