Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Meaningful Happiness is a podcast that unpacks the science of emotions, relationships, and personal growth through the lens of Affect Relational Theory (ART), Chronic Shame Syndrome (CSS), and Latalescence—the second act of life where experience, adaptability, and purpose shape our journey forward.
Each episode explores how shame operates beneath the surface, influencing our confidence, connections, and sense of agency. Through deep insights and practical tools, we uncover ways to rewrite our personal narratives, break free from shame-based cycles, and cultivate a life rich in authenticity, curiosity, and joy.
Join me as we dive into the psychological frameworks and real-world applications that help us navigate relationships, self-perception, and the ever-evolving landscape of human experience.
Let’s make happiness meaningful.
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Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Part 2. Baby Cordelia: How a Three-Month-Old Forms Her World
What happens in the mind of a three-month-old baby? Far more than we once believed. As Cordelia reaches her third and fourth months of life, her world transforms from a blur into a fascinating landscape of relationships, expectations, and embodied scripts that will shape her future.
Dr. Scott Conkright guides us through the remarkable developmental leaps happening in these crucial months. Cordelia's visual system sharpens dramatically as she begins tracking objects and making sustained eye contact. This seemingly simple advancement represents her entry into the world of social connection – the foundation of all human relationships. We learn how babies are naturally drawn to faces with an intensity we later learn to suppress, and how these early exchanges of gazes represent our first dialogues, occurring long before words enter the picture.
The episode explores how these early interactions create what psychologist Silvan Tomkins called "affective scripts" – embodied patterns of expectation that form through countless moments of attunement or misattunement. When a baby cries and someone responds consistently, they learn trust. When signals go chronically unanswered, the nervous system adapts differently. Through contrasting developmental pathways – "Cordelia Ideal" versus "Cordelia Tragic" – we witness how early caregiving shapes fundamental patterns of emotional regulation and relationship formation. Yet these paths aren't destiny; our neural systems remain responsive to new patterns of connection throughout life.
Have you ever wondered what early messages might still be echoing in your adult relationships? Listen as we explore how the formation of consciousness through relationship isn't just fascinating science – it's the very blueprint of who we become.
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Welcome back to the Meaningful Happiness Podcast. I'm your host, dr Scott Conkright. This is podcast two of the Cordelia story. Cordelia ideal, cordelia, tragic. In the vastness of space, we often look up towards the stars and galleries, nebulae and dark matter, searching for meaning. But just as awe-inspiring as the cosmos above is the universe within the early formation of human consciousness. What Cordelia is living through right now is no less intricate, no less mysterious, no less filled with wonder. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself, carl Sagan once said, and today we turn that lens inward.
Speaker 1:This is not a story of thought or speech, not yet. It's the story of a body learning the rhythms of relationships, a mind beginning to form, a nervous system reaching outward and the world reaching back. Cordelia, just three months old, is beginning to form a world, not one she can describe, not even one she can imagine, but one she can feel. What happens in these early months? The flow of attention, the response to joy or distress, the presence of attuned others, these shape her future, like gravity shapes stars. Today we will linger with Cordelia in the months three and four. Cordelia, just three months old, is beginning to form a world, not one she can describe, not even one she can imagine, but one she can feel. What happens in these early months, the flow of attention, the response to joy and distress, the presence of attuned others, these shape her future like gravity-shaped stars. So today we'll linger with Cordelia. In months three and four We'll follow her shifting perceptions, her budding agency and the quiet emergence of early expectations, before language, before memory, and we'll glimpse how her rapidly forming internal universe is every bit as beautiful, fragile, profound and in constant flux as the galaxies beyond. Cordelia's world is no longer a blur. It is coming into focus, both literally and emotionally. Visually she can see more clearly.
Speaker 1:In her third and fourth months there will be rapid changes in improved focus and tracking and her eye muscles are getting stronger. At this age babies often seem cross-eyed and looking like they're trying to focus the drunk baby look that you often see after feeding and when they're about to fall asleep. Her eye coordination is improving. The left and right eyes are now starting to work better together. Color vision improves she can start seeing more reds and greens, for instance, and she is starting to develop depth perception, which is going to be super critical for when she starts moving around and crawling and walking and all that Pretty vital right. As she gets more mobile, she has to know visually what's in front and behind of her. This takes a lot of rapid brain development. The skill that parents notice first and love the most is her improved eye contact and social interaction. She looks at them in the eye, which feels really good. Her focus range has gone from seeing about a foot away the distance from her eyes to the breasts of her mother to several feet away, allowing her to take in more and more of her environment visually. She is like a sponge, adapting to her new environment, practicing and refining new skill sets, metamorphosing and unfolding and changing rapidly. She has gained roughly an ounce a day in weight and her weight will double sometime between four and six months. This is truly remarkable.
Speaker 1:Here's an interesting thought experiment for you in the form of a question how would you cope as an adult if you were teletransported into the body of an infant's physical and visual limitations? It would be a struggle, right? We take our abilities for granted, especially our mobility, but Cordelia at this age thrives as long as her affective and bodily needs are met. At birth, cordelia floats in a wash of sensations light, sound, temperature, hunger, everything is affect, no memory, no self, no symbols, just raw biological signals bursts of interest, flashes of distress, shimmers of joy. Now, at three months, her affect is still primary, but it is beginning to organize. She can fix her gaze, she can track movements. Her hands, once random and reflexive, now hover near her mouth, exploring, touch, texture and taste. Her legs pump when she's excited. Her body speaks, what she is feeling, and we, the adults around her, learn to listen. Here's a critical juncture. She starts to sense, when I do this, something happens, not with thought, with sensation. She doesn't think I made this happen, but the seeds of agency are now being sown. These are the first whispers of story formation.
Speaker 1:Cordelia's favorite thing to look at right now isn't a mobile or a rattle, it's faces, especially of her favorite caregivers. She is wired to be fascinated by them and this fascination will stay with her all of her life. Cordelia's favorite thing to look at right now isn't a mobile or a rattle, it's faces, especially of her favorite caregivers. She is wired to be fascinated by them and this fascination will stay with her and all of us, all of her life, all of our lives. Faces are rich with moving parts Eyes, lips, eyebrows all endlessly fascinating by the way we are necessarily shamed out of this very early in life.
Speaker 1:It is not polite to stare. At a certain age we are instructed, sometimes brusquely, not to look at anyone too intensely. Staring signals to the person being stared at the affects of interest, excitement and enjoyment, joy. It can be the look of desire and fascination, but also hunger. We don't want people gobbling us up with their eyes unless we really want them to gobble us up with their eyes. It's sometimes okay with family members or sometimes with friends, and definitely a sign that things are not going so well if it isn't happening regularly with somebody that you love intimately. But it can also be read as a signal of dominance and aggression. Your parents had to teach you not to stare to save your life. But boy, do we love staring. It doesn't go away, it's just loaded with shame. Now, being in love and staring into your lover's eyes is one of the few occasions you can do so without shame. So Cordelia is watching. She coos, she kicks you, smile, she smiles back. This is the origin of human dialogue.
Speaker 1:Affect is not a solitary experience, it's relational. Cordelia isn't just feeling, she's sharing feelings. This back and forth becomes her favorite game. It's not spoken symbolic language, but definitely communication. She is learning the pacing of interaction and the subtle cues of timing, turn taking and tone. We often overlook this, but it is astonishing. She is creating connections without words, using her own sign language built on affect. And these connections aren't random. She begins to favor the people who respond to her in kind, those who mirror her with joy, who comfort her in distress, who laugh when she laughs. Cordelia's brain is growing faster now than it ever will again and continue at this rate for almost two years. The baby you started with is not the one you will end up with. You have an enormous role in shaping who she becomes, starting with day one.
Speaker 1:The early psychological theories of Infantus Tabula Rossa blank slates with no innate capacities or abilities have now been proven to be very, very wrong. Every moment of engagement builds synapses. Her affective system, the circuits that govern interest, joy, fear, rage, shame, is shaped by how others respond. When she cries and someone comes, her body registers relief, the affect of enjoyment. When she smiles and someone smiles back, it registers another flavor of enjoyment. These repetitions are not just comforts. They are the blueprint for how one will later interpret connections In a responsive world. She learns that reaching leads to response. In an indifferent world, she learns that reaching leads to silence or worse. These patterns are what Sylvan Tompkins calls affective scripts. They are felt, not thought. They will form the scripts for how she does relationships later in life.
Speaker 1:The social smile, which starts around six to eight months, will be Cordelia's first intentional affective gesture. She initiates it, you return it. This is a loop, a shared emotional feedback circuit, and in it Cordelia learns I exist in relation to others. This is a loop, a shared emotional feedback circuit, and in it Cordelia learns I exist in relation to others. This is the earliest form of story, not verbal, not even conscious, but it has a shape. I feel something, you see it, you respond, I feel something more.
Speaker 1:Cordelia's early experiences, especially in months three and four, reinforce or disrupt this loop. The ideal path her smiles are met, her signals matter, her distress brings comfort, her delight is matched. The tragic path her smiles go unanswered or met with coldness. Her distress is ignored or punished. Her delight is experienced as too much for her caregivers. Over time, these tiny repetitions build an inner landscape. They shape how she comes to understand not only others but herself.
Speaker 1:Around month three, cordelia begins to notice the rhythm of her day. She doesn't know nap time, but she senses that after eating comes cuddling, then sleep. She's developing an affective map of her environment, not through thoughts, through felt sequences. When a routine is broken a skip nap, a delayed feeding her distress doesn't just signal need. It now includes something new. Where is the thing that was supposed to happen? This is not yet a protest, but it is an expectation. An expectation is a powerful force. It's the basis of hope.
Speaker 1:Cordelia is also, at this point, beginning to regulate herself. She sucks her hands or thumbs. Sometimes she turns her head to find your voice. These are not random now. They are early attempts to manage feelings. She still needs help regulating distress, of course, but she's beginning to discover that she can do small things to soothe herself. This is a key developmental milestone as it lays the groundwork for emotional resilience. In ideal conditions, her growing agency is supported. Someone joins her in calming down, not just insists that she can do it alone. In less ideal settings, she may be left to flail in frustration or punished for expressing her needs. These early moments create the basic emotional scaffolding for later life. Can I tolerate distress? Do I trust others to help? Can I find comfort without disappearing.
Speaker 1:By four months, cordelia starts to notice that some faces come more often than others. She may quiet more quickly when she hears a familiar voice. This is not yet memory, but it's the beginning of preference. She prefers faces that match her rhythm. She prefers arms that hold her gently. We tend to call this the formation of attachment, but even more fundamentally, it is the weaving of affective memory. She begins to anticipate how it will feel to be picked up, to be smiled at, to be soothed. This is what I sometimes call the first draft of hope. What Cordelia is not doing yet is holding a mental image of someone who's gone. She cannot miss you when you're not in the room. Not quite, but she is close.
Speaker 1:In the coming months, by six to eight months, she will begin to experience absence as a feeling tied to a specific person. That is when longing begins. That is when desire, story and memory start to blend. But for now, we linger here in the beautiful in-between. But for now we linger here in the beautiful in-between, not yet in language, not yet narrative, but something richer than reflex. Cordelia is beginning to feel the edges of relationship, and that matters. If Cordelia continues to experience responsive attunement, her inner world will begin to build confidence. My signals matter. Others care how I feel, I can express myself and be met. If her signals are misread or ignored, she may begin to shut down or may escalate, hoping someone will finally tune in. These are not yet strategies, these are adaptations, but they form the roots of what later we might call anxious attachment, avoidant tendencies, shame-based scripts. The groundwork is laid here in these months, in sighs, in smiles, in the way her body is held.
Speaker 1:At this tender stage, cordelia's world begins to branch, quietly but unmistakably into diverging paths, not because of anything she chooses, but because of the care that reaches towards her or doesn't. Let's imagine two paths unfolding. Call them Cordelia ideal and Cordelia tragic. These are not labels of destiny, but reflections of how our earliest relationships can shape the felt sense of who we are in the world.
Speaker 1:Cordelia Ideal lives in a world where her needs are noticed, where her distress is met, not with perfection, but with a good enough, consistent, kind and soothing presence. Kind and soothing presence. Someone comes, maybe not instantly, maybe not always smoothly, but consistently enough that her nervous system begins to form a rhythm when I reach someone, reaches back. This rhythm becomes the early music of trust. She starts to recognize that her feelings are not too much, that her signals are worth responding to, that it's safe to express. And when comfort is delayed, something miraculous happens she can wait, not because she was taught to, but because she remembers in her body that comfort has come before. This is the very beginning of distress tolerance, the ability to hold difficult feelings without falling apart. It's not stoicism, it's not suppression, it's the inner knowledge that pain is not forever. Distress is not forever.
Speaker 1:Now let's imagine Cordelia Tragic. She is no less worthy, no less alive with potential. But the world in which she lives doesn't always reach back. Or if it does, unpredictably sometimes. Or if it does unpredictably sometimes, soft, sometimes harshly, sometimes it doesn't arrive at all. Her cries are met with silence or with tension, her delight goes unmirrored, her fear is not named, only deepened. Or perhaps her caregivers are kind but inconsistent. Perhaps they're overwhelmed, distracted, hurt by their own pasts, unable to respond reliably. Sometimes the love she longs for comes hand in hand with shame or unpredictability. In more painful cases, there may be outright neglect, where her signals are chronically ignored, or with abuse, where her attempts to connect are met with fear, shame or harm. These experiences leave a different imprint, not just on her expectations of others, but on her capacity to feel safe in her own body. Cordelia's body begins to learn a different kind of rhythm, one of vigilance, one of adaptation. She might amplify her signals, trying harder to be seen, or she might retreat, going quiet to stay safe.
Speaker 1:This is distress intolerance in its earliest form. Not a lack of strength, but a survival strategy. Her nervous system learns it's safer not to need, or to need more loudly or to need secretly. And the implications of this go far beyond infancy. Unmet needs and early trauma don't just disappear with time. They go. Don't just disappear with time. They go underground, shaping adult relationships, stress responses and emotional regulation in subtle and not so subtle ways. Many adults who live with anxiety, depression or relational instability are still trying to metabolize what their bodies learned in these early months. So here's what's so important. Neither of these paths are fates. They are beginnings, and beginnings can be rewritten. Most of us live somewhere in between these two stories, woven of moments of holding and of missing of safety, confusion. But these early threads become the fabric of how we later handle frustration, how we trust others with our feelings and how we navigate longing and disappointment.
Speaker 1:Distress tolerance will become a central theme for both Cordelias, as it is for all of us. It is the ability to remain connected to self and others when things feel hard, when feelings surge, when we are not immediately understood. For Cordelia, ideal, distress, tolerance is built slowly through many small moments of being met. For Cordelia, tragic, it is often built later with help, sometimes in therapy, sometimes in friendships, sometimes through heartbreak and healing. But it can be rebuilt.
Speaker 1:What is true in both stories is this the body remembers even what the mind cannot name. But our bodies also respond to new rhythms, to new music, to people who show up now even if others didn't then. This is where hope lives that no matter where we begin, we are not stuck, and no matter how our early scripts were written, they are still being edited every day, in every connection, in every moment of being seen. So let me ask you who held you in those early months of your life? What did they teach you, without words, about being held? Do you remember being soothed or do you remember figuring it out alone? Maybe you can't access these memories directly, but you can feel them in your patterns, in your relationships, in your body. These stories live in us and it is never too late to rewrite them. The formation of the nervous system, the encoding of affect, the shaping of hope, these are not lesser wonders. They are the birth of meaning.
Speaker 1:Cordelia, just a few months old, is crafting a universe inside of her, not of stars and gravity, but of expectations and joy, of distress and comfort of self and others. She is the cosmos becoming aware of connection, and so are we. Let's marvel, not at the galaxies beyond, but at the inner galaxies we carry. Just, I just channeled some Carl Sagan there, didn't I. The way a coup becomes a question, the way a smile becomes a bridge, the way a returning gaze becomes the first echoes of love. In my next episode we'll enter months five and six. Cordelia will begin to experience something new the ache of missing, the shape of desire, the shadow of memory. Until then, may you look inward with the same awe you offer the stars. Be, be curious, be kind.
