How Buddhist Practice promote secured attachment and nervous system regulation for therapists?

In this episode, Poh explores how Buddhist practice can support therapists in cultivating secure attachment within themselves — and how this inner steadiness naturally supports nervous system regulation, compassionate presence, and therapeutic effectiveness.

As therapists, we often become the emotional anchor for others while quietly carrying our own stress, attachment wounds, self-doubt, or emotional fatigue beneath the surface. In this conversation, Poh gently reflects on the intersection of Buddhist wisdom, attachment science, ACT, and nervous system regulation — offering a grounded pathway back to clarity, connection, and inner refuge.

Through Dharma-informed reflections and practical insight, Poh explores how contemplative practice can soften our clinging to identity, perfectionism, and performance, while helping us embody a more spacious, compassionate, and regulated way of being with ourselves and others.

In this episode, Poh explores:

• What secure attachment means for therapists and helping professionals
• The difference between non-attachment and emotional avoidance
• How Buddhist practice strengthens emotional safety, steadiness, and connection
• Why clinging to identity and “being the perfect therapist” creates suffering
• ACT concepts such as self-as-context and spacious awareness
• The relationship between Buddha nature, wholeness, and inner refuge
• How chanting, coherent breathing, meditation, and mantra support nervous system regulation
• Buddhist practices that support co-regulation and ventral vagal grounding
• How therapist presence itself can become healing and regulating for clients
• Interconnectedness, shared humanity, and compassionate relating

Join the Bodhi Inner Path Circle

If you’ve been longing for a contemplative space to slow down, reconnect, and practise alongside like-hearted therapists and dharma friends, the Bodhi Inner Path Circle may be a nourishing home for you.

Beginning July 2026, this monthly membership community includes:

• Fortnightly meditation and contemplative practice
• Dharma-informed book club gatherings
• Gentle Buddhist teachings tailored for therapists
• A moderated practitioner community away from social media
• Support for nervous system regulation, reflection, and spiritual practice

Founding Member Offer: $55/month

Join the waitlist: https://blossomingtrueself.com.au/communitywaitlist

Connect & Support the Podcast

If this episode resonated with you, please consider sharing it with a colleague or leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps this contemplative community reach more therapists and helping professionals seeking grounded, sustainable practice.

A Gentle Reminder

This podcast is for education and inspiration purposes only. It is not a substitute for therapy, supervision, psychological care, or clinical advice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey! Before we begin today, I wanted to share with you that the Bodhi Inner Path Circle Waitlist is now open. It is an improved version of my previous four-week meditation circle for therapists that they would like something regular, something long-term and intimate. We all know the benefits of meditation practice, but in reality, finding time to practice from our busy daily lives can be challenging for all of us. It is a contemplative membership community for therapists who long for a steadier, more grounded way of being, a place to practice, to learn Buddha Dharma, to deepen your own practice and to reconnect with your inner refuge alongside with your Dhamma friends. If you've been craving depth, clarity, or Dhamma companionship on your path, you're welcome to explore the details in the show notes. We're going to meet every fortnight on Fridays for an hour for meditation practice and Dhamma reflective discussion in a book club format. We are going to start in July. There is a special founding member rate of just $55 per month if you register early. Please check it out. I hope to see you in there. Each episode, I'll be sharing some common issues that therapists may face when integrating and practicing awareness, compassion within themselves, and also supporting clients. I'll be sprinkling some pearls of wisdom that I've learned from my master and teachers that will be helpful as internal resources. I'll also be interviewing other therapists who are on this spiritual path together to share their experiences of how they practice wisdom and compassion in their daily lives. I want to let you know that you're not alone. You are part of a bigger community who aspire for greater soul alignment, growth, and awakening. That we can strike a balance of juggling our busy modern life as therapists with a clear mind and an open heart. I hope to inspire more practitioners to explore deeper spiritual meaning and purpose on our path to enlightenment. I'm your host, Po Gan, a psychologist, a Buddhist practitioner, a parent of two children, a fellow human being with a busy mind, but with a great inspired vision for collective awakening. Let's begin. As you probably gather through this last season of the podcast, I'm a big fan of process-based therapy. As an educational and developmental psychologist, much of my professional background has focused on supporting families, parents, children, and teenagers. So naturally, I gravitate towards attachment theory and how important relationships are in healing and supporting our clients. I'm drawn to Dr. Dan Siegel's work, Circle of Security Framework, the science of interpersonal neurobiology, how connection and co-regulation shape the developing mind. So, in terms of therapeutic relationships, I see how beneficial and transformative it can be for us to be the steady anchor for our clients who may at times find it hard to find such calm and regulated relationships to help them organize their feelings, supporting them through the storms of their lives. The truth is our relational presence and our regulated nervous system, our compassionate steadiness, are often the medicine that brings healing. So, how does practicing Buddhism come into the picture in terms of co-regulation and connection? There's a common myth and misunderstanding about Buddhism and non-attachment that I wanted to clarify today. When people hear the term non-attachment, people often think about non-attachment means emotional coldness, like people who would like to seek liberation often become cold, detached, aloof, and hiding in the mountain, cultivating themselves and have no relationships or seemingly avoidant in relationships. But this is actually far from the truth. In fact, I argue that cultivating and practicing Buddhist wisdom can actually promote secure attachment and regulate our nervous system in a way that promotes deep safety both within ourselves and also in our relationships with other people. Before we get into the whole chunk, let's define what is secure attachment and what is non-attachment. Most of you are therapists, and you may need no reminder that secure attachment, as per the attachment theory by John Bobby, is that felt sense that the world is safe and you can trust people around you. And you have healthy emotional regulation that people around you will respond and meet your needs and back you up. You trust the relationship without fusion or fear of losing them. You love them deeply and you relate authentically. In secure attachment, we intuitively sense that you are okay, your caregiver is okay. So for people who have experienced hurt, harm from their caregivers, or if their caregivers were unpredictable, neglectful of their needs, then it is more likely to result in avoidant attachment or anxious preoccupied attachment, dismissive avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment styles. Research has actually shown that our early experiences in our childhood predict our relationships and internal working models, a template of how we perceived ourselves and the world around us and our relationship patterns with people that we love, whether it is our internate relationships, friendships, or parent-child relationships. So with the anxious, avoidant, dismissive attachment styles, we may fear abandonment or avoids intimacy or getting too close to people, right? So this is how we describe attachment styles. Whereas in Buddhism, then non-attachment actually means something completely different. Non-attachment in the Buddhist context is that you see the reality and the truth clearly. You do not attach to them. So when we are practicing non-attachment, we do not force or cling to the outcomes. And we're not rejecting the feelings or relationships because there's no point having that tuck of war with our feelings. We're simply noticing and unhooking ourselves when necessary. When we recognize that clinging that inevitably show up, we see if we can release that clinging. If you think about insecure attachment, anxious attachment styles would be like when we say, Don't leave me, I can't live without you. We're clinging. We are refusing to see the truth that relationships happen because of aggregation of causal conditions. Whereas avoidant attachment styles would be like, I don't need anyone, stay away from me. I'm not okay, I don't worth your love. And it's stemming from that past relationship template with strong emotional avoidance and avoiding the pain. I don't want to feel the pain and suffering, so I'm not going to love anyone. And in doing so, it means denying ourselves of rich and meaningful relationships. There are some interesting literature that I have recently come across that Buddhist non-attachment actually correlates with secure attachment styles. It's not avoidant attachment styles, it is freedom from reactivity, not clinging to the outcomes or self-image or self-concepts and what you think about yourself. Studies have shown that people who score higher on the non-attachment skills are more likely to have traits associated with secure attachment, like emotional balance, pro-social relating, and reduce anxiety. So when therapist practicing non-attachment and equanimity, it actually helps therapists to foster these strong, secure therapeutic relationships, which is very helpful and healing for our clients, where they can feel safer, more seen and heard and understood. It's like we are being bigger, wiser, and stronger. A reparenting process. So for us as therapists, when we are not attached to our self-identity, our identity stories, the perfectionistic uh therapist, the good girl, or on good therapist spells. Um think about our need for praise, for approval, or our self-worth. Why? What was the underlying unmet needs? What were the negative core beliefs that were at play here? Is that because we're not good enough? What was the function of continuing to pursue the next shiny career goals? Is that for contribution or is it more to keep the feelings of not good enough at bay? Um that like if I can achieve this, it I can prove to others that I'm worth the love. Um, so sometimes it's really helpful to reflect about like our own internal working templates as well. Perhaps our past relationships, our social conditioning might build this I and ego so strong that we're so strongly attached to this self and identity. Um but as a practicing Buddhist, um in Zenskong An, um there's a famous question to ponder that I would like to ask the listeners. Um question is who am I before I was born? Who am I after I was born? So before you were born as this individual, this baby coming into this world, who are you? And after you're born, who's this person that we so call Poe or you know whoever your name and identity is? And then after you die, who are you? I think breaking down this ego attachment is very useful to see that this I as we learn or call ourselves this label Po in this lifetime is only temporary. So between birth and death, we create this illusion that we need to work hard, hustle, and women need to be married and have children and then keep hustling to have this so-called good life, a life worth living. It can look like a various different patterns for different people, but I think fundamentally we wanted to question and challenge what we so-called life trajectory or like milestones and hold them lightly. Not everything that we have learned since we were young until now, we need to look at them critically rather than thinking that oh, that is what everyone should do. When we recognize that this illusion or uh false perception of I or ego, this my, my, my, my, my, um, my life. Um, when we can relate to them more loosely, we can be more open and less rigid. This then expands our capacity to be a secure base for other people, including our therapeutic relationships with our clients. Um, the other practice that Buddhists actively practicing is to realize that our true nature is inherently compassionate, vast, open, spacious, or accommodating or inclusive, neither rejecting, pushing away, nor attaching or holding too tightly. Our loving kindness is the natural expression of this innate true nature. So, what it means in plain language is that we are originally whole, complete, and pure. We need not to prove ourselves in any way. I guess those who are act practitioners will be familiar with the relational frame theory, that this understanding of hierarchical frames and perspective taking self as context, where we relate to our passing thoughts and feelings, sensations and stories, just like passing clouds, and we can be like the clear blue sky, the secure base for everything to um take place, no matter what our minds create stories that are not good enough, and you'll be able to return to this clear blue sky, this spaciousness to know that I'm whole. No matter how um overwhelmed these feelings that we have, so intense that we feel in our chest or in our tummy, um, we know that they are only a part of me, not all of me. When we see our minds thoughts and feelings and sensations are just parts. They're parts that were reactions from the past, or an amygdala that is on high alert, the brain trying to hold and protect us from the evolutionary perspective, or an inner child that is scared or feeling unsafe, we can see all the different parts, but we are able to hold them as a whole in this state of wholeness and openness. We are less likely to identify these thoughts and emotions as me, the small I. It is like our true nature is like diamond, but the problem is due to the conditioning, um the attachments, we see ourselves as a piece of broken glass. Let that sink in a little bit. We are diamond, but we see ourselves as broken glass. So which one do you identify that with? Both of them can reflect and can hold the thoughts and all, but the values are a little bit different. When you see your innate nature as this perfect, all-rounded pure awareness and that is vast and open, would you see yourself as worthless and not okay? Would you still see others as not okay? Because other people also have this innate uh Buddha nature, there's pure awareness that is whole and perfect. Would you still see others as not okay? Would you still would you be able to trust other people's inherent goodness? When you see others also have this same potential, needing nothing else to make them whole. It's just that this diamond was being covered by the grime, the dirt, and everything, the attachment and delusions that we tend to cover ourselves with. Would you think that the world is not safe and you're not okay? In fact, the idea that we are interconnected makes me feel closer with other beings in the world. This shared humanity, this loving kindness towards all beings naturally arises from within. To some extent, we are all connected in some way to everyone because of our equanimous, innate nature quality. I think this is something to really um practice and leaning towards. Because when you are in this state of being, you are more at ease and inner. Way that nothing can quite take away from you. Um the other perspective is that you know how much you love your siblings, your parents, and loved ones. Um I know I do. This form of love is targeted to just a few relatively compared to the entire human population, right? Because of how the family, community, um evolved and were more intimate to our family because we grew up together and we know that form of love, the unconditional love. But what if the notion that there is a past life and there is a future life is true? This might be a little bit confronting for a lot of the westers, but what if we have been reincarnating endlessly in the six realms for eons of lifetime? This means that all of us, all humans and animal beings, have been here on earth countless times. Buddha once shared that if we gathered all our bones after we die, and then you know, our bones are put together, it's enough to fill the whole ocean. It means that we have been reincarnating for many, many times, and I think the reincarnation can sometimes explain we are all born differently with different temperament, the nature and nurture debate. I feel like there are certain characteristics and traits that that we're all born with, yeah, but there are certain habits that we have learned in this lifetime. But discussion for another time. But what I wanted to say is that if this idea of reincarnation was true, it means that everyone in our community, in our family, there could be our families and relatives in the past life that we love so dearly and were unable to let go, whether taken literally or metaphorically. This teaching actually cultivates that deep sense of interconnectedness in some way. Having this knowing means that we will treat everyone with respect because they could well be our family members in the past lives. And there are some sort of affinities and complex causal conditions that we encounter each other in this lifetime. My grandmaster once said that if you met someone in the shopping center and you had eye contact with that person when you walk past them, or you turn around and look at them, it is likely that you might have had about three months of encounter with this person in the past, not immediate past life, but in the countless past lives. I don't know about you, but it makes me feel closer to people that I have had affinity with to become friends, colleagues, and families. It means that we have had very strong relationships in the past that we become families and friends this lifetime. And if reincarnation was true, it means that there was another I, another person in the past life, with families, another me. Okay, there was another me in the past life with families, with loved ones, and with siblings. But where are they now? Didn't we love them so dearly? Why didn't we bring them with us when we reincarnate into this life? No matter how much we love each other, unfortunately we come alone by ourselves in our naked body, our birthsuit, this skin suit, and then we go again by ourselves in our naked body again. We can't bring together with us everything that we treasure so badly. We can't bring along our LV bag, we can't bring along all the material possessions that we have had, and we can't bring along our loved ones. When I first learned about this idea, it was quite confronting indeed, but it makes a lot of sense where I dive deeper. We may not be able to talk about this in more in-depth in this episode, but I would very much love to discuss this with you in future, possibly in a future community. But of course, I'm not saying that real-world trauma and intergenerational wounds does not exist, and like you know, there are people with intention and hatred so strong that they they hurt other people, and these real-world trauma and intergenerational trauma can sometimes complicate how safe we feel in our nervous systems because of the past experiences, and I cannot deny the fact that there are many people who are hurt badly in the past by their loved ones and through unresolved intergenerational trauma. It is almost like these are a big chunk of what we do in our clinic, in our consulting room. Hurt people hurt people. If we have been hurt in some ways, it makes it harder for us to trust other people and be loving to other people and to be kind to other people. Maybe we think that the world is not safe, and this is our natural instinct to yearn for safety and for connection and to protect ourselves for our survival, the survival instinct. But knowing that all of these hurtful actions are not their true nature, that they hurt other people, they also have that basic goodness, that's inherent, innate nature behind all the pain and defenses. It makes more sense for us to love not just the people that we are connected with by blood or the people that we choose to love, but our love can also include people who once hurt us, the people that we perceive as hard to love or hate. It is not just uh intellectual understanding, but more so in the embodied loving kindness and compassion that we share this same nature. This shared humanity is very, very important. This unconditional love and compassion will then make it easier for us to connect with others in a healthy way and eventually considering like forgiving some of them who have wronged us in the past and to promote deeper healing. And of course, this is at each one's own pace, as we all know. What about nervous system regulation? How does cultivation and Buddhist practice promote nervous system regulation? I previously thought that practicing Buddhism and practicing therapy work were separate paths because of my colonized conditioning. Now I realize that ancient Buddhist wisdom holds lots of truth about nervous system regulation. A lot of the Buddhist practices, such as chanting of mantras, prostration meditation, sitting meditation, actually help to strengthen interoceptive awareness and ventral vagal systems. Shifting from sympathetic fight or flight responses to parasympathetic ventral vagal calmness, a state of safety, social engagement, and co-regulation. It is now backed by research and neuroimaging studies. Some of the key practices that we can easily practice, including soothing, coherent breathing, like inhale forecowns and exhale forecowns. If you do this for five minutes, research actually shown that it activates that vagus nerve and boosts heart rate variability, the HRV, and deactivates stress network and promotes recovery. Another nervous system regulation example is harming or repetitive chanting of mantras and Buddha's names. We know how singing is regulating for our nervous system, right? And chanting of mantra works the same way. Some of the Pali or Sanskrit mantra, for example, oh money pay me home, or in my tradition, the chanting of Dizang Pusa. When you chant repetitively and focus your attention on the chanting, it helps to calm yourself down because you are not thinking of your worries, but simply single-pointed concentration in a sound vibration in your throat, hearing this vibration or sound, and you're not thinking about anything else, but just focus on the here and now, the chanting. It is really calming. Have you ever attended a chanting ceremony in a Buddhist temple? If you have, you would have experienced this hard to describe serenity and calmness. This somatic embodied exercise actually helps to calm the distress, particularly when chanting to bless the deceased or to dedicate blessings to others who are sick or unwell. While we chant to transfer the merits to those who are unwell, we generally feel the benefits ourselves by entering into a deeply regulated, compassionate state of being. So the evidence from the neuroimaging of long-term Buddhist meditators shows that there is enhanced frontal parietal connectivity for emotion regulation and default moat network, quiet down. This means that there is less self-referential rumination and more embodied presence. This is something that we can all practice and get better at. And you know what? Our regulated nervous system becomes the safe other for our clients to shift out of the survival mode and for them to have a calm nervous system to co-regulate with, a steady presence, a safe space to allow the trauma energy to discharge, release, and for them to make sense of their life stories. So when we practice this open awareness, we are more likely to be aware when we are becoming rigid and attaching to an idea. We are more likely to see the clinging and let go of them gently. When we notice our rigid agenda might have stolen the progress in the therapy, we can gently adjust and adapt, attuned with what our clients need at this moment in time. So the true Dhamma in action is that we use skillful means to end the suffering for our clients through that observational power of our pure awareness in ourselves and also in our clients. We practice ethically and we have that inner steadiness and deep stillness within us to remain steady when faced with our clients' pain. And we have that deep stillness to remain steady when our imposter um stories or self-doubt stories are allowed. I hope that this episode shows you this the benefits of Buddhist practice and how it can be deeply relevant to our job as therapists and health professionals. When we cultivate inner stability and spaciousness, we are bigger, wiser, and stronger with our inner resources. When our nervous system is regulated in ventral, vagal tone, ready to engage and spacious. It doesn't just help our clients to heal, it sustains us as health practitioners. This is where I think Buddhist practice path and our spiritual path converge nicely with our day-to-day work. May you be with your innate, compassionate Buddha within. As we close our practice for today, I want to thank you for sharing this time. If this episode resonated with you, the most meaningful way to support the podcast is to share it. Share it with a colleague or leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps our community to reach other people who need it. Until next time. Keep your heart open, keep your mind clear and steady, or be your amazing self as you awaken yourself and others. See you next time. Just a gentle reminder that our conversation today is for inspiration and education only. It is not a substitute for therapy or clinical supervision. And our time together doesn't constitute a therapeutic relationship.