About the Book
The Polysecure Workbook encourages examination of any attachment challenges you may have experienced in your opening up process and offers insights into how to build secure relationships. Through practical exercises, you will explore your own attachment history, examine your reasons for practicing nonmonogamy and the different styles of nonmonogamy that you relate to, and consider whether you rely on relationship structure for your attachment security. The Polysecure Workbook provides the tools needed to navigate the complexities of multiple loving relationships and to build personal security.
Table of Contents:
In Part One you will focus on your own attachment history with your childhood attachment figures, your resulting attachment styles as an adult, your different attachment experiences on the multiple dimensions of Nested Model of Attachment and Trauma, and how to bring more acceptance and release of your past.In Part Two you will explore your why for practicing nonmonogamy, the different styles of nonmonogamy that you relate to, your experiences of relying on relationship structure for your attachment security and the specific ways that you may have experienced attachment challenges, changes and ruptures throughout your opening up process.Part Three attends to the safe haven and secure base foundations of being polysecure, how to apply HEARTS in your relationship with partners and yourself and then ends with walking you through some contemplations and ideas for assessing your level of polysaturation and how to create your own vessel when there are attachment struggles at play.
About the Author :
Jessica Fern is a psychotherapist, public speaker and trauma and relationship expert and the author of Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy. In her international private practice, Jessica works with individuals, couples and people in multiple-partner relationships who no longer want to be limited by their reactive patterns, cultural conditioning, insecure attachment styles and past traumas, helping them to embody new possibilities in life and love.
Review :
For Polysecure:
“A deeply compassionate book, Polysecure is a great read for both therapists who serve people in consensually nonmonogamous (CNM) relationships and laypeople who are interested in what makes for secure attachments in such relationships. It offers an excellent summary of conventional attachment theory, critiques and re-interprets attachment theory for CNM relationships, and provides a roadmap for people in CNM relationships who want to establish emotionally intimate and securely attached relationships with multiple partners. One of the most important insights from Fern’s delightful book is that secure attachment is a product of relationship experiences rather than relationship structures.” —Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, author of The Polyamorists Next Door, Stories from the Polycule, When Someone You Love is Polyamorous, and Children in Polyamorous Families
“Secure attachment is absolutely central to successful polyamorous relationships, and insecure attachment is at the core of the jealousy and other challenges in open relationships of all kinds. This book can help poly people, as well as clinicians, get to the heart of their struggles and pain. It can help them to take concrete steps to become more comfortable with their nonmonogamous relationships and trust their partner’s love and commitment. This is required reading for people in open relationships and should be used as a textbook for every therapist who works with people in polyamorous relationships." —Kathy Labriola, counselor, nurse, and author of The Polyamory Breakup Book
"Polysecure is likely to become for people interested in polyamory, what Love Languages is for understanding romance. It gives people a way to understand how they may be recreating those old patterns by bringing their own childhood attachment styles into their adult relationships. And even more importantly, it offers concrete skills for how to use this knowledge to create healthier, more satisfying and secure relationship dynamics.” —Max Rivers, intimacy coach and author of Loving Conflict: How Conflict Is Really Your Relationship Trying to Go Deeper
“An extremely helpful addition to the literature on consensual non-monogamy, and the first self-help book to focus on applying attachment theory to non-monogamous relationships. Taking the reader by the hand, Jessica Fern explains how perfectly secure attachment styles are rare, and how all of us can usefully work with our attachment issues, whatever our way of doing relationships. Weaving together research findings with therapeutic literature and personal experience, Fern does an excellent job of challenging the popular view that non-monogamous people are more likely than anyone else to struggle with attachment. She presents an extremely helpful model locating our relationship patterns within our wider culture and community as well as within our family background and relationship experiences. The notion of openly discussing whether we want an attachment-based partnership or not is worth the price of the book all by itself, as is the chapter on developing a secure attachment with yourself. This is gold!” —Dr. Meg-John Barker, author of Rewriting the Rules: An Anti Self-Help Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships
“I find Jessica’s work not only highly useful but absolutely essential to building healthy, secure open relationships. What a gift this intelligent, inspired piece of literature is to the broader non-monogamous community, as well as those about to embark on this brave frontier of multiple loves! I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in self-acceptance and self-mastery, as well as their own emotional well-being as they build loving, sustainable, healthy multiple relationships.” —Kitty Chambliss, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, relationship coach, and author of Jealousy Survival Guide: How to Feel Safe, Happy and Secure in an Open Relationship “Jessica Fern has outdone herself! With The Polysecure Workbook, she has given us dozens of great techniques and exercises that may seem deceptively simple and user-friendly but are very powerful and effective. This workbook will be extremely helpful to people who are in consensually nonmonogamous relationships, but will be equally useful to clinicians working with poly folks.” —Kathy Labriola, counselor, nurse, and author of The Polyamory Breakup Book “In Polysecure Jessica Fern gave people a whole new language for healthily navigating nonmonogamy. Now, with The Polysecure Workbook, she is giving those readers practical tools to actively build their healthiest nonmonogamous relationships." —JoEllen Notte, author of The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having and In It Together: Navigating Depression with Partners, Friends, and Family "Jessica Fern has outdone herself! With The Polysecure Workbook, she has given us dozens of great techniques and exercises that may seem deceptively simple and user-friendly but are very powerful and effective. This workbook will be extremely helpful to people who are in consensually nonmonogamous relationships, but will be equally useful to clinicians working with poly folks."
- Kathy Labriola (counselor, nurse, and author of The Polyamory Breakup Book) "In Polysecure Jessica Fern gave people a whole new language for healthily navigating nonmonogamy. Now, with The Polysecure Workbook, she is giving those readers practical tools to actively build their healthiest nonmonogamous relationships."
- JoEllen Notte (author of The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren't Having and In) The Polysecure Workbook is a one-of-a-kind tool for anyone looking to create more secure attachment within nonmonogamous (or monogamous) relationships. This ground-breaking book has helped to remove the stigma of polyamory as a pathology, making it more possible for people to explore non-monogamy in a conscious way that strengthens their attachment style. The exercises are thoughtfully created to encourage deep reflection on your values, patterns and relationship structures to work towards healing your relationship with yourself and your partners. I loved going through it and questioning my beliefs and preconceptions around polyamory, it certainly expanded my view of nonconventional structures and how I can reflect on building security within my relationships.
- Annie Zimmerman (Your Pocket Therapist) An essential read for consensual nonmonogamists looking to better understand themselves and cultivate healthy relationships that meet their unique needs. Fern writes in an accessible style and offers readers a series of helpful, in-depth exercises in self-discovery. The end result is an indispensable guide to creating the foundation for secure relationships.
- Justin J. Lehmiller (Ph.D., Kinsey Institute Research Fellow and author of Tell Me What You Want)
