The connectivity creates warmth in the heart, while attachment evokes anxiety.
It may seem super obvious rationally, however, what does it mean in practice?
Both connectivity and attachment are big topics in trauma, therefore they are extremely important for our experiencing of self and life.
I experienced a reasonable amount of repeated physical trauma, sexual harassment, and mental abuse which radically impaired my sense of self. Most of us went through hard times, it’s the nature of life, it comes with good and hard too.
However, all of us deal with trauma very differently. People with resilience, curiosity, hope, open mindset, drive and some level of sense of humor cope better than people with a fixed mindset. Where all traits can be learnt or levelled up.
The loss of sense of self is what I consider as the worse side effect.
Because a sense of self is the most important factor for us acknowledging SELF for who we truly are.
For instance, you don’t see and value your skills or presence therefore you can’t apply yourself accordingly. You know it rationally, yet you don’t embody the knowledge. It’s the same as having plenty of education, yet we don’t turn it into wisdom and practicality.
Underneath, you know yourself, but you aren’t able to sustain the feeling of self connectives (you just have info about self but you don’t feel it).
Childhood trauma is more difficult to heal because at an early age we create concepts and memories (hippocampus) which often run whole life. What happens is that we disconnect from ourselves to survive, we ATTACH to the environment to supply us with LEAD. To complicate the matter, even more, parts in our body disconnect (especially if one was hit), even areas of the brain disconnect for us to experience dissociation (dyslexia, ADHD..)
An attachment ( codependency, insecure attachments, obsessions ..) replaces the connectivity. Within self and with the environment. We always reflect inner states to our physical reality. Being truly connected to self and others feels warm around the heart, while being attached rises anxiety.
To be self-connected comes with some sort of depth and intimacy, peace and calmness, maybe even witnessing. Maybe this description reminds you of somebody? Even from the movie? Haha. This is the state of being where our nervous system gets healed, we feel safe inside ourselves and in this world.
Surely it’s the long path from insecure to safe, but worth every effort. What I realized in self-healing and helping to heal others is, that while we are reprogramming our whole complex self the key is to realize that we overcome already and that we managed to live and create well enough.
That we are doing just fine and that feeling safe within and in the world doesn’t mean that shit will never happen again, but that now we have manual and whatever we overcame we can do again, with much less efforts!
This is what our whole system needs to accept as a new model, living with ease instead of survival mode, where our nervous system (polyvagal theory) functions on freeze or fight and flight.
We can learn to track it, regulate it.
But I say, why not to reprogram it to the opposite functioning(a calm state where the best ideas and creation come from) even by fulling “it” into believing that living in calm mode is safest?!
