The irony that we need to ‘reconnect’ to feel safe..

When we feel unsafe or threatened by anything, or anywhere, your whole being kicks in… your nervous system heads into it’s initial reaction… fight or flight… then if danger does not abate, the next level of nervous system kicks in… freeze… or feigning….

Depending on your own personal experience, environment and beliefs, conscious or subconscious, your nervous system will have developed strategies, systems, memories and beliefs that play again and again, and again…

One such strategy that I want to discuss here today is the idea of ‘disconnecting’…

To disconnect or dis-engage or disassociate are all under the same umbrella of trauma response… all varying levels of the same fear response… all nervous system responses that ‘keep us safe’ when under extreme stress or pain or overwhelm.

I have worked in broadcast tv for 30 years, where it is not unusual to have to sit or stand in one place with out moving for 4 or 5 hours at a time, to not have a wee break for the same amount of time or a meal break for even longer… We have learnt to disconnect our body needs for the job… This is similar, but not exactly what I am getting at when I write of the need to disconnect to feel safe.

When we are little, we find places to ‘disappear’ to.. other worlds or friends that keep us safe and not feeling our ‘aloneness’ or ‘sadness’ or ‘hurt’ or ‘confusion’…

Then when we are adults we might use alcohol or drugs or sex, or food, or any other active version of the same, to ‘not feel’, or disconnect…

We don’t want to ‘feel’ the pain, confusion, hurt, sadness, anger… it is too much, too overwhelming and just too bloody hard to handle.

But… what happens in our body within the disconnect? We still hold and carry the feeling/pain/emotion, it is stored in our body, and if not released, may cause all manner of problems… excessive behaviour, pain, illness or mental illness…

We know we store ‘feelings’ in our body…’butterflies in my tummy’, the weight of the world on my shoulders’ etc, etc.. but most of us aren’t taught to understand or acknowledge or accept these feelings in our body… we can see the ‘disconnect’ in our posture, our gait and our balance. We feel trauma in our numbness, our stutter and our twitching…

We also need to recognise that we are mostly taught to ignore, cover or bandaid any ‘feelings’ in our body… On the whole we have not been encouraged to listen to our bodies or understand how trauma or existential crisis are held and expressed in our bodies.

Yes, existential crisis, the grandmother to trauma – the losing yourself,  having no footing or safe place… trauma by name, existential by nature.

But… we know instinctively and now through modern research, that to recover from trauma, we need to recover in mind, body and spirit… to ’embody’ the work… to finish the action, acknowledge the pain held and release the nervous system from habitual and sometimes damaging reactions.

It’s certainly not that we ‘relive’ the trauma or fearful event – NO – but we do need to explore what that meant to us and where that is held in our body… gently, with trust and care… certainly with time and compassion.

We need to tip our toe in the water of our fears, to touch that which we are numbing from… and so enable those once fearful feelings, to simply become feelings… not fearful, not playing out in the everyday…

This takes time and patience, courage and vulnerability… it takes support and care… it takes you to want to feel again, to believe that life will be better to feel rather than not…

You need to want to live with your whole heart, rather than just a part of it… all the parts of you… the bruised and hurt alongside the courageous and inherently wise..

How I hear you ask…

Firstly, you need to feel safe to feel, to know that you will not be backed into a corner, or shamed or blamed…

It is very difficult to do this on your own… we need to bear the pain in communion, to share the burden and make it bearable… and so, you need to find people to help you – that you trust to hold you and not judge you, and to make space for all of you…

Whether it is a few people or more, professional or friends, this work must be done in relationship… simply because one of the most powerful healing tools in our nervous system toolbox is ‘co-regulation’… your nervous system being influenced by a calmer, more settled ‘other’ nervous system…That is why a pet can be so fabulous to help reconnect too.

Part of the process is learning to befriend the feelings in your body… they are not the enemy, but there to help… they were originally created to keep you safe, and over time recognised as fearful or the ‘enemy’.

Finding helpful movement or creative outlets can be useful as well – to soften the edges and to shift the habitual and long-held heaviness and stagnation in your body.

I don’t have the time nor space to delve any deeper here, but if you would like help to start your journey from ‘disconnected’ to ‘connected’, it would be an honour to be with you and journey with you.

Please contact me and we can begin the beautiful work of healing and connecting!

Lisa