Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Feeling our feelings

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We try so hard to hide everything we’re really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it’s somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life. ~Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday

To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is no shame in expressing your authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a ‘hot mess’ or having ‘too many issues’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world. ~Anthon St. Maarten

For those of us living with trauma, we have spent a majority of our lives dissociated.  Meaning, we didn’t really feel our feelings (until perhaps we had no choice and couldn’t ignore or stuff down anymore).  We weren’t aware of our bodies.  We lived in our heads and outside of ourselves.  

And when we did feel our feelings, we never, ever, under any circumstances shared them or expressed them (except maybe anger).  Those of us living with complex trauma learned early on not to express our emotions, or at least we never learned how to express them in any sort of constructive or helpful way.

So when we start to come to this work of coming into our bodies and processing the traumas that live within us, we all have so much to learn and unlearn.

It is a painstakingly slow process that generally involves many almost imperceptible baby steps mixed with a lot of falling back into old patterns and cycles and finding our ways back out again.

I can say that it does get… less challenging… in time.  With practice, with patience, with self compassion.

Learning to sit in our uncomfortable feelings (and really for those of us who dissociate, all our emotions are uncomfortable, all body sensations can feel like too much) is not easy or fun.  And once we have learned how to tolerate our own feelings, well, now we get to actually feel those feelings and let me tell you I wouldn’t exactly call that fun either.

So if this embodiment stuff isn’t easy and isn’t fun and has us sitting in our uncomfortable stuff, what the heck is the point to it??

I actually used to ask myself this question at least once a week.  I’m not even kidding.

I have many answers for myself (and for you!).  Ultimately, for me, it is all about relationships, and having real, deep, meaningful ones; with myself, with those I’m intimate with, both sexually and not, with my children, with my friends and family.

If we not attuned to our feelings (emotions and bodily sensations), then it is very unlikely we are present in the moment, in our environment, or with the person we are interacting with.  If we are unable to be present with another person, then we are unable to connect with them on a more than a superficial level.  If we are only connecting with folks on a superficial level we feel lonely and isolated and we are also unable to tune into what is happening with the other person on a deeper level.

If we can’t tolerate to feel our own feelings then how can we tolerate to feel another’s?  And isn’t part of being in deep and meaningful relationship being able to hold space and be supportive of and to those who matter most to us?

That’s part one of my answer.

Part two of my answer has to do with our reactions and actions, which also impact our relationships. If we aren’t noticing our little “tells” that we are at the very early states of feeling overwhelmed, flooded, or triggered, then we are unable to do anything to soothe ourselves in those early moments.  If we are unable to soothe ourselves in those early moments, then those feelings build and build.  They may build over weeks, but still with every interaction that activates our sympathetic nervous system that we are unable to reset our system from, then the next trigger feels more intense.  This build up continues until we explode in one way or another.

That explosion can look like yelling and screaming and “losing our shit.”  Generally speaking when this happens we aren’t our best selves and have a tendency to lash out and cause harm to the other person (be that actual physical harm, or emotional or psychological harm may depend on any number of factors).  

That explosion can also look like illness.  Chronic infections, chronic pain, autoimmune issues, chronic colds or flus.  

That explosion can look like self harm, which includes over spending for “retail therapy,” over eating foods that ultimately don’t make us feel good, using drugs or alcohol to numb, and of course what we usually think of as self harm: cutting, binging and purging, suicide attempts, etc.

That explosion can also look like self isolation coupled with extreme amounts of shame and shoulding on ourselves (which can then lead to self harm or illness or “losing our shit”).

That explosion can look like any combination of the above.

None of these explosions are ultimately helpful for us or for our relationships.  

As a species, we humans need each other.  We were never meant to live in isolation or do this thing called Life alone, without any support or help. We are meant to live in community and in relationship.  We are meant to have deep and meaningful relationships where we are accepted by each other (even our uncomfortable feelings), supported by each other, held by each other, and lovingly pushed by each other.

Trauma, and specifically being dissociated, prevents us from being in community and in relationships.

And so.

Becoming embodied helps us relearn what to experience being fully human.

Being fully human has some very messy and uncomfortable parts to it, as well as some amazing and joyous parts, and everything in-between.

So, my short answer to my question above of why I do this whole embodiment thing, and why I support others in their own journeys to embodiment, is so I can be in deep and meaningful relationships with others and with myself and so I can experience all that living as a human has to offer.

It is a conscious choice.  It is made multiple times a day.  It is not a one and done.  

I am so much more embodied and present in my environment, relationships, and Self than I have been at any other point in my life.  Even so, I still fall into those old no longer needed survival skills of dissociation and isolation.  Even so sometimes my feelings sneak up on me when I’m not paying attention.  Even so I cause harm in my relationships, even though that is the last thing I ever want to do.

And.  I am also able to express my emotions to others, often without exploding.  My relationships have grown deeper and more meaningful.  Those closest to me see more of me than they have before.  I am able to get past defensive anger and get to some of the deeper emotions that are bringing up my armor relatively quickly.  I am able to laugh more freely and also cry more freely.  I understand myself so much more.  

I am able to receive love. To be seen. To see that others accept and adore me as I am.

And I have developed a deep compassion for myself and others that wasn’t there five years ago.

This work is not easy.  It is not generally speaking fun.  

And even so, I believe it is so deeply worth it.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 15, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To read my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We need each other

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The world of intimate bonds is the world of emotions—a field of reactions and hidden desires for safety and acceptance that we all long for.  All of us. ~Joseph Schaub, Divorce (or not): A guide

One of the things that trauma does is encourage us to isolate.  It encourages us to be away from our family, friends, intimate partners, and communities.  How this looks for each of us is different.  It may look like us actually appearing to be a hermit and not interacting with people or it may look like we are incredibly social, with many friends and connections, yet all of those relationships are only surface level and we never reveal (much of) who we truly are, our fears, our wants, our needs.

Both scenarios (and a million in-between) are isolation.  When we do not allow ourselves to deeply connect with others, that is one way our trauma shows up.  Our not allowing this deep connection is a signal for our desperate need for a sense of safeness and acceptance, our need for love and a sense of belonging.

When we have unprocessed trauma living within us, it means our ability to have a sense of safeness — with others or with ourselves — is stilted.  For many of us living with trauma, the traumatic events we experienced were perpetrated by people we trusted, people we possibly literally depended on for our actual literal survival.  These types of betrayals, especially when perpetrated over and over throughout our childhoods teach us that we can’t rely on another, that the world isn’t safe, that those who claim to love you will only cause harm. 

We internalize these lessons and they form the development of our neural pathways that then inform us as adults, once we are far from the harm, how to be in relationship with others.

David Richo, in his book How To Be An Adult in Relationships, talks about the “5 A’s” that make up our emotional needs as humans.  These are: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.

We all need someone to pay attention to us in a way that builds us up.

We all need to feel accepted, just as we are, in all our messy and complicated human glory.

We all need to feel appreciated for our contributions to our families, our friendships, our communities, our world.

We all need affection, be that loving words or begin physically held.

We all need allowing, to be allowed to shift and change and grow, allowed to be complex, complicated, and even contradictory.

All humans have these needs.  For those us who did not have most or any of these needs met as children, we have that much more of a desperation to have these needs met as an adult.

But even though we have this requirement to have these basic human needs met, we don’t trust that anyone will ever meet them.  

Trauma is a complex and contradictory thing in and of itself.  As a survival mechanism we isolate and yet isolation can literally kill us.  Without the love and support of our community (be that chosen family, blood relatives, competent trauma informed professionals or hopefully a bit of all of the above), we slowly or sometimes quickly will bring about physical disease, intense loneliness and hopelessness,  and sometimes a depression so deep there feels like there is no way out.

But our early life experiences have formed the ideas that we cannot trust other humans to have our basic human emotional needs met. And it takes a great act of courage and strength to reach out and ask for help.  And frankly, some days we don’t have that courage or strength.

So how do we shift this?  How do we find the resources to move through and past the fears of betrayal?  How do we develop our own sense of safeness and trust?

It takes work.  Patience.  Time. Intention.  Mostly, it takes work.

I deeply believe that we need to do the work of calming our nervous systems, connecting deeply to our boundaries and reclaiming our bodies as our own, finding our ways to our own center and ground.  And then we need to continue this work through deep embodiment and trauma processing work.

Then slowly that sense of safeness, and our ability to trust others and ourselves, will grow.

We are not meant to do this processing and healing work in isolation.  In fact, we actually cannot successfully do it in isolation.  We need others, we need to do this work in relationship.  This is the point of therapy, to help a person heal in a safe relationship so they then can take what they learn (and the ways they have shifted) out into the world and apply it to their other relationships.

Of course, therapy is not for everyone and frankly not all therapists (sadly) are competent.  

However, that does not change the reality that we need to do this work of healing, of developing our sense of safeness, of cultivating trust, within relationships.

It does not make us weak to need other people, it makes us human.  It does not mean we have a character flaw when we yearn for deep connections with others, it makes us human.  It does not make us “less than” or “too much” to ask another for support, it makes us human.

Where this is tricky perhaps, is that we can’t rely on any singular person to fill all our emotional (or any other kind of) needs.  No one person will ever be able to do that. We need a community of people and we need to be able to rely on ourselves in way that is helpful for us and not harmful.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry wrote :
No one is going to love you exactly like you imagine.  No on is ever going to read your mind and take every star from the sky at the perfect time and hand it to you.  No one is going to show up at your door on a horse, with a shoe you lost.  Do you understand?
That’s why you have to love yourself enough, so that any other love just adds more candles to the cake you’ve already iced.

Our work in processing our trauma is loving ourselves, it is the cake and the icing of our making.  But we don’t need to, and I would argue can’t, do this work alone.  We build ourselves up as we build our relationships, our relationships grow as we do, we learn to trust others as we learn to trust ourselves.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum, honestly.  The point being however, we need both.  Both our own willingness to do the work, and people to support us and or guide us in this work.  

It is true that no one person is ever going to meet all our emotional needs.  Knowing this is part of our own maturation process.  However, we can have a community of people, even a relatively small community of a handful of folks, who together can help us get our needs met.

That’s how we are supposed to be.  In community.  Serving each other and ourselves.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter on June 10, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

*Now posted on substack

Breaking open

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To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.

To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust

These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.

They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love. Relating. Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last couple weeks. It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship. It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships.

The other day I watched this IGTV by Jeanette LeBlanc. I sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed some more.

When my marriage was crumbling, and even shortly after it ended, I didn’t believe I would ever love again. I didn’t believe I could ever open myself to that kind of heartbreak again. I didn’t even know if I was capable of loving again, not in the ways that I had loved my ex-husband.

I kept my walls up. My armor was on secure and tight. Once I decided I wanted to have sex with another person, I had partnered sex, but there was no intimacy. I wouldn’t allow it. There was no sleeping over. There was no sharing of my life and there was no listening to them talk about their’s.

I wasn’t ready for and frankly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R). I didn’t want to “catch feelings.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.

And I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind.

Until I did.

It is ironic to look back at the very beginning of this relationship. We texted for a week and I wasn’t overly interested, though in text we seemed like a good match. I almost canceled our first date. But then I wanted to get out and we had plans, so I went.

And I met him.

As soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart. I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open? I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever. I had (and still have) lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part. I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house). I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s. So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, because all things come to an end at some point, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I wrote this the other day on IG ::

Sometimes we meet people who have profound impacts on our lives and our Self. Just by being them they create space for us to unearth some lost pieces of who we are. They show us what it is to be loved and adored. They teach us what freedom is. We may want these people to be in our lives forever but that may not be how it works out. They may only be with us for a short while & yet their impact is massive & our hearts shatter when they leave.

Hearts are meant to shatter I believe. And then to be put back together. We are meant to love & lose that love. Nothing is forever.

And sometimes relationships come back & start again. There are those in my life who I can literally go a decade without talking to & when we see each other it is as if no time has passed.

There are people who light us up regardless of time or distance.

We can’t “keep” these people though. People are not for keeping. People are for loving, for caring for, for experiencing life with. In whatever time allows us to have with them.

“All we have to see, is I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” ~George Michael

I am in a time of grief. It is true. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I left the door open for the future, and who knows what will happen in a week, a month, a year, a decade. And also, in these moments now I need to accept the ending of what was.

This hurts like hell. My chest literally aches. I cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m not miserable though. I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear. I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time.

I will eventually move through this grief. It is true. While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

Here’s a thing though, our love, our wide open hearts, our vulnerability, our authenticity, aren’t only meant for romantic love. They are meant for friends. For (chosen) family. For colleagues. For comrades. For our grocery clerk. For total strangers.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces. Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.

The world needs our wide open hearts. The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over. By lovers, friends, family, and strangers. With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those). It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us harm in the name of Love. It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts. I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart. With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work. Our own internal work. Of healing old wounds. Of processing old traumas. Of becoming self aware, self reflective. Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt. Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own black holes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves. We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry and utilize the master’s tools. We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles. We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love. Each other. Our Self. Our world.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 17, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays along with stream of conscious writing prompts, self-regulation exercises, and more, you can subscribe right here.

On insecure avoidant (dismissive & fearful) attachment styles

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Dismissive-avoidant
A dismissive-avoidant attachment style is demonstrated by those possessing a positive view of self and a negative view of others.

People with a dismissive style of avoidant attachment tend to agree with these statements: “I am comfortable without close emotional relationships”, “It is important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient”, and “I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.” People with this attachment style desire a high level of independence. The desire for independence often appears as an attempt to avoid attachment altogether. They view themselves as self-sufficient and invulnerable to feelings associated with being closely attached to others. They often deny needing close relationships. Some may even view close relationships as relatively unimportant. Not surprisingly, they seek less intimacy with attachments, whom they often view less positively than they view themselves. Investigators commonly note the defensive character of this attachment style. People with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style tend to suppress and hide their feelings, and they tend to deal with rejection by distancing themselves from the sources of rejection (e.g. their attachments or relationships).

Fearful-avoidant
A fearful-avoidant attachment style is demonstrated by those possessing an unstable fluctuating/confused view of self and others.

People with losses or other trauma, such as sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence may often develop this type of attachment and tend to agree with the following statements: “I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to completely trust others, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to other people.” They tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness, and the mixed feelings are combined with sometimes unconscious, negative views about themselves and their attachments. They commonly view themselves as unworthy of responsiveness from their attachments, and they don’t trust the intentions of their attachments. Similar to the dismissive-avoidant attachment style, people with a fearful-avoidant attachment style seek less intimacy from attachments and frequently suppress and deny their feelings. Because of this, they are much less comfortable expressing affection.

~Wikipedia, August 2019

While the avoidant attachment styles are not my dominant styles, I have been in relationships (both intimate and platonic) where the other person has an avoidant style. Some of the ways I have witnessed these styles show up in others (note I have broken it down to three lists: characteristics they share; dismissive only; fearful only)

Both avoidant styles ::

  • Struggle with emotional intimacy
  • Unable to share their own thoughts or feelings with others in a constructive way
  • “Logics” their way out of emotional conflict

Avoidant Dismissive style ::

  • Become uncomfortable when relationships get too emotionally intimate; may perceive their partners as “wanting too much” or being clinging when the partner expresses a desire to be more emotionally intimate
  • Appear fiercely independent – act as though they don’t need others; they can take care of everything themselves
  • When faced with separation or loss, they shift their focus and attention to other (non relationship) issues and goals
  • Tend to withdraw and isolate, attempting to cope with loss and other emotions on their own
  • Deny their vulnerability; use repression to manage emotions that are aroused in situations that activate their attachment needs
  • When seeking support from a partner are likely to use indirect strategies such as hinting, complaining, and sulking
  • Overly focused on themselves and their own comforts; largely disregard the feelings and interests of other people
  • Typical response to conflict, and stressful situations is to become distant and aloof

Avoidant Fearful :: 

  • Afraid of being both too close to or too distant from others; attempt to keep their feelings at bay but are unable to
  • Overwhelmed by their emotional reactions and often experience emotional storms
  • Unpredictable moods; unable to self-regulate or suppress feelings
  • Often in rocky or dramatic relationships, with many highs and lows
  • Fear of being abandoned and also struggle with being intimate
  • Cling to their partner when they feel rejected, then feel trapped when they are close
  • Timing seems to be off between them and their partner

What these styles can look like in the modern world:

  • Ghosting or semi-ghosting
  • Refusing to talk about emotional personal topics
  • Avoiding or ignoring conflicts by ignoring phone calls, texts, emails; when they do reply make no mention of the conflict

Ghosting is a very modern day way that those with avoidant, and particularly dismissive-avoidant, attachment styles cope with their feelings. They may tell themselves all kinds of things about why they are ghosting the person, but it does boil down to not wanting to face and feel with their emotions. Note that their partner may or may not even be aware of a conflict, as avoidant styles struggle to state when something is an issue for them.

As with the insecure-anxious attachment style, the avoidant styles grow from neglect from their primary caregivers during their developmentally sensitive years. This may be due to the caregivers having addiction issues, having avoidant attachment styles themselves, or could be from a life event in the adult’s life that has them withdraw into themselves, like grief over the death of a loved one or needing to work outside the home suddenly due to divorce. 

Those with fearful avoidant styles tend to have grown up in homes when sometimes a caregiver was available and sometimes not; creating a sense of confusion and not knowing if the adult will be available to meet their needs.

Generally speaking anxiously attached and avoidant attached people are attracted to each other. Their relationships tend to look a bit like a cat and mouse game where the anxiously attached person reaches out for connection, then the avoidantly attached person withdraws, so the anxiously attached reaches out more and the avoidant withdraws more, each upping the ante so to speak with each turn of the cycle with neither ever getting their attachment needs met. This cat and mouse game can last for decades, for a lifetime even. 

However as one or the other partner works through their own trauma history and starts to process it, learning to develop a more securely attached relationship style there are two paths the relationship could either go down: 1. The relationship ends or 2. The other partner also begins to work through their trauma history and learns how to become more securely attached in relationship.

Securely attached people can be in relationship with either avoidant or anxious attached people (and of course other securely attached people). The good news for those with the insecure attachment style, is if they are willing and able, these relationships are excellent opportunities for them to grow and begin their trauma processing work and begin to shift their styles. However, the securely attached partner is not the insecurely attached partner’s therapist, and so finding a good trauma informed therapist is vital to facilitate the shifting that can begin to happen in these types of relationships.

Of course the ways we relate to others, especially our intimate partners, is complex and varied. We all have a more dominant style that we typically utilize, however we all have bits of each of the insecure attachment styles in us, regardless of which one is more dominant for us. How our attachment styles show up in our relationships is also varied depending on our partner’s (dominant) style and the work each person has done in processing their own childhood trauma. 

My hope for sharing about each of these styles over the last couple weeks is for you to learn a bit more about yourself and to help you develop a bit more compassion for yourself in understanding some more of the hows and whys you interact in the world the way you do.

The best news in all of this, is with the right trauma informed therapist and our own dedication to practice and growth, we can all shift from insecure attachment styles to a more and more securely attached style. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it can be done. It requires us to literally rewire our neural pathways, and I highly recommend a therapist who utilizes a combination of somatic and talk therapy. This rewiring can begin to happen in a few months, and with more and more work people can begin to see significant changes in how they feel in their own bodies and within their relationships in as little as a year to eighteen months. 

That may seem like a long time (eighteen months), but consider how long, how many decades, you have lived with the attachment style you developed as a child. When we look at it from this perspective, eighteen months is a drop in the bucket.

That doesn’t mean that in a year and half you will be “healed” or “cured” or completely changed in your attachment style. I believe those of us who developed insecure styles as children will always need to manage them in certain situations and consciously and intentionally bring ourselves back into more secure ways of being. However, developing that pause, to be able to move into that secure way of being with ourselves and with others, is everything.

** I want to note that I do not believe it is the responsibility of those who have more securely attached styles to “help” those with insecure styles. None of us are responsible for another person’s growth or trauma processing when in intimate relationships or platonic friendships. However, love is complex and we may find ourselves being willing to be present during our partner’s growth. The key is being able to recognize when a partner is being abusive and to be very clear that abusive behavior is unacceptable and if repeated it is necessary, always, for us to save ourselves and leave the relationship.

/../

This essay was originally published in my newsletter on August 11, 2019 and edited for publication here. To read my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

Being (mostly) securely attached

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Secure attachment
Securely attached people tend to agree with the following statements: “It is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or others not accepting me.” This style of attachment usually results from a history of warm and responsive interactions with their attachments. Securely attached people tend to have positive views of themselves and their attachments. They also tend to have positive views of their relationships. Often they report greater satisfaction and adjustment in their relationships than people with other attachment styles. Securely attached people feel comfortable both with intimacy and with independence. ~Wikipedia, July 2019

If you don’t consciously choose trust and love in each moment, your subconscious policies will choose for you, and they usually choose fear.~Kimberly Giles, Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness

You can’t go back and change the past or remove the impressions of painful experiences; they’re part of your journey and through them you’ve become who you are. But you can activate different vibrational seeds by shifting your perspective and creating new mental habits that result in conscious actions. ~Yol Swan, The Indigo Journals: Spiritual Healing For Indigo Adults & Other Feminine Souls

The other week I was going through a thing, as one does. I was feeling panicked, worried, anxious. And while I was feeling all those things they weren’t totally consuming me. I could see what was happening; I noticed my responses; I noticed that while I was anxious it wasn’t nearly as bad as my reactions to similar situations have been in the past. 

Which got me curious about my own attachment style (which has always been insecure – anxious preoccupied) and how that has shifted in recent years. Of course I went to google to find an online quiz, took it, and then was pretty surprised by the results.

That I now apparently have a “mostly secure” attachment style.

I know that things have been shifting for me over the years. I know that especially over the last five years my reactions to triggers has become less and less. But I still was identifying myself as anxiously attached, I was still being triggered in some important relationships, I would still get anxious and start to panic. But what I realized the real difference was, is that I wasn’t reacting to the other person like I may have in the past.

I found the pause. I allowed myself to feel the anxiety, to examine it, to see what it was coming from, and then would respond to the person (if it was appropriate to do so). I wasn’t stuck in my back brain in panic mode. I could both feel the panic and logically and compassionately think through it.

I’m sharing all this to say that it is possible to change your attachment style. It is possible to move an insecure attachment style to a more secure way of being in the world. That doesn’t mean the feelings of those attachment styles totally disappear (at least that hasn’t been my experience), and we can learn to hold those uncomfortable feelings, slow down, and instead of instantly reacting, we can take the time to examine what is going on and then respond as it is appropriate to do so.

This has required a lot of embodiment/body-centered mindfulness work. It has required a lot of self compassion. It has required an intention and determination to be in relationships differently than in the past. It has required my own curiosity and willingness to be vulnerable with another (with others) who could potentially cause me a lot of pain.

And it has required letting go. Letting go of old narratives. Letting go of looking for validation outside myself (something I’m still working on). Letting go of trying to “make” another person be or act a certain way.

It has required acceptance. Accepting these wounds of mine and the grief that goes with them. Accepting others as they are and then deciding how or if I want to be with them. 

It has required exploring the idea of freedom within relationship – both with another and with myself. Because truly, don’t we all want to feel free within our most intimate relationships? And don’t we want those we are in relationship with us to be freely choosing us too, without games or manipulation or needing to have huge explosions (and calling it passion)?

I know I do.

No matter how severe our childhood traumas, we have the capacity for growth and change. Our brains are capable of rewiring. We are able to move from a state of constant fear and survival into a state of thriving and truly enjoying our lives. 

When we have partners who want to shift and grow too, who are ready to be pushed outside their own comfort zones just as we are ready to be pushed outside our own, amazing things can happen. Amazing, beautiful things.

It can be terrifying. It means doing things we’ve never done before and it will feel weird, scary, uncomfortable. But when you find someone you know you can trust, even though you have trust issues stemming back to childhood, you can actually learn what it means to truly trust, to have compassion for our own and another’s humanity, and to explore this wild life, expanding together. 

/../

This essay was originally published in my newsletter on July 22,,2019 and has been edited for publication here. To receive my weekly(ish) newsletter with my most recent essays and offerings, go right here.