Category: trauma

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On insecure anxious preoccupied attachment

An anxious-preoccupied attachment style is demonstrated by those possessing a negative view of self and a positive view of others.

People with anxious-preoccupied attachment type tend to agree with the following statements: “I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like”, and “I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.” People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their attachment figure. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on the attachment figure. Compared with securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They may feel a sense of anxiousness that only recedes when in contact with the attachment figure. They often doubt their worth as a person and blame themselves for the attachment figure’s lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, emotional dysregulation, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships. ~Wikipedia, August 2019

The anxious attachment style is one I developed due to my particular traumatic childhood experiences. Of all the attachment styles it is the one I am most personally familiar with and have spent years working to unraveling and shifting myself more to a secure attachment style. With that said, this style still pokes its head up and is something I need to intentionally redirect.

Some of the ways this style shows up in our lives:

  • Trying to prove to another why we are worthy of their love
  • In school, always needing and striving to be “teacher’s pet”
  • Chasing after people, even as they pull further and further away. In fact the more they pulled away, the more we chase
  • Bottling up our emotions and feelings about hurtful behavior from another until we couldn’t any more and would explode. (These explosions can look like screaming, throwing things, slamming doors, breaking things, hitting our own body until we bruise, among other not so helpful behaviors)
  • Beating our self up emotionally and psychologically with the stories of how unlovable and unwantable we are
  • Jumping from one intimate relationship to another without taking time to grieve the relationship that was ending/had just ended
  • Constantly seeking external approval; being “charming” so we could get it
  • Enmeshed relationships, with both sexual partners and friends
  • Completely breaking down at the slightest hint of criticism
  • A push-pull game where we would withdraw, waiting for a person to “chase” us, and if they didn’t, upping the ante in one way or another, chasing them for a bit and then withdrawing again to have the other chase us.
  • Picking fights to just get some reaction/attention from a person

I could probably go on for another few pages with all the ways this attachment style can show up in our lives, I know it so well. Most of the above behaviors I have been able to move past and no longer do. And in recent months I’ve seen my this insecure style show up in my life in some of the following ways:

  • Constantly checking my phone for text messages from particular people. Becoming increasingly stressed and anxious the more time passes before receiving a response
  • Seeking external validation via dating apps
  • Penduluming between the stories of how unlovable I am and the deep knowing that I am lovable and okay.

Those last two behaviors, in truth, have felt more like habits. I wasn’t so much driven to those behaviors and patterns as much as it was I couldn’t really think of what else to do to attempt to soothe the wounds that had once again been exposed. Which is often how shifting happens – we have a behavior, we do the work to change it, and at some point, we are still doing the behavior, but it doesn’t feel that same. That is the point when we can actually stop the behavior, when it truly is a habit and not a compulsive or unconscious action.

It is safe to say that all insecurely (avoidant and anxious) attached people have experienced abuse and or neglect when we were children. What seems to really be the key to the insecure attachment styles is more the neglect than the abuse. 

This may seem odd to some, that “simply” being neglected would cause more long term harm than being physically or sexually abused. And here’s a thing, for those of us who experienced chronic physical and or sexual abuse, there was also neglect. Always. Because the abuse was able to occur, over and over again, it is because people were not paying attention to us, were not seeing the signs of our abuse, were not stopping the abuse from happening.

It is the neglect that I believe in the end causes the most harm in regard to the ways our neural pathways develop. The overt or subtle messages that we aren’t worth paying attention to, that we don’t matter, that our pain isn’t relevant… that is what creates the pathways that grow deeper and deeper, until, long after the abuse has ended, long after we have outgrown the need to be physically and emotionally cared for by our primary caregivers, we still have thoughts and feelings that we don’t matter, that we are a bother, that we are too “needy” or want “too much”.

Anxious preoccupied attachment feels like we are constantly reaching and grasping. That is the sensation within our bodies. It shows up in our behaviors in a variety of ways, some of which I listed above.

The good news is that we can re-wire our brains and shift our attachment styles. I posted recently how, apparently, I have a mostly secure attachment style now. This was so shocking to me, because I have gone through a period of feeling that reaching and grasping, the anxiety that comes with the sense of abandonment pretty recently. I still felt anxiously attached.

The key was, and is, though that I was doing my best to not act anxiously attached. That I could slow down, get my logic brain engaged, consider all the circumstances of the situation, and then, usually, act and respond to the situations appropriately. Was I able to do that every time? No. No, I was not. Because I am human, and learning, and the whole not acting out of my trauma and raw emotions is a relatively new concept for me. And. I can say, that I was able to slow down more times than I not was able to.

I couldn’t have said this a year ago. Definitely not two years ago. Absolutely not three or more years ago. Though I could say that two years ago I was a bit better than three years ago, last year I was better at slowing down than the year before. Practice, patience, intention, self-compassion. Those have been the four pillars of getting me to this place.

I don’t believe I will ever be “perfect” at not reacting from my anxious attachment style. I am not striving for “perfection”. This is a life long journey. There will be good days and not so good ones. There will be circumstances that allow me to slow down immediately and others that will require a lot of intention and awareness on my part to slow down my reactions.

This is true for all of us. I don’t believe I will, or anyone will, become 100% securely attached one day. The traumas I experienced impacted me too deeply for one. For another, life happens, more traumas are sure to come my way, my very old wounding will be poked at and opened up and I will find another layer to process, to grow from.

I believe this to be true of all of us. Layers upon layers. Exploring, expanding, shifting.

/../

This essay was originally published to my weekly newsletter on August 4, 2019 and edited for publication here. If you would like to read my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

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On being an adult in relationship

Our work, then, is not to abolish our connection to the past but to take it into account without being at its mercy.  The question is how much the past interferes with our chances at healthy relating and living in accord with our deepest needs, values, and wishes. ~David Richo, How To Be An Adult In Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

David Richo states in How To Be An Adult In Relationships, that in order to be an adult, we need to be self-aware and mindful in our actions. 

 In other words, self-awareness is vital on it’s own, but until it is coupled with mindful and intentional action (or inaction), we still aren’t fully acting in our frontal lobe, or “adult” brain.

Those of us who experienced chronic trauma in childhood have a lot to be angry about.  We have a lot to be sad about.  We have a lot to rage and scream and wail about.  I don’t believe anyone would deny that.  The atrocities that were done to too many of us as children are horrifying and all of it is held in our body and mind memory. 

The trauma doesn’t want to stay trapped within us however, it wants to get out.  This is great news if we are in therapy and doing a combination of talk and somatic therapies to help move that trauma on out of our systems and being.  It’s not so great news if we aren’t and so we try to stuff it down and eventually it bubbles up and out and we spew it all over an unsuspecting passer-by.

That passer-by could be our children, our intimate partner(s), our friends, other family members.  It could even be ourselves.

It is understandable that we have so much hurt and torment living within us.  I makes sense that it all needs to get out.  It is not okay for us to lash out at others.

Even when they cause us harm.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Even when  a person causes us harm, it is not acceptable for us to lash out and cause them harm.

The whole “two wrongs doesn’t make a right” thing.

Here’s a thing, though.  For most of us, I don’t think our “eruptions” or “lashing out” are intentional.  I know for me it mostly certainly isn’t mindful.  It comes from a primal place within that only cares about our survival. And so when we are already wounded, like any animal, if we get poked or prodded we go into fight/flight/freeze because we see any hurt as an attack and we need to protect and defend ourselves.

Rollo May wrote: “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.“

The work of self-awareness is to be able to grow that capacity to pause and allow space for us to mindfully choose the response we want to to actually have.

This is not to say there isn’t a part of us that wants our response to be screaming at the top of our lungs and stomping our feet.

It is to say however, that we need to take the moment to consider the longer term impacts of us screaming and stomping our feet.  And if the longer term impacts actually cause us and other (more) harm, then perhaps we could consider a different response.

Shifting from a space of automatic, mindless, response to one where there has been space created between being activated and actually responding, is no simple task.  We cannot undo the habit of a lifetime of automatic, mindless responding simply because we decide we want to do so.

It takes time.

AND.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, learning to regulate our systems: calm our sympathetic nervous system, activate our parasympathetic nervous system, move the stored up cortisol out of our system.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, connecting to our boundaries and coming into our bodies.  Learning to truly understand, on a very visceral level, where we end and another begins, physically, psychically, emotionally.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, finding our ways to ground and our own center, being able to find our way to not only be in but stay in, the present moment, despite any and all the discomfort we may be feeling.

And after all of that, it takes practice, a LOT of practice, to break the patterns and cycles that we have become so accustomed to.  To actually not engage in an argument even though we may be being provoked, to walk away, to calm ourselves in the moment, to bite our tongues, to actually feel empathy for the person causing harm.

None of this comes easy.  Or at least, none of it has come easy to me.

Changing life long, if not generations old, patterns and cycles takes effort.  It requires compassion.  And we will all screw it up along the way, slipping back into old ways of being because that is what is known.  

And.

It can be done.  With practice.  

What is interesting about changing these patterns and cycles is that as we begin to do so on our end, the person(s) on the other side may try to up their game. When this happens it can be so tempting to engage.  Believe me, I know!  And, it is all the more important for us to continue practicing our own work, to continue growing that “pause”, to continue our own work of breaking harmful patterns and cycles.

Eventually those who try to engage us will change too.  Either they will simply go out of our lives because they aren’t getting the emotional charge from us anymore, or they too will begin to create space, to cultivate and grown that pause, to break their own patterns and cycles.

We can’t do any of that for them though.  We can only do our own work.  Even in those moments when, right then, we really just want to scream and stomp, and perhaps, especially in those moments.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

/../

This essay was originally written in May 2018 for my weekly newsletter and has been updated and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

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The pursuit of pleasure while living with Complex Trauma

Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.  ~Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy.  ~Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.  ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Living with complex trauma in our bodies is not an easy or fun experience.  Many of us dissociate from our bodies entirely, not feeling the various sensations that are part of every day life.  Some of us dissociate and live with chronic pain or anxiety (or both) and only are able to feel painful and uncomfortable sensations.  Living in a state of constant pain and anxiety, or not being present at all in our bodies, is a cage many of us have felt, or still do feel, trapped  in.  We can feel there is no escape from the discomfort and so will find even more ways to numb, to escape.

And those other ways of numbing may work for a while.  I’m all for pain relief.  I’m also fully aware that some pain is more about trapped trauma than anything else and no amount of medication is going to help in the short or long runs.

When our only experience with our body and its sensations is that of discomfort or pain or not feeling it at all, it’s challenging to imagine what pleasure is, what it could possibly feel like.

We also assume that pleasure should actually be pleasurable.  It’s a relatively reasonable expectation, right?  Except when we’ve lived a good portion of our lives outside our bodies, feeling any type of body sensation is strange and uncomfortable at first.  This includes pleasure.  

So, if pleasure initially is uncomfortable, why bother?  

Well, because with patience, intention, and practice, pleasure can become pleasurable – and a life without pleasure is not us living our best lives, it is not thriving, it is merely surviving.  

To feel pleasure we need to come back home into our bodies.  Or for some of us be in our bodies for essentially the first time in our lives.  And this means feeling all the sensations of our body – pain, anxiety, discomfort and pleasure, peace, and comfort.  We can’t experience one without the other.  We can’t pick and choose which sensations we are going to allow ourselves to feel and which we aren’t.  It’s an all or nothing type of deal.

And in order to really feel pleasure, peace, and comfort in our bodies, we need to first go through the initial discomfort of beginning to feel them.  This may seem like an oxymoron, and yet it is part of the process.  

Complex trauma impacts our whole body.  It impacts our nervous systems; our brain and the neuro pathways within it; our sensory receptors and how we notice sensations.  When trauma occurs at a young age it sets our minds and bodies on a course of constant survival.  Being aware of pain is an important part of our survival as a species.  

Feeling pleasure on the other hand, is not necessary for our survival as a species nor as individuals.

I would argue however that feeling pleasure is necessary for us to thrive in our lives, to find joy, to live and enjoy our lives to fullest.  I’m not only talking about sexual pleasure here.  I’m also talking about the pleasure of eating certain foods, of wearing certain fabrics, of being hugged by and hugging those we love, of appreciating art in its many forms, listening to and feeling music and how it lights us up.

Moving from a place of surviving, where many of us have lived most of our lives, to a place of thriving, a place that is wholly unknown and foreign, is a process in an of itself.  It is a part of our trauma processing work, in fact I believe it is the entire point of our trauma processing work. 

Of course it takes time, patience, intention, and most importantly practice.  

And as I have said many a time before, and will say many more times in the future, I believe all the work involved to move from surviving to thriving is totally worth it.

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The difference between being triggered and feeling our feelings

You’re not the same. You’re not supposed to be the same. You’re supposed to be different. This isn’t something you will ever forget. ~Daisy Whitney, The Rivals

I’ve written about how I view healing compared to processing trauma.  It is an important differentiation to make, I believe, and the quote above pretty much sums it up for me.

The reality is that the traumatic events we have each experienced did happen.  And they did change us.  Molecularly, yes.  And more importantly, fundamentally those events in so many ways inform who we have been, who we are currently, and will continue to inform the people we continue to evolve into.

The events happened.  There is no changing that. The conscious memories we do have, we will not forget.  They are imprinted now in our explicit memory.

And.

The body remembers too. That remembering shows up as anxiety and or depression.  It shows up as a low tolerance for sudden and loud sounds.  It shows up, for me, in my own yelly-ness.  

However, the implicit memory of the body is something that can actually be reset.  While the mind will remember forever the things that it does (barring any dementia in the future), the body can release the memories of trauma that lives within it.

This is true for all of us.

This resetting is not done quickly. It usually involves a lot of discomfort and moving out of our own norms and ways of doing and being.  Often times things may feel like they are getting worse before they get better.  And sometimes we reach a point of wishing we’d never started down this journey of processing the trauma that lives in our bodies and being.

Life can be challenging, even hard.  Often there are discussions out in the greater world, as well as in our private lives, that are uncomfortable and even triggering.  Add to this the fact that sometimes our anxiety ramps itself up without any obvious cause and well, our daily lives can be challenging at best.  

There are times where we forget all we know about how to self-regulate and self-soothe. There are times that we need someone else to help us reset.  There are times of lots of tears and actually feeling some pretty intense feelings.  

Which is to say, that while we may have processed a lot of the trauma that lives within us, there is (always?) still more work to do.  And also, life happens to all of us and sometimes we just have bad days or weeks or months.

And.

While it is true there are times that we can’t access all the things we know about self-soothing and self-regulating, with practice there will be more times that we are able to access at least some of what we know and utilize the tools we have worked so hard to ingrain in our mind and body.

Here’s an important thing to note however: there is a difference between calming our nervous systems and not feeling our feelings.

Stuffing our feelings, not allowing them to be expressed in some way, is not the same as calming, soothing, or resetting our systems.

While it is true that we may be able to calm our anxiety and bring ourselves back from our amygdala, it is also true that we are also able to cry and feel sadness.

We can both feel sad and have our nervous system regulated at the same time, is what I’m trying to say.

Sometimes I think we are sold a bill of goods on what it means to process our trauma, or to heal our brain stems, or to reset our nervous systems.  Doing these things does not mean we will not feel intense sadness.  It does not mean we will only ever be happy shiny people.

Having a healthy nervous system does not stop us from feeling grief.  Or fear.  

What it does is allow us to feel those emotions, and the sensations that go with those emotions, and still remain present in our bodies and in the present moment.

In fact, I would argue, that having a healthy nervous system, one that is not in a constant activated state of fight/flight/freeze, may mean we actually feel those emotions more intensely.  Because we stay with them in the now.  Because we literally are able to feel them in our bodies.  Because we are no longer stuffing them down or disassociating from what is happening within us.

I believe this is an important thing to note:

At times, having a healthy nervous system may actually mean we feel worse.

BUT.

That feeling worse, is momentary.  It isn’t a constant state.  It will pass. 

AND.

That sense of feeling “worse” is actually part of the resetting.  It is part of learning to actually feel the emotions and sensations that we have been ignoring for so long.  It is part of learning that we can feel our feelings and not be flooded or overwhelmed by them, even if they feel overwhelming in the moment.

When we first start to do the work of trauma processing and coming home to our bodies, everything is new. Even the slightest sensations or emotions can feel intense.  Not overwhelming, but intense.  It is the newness of it all that can feel a bit “too much” even though in actuality our systems are not being activated or flooded in a trauma sense.

We can feel intense emotions and sensations and not be overwhelmed back into an activated state.

Feeling our emotions and the sensations of our body is not the same as being triggered into a trauma state.

Over the last few years there have been more and more times where I have felt all those emotions and sensations.  It is not fun.  I have cried a lot of tears.  AND I was not in a fight/flight/freeze state.  It is true at some points I was not verbal, and often being in our emotions is a non-verbal state and so we find other ways to express ourselves (crying, art, cleaning, movement, etc). It is true that when our nervous systems are activated that we can become more flooded when we feel our emotions and sensations. 

It is true that being non-verbal is also part of having activated nervous systems and being in a fight/flight/freeze state.  It is true that a sense of overwhelm is part of having the trauma living within us triggered and activated.

And.

It is also true that with time and processing, we learn the difference between feeling our feelings and becoming or being flooded or overwhelmed or triggered.

We learn to tolerate uncomfortable sensations and emotions without going into a fight/flight/freeze state.  We learn that feeling our emotions and the sensations of our body isn’t dangerous or life threatening.We learn to hold ourselves and allow ourselves to be held.

It takes work and time.  In many ways it has taken me years and in others mere months to be where I am now.  To be able to feel intense sadness without becoming lost in a forever downward spiral.  To be able to feel both the intensely uncomfortable and intensely pleasurable sensations of my body without going into a trauma triggered state.

I now have a sense of freedom and safeness within myself that I had not had for most of my life. And it is amazing, even when feeling some of these emotions and sensations isn’t always pleasant.

This sense of freedom is something I want for everyone. The journey to this place is not easy; it is filled with challenges and discomfort. It is also filled with rewards and peace. And I believe it is all worth it.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly newsletter in January 2018 and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most current essays you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

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Desire, pleasure, & trauma

The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect. ~Peter A. Levine 

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ~Eleonora Duse

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. ~Washington Irving

Earlier this week was Mother’s Day here in the United States.  It’s a day that is mixed with many emotions for me personally, and there are few Mother’s Days I can look back on as 100% good or precious memories.  Mother’s Day, for me, is a day of grief, a day of frustration, as well as a day of love.

I know for many this day can be a mixed a bag.  Perhaps our mothers weren’t the mothers we needed them to be.  Perhaps they have died.  Perhaps we longed to be a mother and aren’t.  Perhaps we never wanted to be a mother and are.  Perhaps we desperately wanted to be mothers, are now, but are filled with frustration or regret.  Perhaps this day brings other emotions up for us.

I know without a doubt, that Mother’s Day has never been about pleasure for me.  It has historically not been a day just for or about me, as a mother.  It has never been a day of rest or doing what I wanted.  Last year was a particularly hard Mother’s Day filled with grief, heartbreak, anger, and frustration.

It is funny sometimes how much our lives, how much we, can change in a year. Twelve short months and we look back and wonder at the person we were, are in awe of the changes and shifts we’ve made, are surprised to see where we are now.

A truth is that I didn’t do a very good job of receiving on this day.  Another truth is, I rarely spoke up and stated what exactly I wanted.  I didn’t do a very good job of advocating for my own pleasure, for my own joy, for my own enjoyment.

I know why this is, of course.  There was my own ingrained messages of how asking for what I want isn’t acceptable, that pleasure is bad, and then all the stories about whether or not I “deserved” or was “worth of” doing what pleased me.

The why I didn’t advocate for my own pleasure is a tangled web of complex trauma, fear, and shame.  There is also a heavy dose of the narratives about wanting, about desire, about pleasure, saying they are all bad and only “bad people” want or desire any thing beyond what they have.  Or more specifically that a woman should want, should desire, should seek pleasure in any form.  

Desire, in an of itself, is a complex notion. We are all taught on so many levels to be thankful for what we have and that wanting more or different is not a good or healthy thing. I’ve written in the past about how the whole gratitude movement makes me want to scream, because at its roots can be shame around wanting more than what we have, in wanting different.

We can both appreciate all that we have and want something more, something different. It is possible to hold both, for both to be 1000% true.

Learning to explore our wants, our desires, has so many levels to it.  Unraveling the indoctrination by our culture is one level.  Looking at the ways our families approached desire and wanting is another.  Examining the shame we carry from our childhood traumas is yet another layer.  

We have learned from so many places that wanting is bad.  That desire is bad.  That we aren’t deserving or worthy of pleasure, of peace, of feeling full, nourished, complete.

We learn to strive, yes.  To keep reaching for that carrot.  But we aren’t taught to examine if that is the carrot we even want.  We are sold an idea of what success looks like and if we don’t meet that standard then we are failures and that is even more proof of how unworthy and undeserving we are.  

Slowing down and taking the time to unravel, explore, examine, and experiment with what we actually want,  what we truly desire, what brings us undeniable pleasure is no easy feat in and of itself.  Learning to allow ourselves to experience pleasure, joy, fun – takes practice, time, intention.  And yes, coming home into our bodies.

Learning to be at home in our own skin, to tolerate both discomfort and pleasure, is an important part of the work.  And it is not the whole of it all.  We also need to consciously examine the stories we hold in our minds (and yes bodies), and practicing new ways of thinking, to do the work of growing new neuropaths and allow the old ones, where all these old stories live, to atrophy.

It is not easy work.  And, as I have said many times before, I do believe it is deeply worth it.  

/../

Embodied Writing :: Pleasure Edition is a seven week program where we will explore different aspects of pleasure, our internalized narratives about pleasure, and learning to reclaim pleasure as a part of our lives through stream of conscious writing and embodiment practices.  To learn more click here. 

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