When does the maintenance of our emotions or nervous system become somebody’s job? And if we’re outsourcing our sense of safety to them, can they still show up in the truth of who they are?? I used to believe someone who is caring and emotionally available meant being the one to help stabilise my emotional state and nervous system by being stable, consistent and predictable. But what was I really asking for?
The last time I remember truly stepping into a malfunctioning nervous system – I’m talking re-wounding my attachment system to the point of trauma – was a couple of years ago. A partner had gone to a festival with some friends and was embodying her freedom – as we all should be – living her best life. My experience was something else entirely. My childhood trauma resurfaced during those four long, painfully onerous days. Not gonna lie, it was hell for me. And sadly, my behaviour also made it difficult for her. Through the lens of my trauma, her freedom became my abandonment. I vicariously experienced her festival, or more accurately, her emotions, as she raved and connected with others. I imagined things she wasn’t doing, and made her joy mean something about my worth and ended up triggering myself so badly I hardly slept because my body went into shock. I naively mistook this physiological response of trauma as a sign of healing and sat with it because that’s what I thought was required to move through it, right? I genuinely wanted her to go to the festival and have the best time but for me to feel safe I needed to know her every move – not that I shared this need. I wanted her to have the freedom to connect with others yet for me to feel safe I needed constant dialogue in order to feel our connection. I didn’t share this need either because back then I was in the thick of fearful-avoidance – and I had learned from a previous relationship not to voice these needs aloud. And I’ll be honest, they might have been valid needs for me at the time, but they were rooted in fear and served avoidance rather than healing. To sum it up bluntly, I was a mess and what I – or my nervous system – was really asking for was for somebody to help me – to hold my hand and walk me through the doorway of my traumas and attachment wounds to a place I felt safe and loved and important and regulated. Basically… I was asking for someone to be an adoptive parent who could fill in the gaps my real parents didn’t.
As I now recount that weekend I just want to give my past-self a hug. About 18 months after that event I realised I had been projecting onto her – and almost every single partner before her – my need for the love, care, attention and affection I never got from my parents. I made her responsible for my emotions. For my re-wounding. Lack of sleep. Bitterness and resentment. And although I had the cognition to know she wasn’t truly to blame for any of it, I still felt victimised that I had been made to feel this way. I had made it the responsibility of others to care for my nervous system. I had turned connection into a performance. I needed a partner to show up in the way I needed them to so I felt safe. So I felt loved and needed. As long as they performed well, all was good. until their performance – their behaviour – changed, which as dynamic human beings, is inevitable. This person I was seeking. The person who will grant me safety and love and the all the other things. This person who’s performance my nervous system and emotions relied on? They did not exist. They never did. And the stinger? They never will.
It took me around two years to fully accept and embody the following truth: nobody is coming to rescue me and all the things I seek – love, trust, safety, acceptance, attention – I must find from within me. Two years to arrive at acceptance. Two! And of it all – of everything I have faced in my life – this was the hardest pill to swallow. I finally had no choice but to accept it because my formula –
boy meets girl.
boy seeks love and rescue.
boy is repeatedly triggered and ends relationship, disappointed and resentful
boy meets the next girl –
– my formula wasn’t working. So I made up a new formula (because formulas are like crack for my soul):
boy meets girl.
boy shares boundaries.
boy has his own life outside of the connection.
boy takes care of himself first and then others.
boy creates safety within himself based on self-led decisions.
boy no longer seeks others to fill his void.
boy gets real honest about what connection means to him.
boy trusts in himself.
boy gets radical about his vulnerability.
boy lives a very centred, happy and grounded life and is able to take care of himself when shit hits the fan (as it inevitably does).
I have the gift of sight – I can see things in people others cannot, it’s both a gift and a curse but my gift nonetheless and I’m grateful. However, the curse is that because I let things play out, having relinquished all forms of control to allow the natural flow of life to happen – my gift becomes like being a spectator and participant all at once, of others and myself. The more I step into who I am, the stronger my gift becomes. Because of this, along the way I had to face some really tough questions. Questions like: at what point do I step in and take full ownership of myself and my emotional and nervous system states? Can I allow myself to be truly vulnerable without the safety net of the facade of trust? Am I prepared to lean into acceptance, even if that means letting go of how things are, of what I call ‘safe’? Or am I going to continue chasing people or things for the ways they fill my void and help me escape the very essence of what holds me from a fulfilling life? Am I willing to walk through the doorway into my fears, through the unknown, and see what lurks behind the fog? Can I allow the people in my life to show up as the dynamically fluid organisms they are? Am I able to take care of my own needs? Am I prepared to make wrong decisions? Am I prepared to witness life unfold and can I let go of the need to try and control everything?
I know the answers to all these questions. Do you?
And if not, what’s keeping you from the answers?
