Who or what are you attaching to : some random thoughts

Listening to Gabor Mate’s talk on cognition and emotion yesterday made me realise, yet again, how important a sense of safety in being connected to a person we can depend on, growth through and get helped to find learning and insight from is. He explained so well in that talk that when, due to early trauma and difficulty in attaching in a healthy way, we get stuck in the two responses, freeze/(or fawn) and fight/flight that we are really only DEFENDING and then our power to socially engage and connect, as well as grow, learn, evolve and mature is severely limited.

Many of us who have been abandoned or let down then learn to turn to and attach to unhelpful things, substances, process addictions, unhealthy others while keeping the world at bay.. We may get trapped in this state for years.. It was when he spoke of the reptilian brain in that talk and how it is connected to freeze states that my sister’s dilemma came to mind.. Mum was so often her safe harbor in life and so her loss must have been huge.. this thought came to me.. And she did not find me a person she could connect with because so often I was fighting those two off, as well as wrestling with so much of the trauma I went through..

I held off going to see my sister today.. Maybe I cannot help her.. this admission of my failure and powerlessness is a huge one and is perhaps a shift into reality. It means I cry and let myself have those emotions that go along and surrender in some way, not as a way to ‘give up’ on anything but what is futile for me. and may be unhelpful for her.

I am lucky to have one or two people I can connect to lately about my sister who know her.. I also know my sister does not seem to be getting the right help to move out of freeze where she is.. I lay awake so long at 5 am thinking of other places she could go to get better help, but I am not in charge, her son is and he talks to my brother and neither engage with me.. So in this situation I do not have power and must step back. It isnt easy but its probably for the best.

I now allow myself to be vulnerable with the right people who feel safe for me. This has taken me so so long and has been an epic struggle. In one of the first ever posts I wrote on WP : Chrysalis that I will link to below I spoke of the interpersonal bridge between me and others being broken.. that is one of the hardest things of trauma.. that breaking and the falling into the void and yet if I trust these ongoing deep spirals and spins of my body around the spinal axis that have been going on ever more intensely during the time between the last lunar eclipse and Monday’s solar one then more is going on here too about ancestral breakages of connection too..

Earlier today I just cried out to my Great Great Grand Dad saying I cannot fix the broken bonds but another part of me also knows that on some level my own interpersonal bridge with others is being, over time, slowly and lovingly restored.. It is happening incrementally.. but it is happening. My growing (if at times faltering) connection with Scott.. the new more vulnerable, deeply human and authentic connection with my older sister’s sons and one of their partners, the lovely friends I found through having my dog Jasper and of course my much valued Word Press family.. Slowly I am learning to feel safe with you and attach more in the healthy places, as well as with my deeply felt inner worlds both personal and collective..

And only from that deep place now can I reach for healing for my sister now.. I pray all the time, as I know she is praying too that one day she finds a way to trust, open and be vulnerable too.. To THE RIGHT PEOPLE as well as more healthy things that help her to get up, feel embodied and start living life again, instead of keeping her stuck in a freeze state.

https://emergingfromthedarknight.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/chrysallis-the-emergence-from-the-pain-of-the-lost-self/