Our need for belonging
| Hello beautiful people, How are you? This morning I woke up and I felt scared. What are you scared of love? I ask myself. That I am not really good enough. I am just a pretty useless human being. I am not going anywhere or doing anything valuable. Oh yikes, I say, that sounds like a lot. It is a lot, and it’s really horrible. I want to be useful! I want to be valuable! I want to be wonderful and wanted! And what happens if I am not valuable and useful? Noone will want me and I will be banished to the dark and cold lands. I will be alone again. I don’t want to be alone! Oh yes, so if you’re not valuable and useful then you could be banished? Rejected? Alone? I totally understand why you’re scared. I gave myself a big hug as I watched the world waking up and drank my coffee. I felt a heaviness in my chest from this fear, and a desire to cry. I shed some tears as I acknowledged the fear and supported myself to feel it. These thoughts that fear expresses are not true facts, I am sure you saw that. Emotions are not reports about our lives, but more indications of deep unconscious beliefs that we hold about ourselves and our place in the world. When we are able to communicate with our emotions in this way, to see what is really being believed way down deep, way below the logic we often think drives our lives, then we can examine these beliefs and these feelings. For so many of us what can drive some of our most intense emotional reactions, the ones that keep showing up and perhaps feeling like they are dominating us, come from a desire for connection and safety amongst others. To feel good enough to be loved To feel safe in our own innate worthiness To feel able to receive love just as we are To feel able to relax in who we are To belong For much of my life I felt like I was outside looking in at the groups of humans around me. I felt alone and disconnected. Unable to feel that level of closeness that I yearned to. I realised subconsciously one belief that was very deep for me was that to receive love and belonging I needed to be useful and needed by others. And when I thought I wasn’t useful and needed, I felt anxious, unsure of myself, not on safe ground. And around these emotions, around these ideas of belonging, shame started hanging out. The idea that I could be loved without judgment or conditions felt impossible, and even scary to me. I couldn’t just be me – vulnerable and messy. I have felt so often like I needed to hold back, to pause and wait to see how I might be received, to not say certain things to certain people just in case they don’t like me. And whilst I have never liked that part of me, that wait and see part, now that I know about how emotions and survival reactions work, I can see that in me is just a core need to feel safe around other humans, and safe in myself, to not jeopardize the possibility of belonging. We humans have a need for togetherness and belonging. We are group animals, we survive in groups and so when there is the possibility of being rejected from the group it can activate some big emotions and some urgent survival responses. When we sense any type of unsafety, our brain will do anything to try and help us feel safe again. Even if it means saying things we don’t believe, pushing people we love away, not being vulnerable, hiding behind an emotional wall etc. What I learnt was that I needed to learn to feel safe in my own self before I could feel safe with another. And that sometimes these feelings around potential rejection still arise. When I am confronted by the possibility of rejection I have to be aware that sometimes that wound still pulsates within me. One of the ways I have worked on supporting myself is to be radically accepting of where I find myself. Yes, sometimes I wish there were things I were ‘further ahead’ with. There are times when I wish certain emotions didn’t still activate. But for me tender gentleness, and radical acceptance, of where I am, helps me the most to move to where I want to be. And that is someone who feels safe, supportive and nurturing to myself. Someone who can show up for themselves. Because then of course I can fully and authentically also show up for others. I feel that this work can feel like a process of remembering. Because we so often forget. We forget and fall back into our conditioned way of thinking. And then we remember again. We remember to tend to ourselves with love and care. To recognise that survival reactions feel urgent and are reactions to a feeling of unsafety – not logical facts about who awful our life/the world/each other are. That emotions need to be seen, felt and heard I have been feeling a more heightened sense of fear these past few days, which is why when I woke this morning it was lodged in my chest demanding my attention. I have a lot of complicated travel arrangements to make for my family over the next 3 months. Lots of travel requirements for work, for school, for family, for necessity – and I recognise that this list of many tasks didn’t feel like a list of many tasks, but a vast web of emotions. Of potential disappointment, potential failures, shame at not getting it right. The possibilities that I booked the wrong flights/trains/car rentals – bam! Shame Possibilities I might be over paying for things – possible rage! Getting the intricate pattern of dates wrong – Fear! The list goes on. And it was in this web of emotions that I saw so clearly this wound around belonging. That if I did the wrong thing, a very young part of me felt that I would be punished with rejection. So fear has shown up I feel as a way to point me in the direction of self-care. Of being so very kind and gentle to myself in these weeks and months ahead. Of taking tremendous care over how I feel so that I can do my work, be a human and run what feels like a hugely complicated project for my family. When we look at the emotional load we are carrying, how it’s never ‘just one small thing’, how one emotion connects to another and another, and suddenly we see the whole specter of emotional weight on us – it can feel so validating. I spend a little time working with fear. Bringing some empathy and understanding to this feeling. I hold the feeling in my chest, and feel the heaviness, the weight of it. I ask the feeling what it needs, and it says time, attention, love, quiet. I spend time tending to this feeling. I cry a little, I share some of my thoughts with a friend, I get a beautiful loving hug, I go for a swim. And with this attention, this close loving attention, that I pay the fear, it starts to lift and lift and lift. And then all of a sudden the fear has released and I feel clear and full of joy. Oh wow! I think. And the fog of confusion I have been carrying around clears, I know what to do. Continue this self-care of paying attention and tending to myself. Giving loving support to my feelings, to my nervous system, to my body. So that instead of being pushed outside of my capacity, I can take care of what arises, and support myself with whatever comes my way. I am ready to start the day. Much love to you, Diana |
