One Thing I Misunderstood About Connection for a Long Time
For those for whom “we’re wired for connection” isn’t that simple.
Raise your hand if you’ve heard or read any of the below sentiments:
We’re wired for connection.
We’re social creatures.
Connection and belonging are fundamental human needs.
We all need community.
I’m envisioning all of your hands going up.
None of this is new news, right?
And yet: the most common topic in both my 1:1 mentoring sessions and courses (no matter the topic!) is… can you guess?
Relationships and connection.
Based on what I hear (and have experienced myself), I believe the above statements should actually read:
We’re wired for connection, but there are a whole host of reasons that make it really hard and painful.
We’re social creatures, but sometimes I resent my partner, can’t stand my co-worker, and don’t know how to make friends as an adult.
Connection and belonging are fundamental human needs, but I don’t know how to do it without losing myself at the same time.
We all need community, but can I actually be my full, authentic self and still belong?
Feel more accurate?
The truth is that we are hardwired for connection, and we absolutely need belonging, but many folks misunderstand the mechanics of connection and intimacy + how those things are operating in their own life.
What do I mean by “the mechanics of connection and intimacy”?
I mean the somatic, nervous system, emotional, energetic, and behavioral components that are happening in your interactions with others, always.
Whether you’re aware of it, or not.
For most of my relational life, I forged relationships based simply on what felt like my hard-wired need for connection and the things I learned about how to do relationships and community from the world around me.
And that worked pretty well for a while.
But then it stopped working.
I began to notice that I had surrounded myself with a certain type of person and was replaying a dynamic from my early life, over and over.
I began to notice how hard it was for me to be alone—my chest tight with panic when I noticed a weekend where I had little to no plans.
I began to feel weighed down by the insistence on narratives of struggle and victimization in the communities I had been a part of for so long.
I knew I often felt insecure, rejection-sensitive, and like the connections I did have never quite felt like enough.
Part of me felt utterly confused; I was doing everything that folks encouraged around creating connection and support, and it simply wasn’t feeling good anymore. Or meeting my needs.
I am hard-wired for connection, but I was being invited into understanding how that wiring was structured in my nervous system and brain and to go about re-wiring it in order to recognize and grow my capacity to receive the nourishing and mutual connection that my system actually longed for.
You, too, are hard-wired for connection.
If you grew up in an environment that fostered a secure attachment—a sense of generally trusting others and the world to meet your needs—the mechanics of connection come relatively easily to you.
Bless you and the secure base you provide for others.
If, like me, you grew up in an environment or have had experiences that make connection and intimacy confusing, overwhelming, or downright painful, the reality about your need for support, community, and connection doesn’t change.
It just makes it a little (or a lot!) more challenging.
What a gift, no? To be given the opportunity to create a relational life from the inside out. To get into your inner wiring with such exquisite care and be the engineer around what your new experiences will look and feel like.
Will it be some of the hardest work of your life?
To be sure.
But we are social creatures. We have a biological imperative for connection and belonging.
Attuned, nourishing connection is the difference between stress and trauma that stays in the body and stress and trauma that metabolizes and moves through.
Attuned, nourishing connection is what helps create more capacity for experiencing joy and pleasure in a world that feels like one never-ending crisis.
If you want to deepen your learning about the mechanics of connection and intimacy, join Rachel Svanoe Moynihan, SEP and me for (Re)turning Towards Connection: Embodied Practices for Being a Human Right Now, on Tuesday, November 18 at 7pm CST.
This free call is an hour of guided practice and conversation to explore connection and safety in the body.
We’ll also be talking about our upcoming, in-person workshop day-long workshop around these themes, but any and all are invited to this call.
Whether you live in the Twin Cities or not, whether you plan to attend the workshop or not, we’d love to have you.
With heart,
Grey
Points of reflection / connection:
Have you ever experienced the tension between knowing the importance of connection but also feeling confused, overwhelmed, or activated by it?
If you have developmental or attachment trauma, or identify as someone with an insecure attachment style, what’s the story you tell about it? Meaning: how do you relate to the reality that that’s what your nervous system experienced? Anger? Grief? Compassion? There’s no right answer. Just notice.
Regardless of what your relational experiences have been, what would your internal wiring system around connection look like? If I asked you to draw or map it out for me: what events are connected? What wire gets tripped when you feel unsafe in connection? Which wire governs whether you reach toward the connection you’re longing for, etc? What wire tells the story about whether people and/or the world are generally safe and your needs will be met (or not)?
In case you missed these conversations:
How to Be a Human Right Now; Connection as the path forward
Coming Out Again… This Time About God, Part 2; How I finally found the ultimate secure relationship