Disconnection

One of the few emotions that actually shares neural pathways with physical pain.

I can feel that. I understand that feeling very well. I think that's what also makes my relationship to pain different as well. Physical and emotional pain are not different to me. They both equally suck, they both harm you in ways you never expected, and they leave lasting impacts that sometimes never fully heal.

Being emotionally hurt for me is like a punch in the gut. Not "oh ouch that was a punch in the gut" but rather, I experience a physical response so intense that my body behaves as if it actually has been punched.

I still remember the first day I made that correlation between my emotional pain and my physical reactions. I was getting ready for the day, I had started it a bit later than I should have, and inevitably, my lack of forethought was causing us to run behind schedule. I started to get mad at Brandon,

He said to me, "Hey, are you almost ready?"

Here's a few ways I responded to that question:

"Don't rush me!"

"Don't get so stressed, it will be fine"

"We aren't even that late"

"You getting stressed causes me to get stressed, can you get that under control?"

I have to laugh at that last one a little bit. What are we if not humorous to ourselves and our poorly integrated thought patterns sometimes :)

Eventually, at the start of what could have easily been our next argument, he said something profound to me that really stopped me in my tracks,

"It's okay to run a bit late"

It was at that point and time I had started to spiral. I was losing control of my though patterns. I was slipping into old ones. I was pointing outward looking for something to blame this yucky, confusing feeling on. However, this statement from him stopped that spiral in it's tracks because of my response:

"No it's not"

I didn't even say it out loud... but it was loud enough in my head to feel as though it had been said. It was at this moment I experienced a sensation that, while I had experienced many times in my life before that point, I had not recognized how deeply it had affected me and my daily life.

It was as if that thought, had such a powerful energy behind itself that it made itself a part of my reality. I later reflected upon this thought, and came to this conclusion: it was as if it was a punch that had been thrown at me ten years ago that I was just now feeling. It was more than that too, it was as if, in those ten years, the punch had gotten stronger, it had gotten more ammo. It had gained momentum, and had been looking for just the right moment to attack.

I bring up this story because while it might not seem like it, this was a case of disconnection I was feeling. The physical pain that accompanied this feeling was a verification of this as well. This disconnection was so ingrained in me and my experiences, that it had actually trained itself to respond to certain stimuli.

According to Judith Jordan who is a theorist on connection and disconnection says,

"...disconnections as normative and inevitable in relationships; they occur when one person misunderstands, invalidates, excludes, humiliates, or injures the other person in some way"

In her book, Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown defines disconnection as,

"Disconnection is often equated with social rejection, social exclusion, and/or social isolation, and these feelings of disconnection actually share the same neural pathways with feelings of physical pain."

She also further explains Judith's interpretation of disconnection by saying,

"...[when] chronic disconnection [arises] the person 'often loses touch with [their] own feelings and inner experience."

In this case, the stimuli was me feeling as if I was letting someone down. Someone whom I cared about. Someone whom I valued and thought highly of... his frustrated (albeit understandable) reaction to my tardiness, caused insecurity in my mental space of the position I hold in his mind. I suddenly became afraid of the possibilities that could arise when you let someone down. Without me even being consciously aware of it, I was already planning as if in my mind, he would never be able to forgive me for being late. This fear, this internalized social rejection caused me to feel disconnected. I was disconnected from myself.

How much mental work was I going through to reach that conclusion? How many conscious and unconscious thought processes must I have been running through in order to attempt to accurately predict how he would respond to me running behind schedule? Unaware, I must have been assuming his thoughts, analyzing my own, and also trying to predict outcomes for variables I didn't even know were or weren't happening.

When it all came down to it, I was afraid he was going to leave me because I took too long doing my hair. I put that fear on myself, and disconnected with myself because of it. Brandon wasn't rejecting me... but I assumed he would. I was rejecting myself for making a mistake.

This insecure feeling I experienced affected more than just my mind. It affected my body, my spirit, my wellbeing, my relationships and my life. Something so simple, derived from a faulty response system that was put in place long ago to protect me from threats that are no longer present, led me down a spiral into a mindset I've been trying to run away from my whole life.

What I come to in this realization is that connection... being seen, being understood, being valued and cherished to the point where mistakes are just that... mistakes... was not something I was familiar with. The connection I felt from Brandon empathizing with me in his ability to see the nuance of being late.... it freed a tiny portion of that part of myself that takes no prisoners. It opened my eyes to how little I had been doing that to myself. How little I had placed value on connecting with myself enough to forgive when I made a mistake.

What I learned from that interaction was that next time I should start getting ready a little earlier... and that the realization that it was in fact OKAY to be late if I didn't... was disconnection's greatest enemy. I know now, that making a mistake - does not mean I have to disconnect from those around me to protect myself, but rather, the connection I have the potential to make in those weakest moments, can be the very thing it takes to heal me.