It is Okay Not to Be Alone…
How are you, friends? Did anyone have an experience where our ever-expanding toolbox came in handy? I woke this morning wishing I had more command over the items I have been practicing and have stored in my toolkit. Dr. Brene Brown is known for coining the phrase “vulnerability hangover” when we open our hearts and share our truth to someone, or to a lot of people, we can feel overexposed. That vulnerability can cause one to withdraw from that exposure, or even be exhibited in physiological symptoms like rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking and even nausea.
I wonder what she would coin the hangover I woke with that had me awash with shame, guilt, and fear. I was caught in a web of immobilization. My nervous system was in “shut down” mode. It felt like I was moving through an invisible barrier that was thick with resistance. There was an elephant sitting on my chest. My limbs moved in slow motion to a brain waiting for the train to crash.
All I needed to know was that I was loved by my husband Ed, but I could not verbalize that. The person standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand, was not me, but a stunned little girl balled up in the bottom of my closet from years of emotional abuse and fears of abandonment. I was still triggered from what should have been a non-event in a conversation between Ed and me the night before.
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep several evenings before. Perhaps it was the love that was showered on me by a friend that I believed I did not deserve. Perhaps it was sharing my hopes and dreams with this friend, and then feeling that I overshared or bragged. Perhaps it was the fear of judgement for dreaming too big. Perhaps it was after 6:30 PM and I just wanted to crawl into bed. Whatever the reason or reasons, I was pretty off my emotional game when I walked into our house.
After some brief hellos, I reacted to Ed not remembering who I had dinner with, commenting “I told you multiple times who…” and Ed cut me off with “That’s OK, I don’t need to know.” I don’t know if it was his tone or just that he stomped on my words that sent me back to my father’s overbearing way of commanding fear and stomping on hope.
I was a little girl again.
I needed to hide. I needed to yell. I needed to blame him for what I could not express. That deep sense of abandonment and deep fear of aloneness. I could not speak. I was not present. I was emotionally curled up in a ball waiting for the touch of my mother to soothe all my fears. To know I belonged. I grabbed a glass of wine and silently sat on the couch, far away from my usual seat next to Ed. I went to bed, mostly without a word.
As I shared earlier, I woke with my “vulnerability hangover” gripping me. I also felt guilty for my passive-aggressive treatment of Ed. Sleep was unkind, assaulting me with snarling dogs biting at my heels, mazes I was lost inside, and running for my life from someone sinister. I was so exhausted in the morning that I did not swim. I was numb and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
Nobody sent that memo to Ed! He wanted to talk about the night before. He didn’t let me slink past him in silence. He asked me whether I had been triggered, and wondered if there was anything he could have done, besides not causing it in the first place, to alleviate my distress or snap me out of the moment. He asked if a touch or a hug might have helped. I listened. I softened. He loved me back to “now.” Though as the minutes passed, I didn’t really have an answer for his questions.
When I’m triggered, and disconnected from my body, I’m not rational. This challenges everyone around me: my spouse, my friends, my children, and grandchildren, and even the lady behind the checkout counter at the drug store. At any given moment, I can become triggered and lost in the world of the past or future. In these moments I have lost the freedom of living in the now, and lost touch with my deeper truest self that is always there holding me.
Until Ed talked to me, really engaging my attention, I was still not present. Not free from the trauma.
How can I reliably regain that freedom? How can I help myself or allow someone else to help me? The first step, and most important, to healing is the recognition that I have buried myself in a cloud of unknowing. It is the gentle realization that what is in my head, and how my body is responding, is a reaction to a perceived threat and not a real one. Easy to say, not so easy to do. And if I cannot recognize it myself, perhaps my partner can.
Can he bring me back to a place of groundedness without sending me deeper and deeper into myself? Can he speak softly and gently? Can he patiently soothe the wound with compassion? Can he remind me to breathe and encourage me to check in with what is going on in my body?
Can I lean into that loving care with trust? Can I patiently hold onto and feel the love being poured into me without cost? And in so doing, can I once again experience connection and belonging bringing back to NOW.
“Belonging” is our capacity to feel joy, freedom, and love in any moment. Even those toughest moments when all you feel is the calloused fingers of someone who loves you gently holding you. Or being looked at in the eyes and seen for all of you without judgement. As the late Zen teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck said: “Joy is exactly what is happening, minus our opinion of it.”
We can belong to any moment simply by meeting it with joy. This is freedom. Love is the ultimate expression of joy and freedom. Joy, freedom, and love could be considered synonyms for each other and for belonging. They are also the opposite of shame, guilt, and fear.
Being held with all my frailties and brokenness by the one I lashed out and hurt the evening before lifted the hangover of shame, guilt, and fear and replaced it with joy, freedom, and love.
It is okay not to be alone.
Sometimes sharing our toolbox with our other is the gift we need to return to our deepest truest self.
Until next time, friends.