Other Relationships

Relationships can hurt – Relationships can heal

Relationships are an integral part of our everyday life.  At the basic element, a relationship is a connection with another human being.  “Being”, existing as a human, cannot happen without some contact with another human.  We are born from a female human and begin dependent on other humans to feed, shelter, and care for us.

It is in these human relationships we experience great joy and great pain.  When our deepest desires and longings are met, life feels safe and enjoyable and full of hope.  If our deepest desires and longings go unmet, life feels unsafe and can have little or no enjoyment or hope.  Actively experiencing harmful actions results in feeling unsafe and hopeless.

When relationships bring harm

Abuse and neglect are primary harmful actions that reduce or remove safety.  Physical abuse puts you on alert, constantly looking for where the next harm will come from.  Neglects’ harm may sometimes be less visible, but it leaves behind a sense of never being safe.  Your energy and focus are constantly on the possible source(s) of more harm. This leaves you without energy to focus on how you can grow to have a safer and more enjoyable life.  Any lack of safety with parents, family, school, or friends can leave you constantly looking for the next pain you will experience.  Because of this, you find that you need to protect yourself from that potential pain.

You learn to protect yourself

The means of protecting yourself has become a super skill, allowing you to close down or build a wall in a moments’ notice.  You may interpret, rightly or wrongly, the slightest potential for harm and instantly protect yourself.  This super skill gives you the advantage of minimizing the impact of harm.  But it also robs you of opportunities for safe connection.  Super skills can advance and adapt to changing circumstances. Embracing an adaptation to protect only as much as needed for the circumstance is a beginning to allow more openness for safe connection.

When a safe connection happens between you and another person it provides an opportunity to heal.  This safety in connection gives your brain and body important information: relationship does not equal hurt and pain.  Why?

Healing happens in relationship through vulnerability

Vulnerability is required.  Being vulnerable can seem like a weakness because it opens a door that can allow abuse and neglect in to harm you.  You protect yourself to stop others from using your vulnerability to abuse or neglect you.  However, this may either block new relationships or keep relationships from going deep.  There is a fear that without the protection you have discovered for yourself, you will continue to experience the harm that you have felt in your life.  The truth is being vulnerable is also the thing that can give you greater safety and heal you from that past harm.