The Felt Sense Podcast
Episode 5: The Wonderful Part of Relating
In this first episode of the series on the felt sense during relating, I’ll talk about what’s possible when relating feels safe, and why relating can feel so dangerous.
In the last series on Befriending Yourself, I talked about what friendship is and why it’s important in healing and feeling worthy of love and belonging. I talked about what friendly qualities are important to RECEIVE, which are the kind of qualities that can support you in feeling safe, validated, seen, and connected. These kinds of qualities are beyond important to cultivate within yourself, for yourself, and often they’re only learned when modeled by the way that a separate, regulated, self-affirmed and wholehearted person treats you. Something amazing happens when we can experience being interacted with in this friendly, empathic way. Our nervous systems are designed to keep us safe, and away from danger. Socially speaking, or in relation to other people, unfriendliness is a kind of social danger. People who are mean, cruel, invalidating, abusive or dominating can bring with them the danger of the experiences of not belonging, criticism, being shut out, disconnected, or not worthy of regard, care or interaction. This experience can be devastating socially, and in certain situations can be physically dangerous too. When it senses there’s danger of any kind, your nervous system activates an automatic response of self-protection. Your self protective response is unique to you, and is based on your past experiences, and other cultural factors that were present when you were growing up and developing your self-protective response. It’s a very, very important tool in a healthy experience of life, because it’s designed to keep you safe. Your nervous system either feels safe, or it feels unsafe. There’s really no in-between. And experiencing friendly empathy can allow our nervous systems to enter a state where they feel safe and calm, settled, at peace, ready and able to open up, and both share of ourself, AND receive what someone else shares of themself. THIS kind of interaction is what makes life rich, and immensely enjoyable; these kinds of safe and bi-directional interactions between ourselves and one other person, or ourselves and a small group of people, or ourselves within a larger group of people, or ourselves interacting with the many facets of the natural world, or perhaps our interactions with what we envision is beyond this physical world. But relating is complex. Two people, with different needs and worldviews, even two people with SIMILAR worldviews and SIMILAR needs are still going to be two DIFFERENT people, with at least slightly different histories and experiences of life that have shaped their nervous systems differently. To really connect, requires that both people are open to sharing with, AND receiving each other. No matter what the relationship. This is still technically true of the interactions that you have with the bank teller and the person at grocery checkout, but I’m really referring here to relationships that DO go back and forth, where there’s meaningful sharing done by each person in the interaction. Relationships that have the potential for real intimacy, platonic or romantic. And if true, deep and meaningful connection requires both parties to be open to sharing with, and receiving each other, then that means both parties’ nervous systems must feel safe. Together! Simultaneously! And that means negotiating what each person needs, in each moment! Concurrently balancing what it feels like to safely, respectfully and truthfully share. AND what it feels like to safely, respectfully and truthfully receive. This is such a tall order, because as I said earlier, no two nervous systems are the same, no two sets of needs and preferences are the same, and no two sets of triggers are the same. Relating is risky. We could say or do something that triggers someone else’s nervous system into becoming self-protective. The trigger could be mild in severity and easily recovered from, or it could be monumentally intense and very challenging to recover from. But on the other side of the risk, is the experience of relating in the most beautiful, meaningful and fulfilling way. Really seeing someone else, in their full, sweet and vulnerable state - perhaps playful and funny, or sad and suffering. And also really being seen in our full, human, imperfect, creative, hopeful, remarkable selves. It can be worth the risk. BUT! BUT, I feel like it’s really important to make a distinction here. I know that for myself, as someone who grew up around a lot of relational turmoil, relating was in one sense VERY easy for me. I craved it, and therefore I was good at creating relationships with nearly anyone I wanted to. I developed a skill set that was phenomenal for making connections. I was super extroverted, an excellent and really a charming conversationalist, I was into very interesting topics and activities, I made lots of connections, and had an enormous, and active, social scene. However, at the same time, relating was also very difficult for me. Relationships FELT dangerous. My nervous system was attuned to expecting existential demolition while relating, and interactions with other folks were rife with triggers for me. For most of my life I didn’t understand exactly what was happening when relationships would end. All of a sudden I would be alone when I didn’t want to be, or when I was hurting badly. Sometimes I would leave relationships. Because I’d pick them apart and find things that I couldn’t tolerate, because I’d be triggered by things I’d see that I’d infer meant demolition was ahead, and I’d get out as a means of trying to protect myself. Sometimes I would do things that had an unintended by-product that really hurt someone else, and they would leave. But most of the time I was bullied, and ostracized. Folks would be really mean or cruel to me, or would think that I did or believed things that I didn’t. I wouldn’t know how to stand up for myself and clarify, when someone was insisting that I MUST be thinking or doing something with a particular intention. I didn’t know how to stand up to abuse and gaslighting. I do know how to do that now. And I know how to check in with myself, find what’s true for me, and speak from there. I had to learn how to trust myself, and I had to LEARN that when other people are accusing me of doing something with a particularly nasty intention, that they can be wrong. I had to LEARN that everything I’m accused of, is not accurate, and that my self-worth and sense of self are valid 100% of the time. 100%. And that good and healthy relating takes a fair deal of work, but that there’s a way to safely do it. And now relationships don’t feel as dangerous. Now, I can recognize really great relationships when I see them, or to put it more accurately, when I feel them. Now I know what healthy and friendly relationships actually feel like, my body has a felt sense of what that’s like. Which also means that I can recognize when I’m feeling NOT that, or when relationships don’t feel good, or don’t feel safe. I’m still getting better at taking the right actions when I feel that icky feeling of relating that isn’t friendly, that isn’t mutual, empathic and intimate. But only because I know how wonderful it is to be given respect and space to feel my feelings, and have my own needs, wants and perspectives. And to not only be respected for those, but to be received, included and regarded, just like I talked about in the previous podcast series on Befriending Yourself. It’s the greatest joy of living….But the pain of relating, the triggers in relationships, they keep all of this joy that’s possible, at bay; feeling unattainable. It actually doesn’t HAVE to be that way. But when you’re deep in it, it really feels like connection is out of reach, or impossible. When you have unwound trauma responses, it really feels like relationships are doomed for you, even though you desperately seek out and try anything to make it not so. In the next episode, episode 6, I’ll talk about why “just let it go” or “just don’t let it bother you” types of approaches don’t work for folks who have relational trauma or tough and hurtful past relationships. I hope to see you in there. This is MacPherson on the Felt Sense Podcast, take care kind soul.
