One path to take to heal a cycle and work trough trauma/attachment injuries

Following my offer on peer counseling on trauma / attachment injuries and self-healing for queers and womxn I put out the other day, I feel the pull to write intermittently about personal experience as well as sharing thoughts and feelings on queer healing, connecting and politics. I’ll post on and link to my webpage soon, anyway – I’m not the most talented person with technique, so I start here.
Take what is helpful for you, simply leave the rest. We all travel on different paths and making our own choices. I honor this.

As this is close to my heart right now, I’ll begin with one path to take to heal a cycle.

One path to take to heal a cycle and work trough trauma/attachment injuries | Experiences, thoughts and feelings on queer healing, connecting and politics

“Life itself is the inauguration.“ (unknown)

“The most important spiritual growth doesn’t happen when you’re meditating or on a yoga mat. It happens in the midst of conflict – when you’re frustrated, angry or scared and you’re doing the same old thing, and then you suddenly realize that you have a choice to do it differently…“ (@lightworkerslounge by @woowooverse)

„We live a story that originates in our autonomic state, is sent through autonomic pathways from the body to the brain, and is then translated by the brain into beliefs that guide our daily lives.“ (Deb Dana)

If you start reading this, you most likely know what I mean by cycle. If not, think of getting stuck in misattunement with your loved one over and over again out of nowhere when you expected to be seen, understood, validated and feel belonging and connection, resulting in a sudden feeling of disconnection/alienation, hurt, being overwhelmed by intense waves of emotional pain, experiencing a strong body reaction, accompanied by confusion/irritation, oftentimes helplessness, agitation, and/or dropping into numbness or dissociation, and telling yourself a story of what just happened which fits your fear and wounding of (early) memories and trauma/attachment injuries.

Imagine two individuals and their nervous system survival pattern, which are fantastic adaptions to the experience of trauma/ongoing stress, activating each other*, and both act and react unconsciously, driven by old neuronal pathways, in the attempt to get what they needed but have never got in the situation/constellation at the root of this. Basically both their systems try to make a healing experience in getting their deep and early core needs met, and thereby releasing old stuck energy. It’s really shit that the automatic self-protective response to the triggering situation in the presence makes it usually almost impossible to receive the healing experience one is longing for, as it happens within fight – flight – fawn/freeze and the related nervous system state, so it rather reinforces the old experience.

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*How does a trigger function? The mind basically learns the world by patterns, short-coded by one or some significant markers, sorted by context. This means it stops reading and perceiving what’s really going on after catching these markers; everything else is just added and interpreted automatically, based on past experiences. It’s a kind of selective perception/strong focus. So our experiences with our first caregivers / family of origin are coded in this way too, and it gets activated in the ‘program‘ of love / intimate connecting. If the connection was not secure and wounding/trauma happened, and is not healed yet, the nervous system (neuroception – see Polyvagal Theory) reacts highly sensitive in the present to the slightest hints of these learned markers/triggers to protect us from danger and further hurt, initiate a pre-conscious protection mechanism which was successful back then like flight (withdrawal, …), fight (attacking, blaming, …), freeze (numbing), and our brains add the story.
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But does it mean we only partner up with others because our systems strive for healing? Yes and no. And this is essential to me. We have choice.
Yes, we pick people for closeness and intimacy who carry traits of our first caregivers/family of origin, and therefore they are able to “press our buttons“, pointing out what is not yet healed in us, to offer a chance of healing through delivering the antidote to old hurting. No, this is not all. There might be hundreds of people carrying these traits, but you pick this one. Besides these shared traits with your early caregivers/family as healing potential, there’s a whole beautiful flawed being entering your life. There is so much more ♥

Knowing about this effect of close connections as a space that people intuitively seek to experience healing, and being aware that old wounds will show themselves and hurt before the alchemy can happen and the remedy can be found together – these are conscious relationships.

Back to the healing attempt and automatic survival mechanism: When I felt left out in the past and my abandonment wound kicked in and hurt like fuck, activated me to the point of a meltdown, crying and yelling and accusing my loved one of excluding me, I for sure didn’t get what I would have needed for healing – reassurance that I belong, warmth and love. My beloved person felt (with all the right in the world) disrespected, probably treated unfairly and not seen in their efforts and being. Maybe this feelings trigged them, or their nervous system reacted to the perceived threat of a disregulated = unsafe person around, or yelling itself was a trigger for them, linked to unsafe conflict, or all of this, or something else. In the end, one activates the other, the shit hits the fan and both move in a cycle of nervous system deregulation, attaching stories, unconsciously reenacting past dynamics in the present.

Either over time, when the same button is pushed over and over again, or within a situation which causes an especially strong rupture related to the core wound, the beloved person “vanishes“ permanently and not only in triggering situations behind a filter of the person(s) of the past. They “become“ our early attachment figure(s), and everything they say or do will unconsciously be interpreted through this lens. I experienced this with seeing a beloved one through the lens of my attachment injuries of belonging/abandonment related to my mum. I reacted hypervigilant with intense emotional pain, and one time with a massive meltdown, to all day events in the present to a past long gone. Yes, it is a bit like real life role play but nonconsensual. It can be incredible healing in Kink, if it is consensual, carefully negotiated, within clear boundaries, and designed to let the healing experience happen. However, this real life “roleplay“ is normally not even conscious, and has almost no chance to go out well. If both queers in a connection experience this with each other, it easily gets super messy and stuck. In worst case they re-traumatise each other by accident. Each one has their shit coming up, causing tumult inside, plus the experienced based attempted solutions of their systems trigger each other on top. No fun at all.

So, how do you know if you’re triggered? Clues: Your reaction is oftentimes surprising to others, it is slightly “off“ the situation, it is disproportionately intense to the thing (look, word, gesture, energy shift, …) which activated it, and it consumes huge amounts of energy, leaving you exhausted and drained on every layer.

To me the work of breaking through a cycle comes down to a 3 step, which is quite simple to describe, and which is one of the hardest things in the world to do at the same time, as it requires to move beyond what I thought is my perception and through my conditioning, while feeling and releasing/coping with high levels of discomfort and/or pain on psychological, emotional and bodily level. In my experience it is work, and it needs dedication, effort and resources in time, energy and support.

Coming from a spiritual perspective, it’s about unlearning, becoming who I am meant to be, healing, outgrowing my limitations, expanding and freeing myself. Or as snake says, nothing in this world is too toxic to get digested and transformed. It’s a matter of antidote, patience and, in best case, teamwork to transform a wounded pattern in a healing pattern – complete the circle and therefore heal it.

What works for me is…

• Recognizing the trigger and the mechanism/dynamic. Asking myself: When did I feel like this beforehand/the first time? Identifying the story I attach to it. Digging deep into myself and finding the wounding. Here lies the key to healing, the recipe for the antidote. Ask yourself: What is it about, and what exactly do I need to receive relief? Take this with you in the present (see step 3)
• Working on the past, reparenting myself, rediscovering the inner parts I abandoned on the way, listening to them and nourish them, doing inner child work, grieving, sacred anger processes, writing, ritual, …, and externally with my mum, breaking old communication pattern, telling my truth, naming my hurt, setting boundaries, …
• Working simultaneously on the present. Learning how to move toward the things that upset me rather than away. When I was triggered, I accepted to be activated, didn’t fight the efforts of my super sensitive alarm system to keep me safe, I merely let them be, let it be true (as it was once and lives as an echo in me), just ask: What else is there? Really, this is the magic. What else is there? There’s always more, and if you can’t see it yet, you need to observe a bit more. At the same time processing upcoming body sensations, emotions, thoughts. Let myself be flooded. Breathing, grounding, trusting it will pass. Literally sitting with it, in discomfort. There was intense pressure, hyperarousal/agitation, the strong impulse to run/fight/scream/crash down, crying, intense emotional pain flooding my system, heartache, falling… . Holding on to trust that it has nothing to do with the person I love, but that the past is f*cking my mind. Holding on to trust that it is all about myself and my past experiences, trying to see and hear the person I love, focussing on everything I don’t know yet, the sidelines of my experience. What else is there? And then I began to see them without filter, behind the other “reality”, beautifully gifted and flawed, a multifaceted being. Yes, it felt strange and kind of spooky to shift this. I did it while having very limited contact to the other person, which made it really hard to see them. I compensated with revisiting and re-examining past situations, investigating: What else was there?
  So I would recommend to team up with your partner against the cycle, not against each other. To me boundaries are tools to support me in my movement in the world, to help me keep the delicate balance in between stabilizing/safety (grounding, self-care et cetera) and working towards change. Too much change may push me out of my self, too much stabilizing may keep me stuck behind the walls I build for protection.
  Yes, team up with your partner against the cycle, not against each other will most likely feel counterintuitive (I still prefer: counter-trauma-adaptive) – moving towards each other when your alarm system is telling you to withdraw, sharing your innermost feelings and thoughts when your alarm system tells you to hide, believe in being safer with them, when your alarm system insists on them not being safe. It feels risky, scary, and requires courage and resilience. Trust in yourself and them. And a lot of communication.

  Have honest and deep in person conversations with each other about your attachment injuries/trauma, attachment style, trigger, mechanism, stories and core wounding. Be in an ongoing intimate, vulnerable and radical honest conversation and share as much about you as possible so the other can see the real, authentic, uncensored you. Remember: An essential part of trauma is to hide (parts of) yourself often especially from your close people to be safer. So be your most authentic self, act with integrity and don’t hold back while being aware of your impact and offering help with processing if you have the energy to do so, always trusting that the other can hold their own, and will, and that their “negative feelings“ are safer for you.
  Find out by what you can tell that one of you is triggered. Figure out what both of you need on nervous system and attachment level to make you feel safe(r) with each other when one of you or both are triggered. Speak about your window of tolerance. If one of you suffer from ongoing stress you need easy first aid actions to bring them back in their normal nervous system state – best: safe and social, and conflict conversations might need extra planning, i.e. pendulating in between discussing and reassurance/getting close/taking breaks, or building in elements that make them feel inherently safe, i.e. traffic light system or tapping out.
  If you can, give each other what you found out your core wounding (see 1) needs.
  Learn self-soothing. Learn to sooth/regulate each other. Negotiate how to care well for yourself when both of you are triggered, find an agreement that feels caring and safe enough for both of you, stick to it, don’t expect wonders – this needs time, you are re-wiring your systems, separating past from present while leaning into each other and developing intimacy. Relational healing. Magic ♥

It is okay if this path is not yours. I’m sure there are others, I simply don’t know them, as I didn’t walk them. You have always choice, it’s your healing journey, and what you want for yourself is valid.

I did withdraw from connections myself in the past, because I had no idea what was happening and how I can work with it, while I was flooded by intense emotional pain of my activated abandonment wound. I followed my pattern in the safety of distance, worked on my wounding, even with a therapist – to be served with the same pattern again when I did choose to connect again. So I guess I can decide that I have not the capacity right now, or that it’s not the right person to do the work with – and postpone it. At the moment I tend to believe deep healing needs both – the work within and the stimulus from outside. Yin and Yang. Movement in the standstill and standstill in the movement. I guess I prefer to do the work with someone I love – it makes it easier to let them touch the wound and take the pain willingly.
Observing others, I saw two more variations in handling this: Decide to never do the work and end connections and move on to another person as soon as first signs for this pattern coming up, or taking care not to connect on a deeper level, so woundings are not getting touched.

So why did I choose to do the work instead of moving on when it comes to the point when relationship rupture occurs? I strive for being free and having true choice, which requires to heal what weights me down. I believe that close connections of any kind are containers for conscious growth – someone needs to come close to my heart to be able to press my buttons which reveal what is unhealed within me, and to give me access to it. I believe that it is not a question if the shit will hit the fan, but when. I believe in the power of healing together and supporting each other in the process, creating transformation together. And I have a stubborn heart and really want this person in my life.

In addition, it’s a question of politics to me: I strongly believe in the possibility of deep and ongoing queer relating.
I also perceive that in queer relating trauma/attachment injuries and/or oppression-based ongoing-stress are oftentimes strong on both sides of a connection, even multiplied in queer poly constellations. As a friend said: It’s difficult to get traumatized when you hold the main power, privilege and resources in a society. We queers, especially WLTI, are all marginalized in some way, some of us in multiple ways. This takes a toll of our nervous systems, on top of childhood attachment injuries. It is easy to get stuck in each other, creating disregulation loops. Usually no one in a connection is ‘the healthy one’, in contrary to a connection with white straight cis/cis passing men, in which one has a high hit rate for a regulated nervous system to co-regulate with, and rarely highly loaded trigger from complex trauma / ongoing stress from their side.

In queer connections oftentimes no one is ‘the healthy one’, but both can become ‘healthy enough’, and oftentimes no one draws from an abundance of resources.
So mutual support and care, leaning into each other and into community are essential to let queer connections thrive. Mainstream emphasis on individualism/autonomy in relating, especially in polyamory, is a capitalist idea to me and don’t do the trick in ongoing and intimate queer relating. The additional pressure of figuring it out all alone takes even more of our limited individual resources.
Let us instead coming back to our strength as queer people – throwing in individual resources and doing it together, supported by community. Collective healing on this layer as well.