Diane Poole Heller Quotes

—a definition of trauma should include “broken connection.” Accordingly, our healing comes in the form of reconnection—to our own body, mind, and spirit, but also to other people (especially

As author and research professor Brené Brown from the University of Houston recommends, we should look for the people who deserve to hear our stories.6 Brené suggests that there may be only a few people we know who we can trust to hold our stories with respect, who honor our vulnerability, and can meet us authentically in our sharing.

Being comfortable in your own skin and having tools that help you relax is a really big deal, but learning how to feel safe with others is revolutionary. When your nervous system can co-regulate with other people, and you feel safe and playful and relaxed, you can develop a stronger sense of secure attachment and enjoy its profound rewards, no matter what environment you grew up in.

Couples therapist and author Marion Solomon writes about “positive dependency.”3 Dependency gets a bad rap, like it’s a derogatory word, but dependency can be generative, connective, and healthy. It’s important that we learn to meet our own needs, of course, but we also need to receive support from others and offer to meet their needs, as well. Doing so makes relationships valuable and rewarding.

I’ve also started thinking of trauma in terms of connection. The theme of broken connection has come up in my work repeatedly over the years: broken connection to our body; broken connection to our sense of self; broken connection to others, especially those we love; broken connection to feeling centered or grounded on the planet; broken connection to God, Source, Life Force, well-being, or however we might describe or relate to our inherent sense of spirituality, openhearted awareness, and beingness. This theme has been so prominent in my work that broken connection and trauma have become almost synonymous to me.

When I discovered just how important contingency is, I performed a bit of a “garage sale” on my relationships. I identified the ones with the most possibility for growth and decided to put more of my energy into those people. On the flip side, I also chose to put less energy into the people who didn’t seem to be very supportive or capable of positive empowerment. I’m not suggesting that you do this yourself, but I do encourage you to make sure your support system is strong and nourishing. Take an added interest in people who feel safe, available, and emotionally resonant. Choose your people wisely. This doesn’t mean to avoid conflict, but focus on the people with whom you have the possibility of working things out—relationships that can weather the inevitable disagreements and disappointments and eventually become stronger and more resilient as a result. Some now say that who you eat your meals with is more important than what you eat or how you exercise. When it comes to enjoying healthy relationships and growing into your own secure attachment, it truly matters who you surround yourself with in life.

When our partners are able to articulate the ways that we are special and valuable to them, our interpersonal self-worth is supported. When we express the ways that we appreciate and are grateful for our partners, we create a culture of positivity in our relationships that allows mutual vulnerability, authenticity and joy to flourish. We can express the delight we have for our partners through our words, our actions, our touch, as well as just the look in our eyes. Diane Poole Heller and her colleagues use the term beam gleam (also known as the attachment gaze) to refer to the nonverbal expression of warmth, kindness and love that radiates from our eyes, letting our partners know that they are special to us.

Being comfortable in your own skin and having tools that help you relax is a really big deal, but learning how to feel safe with others is revolutionary.

sometimes denigrated as “needy,” “clingy,” “oversensitive,” “controlling,” “high-maintenance,” or “high-strung.

Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married. Chicago: Northfield, 2010.

Self-regulation and co-regulation are both needed and beneficial throughout our lifetime. Many of us have established techniques to regulate our own nervous system—yoga, breathing practices, physical exercise, and meditation—and I don’t want to diminish the importance of how helpful those can be. Being comfortable in your own skin and having tools that help you relax is a really big deal, but learning how to feel safe with others is revolutionary.

we should look for the people who deserve to hear our stories.6 Brené suggests that there may be only a few people we know who we can trust to hold our stories with respect, who honor our vulnerability, and can meet us authentically in our sharing.

The trust I’m talking about is a sense that the world is a predominantly good place—a conviction that even in the darkest of times, healing, understanding, and goodness will prevail.

our brain is designed with neuroplasticity. In other words, it is constructed to allow for growth and adaptation. As adults, this means that we can affect our neural pathways and steer them in the direction of secure attachment. We are fundamentally designed to heal. Even if our childhood was less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to find out more about what’s interfering with it and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant. Our goal is to excavate our secure attachment so that it will eventually prevail over any relational trauma or attachment disruption that comes up—or at least that we might become more resilient and recover more quickly from distress.

We can never be completely safe, but we can move toward relative safety. We will never have our needs met perfectly, and we will never be (nor have) the perfect parent. Thankfully, that’s not required for deep and lasting healing. As we grow out of our wounded self and become a more securely attached, resilient being, we can foster the same process in others, becoming intimacy initiators and connection coaches for our families, friends, and the larger world.

Our attachment style isn’t something that we can talk or wish our way out of; it’s deep inside of us, and it is always active automatically. For this reason, it is crucial to have compassion for yourself. We need to have compassion for others too, of course, but it’s critical that compassion begins at home.

Due to an extreme level of inner strife and chaos, those of us with the disorganized adaptation can be quite self-absorbed. Managing such intensity takes a lot of internal focus, and one way that plays out is in controlling behaviors. I’m referring to going through life feeling the need to manage and supervise all the situations and people we relate with. We often feel the need to have control if we have a history of bad things happening to us when we didn’t have it. Controlling behavior gets a bad rap, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. When you deal with trauma early in life, you’re too little to fight back, and you can’t just run off and pick new parents down the street. You’re trapped in a situation that’s incredibly difficult. So you grow up believing that if you could only control things, you’d be safe. The older you get, and the more agency you have, the more you’re able to actually take charge of things. And learning to exercise a high degree of control over others usually also serves to enhance self-absorption.

The disorganized adaptation comes with a lot of confusion —  cognitive, emotional, and somatic. This makes sense when you consider that the fundamental issue with disorganized attachment is that two major biological drives are in constant conflict. We’re instinctually driven to connect with others, but we’re also programmed to avoid danger and to survive. When there’s excess fear in our original patterning, we can feel that relationships are fundamentally dangerous, and yet we long to connect. Often

Because our primary bonds are so meaningful, it’s crucial that we know our partners well, be able to bring them up when they’re down, calm them when they’re stressed, and do our best to help them through all the nuances of being alive. Of course, we want them to pay attention to us and care for us in this way, too, because both partners have a sacred responsibility to promote each other’s well-being. Ideally, both people are working to co-regulate one another while helping the other person with whatever it takes to self-soothe.

Stan Tatkin recommends a beautiful activity called the “Welcome Home Exercise”5. Maybe you’re at home making dinner, and your partner comes home from a long day at work. To do this exercise, all you have to do is turn the heat down on the food, walk over to your partner, and give them a big hug. You stay in that full-body, belly-to-belly embrace long enough for both of your bodies to relax and regulate.

Every person in our life is a unique, unfolding universe. It’s far more rewarding to attend to this fact and engage them in ways befitting their ongoing miraculousness.

The more we allow for novelty and complexity, the more possibilities we encourage to arise in our relationship, which keeps us interested.

So it’s important to keep yourself open to all the different possibilities of what your partner could be and who they are and not assume that you already know them, and it’s all done. It’s not done; it never ends. Every day is a new beginning.

When someone comes forward with some gesture of reconciliation, try to recognize that and appreciate it for what it is as opposed to how it falls short. The benefit of the doubt will benefit both of you.