Love, connection, and acceptance are our birthright
When we carry unresolved CPTSD, that statement may feel scary to our bodies.
We learned how to form connection with ourselves in our early life through the connections we had with our primary caregivers.
You may have heard of “attachement styles”… many call these attachment strategies or stances now.
These attachment strategies are ways to name and presence how our bodies have learned to be in connection… with others AND more importantly, with ourselves.
These internal strategies of connection can be described as…
Secure: we feel warmly towards ourselves and our parts… accepting that all of us are “doing the best we can”. We easily forgive ourselves for flaws and mistakes. We move through the hierarchy of our nervous system (read Anchored by Deb Dana)… and spend lots of time in connection with ourselves. This is a foundation for self-love.
Avoidant: we may not be hostile to ourselves or our parts but we are in disconnection from the parts of ourselves that we judge or “don’t like”… and since we can’t name, presence, or feel these parts of ourselves, we are out of touch and avoiding connection with these parts.
Ambivalent: we all have parts of ourselves that did not get our needs met in childhood. With CPTSD, this goes beyond that into violence, neglect and abuse. So, we trained ourselves as littles to escape our terrible experience by leaving our bodies, pretending that it wasn’t happening, shaming and criticizing ourselves or hiding somewhere inside ourselves.
Disorganized: We feel like cannot be with ourselves. We feel like we cannot love ourselves because we are locked into an internal struggle between this deep yearning for acceptance of ourselves and the drive to continue to keep ourselves safe (what we learned felt safe) by extreme self-judgement and rejection.
As adults, these young parts of ourselves are trapped and yearning to get their needs met. We don’t feel like we can be there for these parts (because we were never given examples of how to do this)… and so, we seek others to be there for us.
It’s important to remember that all parts of us are here because they want to keep us safe, loved and belonged. These parts of ourselves believe that they are keeping us safe by defending, protecting or managing our experiences.
How we are in relationship with ourselves, intimacy, and connection is so important to our well-being.
And for people who carry CPTSD, engaging our mind with information and education is an important component of this journey.
It’s never too late to start the practice of self-love. We can learn how to love ourselves at any point in our lives. And create a new foundation in our nervous systems where it feels safe to give and receive love, especially with ourselves!