There was a stage in my life when I sometimes idealized, not all, but certain people into more than what was humanly possible for them to heroically become, or what was personally inaccurate for them to want to be. I was younger, inexperienced, and more significantly, I was moving from my wound spaces.
For myself and others who experienced trauma, it’s important for us to comprehend the nature of our wounding, and it’s also necessary to include how we react to stimuli on a level all humans encounter primally. We learn and recognize when and why we’re fawning, freezing, fleeing and if all else fails, crying out for help.
Crying out for help isn’t bad since what’s intended for survival is beneficial for returning to equanimity. And although we will spend our life responding from our primal, animal brain, we don’t want to keep getting stuck tremoring and perpetually reacting from former wound spaces or trauma frames.
Young animals must call for help to be brought back into safety by their mother, so it’s a positive instinct to have. However, if you tended to get neglected as an infant or child, you likely had to cry louder for necessary attention. You needed an adult to feed, change and comfort you, and if they were unavailable or ignored your pleas, your cry may have frequently escalated into absolute distress. The same applies in adulthood, where we can find ourselves being in harmful or dangerous connections or situations that create new wounds or are reminiscent of our early years of not being met.
When we’re doing it or caught in a cycle of it, Crying out for help can be heard in our vocabulary, language, and our behavior and actions and avoidance or attachment. In fact, I would often get stuck in an attach/cry for help response until I was able to comprehend the triggers that were switching it on and causing me to enter and remain in a distressed form of hyperarousal, then responding to practically everything incoming from that activated place.
Additionally, growing up waiting for a specific kind of help that never arrived caused me to swing into an imbalance of either/or. Not in every case, but I could identify circumstance when I would either give up too quickly on a connection that held potential to evolve desirably, or I would hold out for something unrealistic and stick it out too long in unhealthy dynamics. Both were my unconscious attempts to secure a stability I hadn’t yet built for myself through recovery.
And when it came to some relationships, I would forge my ideas of how the connection should be into rigid role expectations, yet feel as though I were receiving the bare minimum and feel disappointed. I recall how I romanticized the concept of best friend and the ways in which they were supposed to behave or be there for me based on what was instantly and culturally ennobled, without allowing myself to consider the value in everything developing and maturing over time. I was expecting a hero of my own design and not a living human being with a lot of stuff going on for them, too.
Our bonds wonderfully form inside contact and meaningful conversations and talks that encourage honesty. Honesty about individual limitations and understanding what that person is dealing with as they really get to know the same about me, and allowing our discoveries to develop into deepening appreciation. Our bonds can even strengthen inside occasional conflict leading to resolution. All this and more nourishes our journey together as human beings.
LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD
Life features a route called Recovery Road. On this road, I’m able to give myself times to pull over to investigate my intentions and ask myself some questions. Like whether I’m feeling stuck inside the attach/cry for help response, among other inquiries.
Facing specific past experiences would inform the feelings of helplessness, dysregulation, and the habit of pedestalling people or exaggerating the aspects of what a real person might be capable of manifesting. That meant recognizing the loneliness and isolation caused by managing a destabilizing reality. And understanding the fantasy of escaping or being saved. And being compassionate for the child holding out a nightly wish to be rescued, only to disintegrate into embittered tears. And pinpointing those engulfing sensations around being trapped in helplessness or hit by the overwhelm of an exhausting pattern of crisis/rescue/crisis.
And the hardest part to take in was noticing the cry for help that kept signaling like a blinking light,
See me…I am in deep waters and I think I’m drowning. Hear my cries and save me…
—which would become an internal call for relief that flooded my heart with pure compassion.
In order to heal and recover, it’s vital to identify the wounded child who is still waiting for the arrival of a reliable adult to secure, soothe, and provide safety.
Becoming the Healthy Adult who would go back for my wounded inner-child would be the heroic path that offered rescue. No longer at the mercy of how my early guardians functioned, eventually I learned to welcome what a person was reasonably and energetically capable of offering on an individual basis. Meaning, if they had the tools, bandwidth, emotional resonance, insight, and physical strength to meet me needed to be considered. Not everyone will be the same, and that will be good. It would be trial and error on the way to discerning the characteristics of different types of connection and learning about the realistic features of a human relationship. Most importantly, building a grounded and optimistic inner narrative and resilience would be the foundational bricks creating personal stability. Knowing I could support myself, allow myself to have big feelings, show up, and be self-possessed were powerful strides forward.
I must tell you, it doesn’t suddenly stop happening. I am still confronted by situations that test my need for security within a more balanced and healthy lifestyle. I will always meet other people who are working through their own material and carrying a heavy load. The idea is to not judge either of us unfairly. The goal is to accept us in the condition we are in at the time, to understand as best we can and apply internal and exterior boundaries where needed, and help one another to the best of our ability.
We are worthy of solid, stable friendships and connections. Connections that do offer positive reinforcement, support and assistance when we need it and a place to feel met. If any of what I’ve shared in this newsletter resonates, my wish is for you to step into your healing and find yourself forming wonderfully lasting friendships. As you grow to understand what you’ve dealt with in life and how any of it might be causing you undue pain and disappointment, I hope you also apply generous amounts of self-love and patience and flourish in ways you so deserve. And it is more than okay to ask for help.
And when you’re frustrated and impatient with the process, try to remember:
In a world that’s always shifting and receding with a culture that glorifies and cancels, there lives a multitude of people working out their stuff and can’t always find you where you are. Or they are dealing with their stuff, so they can’t meet you in ways you need.
But you don’t have to wait in distress. Reach out to someone and describe what you’re dealing with and ask if they’re able to help by holding the space for you to regain your footing.
Having shared all of that, I offer this for thought, too:
One of the most humbling, profound and treasured lessons I learned is there will be ones who will not meet the unrealistic mark, yet far exceed the highest measure of what a soul passing through is here to give. I promise you this, you’ll experience someone who’ll need your efforts more than they can possibly return and you’ll hold it as a blessing to be cherished ever after…
With love, care and Kindness,
Susan
Trauma responses like flight or fleeing, fawning, freeze mode, or crying out for help are real panic responses and can be treated with the support of a trauma-informed therapist. If you suspect you are experiencing serious symptoms of post trauma, please contact a counselor or therapist or tell someone if you need assistance with finding an appropriate path for recovery.
Thank you for this perfect expression of my mood and heartache today.
Expectations unmet needs, a longing for my family to “get” the trauma and attachment issues I’ve been working on for 40 Years beginning with getting clean and sober and peeling away layers of trauma before it was even called that.
The searing pain was so deep when your heading caught my attention so I regulated to
See if something in your words would calm my ache for co regulation in the midst of the childhood pain I knew did not really belong to my current situation a resurfacing pattern under certain circumstances.
As I read your words soothed and calmed me aha thus writing encapsulates my feeling experience right now held pain needing my acknowledgement to the depth of that other time.
I’d never experienced that awareness before that I project the pain to expectations of others and therefore don’t process it and my in anger and projection into others keeps me stuck in sympathetic.
Such healing clarity and perfect timing.🙏🥰
good words thanks. being with that ache ongoing and always as it comes and goes is the only option these days. it feels like it must be wrong tho because the lifelong addiction to rescue and be rescued no matter what else is compromised doesn’t go quietly. weird new reality and more and more openings into deep self other than alll of that shite.
the automaticity of wafting amongst the crowd to “belong” v standing out side in the cold and alone and relishing the slow warm and thaw.
rich🌞