The Courage to Connect
Connection and belonging is our greatest drive.
For humans, our need for connection and belonging is arguably our most adaptive and desired drive. Many in the psychological field position connection as the essential factor in driving human growth and continued development. Connection works its magic across the lifespan knitting people together, establishing safety, security, and collective collaboration and cooperation. Some of the most impressive human designs and moments of unity have been created and empowered through finding a greater sense of energy and vitality in togetherness.
It can be a risk to authentically connect.
Yet the drive to connect does not always feel safe or come naturally. While it is part of our foundational makeup, connection often arises out of conflict and doubt. It can be a risk to authentically connect to another and trust you will be received with openness and acceptance. Throughout our lives many of us learn, often early on, that connection is met with disconnection and disappointment from our caretakers and cultures. As these experiences accumulate, they become the point of creation for our inner expectations and beliefs about how relationships will turnout and if connecting to another is worth it.
Our fixedness to the pain of the past keeps us locked out of relationship.
Most of us will know the feeling of wanting to connect but choosing to stay detached or alone out of the fear that we will be not met or received by the other. When this happens the rational part of us becomes a convincing ally with the purpose to protect us from hurt and reopening old wounds. Paradoxically, as our drive to connect persists, so does our fixedness to the pain of past experiences that keep us locked out of relationship. This inner conflict of “to connect or not to connect” can feel maddening, hopeless and a bleed on our zest for life. To avoid such discomfort we might create strategies to stay out of connection such as work, sex, substance use, eating, shopping, gamboling, and other behaviors that numb this inner conflict.
Vulnerability is the doorway towards empathy and authentic connection.
It takes courage to change our habits and explore where they came from. It also takes opening to the vulnerable truth regarding our need and desire for connection. For us in western societies this may mean confronting the cultural message that establishes vulnerability as a sign of weakness, exposing us to more pain and something to avoid. When adhering to this type of message it makes sense to stay in the pain of the past and resign to isolation. But what if vulnerability, at its core, meant something else? What if it meant braving the exposure to a connection that is greater than the accumulation of all our experiences? Opening to the possibility of unity through conflict and intimacy in mutual understanding and acceptance for another, warts, and all. From this place vulnerability is the doorway towards empathy and authentic connection, creating a place for us to experience a shared purpose and zest for life.
Courage means to act meaningfully and with integrity in the face of acknowledged vulnerability.
Taking care of both our heart and the hearts of those we love takes courage. To risk this in the tender space of connection takes relational courage. And while courage partly means to defy fear regardless of the cost, from a relational standpoint it means to act meaningfully and with integrity in the face of acknowledged vulnerability with another. It requires an openness to continued growth in our awareness for how our experiences impact us and keep us out of connection. It also establishes in us a tolerance and care for the relational past of others, knowing they too experience conflict of connection.
Embracing ones own truth takes an act of will and bravery.
As we embrace this type of awareness and growth our ability for relational discernment grows and the conflict of connection matures to an inner stability, a knowing that we can handle the possibility of disconnection should it arise. Embracing one’s own truth about their relational past and established patterns of protection against connection takes an act of will and bravery. And while relational courage may not always come easy or be a place we can always reside in, embracing our innate capacity for it may bring us towards the depth of love and intimacy we were designed to experience.
Article supported by Relational Cultural Therapy by Judith Jordan.
Read more by Judith Jordan and Relational Cultural Theorists HERE
