On Solid Ground- Building Trust
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas if that’s your thing. Seriously ready to say goodbye to this tired old year and say hello to 2019. Check out my workshop schedule as you set your New Year intentions.
Interpersonal Neurobiology Part 4
Just to review- Dan Seigel’s 4 steps to how our brains built connection linked to my other posts.
Presence- choosing an open minded, accepting state stance with those we care about.
Attunement– focusing on the internal state of the people we care about, rather than the just their behaviors.
Resonance– allowing ourselves to be shaped and influenced by our experience of those we love.
Trust– mutual resonance allows shaping and responding to the person we care about while also knowing we are shaping them.
Over time, presence, attunement and resonance create a safe environment. Our relationship becomes a thing- something we count on. Trust is letting go. Trust is relying on the relationship you have built to meet your needs. Love plus safety. Not trust that nothing bad will ever happen but that we can keep going back and restoring the connection.
Building trust allows openness- to feedback, to new information, to collaboration. Trust allows us the safety to be vulnerable, uncertain, open, flexible, confused, receptive. Trust is feeling free to get naked with someone- no protection, nothing hidden.
The inner work of creating safe space is to apply kindness and compassion, for ourselves and for others. Kindness and compassion foster integration, spontaneity and growth. Think about how hard it is to admit you screwed up or that you aren’t who people think you are or that we are feeling something unexpected. In our deepest connection, we work to create the space where anything is possible, where we can share our deepest, complicated experience of self. This space deepens our own self understanding as well as our capacity to know the inner workings of others.
When we struggle with trust, we become less adaptive. We hold onto protective patterns with limited room for possibility. With poor connection, we often feel ignored, misunderstood, judged.
When we are blocked- we are at risk for impulsive behaviors, disruptive emotions, irrational fears, confused thinking anchored in our past.
Trust is a huge word in marriage work. When couples bring up trust- it isn’t usually fear of violence or betrayal or even dishonesty. It is fear of getting hurt, fear of being disappointed that block intimacy. This week, through the lens of trust measure the relationships you are in. Which relationships offer the most freedom? Which ones can you count on to get naked? Which ones allow for the full expression of who you are, who they are? Which relationships do you wish were more solid and what are you willing to bring to that relationship?
Can you take on the practice of kindness? Can you have some compassion? Do you know how hard life is for all of us? Do you appreciate that everyone is struggling?
In any given moment, first cut yourself some slack, then see if that allows room to cut everyone else some slack too. Compassion and kindness are responses we can practice when faced with old reactivity. Maybe it ain’t fancy… but remember… even the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day.
Love you all… more in 2019! Can’t wait.
Maureen
