Humans need connection just like we need food and water.
We are born small and fragile, depending completely on others to nourish and protect us. As we grow, we become able to do more and more things for ourselves, and we feel more independent. But our need for connection remains. We find meaning, joy, comfort, and safety in our relationships with each other and with the living world around us.
It has always been this way. Whoever we are and wherever we come from, all of us are descended from people who spent their whole lives, from cradle to grave, in tight-knit communities that depended on each other for survival. They hunted together, dug roots and gathered leaves and berries together, told stories and made music together around the fire at night.. They gathered together to celebrate every child’s birth, and they mourned together when one of their kindred died.
In this way they were connected also with the plants and animals and rivers and mountains and stars that formed their world. Their world was filled with the scents of grasses and wild flowers, the sounds of wind blowing through the trees and water running over stone, the sight of the Milk Way spread out across the sky. We take comfort in these things still. Japanese doctors have found that a mindful walk in the woods is one of the best ways to help the body recover from stress. They call it “forest bathing.”
In some ways, we today are more connected than people have ever been before. We can have instant communication with people almost anywhere in the world. While at the same time, our lives are lonelier and our valuable webs of connection are smaller and weaker than those of anyone who came before us.
Authentic connection is a biological need shared by all mammals. Our nervous systems evolved to measure safety or danger based on the voices and facial expressions of the people and animals around us. When we hear a loving, familiar voice, or see a kind look in another’s eyes, we relax.
When that connection is broken, our first instinct is to try to repair it by attempting to communicate. If communication breaks down or feels impossible, we begin to feel afraid, and we fall back into old survival strategies we share with our reptile cousins: we get ready to defend ourselves or run away. Our muscles tense, our hearts pound, we become entirely focused on the feeling of danger and the need to either fight or flee.
If both fight and flight seem impossible, we begin to disconnect, go numb, and freeze.
The only way to come back to ourselves in those moments is to come back to each other.
This is especially challenging if we have never known anyone we could depend on and feel safe with, or if we have experienced danger, hurt, or betrayal from someone we trusted. To some degree, this has happened in almost every life.
The only way to heal our relational wounds is in relationship. The parts of us that have been hurt or frightened or rejected need to fully experience love, acceptance, and safety.
Therapy is one place that can happen. Together, therapist and client build trust. From within that trusting relationship, it becomes possible to explore new responses to frightening and overwhelming situations, new ways to come back to connection.
We get to be our truest selves when we know we are loved and accepted for who we are and who we are becoming.