Emily Dickinson, Attachment Trauma and Love- It's complicated

Hello,
It's Sunita here.

Emily Dickinson said " I argue that love is life. And Life hath immortality."

I felt our society's fascination with love and relationships reached a crescendo this week due to the occasion of Valentine's Day. You know it has permeated our culture when the check out clerk at your grocery store wishes you a 'Happy Valentine's Day' while handing you your receipt.  I, out of habit, replied, 'you too'.  It was an automatic response.

But my relationship with love has not always been this uncomplicated. I, only now, am beginning to understand the historical mechanics of my brain in the department of love. The impact of attachment trauma affects every level of our being and every aspect of our existence. But nothing compares to it's effect on how we experience and look for love.

LONGING

Running towards you

Didn't bring you

Any closer

It just made me go away.

Longing is # 52 in the collection of poems that I wrote as I battled to heal from trauma. You can read the rest of my poems in my book  Stripping : My Fight to Find Me

Who hasn't felt a longing for someone or something that is unattainable? That's natural and actually has an element of excitement and thrill attached to it. But I am not talking about that kind of innocent and harmless longing. I am referring to the futile and dark longing that renders you invisible. It is a desire that is birthed from the deep emptiness and feelings of being lost resulting from attachment trauma.

One is invaded with the terror of not knowing where one ends and where someone else begins. A loneliness and desperation that is indescribable drives one to tolerate relationships that should not be acceptable under any circumstance. Least of all, under the guise of 'love'. It refers to one's unconcious agreement with another person to become invisible so they will stay and 'love' you. That's the longing that I write about in this poem of mine.

It took alot of hard work to heal my brain and create new networks and pathways in it. That restructuring now allows me to move away from it's primitive parts parts and use the more evolved structures of this amazing organ when experiencing life and responding to it's events.

It is still a constant process to understand my motivations that drive my choices. But it is no longer an unknown drive. This self awareness, gained through dynamic psychotherapy and learning about the damage that attachment trauma caused me has made all the difference in how I love and whom I love. The mad desperation to be loved evaporated when I found love for myself. That was the starting point for me to define how I needed, wanted and deserved to be loved.

It's simple. I must be accepted, respected, honored, cherished and desired for who I am. Not who someone else needs or wants me to be for their selfish reasons.

No exceptions to this. Ever!

Now I make my choices through the lens of Self Love Self Care First. I have not only a mental check list that I go through when deciding something but also rely on an entire committee of emotions and 'gut feels' that I pay close attention to. I respect my instinct and now trust it and actually act on it's advice, instead of negating and dismissing it.

As my brain healed, my heart healed.

I opened up to the right people. I put up shutters for those who were harmful, dangerous and damaging to my well being. In essence, my heart became my protector. It expanded in a way that I never imagined it had the capacity to. It led me to light.

My heart saved my life because it guided me to take the path of Love.

I knew I had healed when I wrote the poem 'The End.' I hope it stands the test of time and is around forever. Just like I will be. And you will be. If we give the experience of love and loving our entire being.

As Emily Dickinson said,

"Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is immortality,
Nay, It is Deity-"


Wishing you a week of love!
Be well Do well Live well,
Sunita
#selfloveselfcarefirst  #jointhemovement

PS- I write and post at www.selfloveselfcarefirst every Friday so I may hopefully bring light to the destruction that Attachment Trauma causes in our lives. And to share hope. Because there is treatment for it that is predictable and effective. I know that there are millions of us who have suffered as children and grew up to be tortured adults. This is a hidden but prevalent trauma in our society that takes many devastating shapes and forms of mainifestation. And is tragically is passed on through generations. If we talk about it, we will recognize it. If we recognize it, we can deal with it. And that involves fighting for a life full of peace and love and feeling whole. It can be done! I am proof of that. So please share this blog with someone who you suspect might be suffering from ACE's, Adverse Childhood Experiences. Better still, subscribe them to www.selfloveselfcarefirst.com
Sincerely,
Sunita