You’re very little. Some feelings are overwhelming. You call for help. Here’s Mum. She syncs her nervous system with yours. You feel slightly bigger. She shows you that she can hold the feeling. She shows you that you can hold some of it too. You two can both hold a piece of it.
Gradually, over many years, you learn to hold bigger and bigger feelings by yourself. Not “hold” as in gritting your teeth and “holding it all together”. Sometimes you break down, disintegrate, fall apart like a string bag full of oranges. That’s good, that’s how it goes. I mean you learn to stay in contact with emotional intensity without always having to look away, dissociated, numb, braced, distracted, hard, clenched...
You’re an adult now. A lot of stuff you can handle on your own. But there are still moments of overwhelming intensity that exceed the capacity of a single nervous system to bear. You can look away, or you can find another bodymind to share the load with. Both options are good.
My story doesn’t look much like this one. Maybe yours neither. Most of us have been interrupted in our growth. That’s okay. The growing never stops, though it slows down sometimes. Life creates conditions for growth. From a very young age, you’re capable of providing that loving fathermother energy to others, that compassionate presence, that calm soft strength. It flows out of you, it grows on you like mold on an apple core.
Eventually your mum dies. The “open heart of last resort” is gone. Ideally by this point you will have learned that there are open hearts everywhere. Not everyone, of course. A lot of people need to keep their hearts guarded to make it through the day. But there are still plenty of trustworthy caring people scattered everywhere. You have an organ of discernment that will help you find them.
Love love love this piece, thank you Richard. It's taken me years to experience, but now i'm aware that the 'inner' mother (and inner father) never leave us.
Over the years, one of my friends from a group I am in often mentions shared nervous systems. It is nice to see you writing about it here. As an adult, it may sound strange, or wrong, to say that I am learning to do this for myself. I left an event yesterday due to a lack of empathy, sensitivity, and capacity of someone there. But just that act felt powerful and like a holding of myself. I wouldn’t have done it five years ago. I would have stayed and suffered in an attempt to be accepted and belong. I would like to hear more about your experience of this as an adult. What does it look like for you? I find other adults who have a lot of empathy from their own past, challenging experiences, and depth and capacity to be with a spectrum of emotions from living through them (if they have grown and integrated their challenging experiences). I am not sure if we share nervous systems except I can say things without triggering them and that is a powerful thing and I feel less alone.