Sensitivity and Attunement

My intention is to impart some food for thought and some practices you can utilize for yourself this holiday season to support your inner-tending.

I know for many of us, the holidays are a mix of excitement and joy, and of complex challenges when it comes to spending time with our family of origin.

I have been sharing quite a bit about sensitivity relating to early life experiences, and how it can show up for you in your nervous system, as unconscious perceptions and beliefs about yourself and the world, and specific ways you can become oriented to manage any kind of core wound relating to your sensitivity.

These core wounds can be prerequisite to and/or a result of being a sensitive person.

The medicine for working with your sensitivity is ATTUNEMENT.

Learning how to attune to yourself can be a lifelong learning for those of us whose missing experience was co-regulation and attunement from a loving other early in life.

Infants completely rely on their caregivers to regulate their nervous system, so much so that a baby who is left alone untouched will literally die.

Being attuned to, and feeling welcomed and safe in this world is a very basic primal need, and our evolved nervous systems will figure out complex ways to cope with this unmet need.

If you were born sensitive, your need for attunement was greater than an average baby.

If you are inherently sensitive, and you were coupled with even slightly misattuned caregivers or an unwelcoming environment, your sensitivity likely exponentially increased, and as an adult you may walk around in this world with an increased sense of vulnerability compared to the average person. This could present as an inward or an outward sensitive orientation that I shared in detail in last week’s email.

To manage this feeling of tender sensitivity in an insensitive world, you likely learned how to unconsciously strategize at a young age to function in this world while carrying the vulnerability of your beautiful sensitivity.

This could take the shape of a strong self-reliance layering over your sensitivity.

This could also present as being very charming and people-pleasing, or a tough/generous strategy to protect your inner tenderness.

Or you may have oriented toward being very productive, energetic and industrious to unconsciously gain a sense of self-worth or internal coherence.

Most of us have a complex layering of all the different strategies our nervous system uses to protect us.

It is my hope to support you to have an embodied understanding that your emotional and physical symptoms and sensitivity are wise nervous system responses rather than problems to be solved.

With this awareness, you can experience your body as a resource, and trust the inherent wholeness that is already within you.

Transformation happens when we FEEL our core material from a place of safety, compassion, and support.

Rather than attempting to problem solve with the rational mind, I encourage you to enter a state of present moment awareness in order to visit the inner terrain that is underneath the surface of the mind.

Listening to the cues that your body is providing in a moment-by-moment basis is a compass toward gently deepening into and processing your core material (i.e., your emotions and internal sensations), and gaining insight into the automatic and unconscious impulses that are more challenging to access in ordinary states of awareness.

Rather than trying fix or simply “let go” of your limiting habits, behaviors, chronic pain, anxiety, sensitivity, etc, what if instead you knew how to lean into and support these inner experiences with an attitude of curiosity and acceptance, knowing that they are protective responses that deserve to be honored and understood?

Your body and nervous system are working to keep you safe, even if they have gotten kicked into overdrive when it is no longer necessary, and are now limiting you more than they are helping you.

Your body has a lot to say about what happened to you growing up, how those experiences shaped you, and what your present needs are. You may already have some of this information from past talk therapy or memories that your rational mind understands as being the cause of your current struggles.

However, the body is where we carry implicit memory which is the deeply held patterning of your nervous system, that the conscious mind often does not have direct access to.

If you identify as a sensitive person, rather than thinking about doing “inner child work,” orient instead toward your inner infant…. it is literally like doing “inner infant work.”

Hold yourself, touch yourself lovingly, smile to your own heart, hum to yourself, imagine yourself as an infant being held, loved, and delighted in from a kind, warm caregiver. See if you can simultaneously be that caregiver and that little receptive infant.

It may be hard to have access to this degree of self-compassion if we have never felt this degree of care from another. More to share on that later...

For now, orient toward cues of safety in your body. Whenever you feel a sense of safety or ease, get to know that feeling internally, and lean into those pleasant sensations. Let them be an anchor for your attention, and a turning point toward a new possible way of being.

Lastly, whenever you engage in any kind of meditation, movement, or self-reflective practice, start with an intention.

An intention can provide structure for the mind whenever we get lost, distracted, or swept into the rip tides of despair or confusion. Having an intention to come back to can be so helpful to continue to plant the seeds for what we are trying to grow in our lives.

If you struggle with family this holiday season, I invite you to carve out a safe container for yourself. Use the above bullet points, and anything else that is going to support you in connecting to your feelings, your needs, and your right to knowing that your experience matters.

This could look like stream-of-consciousness journaling, connecting with a friend or pet who helps you feel safe, any kind of creative practice that brings you a sense of openness and fun, getting outside, you fill in the blank here.

And sometimes we can't do it all alone, and we need support and attunement from another human.

If you find that this is the case, please do not hesitate to reach out and schedule and appointment. I would love to be an ally, witness, and support in your process.