Sensitivity and 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.
Core beliefs and Sensitivity
Core beliefs are deeply held, unconscious beliefs that exist as a felt sense in the body, rather than a conscious, rational belief held in the mind.
For example, you may have the conscious belief that you deserve to be respected just as much as any other human being.
You may know this in your mind, but your body may hold the implicit memory of being bullied, neglected, or abused as child. So the unconscious core belief that exists as a felt sense may be something like "I am unworthy".
And as much as you may say your affirmations or try to change your core wounding from changing your thoughts, your body keeps the score.
Intersections of Sensitivity and Complex Trauma
An infant has no degree of conscious awareness that the outside world is differentiated from their internal world.
To an infant, their inner sensations are one continuous experience to their external environment, with no consciousness dividing the two.
The experience that occurs in infanthood is “If something is wrong outside of me, then something is wrong inside of me.” Of course, the reverse is also true, and this experience is not a conscious thought, it is a very basic felt sense.
Often this process of awakening to the core wounds of the sensitive strategy is one of immense confusion and overwhelm. However, once realized, I truly believe that highly sensitive people are some of the most insightful, soulful, creative people on the planet.
Hakomi Somatic Therapy
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 explicit memories that your rational mind understands as holding some foundational rooting of your present symptoms and 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.
This is why Hakomi sessions occur in a state of present moment awareness, or mindfulness, for both client and practitioner alike, so that this core material is more accessible through the felt sense of the body.
Sensitivity, Anxiety, and Chronic Pain - What is the link? Do you identify as a sensitive person?
If you are a sensitive person, you may have at least one or more of these core beliefs:
· There is something wrong with me
· The world is unwelcoming and dangerous
· I am not safe
· I am not normal
· I do not belong anywhere. I am not welcome.
Embodiment and the Middle Way
Working through neurophysiological pathways and patterns of trauma is anything but a linear, clean, simple process. The brain and nervous system require an immense amount of tending when we are working with our neuroplasticity. It’s not just changing old habits, instead it’s finding a new way of being through many realms of our experience.
Our habits, movement patterns, posture, thought patterns and the connected emotions, beliefs, perceptions; really all these things that make up our conscious experience are all interconnected and simultaneously functioning in this complex dance of being a human being.
Core Beliefs, Chronic Pain, and Choices
Our beliefs are often not a deliberate choice we have consciously made, but instead are often rooted in our physiology, manifesting as a felt sense in the body that correlates with our perception of ourselves and the world.
