Poll Where Do You Find A Sense Of Belonging?

[Tinyflame]

Fate must despise me then.

 

[Abstract]

Trauma has a way of totally breaking open the heart, tenderizing it to a point of infinite softness and openness, but it's also an infinitely courageous heart that can endure more raw emotional energy than any normal human being can. We notice that the bigger heart feels pain and suffering more intensely, but that same bigger heart can also feel bliss, joy, freedom, peace, and love just as intensely and so more than our pre-trauma hearts.

Sadly I think it can go both ways. I think there are a fair amount of people where it hardens the heart to others even though it is a bruised and tenderised heart when it comes to the person themselves. Like so much it depends on how that individual reacts to the trauma.

Junebug. I don't believe fearlessness is in any way important. Bravery is feeling fear and doing it anyway. Doing something without fear isn't brave. Fear/anxiety is part of PTSD and it depends on what we do with that fear. Fate does not despise you.

I agree with Survive that pain can be energy.

 

[Hashi]

@Abstract - I read this as healing being the thing that opens the heart (rather than trauma itself).

while this path can be so much more difficult, maybe it might offer a much richer wide open heart at the end. Trauma has a way of totally breaking open the heart...

@Valentino - is that what you meant? ie the journey of healing from trauma is what opens the heart?

I think what people have written is really interesting. As long as it's related to belonging I'm fine with whatever course the discussion takes, and people have related it to belonging.

It's also hard to follow though, I've got to say! I think for me the question always comes back round to everyday life. Is the general idea that this higher sense of value and "nothing lacking" means there isn't the same need for physical or tangible belonging of the more everyday kind?

How does this fit into our human experience? What would someone else see in the way we live our lives in a practical sense? What would we do with this kind of enlightenment, say, next Wednesday?

 

[Abstract]

I only seem to be able to follow reams of in depth and intellectual discussion properly when I am the one writing it! :x3::roflmao: I still appreciate people doing it though. Just often can't read it.

tenderised heart when it comes to the person themselves

Actually I think it is rare to find a situation post trauma where the persons heart is not hardened to themselves. I may not be understanding tender though.

 

[Valentino]

I think for me the question always comes back round to everyday life. Is the general idea that this higher sense of value and "nothing lacking" means there isn't the same need for physical or tangible belonging of the more everyday kind?
How does this fit into our human experience? What would someone else see in the way we live our lives in a practical sense? What would we do with this kind of enlightenment, say, next Wednesday?

Let's say that instead of a life of chasing after addictions which make life more bearable. It turns into an addiction to the divine, but it's a different flavor. Normal addictions are always inadequate at filling the inner emptiness or covering up suffering. Divine addiction is a flow of love that not only fills the emptiness but expands it, increasing meaning and value of life. That means expansive peace, joy, meaning, purpose and freedom. But at the same time, more sensitivity to pain, grief, suffering, responsibility, and helplessness.

That person might look quite ordinary and live a pretty normal looking life. But subtle distinctions would be a more active and conscious engagement in their relationships. There might be a natural appreciation and gratitude in each and every moment. They might more openly and fully embrace their emotions, pure raw sadness when they're grieving, powerful pure anger when they are disgusted, immense capacity to bear witness to another's suffering without a reactive need to interfere or rescue.

Each expression would be unique, as everyone is born with different karma, gifts, lessons to learn.

But maybe it'd just simply be a more open conscious active graceful approach to each moment of life, instead of a reactive resisting closed trapped type of living.

Actually I think it is rare to find a situation post trauma where the persons heart is not hardened to themselves. I may not be understanding tender though.

Life has a way of hardening the heart, people just keep adding more defense mechanisms and coping strategies, to create a gigantic heart wall.

When I'm talking about trauma tenderizing the heart, I'm comparing it to how meat gets tenderized for cooking purposes. With meat there's variety of ways including using physical manipulation, chemicals, time, and temperature (heat or cold). The end result is the meat is softer and collagens are broken down inside the meat.

With overwhelming trauma, it's making the heart more sensitive. That's why PTSD symptoms are so challenging. If the heart was numb and hardened from the trauma, the symptoms would be easier to deal with. Flashback memories come, but with a heart hardened, totally easy to deal with. Emotional triggers happens, there is no effect if the heart's shell is hard. Hypervigilance, totally easy to deal with if you believe you heart is iron clad bullet proof, what's there to be scared of?

But, Yes, the traumatized heart can seem quite distant and detached with other people. Why? Because it's so hard to relate to other people's minor sufferings and joy. Those issues seem minuscule compared to the intense emotional waves effecting our traumatized more open heart. I would theorize that the reason is because of sensitivity, traumatized hearts are over-sensitive, so trauma survivors are simply too busy and distracted dealing with their own overwhelmed feelings. Once the past traumas are better integrated and processed, and healed (made whole), the heart is still left tenderized with higher sensitivity and capacity.

 

[Hashi]

If the heart was numb and hardened from the trauma, the symptoms would be easier to deal with. Flashback memories come, but with a heart hardened, totally easy to deal with. Emotional triggers happens, there is no effect if the heart's shell is hard. Hypervigilance, totally easy to deal with if you believe you heart is iron clad bullet proof, what's there to be scared of?

I have to say I can't agree at all.

I don't think flashbacks and hypervigilance are to do with the heart. I experienced them in my psyche, body and central nervous system. The challenges were extreme but they were somatic, energetic and psychical, not emotional. I experienced them on different planes. A sense of psychic attack is not the same as emotional fear, for instance.

As for emotional triggers, which do seem to me to be related to the heart, I'm not aware of ever having had one. I don't relate to the idea at all. I must have read the explanation of an emotional flashback about 30 times before I could make any sense of what on earth people were talking about. It just has no resonance. Which actually would seem to indicate they are indeed quite easy for me to deal with.

My heart was well and truly numbed and hardened from the trauma, and still mostly is. That's why belonging is something I have only selective interest in.

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

Junebug. I don't believe fearlessness is in any way important. Bravery is feeling fear and doing it anyway. Doing something without fear isn't brave. Fear/anxiety is part of PTSD and it depends on what we do with that fear. Fate does not despise you.

IMO Fear is the root. Yes. Bravery is feeling fear and doing it anyway. That's how you become fearless. Fearless is freeing the soul. And the root of peace.

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

How does this fit into our human experience? What would someone else see in the way we live our lives in a practical sense? What would we do with this kind of enlightenment, say, next Wednesday?

is that what you meant? ie the journey of healing from trauma is what opens the heart?

It opens the heart to knowledge and greater understanding. A sense of belonging comes from a sense of oneness. All living things connect. Hence,you belong. Even if you don't have a sense or need for community bonding/belonging.

Trauma causes PPL/peeps to dig deep for answers. It's a journey to your authentic self. There are evil PPL/peeps in this world. The only thing you CAN do is rise above them.

 

[Valentino]

My heart was well and truly numbed and hardened from the trauma, and still mostly is. That's why belonging is something I have only selective interest in.

To me, it feels like maybe you're more disconnected from your heart instead of it being hardened or numbed.

Maybe it might be worth exploring brain anatomy aspects in relation to sense of belonging?

I have an atypical Asperger's Syndrome brain, brain research point towards differences with internal connectivity and frontal cortex regions. My particular brain creates symptoms like a more impersonal flavor of experience, a level of affective empathy blindness, slow to read and react to other's emotional language, over-sensitivity to stimulus, etc. In the past I might look to my past suffering, personal history, environment, and family to explain the symptoms, but now I find that my atypical brain might be the primary core influencing factor.

Dr. Dan Siegel lists 9 main functions of the middle prefrontal cortex as: 1) bodily regulation, 2) attuned communication, 3) emotional balance, 4) response flexibility, 5) fear modulation, 6) empathy (You-Maps) , 7) insight (Me-Map), 8) moral awareness (We-Maps), and 9) intuition.

From his book Mindsight, he describes brain maps & a patient who had a head trauma which damaged part of her frontal lobe:

The prefrontal cortex—the most damaged part of the frontal lobe of Barbara’s brain—makes complex representations that permit us to create concepts in the present, think of experiences in the past, and plan and make images about the future. The prefrontal cortex is also responsible for the neural representations that enable us to make images of the mind itself. I call these representations of our mental world “mindsight maps.” And I have identified several kinds of mindsight maps made by our brains.

The brain makes what I call a “me-map” that gives us insight into ourselves, and a “you-map” for insight into others. We also seem to create “we-maps,” representations of our relationships. Without such maps, we are unable to perceive the mind within ourselves or others. Without a me-map, for example, we can become swept up in our thoughts or flooded by our feelings. Without a you-map, we see only others’ behaviors, the physical aspect of reality, without sensing the subjective core, the inner mental sea of others. It is the you-map that permits us to have empathy. In essence, the injury to Barbara’s brain had created a world without mindsight. She had feelings and thoughts, but she could not represent them to herself as activities of her mind. Even when she said she’d “lost her soul,” her statement had a bland, factual quality, more like a scientific observation than a deeply felt expression of personal identity. (I was puzzled by that disconnect between observation and emotion until I learned from later studies that the parts of our brain that create maps of the mind are distinct from those that enable us to observe and comment on self-traits such as shyness or anxiety—or, in Barbara’s case, the lack of a quality she called “soul.”)

Trauma survivors might be dealing with a mind injury, weakening their abilities to form mindsight maps(me-maps, you-maps, and we-maps). Good mindsight maps might be integral for developing a 'sense of belonging'. Otherwise there would be a mind sight blindness, leading to cold relationship interactions, or possibly feelings like 'losing your soul'.

He also describes the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain:

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of each mode:
* Left—Later developing, Linear, Linguistic, Logical, Literal, Labels, and Lists.
* Right—Early developing, Holistic, Nonverbal, Images, Metaphors, Whole Body Sense, Raw Emotion, Stress Reduction, and Autobiographical Memory.
Another way of thinking about the two modes is that the left is more “digital,” with an on-off, up-down, right-wrong categorization of information, while the right is more “analogic.” Brain anatomy reveals a possible reason for these differences in the contrasting micro-architecture of the two regions.
The right mode creates an “AND” stance, while the left creates an “OR” point of view. Using my right mode, I see a world full of interconnecting possibilities: This AND that can be true. And together, wow, they could make something new! Using my left mode, I see a world more divided: Is this OR that true? For the left, only one view can accurately reflect reality. And when I’m looking at the world through my left-mode OR lens, I have no sense that I’m choosing to see the world this way. It is the way. And the other way, the right mode, well, it is just plain wrong.
...
There are many reasons that someone might grow up “leaning to the left.” What if our need to be close to others—to share our nonverbal signals, to feel seen and safe—is not met by a caring, connecting, communicating other? Or even worse, what if those early interactions are terrifying? How can we live with that sense of uncertainty? If we are living in an emotional desert or are being tossed about by violent storms, our right hemisphere may shrivel in response. Retreating to a more left-dominant mode puts our awareness in a safer place. It is one common and adaptive strategy to survive. But there are better ways, and I was hoping I could help Stuart discover them.

Or overwhelming traumatic suffering might just push people to retreat to their left hemisphere for survival, so it would become hard to value sense of belonging when all you see is a world divided?

However all hope is not lost, because there is a lot of brain research pointing towards neuroplasticity (brain plasticity), an ability of the brain's neural pathways and synapses to physically change with education, concentration, exercises, and practices.

 

[Hashi]

I'm only using a metaphor for my heart reaction, so if I stay with the tenderised metaphor I would say my heart is hardened. If you're talking about my heart being disconnected then I'd think what you're talking about is actually a greater connection to the heart. I don't mind which metaphor, but I wouldn't mix them up. And no doubt you'll see it as not like that at all!

Lol Valentino, I'm not sure the two of us could think any more differently. Not just in this post but generally. I'm not sure we will ever approach anything the same way! But that's cool. :)

What I do have to say, though, is that unfortunately I struggle to follow or relate to scientific theories. I'm really sorry, but I've tried to understand what you've quoted and to me it's just a lot of words swimming around without meaning.

I need concreteness, examples, stories. I need things like: If a dog licks your hand and you're someone who responds to affection, you'll pat the dog. If you're someone who sees affection as a threat, you'll kill the dog. If you don't register affection, you'll absentmindedly go off and wash your hands. That's the kind of level I'm talking about. Rather than the theory of expressions of affection mind sets.

I'm sorry. I honestly can't follow abstraction and theory.

The most I could follow is the right brain/left brain thing because that's somewhat familiar to me as a concept, although one I don't relate to. I can't apply what this says to make anything out of it, though. I have some strong aspects of both left and right brain. High on analysis, deduction, detail, articulation. Also high on intuition, imagery, creativity and metaphor. I don't know what you mean by a world divided. I'm really sorry, but I just can't follow the meaning.

 

[Changing4Best]

I feel a sense of belonging to God, with other Christians, and here on this forum. I feel somewhat welcomed by a few neighbors, but for the most part they ignore me or worse, because I live in the poor house and have no vehicle. I live way out in the mountains, so there are not a lot of folks around here; our town only has maybe 2500 folks in it, if that.

My family does not give me a sense of belonging at all, as their beliefs are different from mine, they live 100s of miles from here and they make no effort to visit me nor to bring me to visit them (I am too poor to pay for the transportation). At least they do call sometimes, or I call them when they don't. One of them buys be phone cards, so I have minutes to talk to them.

Small shop owners welcome me when I have money, but if I just want to chat, they don't. So many of our shops here in town have closed, that it is hard to find one that is welcoming AND OPEN AT ALL! Mac Donalds is not far from here, a quarter mile walk, but there are a group of men there in the mornings that harass me because I bring my Service Dog with me.

I'm looking forward to turning 60 soon, as I can then go to the Senior Center for lunch. At least then I shall hopefully find some friends and get a sense of belonging.

 

[Tinyflame]

I guess I would say I belong to God, as that is how I see it. I guess I 'belong to' those in my life I need to be responsible to, though I figure we're all on loan.