My polyvocal agency, otherwise known as my body, has been operating out of fear, as a result of my disorganized upbringing.
There are seven Foundational Attachment Needs we all have. When we don't get those needs met, we feel "needy" the horrible feeling of being exposed. Those needs are:
Once my father left, I entered the first stage of separation distress: PROTEST. I threw fits and temper tantrums.
When I didn't get my daddy back, I flung myself into DESPAIR. I became withdrawn and miserable, appearing to be interested in my surroundings, shutting off my experience.
Lastly and most harmfully, I sunk into DETACHMENT. As though I shut off the love I had, the need I had for connection.
It turns out that I have undergone the exact same separation distress from within my own body. When my eating disorder emerged as a way to control a world I so desperately wanted to understand (unsure as to why I was so sensitive about things I was expected to "just get over," why I cried at Daddy-Daughter dances, why I craved the validation of any and all older men, why I was such a people-pleaser when the last person I was pleasing was myself), I abandoned my needs, my body, and myself. Because one of those visceral needs was parental connection: something I would never get. A gaping wound that would never be healed. So I put up resistances and blocks to any and all needs I may have: because having needs was associated with one thing and one thing only: pain. In order to protest that pain of existing, I threw a hunger strike. The hunger strike was much more than avoiding food: it protesting vulnerability, hardship, heartache, and anything that filled me. As the separation from myself became longer, I became depressed. Eventually the protest and despair lead to complete detachment from myself; I became a shell of protection. That shell was also encased with jovial femininity that society would applaud... at least I'd get somebody's approval. Then the pain of self-abandonment would come haunt me in the form of self-criticism and degradation. So I kept moving, pleasing others, and covering up my wounds with bandaids made for me by corporate capitalism. Following a system's rules is much easier than digging into my soul and living a handmade life.
I know realize my protest was a way of saying, "This hurts. Living an abandoned life hurts. Why would you abandon me the same way your father did? Why don't you lift me up, encourage, and motivate me? Feed me, nourish me, love me, and rest. Oh, and laugh a little. That'd be nice, too." Instead of inner protest being labeled as "bad", I now see it as my inner guidance system, letting me know that something should be different within myself.
With self-abandonment comes the inability to meet my own attachment needs; becoming "needy" and feeling horribly exposed. An after-affect of that is shame. When those very natural needs aren't met, I feel as if there is something fundamentally wrong with me.
To that I say, no more. As my defenses from my pain turned me into somebody I no longer wanted to be, I knew something had to change. Not only with weight restoration and therapy... but by choosing to be empowered by my life. I will no longer bow down to my pain. I will no longer worship it and let it dictate my existence. I choose to instead see the knee-jerk reaction of AVOIDANCE as a red flag that this is something better-off being explored.
This realization has been a long-time coming. The sensitivity and defensiveness I have towards the world around me has left me bitter, dependent on medication and/or substances, only pulling me further away from myself. I've recently made notecards of what the inner experience looks like when I become chaotic and desperate to please anyone else because I can't seem to please myself. The second one is what the inner experience looks like when I become rigid and set in my ways as a form of protection (see attached). Neither are productive. Neither reveal anything to me. Neither bring me home to myself. Yet this is my inner experience on a daily basis: a monoculture of defensiveness. Out of curiosity, I recently asked my body what else it had to say. It turns out, it was polyvocal! My thighs said "hug me," my knees said "rest me," my back said "it feels nice when you lay on top of a foam roller." Each one of these fabrics is interwoven into an intelligent and animated whole. I understand now that all feelings are for feeling. Because the only thing worse than feeling it all is missing it all. So when I feel tight and rigid and stressed, I explore my psoas muscle. It is the incubator of the fight, flight, or freeze response I have habitually operated out of for so long. It is the instigator of defensiveness, of "gut feelings", intricately tied to the illiacus, located deep within my core, where all movement originates. I stretch it and allow it to be free, as a way of thanking them both for allowing me to move on this green Earth. I ask my neck if it would like the same. I move through different points of tension throughout my body. I reassure all parts of me that want to be tight that they can be free. I slow it down to the sensations of merely existing. This is the turning point: I am empowering myself to do what my vibrant body is asking. She's been talking for a while now, but my attachment issues have made it hard to listen to her.
I choose now to transport myself out of that pain; to love it, be better for it, and use it as bridge to run towards my best and wildest dreams, built by my own desire to heal. I can use pain to become. As Glennon Doyle says, "I am reminded constantly by the ache: this will pass. Stay close."
It's time to address my body with a soothing balm: asking it what it needs. Offering integrity and wholeness, rather than disassociating from it entirely to hide from the pain. She is telling me that what I need now is to stay in the pain. To become from the pain. Because after walking through fire after fire after fire, I will soon learn that I am fireproof.
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