Resonance and Relational Holding Patterns

When we were young, we developed highly intelligent and refined strategies for creating and maintaining a sense of safety.  During these younger years, the feeling of safety came largely through secure connection with our primary caregivers.  When a young baby or child gets any cue from their caregiver or environment that secure attachment is threatened or unavailable, survival instincts kick in and the mind-body system will do what it needs to in order to stay intact and not become overwhelmed by fear.  For this reason, strategies that are ultimately about maintaining safety and connection can look amazingly varied, from acting out to get attention from an inattentive parent to deeply suppressing the urge to cry out for fear of a reaction from an angry or anxious parent.  These strategies really run the full spectrum and can get quite creative.  They can show up in our adult lives in these more obvious forms, or as subtler ways we organize ourselves and manipulate our environment in order to create and maintain the type of connection that we want.  These strategies make up our primary relational holding patterns.  Not all, but much of this patterning is linked directly to our early attachment experiences, and is therefore ultimately about survival.  Because of this, we tread gently and patiently in this territory.  

I want to note that I call these “strategies” because that word feels fairly accurate, but these are not calculated, conscious plans of actions.  They are unconscious reactions of the mind-body system that effectively work as strategies.  When we become conscious of them as adults, we can relate to them more as strategies we use to navigate our relational life.  This becoming conscious and pivot to agency is the key to transforming our relational life.       

This patterning is both about maintaining connection to others and connection to ourselves (self-possession).  Both are essential, and yet for young ones, a very common and necessary reaction to insecure attachment is to abandon internal contact (lose self-possession) in order to try to create a sense of connection out there.  On the flip side, when attention or energy from someone else feels imposing or smothering, we might contract inward and grip tightly on ourselves in order to not completely lose our sense of self.  Reactions to these scenarios can show up in myriad ways, and yet both of these are ultimately about avoiding feeling overwhelmed, either by the fear of abandonment/aloneness or fear of loss of self.  So depending on our early conditioning, when we feel others are more distant or less attentive than we’d like, we will often draw out of ourselves and move toward the other in order to create closeness/connection.  When we feel others are too close –  physically, emotionally or energetically imposing on us – we will often contract inwardly and move away or go out and go against the other in order to create space and not feel overwhelmed… in order to not completely lose our sense of self amidst the imposing energy.    

These strategies for creating and maintaining connection (attachment) and self-possession can be very subtle (or very obvious).  Because they can be so subtle and pervasive, they can just feel like who we are.  “This is just how I connect,” or, “This is just how I am around others.”  Like water to a fish, we are living in this sea of relational strategizing and manipulating and yet not aware of it.  That is, until we become sensitive enough to our experience to feel the pain / contractions (the suffering) that comes with this conditioned way of relating to ourselves and others.  This is where sensitivity to our internal experience is such a gift.  We become conscious of the suffering and want to do something about it.     

Resonance, which we will explore in this series, has nothing to do with the sort of connection these strategies create for us.  This strategic connection was at first about survival and then it became more about belonging (which, even as a teenager, we still experienced as a matter of survival), and was absolutely necessary.  So we honor it.  Resonance, however, comes when we feel safe enough and have enough internal contact to allow these strategies to drop and we find ourselves relating to others from our internal depths, without any strategizing… without leaving ourselves, without contracting inward, and without pushing against.    

Resonance does not come from successful strategizing (which is often completely unconscious).  It is also not the relief or satisfaction that comes when we get the feeling of connection or sense of space that these contracted parts of us are often looking for.  Rather, resonance comes from true mutual contact.  There is nothing wrong with trying to create a sense of connection or security in order to soothe these contracted parts of us.  This can be necessary in order to help regulate our nervous systems and create some semblance of resource.  True mutual contact, however, is spontaneous and emerges when two people open to connection from a place of deep internal contact. It is without agenda and disentangled…core-to-core…being-to-being.  

As an example, two hands touching create resonance when each person is inhabiting their hands as conscious space (when there is internal contact with the aliveness and presence within one's hand). Similarly, when we inhabit any part of our body (or our whole body) we are available for resonance in / from that part of us.  Resonance requires inward contact as a starting place.  From there – from this intimate contact with our own being – we are available to resonate with the aliveness and presence of another.  When we are only aware of our hands or are inhabiting them as physical matter (rather than as conscious space), we are simply not available for deep, subtle resonance.  When we inhabit ourselves as energy (when we are living in that energy dimension) connection is often experienced as a merging.  Our energy merges with others or our environment.  Because we lose contact with our own core when we merge, we are not available for resonance.  When we merge we also lose our sense of having a boundary to our being.  Thus, issues with boundaries can be a call to us to regain internal contact.  To inhabit ourselves as the stillness of fundamental consciousness (subtler even than the movement of energy), we create the possibility of deep, resonant connection.    

Because the subtle core of our body (sushumna, central channel) is the deepest contact we can have with ourselves, core-to-core contact seems to be the most resonant and deepest contact we can have with another.  

Once we know what resonance feels like, we can start to let that be our guide in navigating the relational world, rather than being guided by the vigilance and attempts to control that come with the parts of us that hold relational wounding.  We can deeply honor these parts, and at the same time gradually let resonance be our barometer for safety and connection.  In other words, with enough internal contact and sense of safety in our body, we can move through the world more and more from felt-sense, following a wisdom that seems to be deeper and more trustworthy than the strategizing of the thinking mind.  When we find ourselves mentally strategizing to navigate our relational world, we can sense that that mental activity is fueled by our relational holding patterns and the undigested emotional charges held within them.        

When we experience resonance / mutual contact, our relational holding patterns can soften. These holding patterns keep us searching for a certain type of connection or avoiding that which we don’t want to experience in relationship.  Ironically, what we are often unconsciously searching for is what was familiar to us when we were younger (the type of connection that was available and satisfied our need for basic safety). Through true mutual contact, we experience a depth and ease of connection that we likely did not know when we were younger (or experienced only rarely).  In response to this depth and ease, our relational strategies might naturally soften.  We can gradually become more oriented toward resonant connection than we are to the old, familiar types of connection.  We are reprogramming how we orient relationally.     

My sense is that we long for resonance more deeply than we do any type of connection we have learned to get a result of relational conditioning.  Resonance emerges when there is no agenda, just a disentangled opening to the other; whereas strategic connection is largely based in the fear of loss, aloneness and overwhelm.  Most people live at the whim of these strategies.  Most of us are too consumed by our young parts’ needs for connection or for space to open to the possibility of resonance.  And there is no blame or judgment here.  This conditioning can run deep.  In fact compassion arises when we see how necessary it was for these young ones to strategize the way they did, and how intelligent these strategies were.  When we are able to relate to these holding patterns with compassion (rather than resistance), they can soften and we can come into our body more subtly and fully… we can open to resonance.  So sometimes resonance is available even when these holding patterns are quite present, and they can then soften in response to resonance.  Other times, we need to first bring compassionate attention to these holding patterns so that they can soften and we can contact ourselves deeply enough to open to resonance.

I’ll leave it there for now.  I hope this was supportive in some way.  I would love to hear any reflections and feelings that arose for you.