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Here’s a quick note:  I just spent 90 minutes in telephone conversation with a friend I’ve had for 30 years.  It was wonderful.  But I wanted to take a minute before I run on into town to write down here something that became very clear during that conversation.

When a person is in close relationship with anyone else – children, spouse, intimate friend – even less close relationships with coworkers and others – there can be patterns that will best be dealt with if we can depersonalize problematic interactions and step back – way back!

Attachment disorders and all so-called ‘mental disorders’ take place within the body.  Changes in patterns of information transmission in the body always show themselves in how the BODY of a person responds to and within their environment.

Our culture is very short on realizing that the MIND is not the problem.  What happens within the body, brain, and nervous system – especially within our stop and go autonomic nervous system (ANS) – which is our calm-connection – stress response (fight, flight, etc) system can determine how a PERSON is because they live in and with their body.

I saw the image of two people taking a pleasant walk down the road of their lives together (in any kind of interaction).  Suddenly, one of the people trip and fall down.  Maybe they didn’t see a stick, a stone, a pothole in their way.

So the other person turns to say something to their partner, a low and behold, nobody is beside them.  This person who has not fallen has to stop, turn, look to find where back there their partner is.  They can walk back to help them.  They can erupt in rage that their partner has abandoned them.

In the worst of trauma drama situations, the falling partner grabs onto the person beside them and takes them on down, too.

We don’t gain objectivity, detachment, or our own clear sense of who we are in the world separate from other people if we don’t understand that what is most often blocking the pathway of someone else – those sticks and stones and troublesome potholes – are

physiologically in the body!  Often our body’s reactions take us completely by surprise – bowling us over, sucking us under, getting us stuck – tripping us and making us fall so we can skin our knees – and maybe not even be able to get up again.

When a person experiences anxiety, depression, eruptive uncontrolled rage and irritability, wide ranges in mood states, shame-based reactions — and so much more — all these changes are happening at the speed of light within the body itself.  I say speed of light because they happen as the electrical signals between the cells happen.

As long as we cut our ‘mind’, ‘brain’ and ‘self’ off from the body that keeps these others alive, we miss our greatest opportunity for removing trauma drama from our lives.  How thrilling is it to realize that ‘it’s just my body’ responding this or that way – ?  I mean this literally.  It is not a thrilling trauma drama reenactment to be able to recognize instantly when something in our body has happened that is affecting us now.  We can simply recognize these changes, understand how they affect us, and begin to be able to gain increasing CONSCIOUS control over our life.

Simply put – nothing could be more complicated.  But it is NOT impossible for us to accomplish as adults (obviously difficult for children).

For adults, it’s important to realize when someone we care about has had or is having one of these mishaps.  No, we didn’t cause it (can’t control it, can’t cure it).  How DO we react?  Get mad, blame self or other, get knocked down with them, get stuck so we can’t get out?  Do we turn around and help, sit down by the side of the road and whistle Dixie while our buddy figures it all out and ‘gets better’?  Do we go back for them, tow them out, or walk on ahead into our own life and leave them far behind?

Tripping on the pathway and falling down takes all kinds of time out of living a good life.  We often find ourselves trying to anticipate what is going to appear ahead to trip our partner so we can perhaps remove the stumble factor for them.  This helps us keep them beside us on OUR walk because that’s what having a relationship is.  Well………  sorry to say, more on this later……. I’m taking myself on a walk now right out the door, into my car, and………

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