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As so often happens I have no idea what I need to say until I write it.  If I don’t write my thoughts just continue to roll around in a jumble like long scarves swirling around in a tumble drier.    I am thinking about how one’s social-emotional early forming right limbic brain develops must appear in action during conversation.  (I almost said human-to-human conversation, but is there other kinds?  Yes, I do think so.)

If patterns of safe and secure or unsafe and insecure attachment revolve around patterns of rupture and repair, then I suspect these same patterns govern our ‘people’ conversations.  (My thoughts are spinning around very quickly so I will have to hope what I pick out of this swirl applies to what I really want to say!)

Resonance and mirroring, sending and receiving signals — along with activated safety and security attachment needs versus the ability to deactivate one’s own attachment system so that caregiving can happen — are a part of human interactions we have with others from the moment we are born.

What about the patterns of rupture and repair in conversations?

I wonder:  If true empathy and compassion are present in conversation MUTUALLY do the patterns of rupture and repair never have to occur?  Is this kind of conversation, then, the kind that leaves us feeling ‘balmed’ – listened to, hear, appreciated, valued, understood and BETTER for the conversation?

I would contrast these soothing, balming kind of conversations to ones where there is a disturbing competition between the speakers.  Who is right?  Who is wrong?  Who is smartest?  Who knows more than the other?  How does the competition for the ‘goodies’ of conversation play itself out?

In patterns either of rupture with repair or rupture without repair.  And we KNOW the difference.  A competitive conversation leaves us feeling disturbed if not distressed like neither participant was able to truly say from the heart what they would have liked to say — and neither truly listened to or heard the other.

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I believe that some people are by nature, by design, or by trauma-altered early development far more competitive than others.  There is a spectrum of aggression and on this spectrum lies those people who thrive on competition and those who find competition troubling and unnecessary.

I am one of those who see very little need for competition.  When competition appears in conversation it means to me that someone is trying to override (in disrespect) the other.  To me, competition does not happen when there is a mutual acknowledgment of ‘there’s plenty of resources to go around’.

Traumatic backgrounds often leave people feeling desperately unsafe and insecure in the world so that their attachment system never actually turns itself off.  Rupture WITH repair allows for attachment needs to be met so that the system can turn itself OFF.

Rupture WITHOUT repair in relationships and conversations happens, I suspect, when one or both people’s insecure attachment systems remain ON so that one or both peoples CAREGIVING system cannot truly (honestly) be activated.  Our attachment and our caregiving systems are so linked together than diminishing activation of one system allows for increasing activation of the other.  Humans are not designed to operate with these two system dissociated from one another.

I am NOT saying that either attachment or caregiving remain separate from one another.  I AM saying that the way that they are always linked together affects our patterns of human interaction either toward a center point of soothing calm or toward a center point of competition for scarce and needed (depleted) resources.

The fact that we are not educated in any way to usefully recognize these patterns so that we can identify them, name them, own them and then bring under our power of conscious choice our ability to ALTER how these patterns are operating creates (I believe) far more unsatisfying than truly satisfying conversations with others people in our world.

I suspect that the more we are in competition with one another (nearly always on the unconscious level) the LESS able we are to help ourselves and others increase our sense of safety and security in the world.  This means we are then NOT increasing our ability to feel empathy and compassion because degrees of safety and security are what allows true empathy and compassion to operate.

Our body is designed this way.  Our safety and security ‘sense’ system is directly tied to our (anxiety producing) stress versus calm/connection (soothing) response system.  I do not believe that genuine connection between people involves active competition — on any level (I am not talking about ‘friendly games’).  I also suspect that if a person has unacknowledged need competition with others for scarce resources will be present on some level.

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For the first 18 years of my life I was nearly completely barred from social opportunities to participate in banter, gossip, or any other (more?) meaningful human conversation (some experts suspect that humans acquired verbal language due to our motivation to include more members of a social group in gossip).  I DID witness, listen and watch others any time I was around them.  Nearly all of the time to this day some aspect of who I am is involved with this same process — which contributes to my sense of remoteness and disconnection from others.  I believe I was wired this way from birth.

Being involved in this kind of remote watching even when I am involved in conversations with others often feels awkward — if not just plain ‘wrong’ — like part of me is spying upon and critiquing ongoing patterns of conversations, detecting what others were built-from-birth to know instantaneously and automatically and can simply accept as givens and ignore.

Because solitary confinement and social isolation was such a large part of the patterns of abuse I experienced the first 18 years of my life I do not believe that ordinary human conversation (even in my native English tongue) will ever be natural to me.  I am an ‘outsider’ who can somehow ‘cheat’ in conversation like I am watching a movie and can detect in human conversations what others do not(though I was the one initially who was cheated and deprived of what most people take for granted).

Then after conversations I have participated in I have a whole basket full of information I have gleaned by watching the patterns that I have absolutely NOBODY to share the information with.  So today I share this with you.

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