You’re very little. Some feelings are overwhelming. You call for help. Here’s Mum. She syncs her nervous system with yours. You feel slightly bigger. She shows you that she can hold the feeling. She shows you that you can hold some of it too. You two can both hold a piece of it.
Gradually, over many years, you learn to hold bigger and bigger feelings by yourself. Not “hold” as in gritting your teeth and “holding it all together”. Sometimes you break down, disintegrate, fall apart like a string bag full of oranges. That’s good, that’s how it goes. I mean you learn to stay in contact with emotional intensity without always having to look away, dissociated, numb, braced, distracted, hard, clenched…
You’re an adult now. A lot of stuff you can handle on your own. But there are still moments of overwhelming intensity that exceed the capacity of a single nervous system to bear. You can look away, or you can find another bodymind to share the load with. Both options are good.
My story doesn’t look much like this one. Maybe yours neither. Most of us have been interrupted in our growth. That’s okay. The growing never stops, though it slows down sometimes. Life creates conditions for growth. From a very young age, you’re capable of providing that loving fathermother energy to others, that compassionate presence, that calm soft strength. It flows out of you, it grows on you like mold on an apple core.
Eventually your mum dies. The “open heart of last resort” is gone. Ideally by this point you will have learned that there are open hearts everywhere. Not everyone, of course. A lot of people need to keep their hearts guarded to make it through the day. But there are still plenty of trustworthy caring people scattered everywhere. You have an organ of discernment that will help you find them.
