Connection, Disconnection, Reconnection: how to survive the unsurvivable

Artwork by Virginia Frances Sterrett

“Studying girls, I became a witness to dissociation— a not knowing that was culturally inscribed and socially enforced… if we cannot think about what we are feeling, if our mind doesn’t register what is going on in our body, and if our self becomes like a mighty fortress, defended and boundaries rather than open and engaged in relationships, then we cannot know what otherwise we would know. Because it is only when our thoughts and our emotions are connected, when our minds and our bodies are joined, and when we are living in relationship with others rather than standing apart from them, that we can make sense of the human world.”

-Carol Gilligan, In a Human Voice¹

My heart rate was pretty high when I sat down to meditate this morning; I could feel it. Of course, it was no mystery to me why I’d be feeling activated— schedule stressors, trouble with our air conditioning, a depressing morning of news. Our systems are made to respond to stress, so my body was just doing what it thought was best; raising my heart rate, producing stress hormones, and generally prepping me for another day in the life of 2025.

The thing about a stress response like this is that it’s inherently activating. It feels like stress, or danger, or like why don’t you get the hell up and DO SOMETHING already. The last thing we want to do is sit down and feel it (and in fact, I don’t necessarily recommend you try that— it’s probably better to take a walk, or use the energy in some way, rather than let it churn as unprocessed anxiety).

Stress is supposed to feel bad.

It feels bad to be stressed. That’s on purpose, actually— the symptoms of discomfort are supposed to remind us that HEY, SOMETHING BAD IS GOING ON. Meanwhile, the sympathetic nervous system is helpfully handing us the physiological resources it thinks we need to deal with that problem. Fight somebody! Run away! For God’s sake, do something, you fool!

But post-industrial, modern humans, well, we have a different set of stressors. The fall of democracy, the loss of civil rights, or impending environmental collapse, while real and genuine catastrophes, aren’t the predators that our biology was built to fight or flee from.

Yet because the effects of this stress are so uncomfortable, and because we often feel like there’s nothing to do about it, we do our best to disconnect.

Disconnection as survival strategy

When fight or flight aren’t an option, freeze is our last resort. This is true for human infants who don’t receive adequate care, or who experience some kind of environmental failure— when their crying fails to bring them the help they need, they will shut down as a safety mechanism to avoid feeling the toxic amounts of stress that would otherwise be lethal to their growing brains and bodies.

This strategy of disconnection is a built-in, brilliant way for us to continue to survive in a hostile environment, and it operates in all humans when it needs to, even as adults. But it’s not just lying around playing dead. We can be amazingly functional and still completely disconnected from our physical experience.

Rather than consciously feeling the discomfort of living with overwhelming stress; or feeling unloved or unwanted as part of the larger culture; or feeling the terror of losing stable employment, friends, or home— we are functionally disconnecting in a thousand socially acceptable ways. We distract ourselves with social media, or TV. We shop. We project our suppressed emotions onto others. We numb ourselves with substances and food. To touch in to the existential terror of our times can feel so overwhelming— especially for those with a history of complex trauma— that disconnection isn’t even a choice, but the only way we know how to keep going.

There’s another biological benefit to dissociation. In human infants, this systemic shutdown keeps them quiet and safe from those who would not respond to their protests with love, but with abuse.

Think about that— our first biological desire is to protest. We are born to scream for help, to reach out for connection— but when we have reason to feel that our voice isn’t welcome or that speaking up will bring us harm, disconnection is a way for us to continue to receive at least the bare minimum of care.

Soothe, settle, resources: a somatic smorgasbord

“Somatics” being the buzzword that it is, you’re probably already aware of some basic techniques that we can use to help cope with chronic stress. Shaking, tapping, vagus nerve stimulation. I’ve shared many of them myself, after all. I’m not averse to people doing things to help themselves feel better. That’s a great start.

At the same time, if we’re always soothing away our symptoms without ever connecting to the underlying causes— outer and inner— we’re in grave danger of taking away our own agency and grooming ourselves to be more compliant to larger oppressive systems. We forget that our symptoms aren’t just troublesome incidents to be managed, but a meaningful expression of an underlying (or external) condition.

In an essay titled, “The Forgotten Psyche of Behavioral Therapy,” Jungian analyst Russell Lockhart tracks the recorded dreams of a woman who is undergoing behavioral therapy for her symptoms of anxiety. As she is conditioned not to experience anxiety by engaging in relaxation exercises over and over again, she continues to have dreams:

“I am in a double house like my aunt has. There is a guy there who does mean things to frighten people. Other people are there too. The guy grabs my hand and forces me to stay. He has four big wiggly spiders in his hands. I can feel them moving in my hands and he won’t let go. I feel panic. I can’t scream. Someone is there but I can’t ask for help. I finally shake him off. I run like mad to the other part of the house- -outside. I can hardly breathe; I’m crying. When I woke up I still felt crawly and scared.”

Lockhart comments, “Escape is uppermost in her creation to the situation. Once again there is a pronounced theme of inability to get or receive help. She is muted by her panic and cannot scream, that is, cannot even make the instinctual response. Jung says that ‘deviations from instinct show themselves in the form of affects, which, in dreams, are likewise expressed by animals.’” The client has learned to shut off her instinctual voice in waking life— her conscious experience of panic is abating— but her dreams are haunted by her inability to make the “instinctual response.”²

I find this chilling— a Stepford Wives vision of “wellness” that would disconnect us completely from being in relationship with our authentic selves.

The possibility of reconnection

I opened this essay with a quote from Carol Gilligan because her work on young humans demonstrates how socialization into a patriarchal culture encourages this mind-body split as a means to stay connected to larger culture. We are not born dissociated; we learn to dissociate— to disconnect— to protect ourselves from systems and situations that are more stressful than we are able to tolerate. But reconnection is possible.

This morning, when I recognized my heart rate was high, I paused. I recognized that in this moment, there was nothing dangerous happening; that my body’s response wasn’t necessary to meet the needs of the moment. I felt what I was experiencing, and just by giving my attention to it— by reconnecting to it— my body settled— like a car shifting into lower gear. I got heavier in the chair; my pulse slowed, my breath deepened, naturally.

Of course, it’s not always this easy, but the possibility of reconnection is always right there. What are we reconnecting with? Our authentic experience. What’s really happening for me, right now, in this moment? Why did I just change the channel? Why did I yell at the dog? Why is it hard for me to sit still? Can I notice without judging?

This is a practice that is difficult because (see above) it is often working against our own biology. It’s a conscious disruption of a largely autonomic system, reinforced by cultural norms. But the more we do it, the easier it gets.

My meditation teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, is famous for saying, “Short time, many times.” This practice of touching in to our experience, over and over, is a micropractice that we can do anytime, anywhere. Just noticing, “oh, I’m anxious,” or “hey, I have a headache” can sometimes be enough to bring us back to ourselves. Then we can make a choice, rather than have a reaction. In this way, reconnecting with ourselves, we rediscover our agency.

Disconnection offers survival, but it comes at a cost. We lose our voice; our choice; our sense of meaning. Reconnection takes effort, and it doesn’t always feel good. But as humans, as a society, as a planet, if we are to survive what would otherwise be unsurvivable, we cannot continue to stay disconnected from ourselves and the truth of our own experience.

1. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 29.

2. Russell A. Lockhart, Words as Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic (Zürich: Spring Publications, 1987), 42.