Why You Really Feel Disconnected With Others
Do you feel disconnected from others? Do you feel like no one really knows you, or you don’t belong, or your relationships aren’t fulfilling your desires for connection that you crave?
This is something that I hear a lot from the women that I coach and I’m given a lot of reasons for it:
-My family/friends don’t enjoy the same things as me
-The people I hang out with don’t like to have deep conversations
-I don’t feel like others initiate hanging out like I’d like
-I don’t have the time/energy for cultivating the relationships I’d like
The reasons for lack of connection are most often attributed to either something is wrong with me, or something is wrong with them.
But really, we can only feel as connected to others as we are connected to ourselves.
Relating and connection are based on two people sharing their truth, having it witnessed, and holding space for each other.
I like to think of it as two people saying, “Here I am. This is me. This is what is up for me right now. What about you?”, with curiosity and openness.
When we aren’t connected to ourselves, or if we are operating out of programming that has taught us to shape-shift, hide parts of ourselves, or make ourselves small, we will feel disconnected from others because of this disconnection from ourselves.
When we aren’t bringing the fullness of ourselves to the table, our ability to relate will be stunted and feel unsatisfying.
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
Ultimately, I think this is really good news, because when we learn the real source of our feelings of disconnection and address them at the source, we can open ourselves up to more connection and satisfaction in our relationships by connecting more with ourselves.
Ways to Facilitate More Connection With Yourself:
- Attune to Your Body Sensations
Learn to tune into your body sensations instead of living solely in your head.
What physical sensations are you feeling?
What messages are those physical sensations communicating to you?
What are they asking you to do (if anything)?
Our bodies are giving us an absolute treasure trove of information all day long, if we only learn how to tune in.
This can be tricky since socioculturally we are trained to tune out our body sensations from such a young age. Additionally, many religious traditions make us feel our bodies are bad/wrong and not to be trusted. Others of us may have learned to tune our bodies out to survive because we didn’t have the capacity to feel the sensations that were present; it would have been too overwhelming.
The journey back to your body is the journey home.
See if you can make it a practice to regularly check in with yourself and do a body scan and notice what sensations are present for you.
If this is a new practice for you, it can be helpful to start with the most basic things: noticing hunger, noticing when you need to go to the bathroom (we are socialized to not honor these cues and to hold it!), and noticing when you’re tired. Then begin to honor and act on what you’re noticing.
2. Learn What You Value
Our values are unique to each individual and reflect what is most important to us. If we haven’t taken the time to get clear on what we value, it is so much easier to make decisions that ultimately don’t support what is most important to us in our lives.
Knowing our values is a way of knowing ourselves and allows us to live in integrity with who we are created to be.
It can be helpful to find a list of the most common values and choose 3–5 that stand out as the most important driving forces for you. It’s tempting to choose many more, but when you do that it makes decision making more difficult. Try to whittle it down to a max of 5 top values.
3. Tend To Your Needs
Once you are familiar with your body sensations and what they are communicating to you, you can also ask yourself what you need.
Many of us have learned that we are “too much” or “needy”, but to be human is to need. We can never reach a point where we are needless, and striving to do so only robs us of our humanity and our ability to be interdependent as we were created to be.
Once you are clear what your need is, honor it. How can you show yourself that your need is so worthy and valid?
Can you meet your need yourself?
Do you need to express your need to another in a grounded way and invite them to help you meet it?
Often getting acquainted with your needs and validating them instead of dismissing them is the first and most important step.
4. Turn Up the Volume On Your Desires
Many of us have learned to stamp out our desires and turn them off, but I want to you to turn them UP and allow them to be the driving force of your life.
Allow yourself to get honest about what you really want.
If you could have anything, what would it be?
Don’t try to be “realistic” or stop dreaming, allow yourself to fully feel into your desires and allow them to lead.
Your desires are there for a reason and are a crucial part of what makes you, you.
Do you find yourself feeling disconnected from others? Comment below and let me know, and I’ll be happy to give you some customized tips to help in any way that I can.
Reconnecting to ourselves it the first step forward in having the deeper connection with others that we crave.
XX,
Kim
