Holding; A third way
Reflections on soothing psychic distress
by Harmony Gates
My distress pattern used to go like this;
I feel out of sorts, disconnected, unable to get my bearings. I’m not sure what is wrong, but I begin to sound a cry of distress. I do my best to reach out to find connection from another person. This can look like anger, demands, and blame. Because I am not centered and connected and content, my ability to ask for help, to reach out to another for connection, is clumsy and obscure. It is as a thrashing around, rather than a clear call from the aware place of feeling connected to myself and wanting to enjoy connection from another. When I’m in this distress, I’m actually feeling frightened and desperate. Lost.
Often the person I’m reaching out to becomes reactive to the way I deliver my plea for help, and fails to sense the content of my need. And even if this person does understand this to be a plea from me for help to reconnect to myself, he may be unable to guess how he could give help in a form I could receive it.
My reaction to asking for help but failing to receive it generally takes one of 2 forms. Either I feel despair, collapse my will, blame myself, and fall into depression. Or I become angry and resentful, blame the person for failing me, and become distracted by this drama. Both of these strategies leave me disconnected, but now I have the additional confusion of dealing with either depression or anger, distracting me from satisfying my actual need.
There is a third way. The holding way.
I have learned to hold myself. I have learned to turn my attention in toward myself, and become present to myself. I am be able to take myself in, witness my feelings, and allow them, and myself, to be OK. I become curious about my state of mind instead of resisting and fighting it, or trying to fix it to be relieved of my distress. By accepting my feelings, without identifying with them, I begin to be Present to and aware of myself. And this, in itself, has a calming, soothing effect on me. It is a focus that brings me more in touch with myself, in a nurturing and accepting way.
The fact is that no one can connect me to myself. It’s an inside job. I must take responsibility for this. No one is going to rescue me from myself, or from my distress of feeling separated from myself. Granted, there are skilled witnesses that can facilitate and direct my attention into myself. But I have to agree to Be with me. Only then does the magic doorway open, allowing the release into embracing this moment.
But wait a minute. How does an individual come to find the way of self-soothing? Are we born with this capacity? Is it instinctual? Or is it an emotional skill we learn through relationship, ideally in our formative relationships with others?
A friend who works with new mothers explained the different strategies that are currently in vogue for helping a crying baby to relax and quiet. It seems to me that there is a connection between styles of handling crying babies, and the way a child learns to handle disconnection stress. First, it is important to realize that crying serves a purpose for the baby, beyond signaling that it has unmet physical needs. Babies have a need to cry. Crying gives a physiological release from stress. Both the muscle contractions and the tears that accompany crying release cortisol, the stress hormone that builds up in the body from the everyday stresses and effort involved in learning and growing.
The three common strategies used in responding to an infant’s crying follow.
The first strategy is based in the belief that babies should never be allowed to cry. when the baby’s physical needs are met, (including its need to be held) and it continues to cry, the caregiver uses very active measures to stop the crying, including swinging, rapid rocking, etc. In my opinion, this has the effect of denying the infant the crying that it needs to experience, and communicates to the child that crying is not ok. Children raised in this way will come to believe that calming and soothing is achieved only through the intervention or application of forces outside oneself. ("I need another to help me through my stress.")
The second strategy is to allow the child to ‘cry it out’ off by itself in another room. This strategy is based on the belief that babies need to learn how to soothe themselves. In my opinion, this strategy has the effect of communicating to the child that there is no support for them, that they are utterly alone, and that they shouldn’t need support. When this message is given, the child makes one of 2 choices. Either it collapses into despair and depression, blaming itself for not receiving support. Or the child becomes enraged and blames the caregivers or the universe for not giving it support. Or the child bounces back and forth between these two conclusions. In my opinion, the anger is a healthier choice, but when anger is employed and still no support is forthcoming, despair is the inevitable result.
The third strategy, called ‘holding’, seems to be the best one to me. This strategy is based on the belief that the child needs to learn to soothe itself, but it needs the support and soothing of the caregiver in order to achieve this. This strategy consists of holding the child during it’s crying, witnessing and reflecting back to it its distress, allowing it to cry itself into quiet, with adult support. This strategy is employed (as are the other 2) only after the physical needs of the infant have been met.
For years, as an adult, my strategy for the distress of disconnection was to turn the blame upon myself and become depressed, self-sabotaging, and self-destructive. I first denied, then resisted recognizing I needed soothing and finally I withdrew, and went into isolation. I could not reach out for help. I believed that I should be able to soothe myself by myself. I couldn’t. But I believed that I shouldn’t need others to help me. And I felt ashamed that I couldn't accomplish self-soothing.
Now I realize that I never learned how to self soothe because I never had adult support and soothing to help me find the resources in myself to achieve this. Some people I know respond to this same distress by becoming bitter, angry, defensive, and off-putting, blaming others and the world for the psychic distress of their feeling disconnected. Both these strategies (practiced as children, during our early developmental periods) make it difficult for us to discover or access the third way.
Discovering the third way requires us to enlist another human being to witness us during these periods of distress. Our witness must refrain from either judging, (rejecting) or fixing, (rescuing) us. We must find someone who can hold us in Presence, hold space for us, allowing us to discover that the third way lies within ourselves. This kind of witness allows us to experience that we can, if we will stay with our process, discover what will soothe us and re-connect us.
As parents it is vital that we recognize how to actually support our children so that they can discover their own inner resources for self-soothing and self-connection. It is also imperative that we heal our own impaired ability to do this for ourselves, in order to be able to be fully Present to our children. We may need to find a healing professional, or a healthy friend, who can give us non-directive, non-interfering witness. Someone who can soothe and support us as we learn to soothe ourselves, releasing the stress that builds up in our daily lives and especially the stress we experience when we become disconnected from ourselves.
Given my dysfunctional strategies for dealing with stress, it took me years to discover how to self-calm and self-soothe. I believe non-directive, non-judgmental, unconditionally loving witness is a necessary requirement for the development of one's ability to self-soothe. For those who need it, I offer my presence, holding space, and often holding them physically, to help them discover their own ability to self-soothe.
Reflections on soothing psychic distress
by Harmony Gates
My distress pattern used to go like this;
I feel out of sorts, disconnected, unable to get my bearings. I’m not sure what is wrong, but I begin to sound a cry of distress. I do my best to reach out to find connection from another person. This can look like anger, demands, and blame. Because I am not centered and connected and content, my ability to ask for help, to reach out to another for connection, is clumsy and obscure. It is as a thrashing around, rather than a clear call from the aware place of feeling connected to myself and wanting to enjoy connection from another. When I’m in this distress, I’m actually feeling frightened and desperate. Lost.
Often the person I’m reaching out to becomes reactive to the way I deliver my plea for help, and fails to sense the content of my need. And even if this person does understand this to be a plea from me for help to reconnect to myself, he may be unable to guess how he could give help in a form I could receive it.
My reaction to asking for help but failing to receive it generally takes one of 2 forms. Either I feel despair, collapse my will, blame myself, and fall into depression. Or I become angry and resentful, blame the person for failing me, and become distracted by this drama. Both of these strategies leave me disconnected, but now I have the additional confusion of dealing with either depression or anger, distracting me from satisfying my actual need.
There is a third way. The holding way.
I have learned to hold myself. I have learned to turn my attention in toward myself, and become present to myself. I am be able to take myself in, witness my feelings, and allow them, and myself, to be OK. I become curious about my state of mind instead of resisting and fighting it, or trying to fix it to be relieved of my distress. By accepting my feelings, without identifying with them, I begin to be Present to and aware of myself. And this, in itself, has a calming, soothing effect on me. It is a focus that brings me more in touch with myself, in a nurturing and accepting way.
The fact is that no one can connect me to myself. It’s an inside job. I must take responsibility for this. No one is going to rescue me from myself, or from my distress of feeling separated from myself. Granted, there are skilled witnesses that can facilitate and direct my attention into myself. But I have to agree to Be with me. Only then does the magic doorway open, allowing the release into embracing this moment.
But wait a minute. How does an individual come to find the way of self-soothing? Are we born with this capacity? Is it instinctual? Or is it an emotional skill we learn through relationship, ideally in our formative relationships with others?
A friend who works with new mothers explained the different strategies that are currently in vogue for helping a crying baby to relax and quiet. It seems to me that there is a connection between styles of handling crying babies, and the way a child learns to handle disconnection stress. First, it is important to realize that crying serves a purpose for the baby, beyond signaling that it has unmet physical needs. Babies have a need to cry. Crying gives a physiological release from stress. Both the muscle contractions and the tears that accompany crying release cortisol, the stress hormone that builds up in the body from the everyday stresses and effort involved in learning and growing.
The three common strategies used in responding to an infant’s crying follow.
The first strategy is based in the belief that babies should never be allowed to cry. when the baby’s physical needs are met, (including its need to be held) and it continues to cry, the caregiver uses very active measures to stop the crying, including swinging, rapid rocking, etc. In my opinion, this has the effect of denying the infant the crying that it needs to experience, and communicates to the child that crying is not ok. Children raised in this way will come to believe that calming and soothing is achieved only through the intervention or application of forces outside oneself. ("I need another to help me through my stress.")
The second strategy is to allow the child to ‘cry it out’ off by itself in another room. This strategy is based on the belief that babies need to learn how to soothe themselves. In my opinion, this strategy has the effect of communicating to the child that there is no support for them, that they are utterly alone, and that they shouldn’t need support. When this message is given, the child makes one of 2 choices. Either it collapses into despair and depression, blaming itself for not receiving support. Or the child becomes enraged and blames the caregivers or the universe for not giving it support. Or the child bounces back and forth between these two conclusions. In my opinion, the anger is a healthier choice, but when anger is employed and still no support is forthcoming, despair is the inevitable result.
The third strategy, called ‘holding’, seems to be the best one to me. This strategy is based on the belief that the child needs to learn to soothe itself, but it needs the support and soothing of the caregiver in order to achieve this. This strategy consists of holding the child during it’s crying, witnessing and reflecting back to it its distress, allowing it to cry itself into quiet, with adult support. This strategy is employed (as are the other 2) only after the physical needs of the infant have been met.
For years, as an adult, my strategy for the distress of disconnection was to turn the blame upon myself and become depressed, self-sabotaging, and self-destructive. I first denied, then resisted recognizing I needed soothing and finally I withdrew, and went into isolation. I could not reach out for help. I believed that I should be able to soothe myself by myself. I couldn’t. But I believed that I shouldn’t need others to help me. And I felt ashamed that I couldn't accomplish self-soothing.
Now I realize that I never learned how to self soothe because I never had adult support and soothing to help me find the resources in myself to achieve this. Some people I know respond to this same distress by becoming bitter, angry, defensive, and off-putting, blaming others and the world for the psychic distress of their feeling disconnected. Both these strategies (practiced as children, during our early developmental periods) make it difficult for us to discover or access the third way.
Discovering the third way requires us to enlist another human being to witness us during these periods of distress. Our witness must refrain from either judging, (rejecting) or fixing, (rescuing) us. We must find someone who can hold us in Presence, hold space for us, allowing us to discover that the third way lies within ourselves. This kind of witness allows us to experience that we can, if we will stay with our process, discover what will soothe us and re-connect us.
As parents it is vital that we recognize how to actually support our children so that they can discover their own inner resources for self-soothing and self-connection. It is also imperative that we heal our own impaired ability to do this for ourselves, in order to be able to be fully Present to our children. We may need to find a healing professional, or a healthy friend, who can give us non-directive, non-interfering witness. Someone who can soothe and support us as we learn to soothe ourselves, releasing the stress that builds up in our daily lives and especially the stress we experience when we become disconnected from ourselves.
Given my dysfunctional strategies for dealing with stress, it took me years to discover how to self-calm and self-soothe. I believe non-directive, non-judgmental, unconditionally loving witness is a necessary requirement for the development of one's ability to self-soothe. For those who need it, I offer my presence, holding space, and often holding them physically, to help them discover their own ability to self-soothe.
