Emotional Homelessness
A response to developmental trauma
For many trauma survivors, it is as if there is no safe place for the experience or expression of difficult emotions.
When there has been either a) a disruption to the level of available safety during the formative years, and/or b) a lack of safe attachment to primary care givers, we have to respond accordingly.
As children, when we are faced with a sense of danger, we are helpless. We require an adult to help us to physical and emotional safety, and to process the experience. When this support function is lacking, we are forced to do what it takes to survive through the sense of danger…alone.
So how do our little selves do this?
In a neurophysiological sense, what happens is that the internal neuro-alarm bells ring at the sense of danger, the pre-frontal cortex (access to rational thought and expression) goes off-line, and the more primitive parts of the brain signal survival physiology to come into play. Depending on the level of danger and the existing neural baseline, we may either fight/flee or we may freeze/shut down. The system makes an immediate assessment of what is required to survive. Our little bodies are very clever at protecting us!
The pattern I commonly see in clinic is a coactivation response that consists of an initial fight/flee response, followed and masked by a freeze response.
Imagine a little child who suffers from an abusive or neglectful parent over a number of years. Initially they may get all the regular fight/flee response (racing heart, cry/scream, fail around or try to physically act out). When this response doesn’t help them to physical and emotional safety, the nervous system slams on a hard brake (high tone dorsal response) and takes the child into a freeze response. It is akin to babies who are left to cry out – they are screaming for help and when the help does not come, at some point they learn that no one will help them, so they quiet, their eyes glaze over and they disassociate or put themselves to sleep; basically finding a faux state of safety where they no longer have to experience the sense of danger.
It is not safe to fight/flee. It is not safe to express the sense of danger. So, expression is turned inwards.
In an ideal scenario, the sense of danger would pass, and it would become safe to return to authentic expression (this makes me happy; this makes me sad; I don’t like this, I would prefer that). However, when traumatic experience is either acute or chronic, we may end up in a perpetual state of suppression; because at some level, there is a sense that suppression equals survival.
In an emotional and relational context, our little selves learn: ‘When I feel unsafe, it is not safe to express. I must manage alone/internally. It is the safer route.’ As a result, when the neuro-alarm bells continue to ring, not just through our childhood, but into our adulthood, we follow the learned response, to turn our emotions inward and isolate.
Emotions live in expression and find a home in dynamic relation. Without the ability to relay our emotions, we are effectively emotionally homeless.
Emotional homelessness causes a spilt between our internal and external experience and can manifest as feeling different/misunderstood, not quite present, or a deep sense of unexplainable shame or worthlessness. Often these internal ‘feeling’ aspects can seem very out of place, because in the external world, everything appears well and good.
Examining this response and how it presents in adulthood, I notice some of the following:
A tendency to express only positive emotions, or even denying the existence or more difficult emotions (either they are ignored or they are buried so deep that they are not accessible).
‘Acting In’ – turning the difficult emotions towards self. Anger, Shame, guilt, fear, are turned inward that often results in a sense of worthlessness, powerlessness or self-hatred.
A tendency to go against internal instincts, forming a pattern of both people-pleasing and/or self-sabotage.
Bursts of strong emotion or anxiety, directed outwardly. (The prolonged suppression is like a pot of boiling water with a lid on. Eventually the water bubbles over the sides)
Spiritual bypassing – denying the difficult emotions and clinging to states of joy and bliss
Physical symptoms vary, however may include: unexplained pain, intermittent headaches/migraines, fluctuations of high energy and depletion, spikes or drops in blood pressure, digestion issues, weight gain.
How do we recognise emotional homelessness?
Many of my clients show up as the result of a physical condition/symptom that has been unsuccessfully treated, often accompanied with bursts of anxiety or spilling over of emotions.
Knowing what we do now about ACEs and the link between childhood trauma and complex health conditions, upon presentation of unexplained/untreated symptoms, I will automatically seek to explore the childhood dynamic and the internal identity that has formed.
Once we can draw a clear link between the current physical symptoms and internal identity with developmental trauma, we can start to map out a road to recovery and reintegration of self.
Because our experience spans all aspects of self (physiological, emotional, relational), it is important to work with an integrated approach that addresses each layer.
At the crux of this issue is the question: How do we find a place where it is safe for the internal self to reintegrate with the external self?
Or more specifically, how do we make authentic expression safe?
In my experience, the path to recovery is not so linear and requires a highly relational approach. Put simply, emotional homelessness was caused by the lack of a safe relational dynamic; a void of safe connection. So, to recover, a home must be created for the emotions – a safe place for them to be felt, expressed and more so, welcomed. This requires either a therapist, loving partner or friend who understands our experience and seeks to support our recovery.
Nurturing the ability to safely express takes time and can initially be very uncomfortable. If we consider that as children, the suppressed authentic expression was a) a response to danger and b) not well received and led to either increased danger or shut down, the implicit response to authentic expression may be one of fear. Just the thought of emoting can trigger a fight/flee response, that as learned, will be eventually supressed to a freeze response. It is a perpetual cycle (I want to express, I am afraid to express, I will shut down and not express).
Understanding what is going on in our viscera may be a big help to circuit breaking the response. If we can acknowledge how the somatic response to our own emotions is to at first fight/flee and secondly to freeze/shut down, we can try and find a way to move through this learned pattern and find a place where we can either brake it repattern it, or ask another to help us.
Questions to pose include:
What do I feel in my body when I have a difficult emotion?
How do I usually respond to that felt sense?
How can I respond differently, knowing what I know now?
Who is safe for me to authentically express with?
One of the cornerstones of trauma recovery is the intention to build resilience – to make it safe to go into increased states of activation ( be it neurophysiological or emotional) and to be able to return to base line/internal safety. When first exploring expression of emotion, states of activation may rise quickly. It is important to create a recovery dynamic where we feel safe in connection, activation levels can be monitored and responded to appropriately and where we can always return to a safe resting state and be acknowledged as safe within connection.
In this dynamic the nervous system learns that activation is ok, because safety is always accessible. Our little selves learn ‘it is safe to feel and express authentic emotion. Nothing bad will happen. In fact, I may feel better after such expression and the person I am with will not hurt me’.
Finding safe authentic expression is a process that is non-linear and requires great compassion. Slowly, as we start to feel and express in ways that perhaps we have never dared to, we may find that our internal and external words start to reintegrate across all aspects – physiological, emotional, relational.
In the dynamism of safe connected expression, our emotions finally have a home.