The Price of Connection
Author’s note: names, gender, age, and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of any clients mentioned.
Christopher is a bright young man in his late 20’s. He constantly drops fantasy and film references into his speech, testing to see if I will catch him when he pivots from using Star Wars as a reference to ET with that sly grin creeping in at the corner of his mouth. Sessions with Christopher often feel like an invitation to verbally play a game of cat and mouse, and the only real stakes are me looking like I missed out on more time in front of a TV in my childhood. So, pretty high.
Behind the banter and the sly grins is a looming pattern: Christopher is trapped by perfectionism, people pleasing, and profound self-criticism.
Of course, that isn’t what led him into my office, instead we began with all the symptoms: migraines, anxiety, small panic attacks, lethargy, simmering depression, and burnout. Like many clients, we needed to be curious about the source of all of these day-to-day experiences before we could begin to attach more clear labels to them. What began as a cry for help with difficulty sleeping due to anxious thoughts eventually became a clearer picture: Christopher believed at his core that it was his job to perform, to put his needs last, to stifle his emotions for the sake of connection with others.
Feel like I am describing you? I certainly related to his story, and would think to myself at times: we should probably switch places… there are parts of my inner world that still need care here.
Each of us paid a price for connection — what was yours?
As children we are wired for connection. Our very survival depends on it. In their work Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered, authors Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz cite a study done on infant mortality. They found that when newborns are not held, when they are not met with eye contact and human interaction but are instead left to lie in a cradle until their next feeding, they die. The medical world calls it “failure to thrive.”
Because connection is so vital for our survival we will do whatever it takes to ensure that we get it. As children we begin to build our pattern without ever thinking about it. Daddy sees me and smiles when I do well in sports? Mom shuts down when I am too loud or too needy? The other kids notice my dirty shoes instead of my laugh?
There are so many ways that this plays out, but for Christopher it was simple: the family is barely staying together as it is, so don’t you dare add any extra pressure to it.
Play this out over time and migraines make a whole lot of sense.
Alice Miller, author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, puts it this way, “A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”
The journey back to experiencing a full range of emotions and a balanced sense of connection is there. But not until we are able to name what we have come to believe is the price of connection, grieve what was learned, and begin to practice curiosity for what our true self looks like.
