What prevents people from being authentic and connecting authentically with others? In my experience with clients, it's often the fear of encountering old buried pain.
To avoid this, we put on masks and hide who we really are. We dissociate from our feelings, meaning we simply stop consciously perceiving them. We bend ourselves out of shape to avoid difficult but authentic conversations.
Dan Siegel says that once linkage and differentiation are balanced, authentic, deep, and connecting encounters are possible. So why aren't these two poles balanced? Because you unconsciously act out old habitual patterns. Yes, they offer a short-term advantage: you avoid coming into contact with your pain, or as Eckhart Tolle calls it, your pain-body. However, in the long term, we pay a high price. The experiences that truly make us satisfied and healthy—feeling belonging, purpose, and meaning—are denied to us. The price, I think, is too high.
The more often my system experiences that when I connect with my old pain, consciously perceive it, and then let it go, the easier it becomes. The old feelings may have been overwhelming in childhood when the nervous system was not yet mature. However, as an adult, they are no longer overwhelming.
Especially not when I receive loving support from others who are able to "hold the space for me." For a long time, I couldn't understand this expression. Today, I know that these are people whose social nervous systems are activated. People who act from an inner balance. Therapists have learned to provide a calm nervous system. The nervous systems of people we trust can have the same effect. Their calm nervous system unconsciously shows my nervous system, which is agitated by the pain, that the situation is still safe for me.
Every conscious perception and release of pain brings us closer to our authenticity. Every release of pain increases resilience. Every release of pain brings the poles of linkage (the ability to connect) and differentiation (the ability to see oneself within the connection) more into balance. With each release of pain, a mask falls away or holes are punched in the thick wall of dissociation.
Let's face the pain to savour the sweetness of life.