How We Show Up In Others' Eyes and How We Feel About Ourselves Affects it

        Attunement is important in a relationship. That is knowing the other person's feelings any particular time when they are stressed, worried, sad, triggered, angry, happy, excited, bored etc. This is important because you need to know how to treat them if you really care about them. For example, if they are triggered you will need to know it in order to calm them down,and know exactly what they need that will help in that situation. They may need to vent, and have someone listen and show extra love, or they may be to be left alone but within your reach if needed.

           The same goes with a mother and child bond, of course this being very crucial. The more a baby is understood and known to her mother, the greater their bond will be and trust. 

           However, attunement is often disconnected because one is stuck in their blind spot of not being able to see the other objectively because they cannot see that particular feeling in themselves. So they shut it down and ignore it in the other person, minimizing it's existence, and this hurts the other and causes confusion. They feel a sense of invisibility. An example would be when an adoptive parent does not see their child's grief at being left by their friends in the group, and the mother may not be able to see it because of her own feeling of not being good enough for her child because of her deep down insecurity of not having been able to have a biological child so she minimizes the pain by saying something like, "Oh, come on, don't feel bad about it you will make new friends." Or in my case, where my mother has deep seated feelings of not being enough so she makes fun of my insecurities about being unworthy in life because of my past trauma.

             I was so terrified of the thought of not being attuned to my daughter, that ironically I overdid my concern about her feeling loved by me. I worried when I didn't engage her for an hour because I was involved with house work that she felt totally abandoned by me, but the truth is she still feels my love because I never left her fully alone by herself for more than 3 minutes so she knows I am there. Also, she grew inside me so she knows I am consistently her life source, and so she automatically drawn to me. It is still foreign to me though, because of my own ocean of doubt in my connection with anyone else even my own child. So anxiety hits full force every time I sense myself not tuning into her, and this tunes me out of her REAL feelings lol. That she will still love me and yearn for me even if it looks like she is rejecting me because she was hurt in the moment.

           On to other complicated matters. My husband and I. We are often out of tune with each other based on our own survival mechanisms that we learned to use from a lifetime of not being connected emotionally to any family members for more than 5 minutes at a time. We sit down to eat and no one says a word. We grab a topic to focus on with relief, and try to seem interested in the other's point of view. We are living in triggered states of not feeling good enough to deserve attention, and not being able to validate each other's stress and C-PTSD. It's awful, and the only time we are really there is when exciting new things arise and we share joy in the event. We do love each other and are happy when the other succeeds, but we are of no help to each other without major breakthroughs where the other can learn by example of how to achieve or learn how to do something. Oh, the projection is AWFUL too, when we get resentful of each other for doing the very things we each have weakness in and blame one another for it, self righteously screaming at each other how terrible the other is. For me it's when he doesn't notice my feelings of anger or sadness, for him it's when I am unsure about what I want and insecure, when I get angry and shut down passive aggressively and vice versa... etc.

           I noticed this attitude of ours, which I was ignoring until now because it was set in my mindset as being passable, when I had a session with a therapist for my daughter's trauma. A very, very attuned and special person helped me with seeing the reality of how trauma affected me and my daughter and how we relate to each other. Anyway, she was a happy vivacious woman, that's why the first thing that struck me was the contrast of my own way of communicating- very flat and un-engaging. It was a major observation, and I realized that it came from my feeling hopeless and self-doubting all my life. The trauma is still stuck, and as Melanie Tonia Evans says, it is trying to tell me something when it gets shown up in my outer world. So there I was, sitting monotonously and seriously across from her, as her happy, zestful and cheerful attitude rang out all too loudly in the air. I instantly yearned to be like her, but I had to stay present and be myself. She was quite unaffected, kudos to her, and accepted me warmly and compassionately. She accepted my situation, and only a few times did I feel misunderstood and teetering off balance to which I held myself up. I felt a bit judged when she said that my trauma was making my daughter not feel safe with me to cry spontaneously and that the control patterns of her having to be walked in a sling to sleep was not truly a control pattern, it was normal for babies. I felt like all her repression was blamed on me, and that my daughter was not so troubled after all and it was mainly me. She made me feel good that I was a bit attuned with my baby a few times, and my daughter was happier than I imagined. She said the trauma vortex that I get into drags us down, and not take of her first when I was in it. I should rather work on feeling good so that it can transfer to her. It was very exposing and I did not feel very proud of myself I guess. I do not always see how insecure I truly am with my daughter, such as that I can barely see her true feelings because I get triggered whenever she gets agitated. And that could be contributing to her blockage of feeling safe with me. I am doing pretty okay with her, though, and she is not as fully mistrusting and of me and feels as alone as I think. She just has trauma from being left alone for a while after the terrifying birth, and my crazy emotional roller-coaster of feelings inside. I do believe she has a high strung personality too, though. So she WILL be able to be attuned with me if I work on accepting myself first, so I can see her better.

           So I realized that I am stuck in helplessness about my feeling bad about myself, even if it is subconscious, and that hinders my success at welcoming others emotions with open arms. Sorry, insecure people, not today. I won't be able to see you in your emotion of fear and self doubt and help you feel encouraged to love yourself, because I feel that too. 

           My husband and I had a conversation about this, and have decided to try and be present with our insecurities and not try painting a picture of happiness when we are obviously feeling, as Ralph Smart says: "Fine" standing for fearful, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. Lol I always laugh at that it's so true. I hate when people are fake, it drives me crazy- because they destroy others with the emotional dissonance that they feel from it. But I guess it's because I am like that too often. Ouch.