Relational Movements
According to Damasio (Sletvold, 2019), from an evolutionary perspective, a living body and emotions came first, followed by an unconscious mind and, lastly, conscious minds, feelings, and self. The conscious mind emerged from organisms, like bacteria, that developed adaptive behaviors to maintain homeostasis within the organism. Feelings drove these adaptive behaviors. These primordial feelings cause organisms to move towards what is beneficial for homeostasis and away from what is a threat to homeostasis.
Damasio (Sletvold, 2019) hypothesized that whenever brains began to generate primordial feelings, organisms acquired an early form of experiencing feelings and sensations. Through evolution, a self-process was added to the mind, beginning the elaborate conscious minds we developed.
In the 1930s, psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich also suggested that our emotions at their core could be traced back to single-cell organisms like the amoeba. Reich wrote:
“The word “emotion” means “moving outwards” or “pushing out.” Thus, we not only can but must take the word “emotion” literally in speaking of sensations and movements. The microscopic observation of living amoeba subject to minor electric stimuli reveals the meaning of the concept “emotion” in its most basic form. Fundamentally, emotion is nothing but a plasmatic movement. Pleasurable stimuli affect an “emotion” of the protoplasm causing it to expand and move from its center towards its periphery. Non-pleasurable stimuli, on the other hand, brings about an “emotion” of the protoplasm by causing it to contract and move from its periphery towards its center.” (Sletvold, 2019)
Damasio (Sletvold, 2019) believes that emotions are the basis for survival and all behaviors that regulate life. This means that emotions and feelings are the foundation, and the mind and self are built on this foundation.
Damasio (Sletvold, 2019) states that this emotional foundation produces automated action-based behaviors. These actions are carried out in our bodies via facial expressions, movements, and posture and internal changes in the heart, lungs, gut, skin, and endocrine changes. On the other hand, feelings of emotions mean that we can perceive the changes in our bodies caused by emotions; this ability to perceive our internal states is also known as interoception. Feelings are perceptions of actions rather than the actions themselves. We evolved to have the ability to use our interoceptive sensing to experience the state of our body.
However, many of us grew up in societies, cultures, or households that actively taught us to disconnect from our ability to perceive ourselves and to deny what our bodies are sensing. This results from having been trained to devalue emotions and, instead, to value logic and reason and perform in ways society considers acceptable. Through this process, we have lost touch with a sense of profoundly knowing and being connected to our core foundational selves and, as a result, live in perpetual states of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. These symptoms result from losing our ability to yield within ourselves and be open and curious about our internal states to make meaning of our lives through the interoceptive process of perceiving ourselves.
We are hard-wired to want to move towards attachment, and this drive to attach is driven by our foundational emotions, which create homeostasis-seeking behaviors. The environment we grow up in teaches us what actions to take to feel safe and connected to the people around us. Quite often, because of all the rules and expectations put on us by things like gender roles and societal norms, the action required is to deny our ability to perceive ourselves. We are forced to wear masks to pretend we fit into these roles, not to rock the boat and make those around us feel more comfortable. We choose attachment at the expense of losing ourselves. That is how vital attaching is to our survival.
Foundational emotions, attachment, and relational movements:
Frank (Frank, 2021) states that all relational movements originate from yielding/pushing and reaching/pulling. These patterns of movement reflect the basis of emotion, which Damasio described as an organism maintaining homeostasis by moving out towards its periphery or inward towards its center.
If we can securely attach, moving away or towards will have a fluid, flexible quality. The experience of these movements will create a sense of connection that connects us to our aliveness and gives life a sense of vitality and flow. However, if there has been relational trauma, the movements will feel dull and rigid and will lack the sense of satisfaction that comes from being able to move from a place of fully embodying ourselves.
This lack of fully embodying ourselves is a result of growing up in an environment that requires us to pay more attention to what we think rather than how we move and feel. This disconnect from our bodies causes us to lose touch with feeling alive and connected to our environment. We no longer feel a sense of belonging in our body and, therefore, do not feel connected to and belonging in the world.
Six relational movements:
Yielding with - This movement isn’t about surrendering but rather about us adjusting to the environment and the environment also adjusting in response to us. The quality of our being able to take in and receive from the environment depends on how safe we feel. We take in the world through the back side of the body, and that information is brought forward into our conscious awareness. Yielding is the foundation for the fluidity we have between giving and receiving. Yielding asks, “Is it safe for me to give to you and receive from you?”. If we don’t feel safe, we tense; this tension diminishes our receptivity to the environment and ourselves. Feeling ourselves requires being receptive to taking the world around us in (Frank, 2021).
Pushing against - The act of separating from while including the other. This is part of the process of becoming differentiated/individuated. “Can I be different from you and stay connected to you?” “Can you be separate from me without me losing connection with you?” In pushing against, we experience the quality of the other pushing back. Is it playful? Is it abrupt? Is it soft, or is it hard? The quality of this interaction tells us whether differentiation will lead to more connection or disconnection. Suppose it is going to lead to more connections. In that case, we are in an environment that will enable and support our ability to discover ourselves and develop our identity. This person will begin to internalize a feeling that my needs are essential, I can take up space, and I exist. We cannot develop a sense of independence from others. We create it within the context of relationships (Frank, 2021).
Reaching for - the act of seeking; extending yourself out into the environment. You can reach for others with your mouth, eyes, ears, and all four limbs. The spontaneity and fluidity of one's ability to reach is dependent on the experiences one has had with reaching in the past. Your experiences with being able to yield and push also determine the quality of your ability to reach. This is because yielding and pushing are what build a sense of self, and this sense of self determines how connected you are to what you authentically desire. Reaching for the other can either be filled with hope of being met or dread of the other not being there for us. By reaching, we bring the object we desire into more precise focus, adding energy to what is already a charged experience. When we get the object into more precise focus, what we want becomes an ongoing emergent process that emerges from the bidirectional quality of two people reaching. This process helps us gain clarity about our impulses, the other, and also about ourselves. Questions we might ask ourselves are, “How much of myself can I let you see?”, “How open to receiving from you can I be?” “How much of my desire can I let you see?” The ultimate question always being, “How safe do I feel in the presence of the other?” (Frank, 2021)
Grasping onto - The act of enclosing and containing. We can explore it more deeply by holding onto what we reached for. If reaching for connects us to the fear of the unknown, grasping onto something creates stability and balance. Through this process, we begin to understand the other person's boundaries - what we can and can’t do with this person. Simultaneously, we learn about our bodies through this contact because it is through perceiving ourselves that we can perceive the other. Questions we might ask ourselves are, “How firmly can I hold onto you, and how firmly do you hold onto me?” “Will you let me hold onto you until I feel fully satisfied with taking you in?”
Pulling toward - The act of drawing the other person in towards yourself. By grasping, we can decide whether we want to pull towards ourselves the thing that we have grasped. This process of whether we can pull another into ourselves informs how we develop a sense of self. Does the other person push away from us when we try to pull them in, or does the other person completely engulf us, causing us to lose ourselves? The response we receive to pulling someone in, informs how we feel about others and how we feel about ourselves. Ultimately, it determines whether the connection is safe or unsafe. If we are pushed away while growing up, we might internalize this as meaning that we are unworthy of connection and need to be different from who we are to stay connected. If you were engulfed, it may tell you that connection is dangerous and only comes at the expense of losing ourselves. Both of these internalizations thwart the development of a core sense of self. If the connection is unsafe, we might avoid it, and we don’t get the necessary relational feedback that helps us develop who we are. If we are pushed away, we abandon ourselves to try and be what we believe will gain acceptance from others. When a caregiver won’t allow themselves to be pulled in or when they engulf their children, they do not have a healthy individuated sense of self to offer the kind of connection necessary to support secure attachment and their children developing a stable and secure sense of self.
Individuation is an ongoing process resulting from being able to merge successfully by pulling someone towards themselves, taking them in, and, in response, experiencing being taken in by someone who can stay connected to their sense of self in this process. Through this process, we can experience “me” and “you” and the degree to which we become “we.” The issues inherent in this process are: “How much of you do I take in and make a part of myself?” and “How much of me do you take in and make a part of yourself?”
Breastfeeding is an excellent example of this relational process. The baby pulls the nipple into the mouth to suck and swallow the milk. The mother needs the comfort of having her milk drained, and the baby needs the comfort of yielding and taking nourishment. By experiencing the felt sense of the nipple in the mouth and the milk going down through the digestive system, the baby can feel their body. This is the beginning of bodily agency. We develop a sense of ourselves through the experience of taking others in and being taken in throughout our lifetime.
Releasing from - the act of letting go of the person being held onto. Releasing from is an integral part of organizing the personality and forming what we come to experience as ourselves. In the “releasing from” movement, we experience a kind of disorganization and need time to organize and absorb the experience we just had. The experience now lives in the past, and by assimilating what we took in from it, we continually grow and develop our sense of self.
The developing psychological issues in “releasing from” are: “If I let you go, will I find you again?” “If I let you go, will you find me again?” “How can I release from you if I never fully had you with me?” “If I now let you go, what will happen next?”
Connection is a bodily experience, and it can be brought into conscious awareness through developing interoception and nurturing touch skills. If you live in CA and would like to learn more about how we can work together, please go to the contact page and schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
