The Psychology of Reaching: Why Connection Requires Courage
May 27, 2025
How healing developmental trauma begins with remembering we belong to the earth—and to ourselves.
I grew up queer and neurodivergent in a chaotic, violent, alcoholic family system in the South. Years later, I would be diagnosed with ADHD and complex PTSD (CPTSD) and spend the next few decades working on trauma healing while developing my career as a bodyworker and psychotherapist.
For years, I processed all the pain that my body held through somatic therapy approaches. Through this journey, I discovered something that would fundamentally shift how I understand healing, connection, and what it means to truly belong.
This discovery became the foundation of my workshop, the “Core Connection Approach” – a trauma-informed somatic therapy method.
I hear my clients expressing deep pain around loneliness and feeling disconnected all the time. As a trauma therapist, I believe at the core of this wound is a profound sense of not belonging—and the mistaken belief that belonging is something we must seek outside ourselves, rather than remembering it lives within us.
Here’s what I’ve learned through somatic therapy: belonging isn’t about finding your place in the world. It’s about remembering that you were never separate from it to begin with.
We are no different from a plant, a tree, or a river. The idea that we exist in separation from the energy that animates all living beings is an illusion. Every time we step outside our house, we are home. Nature-based healing is waiting to embrace us, and when we allow ourselves to feel held in that embrace, we begin to awaken to the truth that we belong.
As I started exploring the idea that I actually belong—that I am a contributing part of the dynamic rhythms of life—something shifted. I began to feel like I have a right to be here, like I can unapologetically take up space because my presence adds value to this interconnected web of life.
I stopped efforting so much in my career and relationships. Instead, I began trusting the same life force energy that sparked my development in utero. The energy that knew how to direct an arm to become an arm and my heart to become a heart also knows how to continue directing my life today.
When I allow myself to trust and yield into this energy through somatic practices, my life flows in harmony with what I came here to experience. This doesn’t mean life will always be perfect or that only good things will happen to me. It means that no matter what happens, I know I will be okay—and that I will never go through anything alone, without support available to lean into.
If we are going to get through challenging times, it’s crucial that we learn how to rest and regulate our nervous system. Yes, you heard me right: REST.
Trauma-informed care recognizes that capitalist culture has reinforced the lie that we operate as singular systems and that our value is directly connected to our productivity. It has denied our need for rest and for our bodies to need rest within the rhythms of our connection with nature.
We spend so much time indoors, working under fluorescent lighting, staying up late, and being completely out of sync with nature’s rhythms. When I began to understand circadian rhythm healing and its role in overall health, I realized why I spent so many years feeling alone and disconnected.
The sun is an anchor that holds us all together, and without her, we are lost.
Capitalism thrives off our denial of the fact that we need to receive, rest, and live in harmony with these rhythms. Of course we’re all depressed and anxious—we have completely lost our ability to rely on and be held by the sun and everything that exists as a result of her existence.
Every day when I step outside, I am saying “I need you,” “I cannot exist without you,” “You are the center of my world.” We have forgotten that we cannot do it all on our own and that we must surrender to the fact that we do not exist in separation, but in connection. In this surrender, our bodies remember how to let go, yield, and trust through somatic experiencing.
Do you ever feel disconnected from your own body? Like you’re going through the motions of life but not truly experiencing it? That sensation isn’t just in your head—it’s trauma stored in your tissues, silently stealing your capacity for joy, connection, and vitality.
What you’re experiencing isn’t weakness or something wrong with you. It’s your body’s nervous system intelligence trying to protect you from past wounds. But that protection is now blocking the very life force energy you need to feel whole again.
At the cellular level, protoplasm—the living substance within our cells and the building block of all life—is both active and receptive. It responds to internal and external stimuli with exquisite intelligence. But developmental trauma interferes with this responsiveness.
When tissue has forgotten how to receive, we may find areas of numbness, disconnection, or collapse. When it has forgotten how to impact, we may feel dissociation, helplessness, or chronic inhibition.
The question becomes: Where in the body has life stopped moving? Where is the impulse frozen, the reach arrested, the boundary silenced? Where has the tissue lost its right to say yes and no?
Developmental trauma—trauma that occurs within relationships during critical stages of development—has a profound impact on the flow of life force energy. It doesn’t just affect what happened to us; it shapes what we believe we’re allowed to feel, how we inhabit our body, and whether we trust ourselves to respond.
When caregivers are abusive, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable, the child’s sense of safety is compromised. Without a secure base, the body contracts. The nervous system shifts into
chronic survival mode. The flow of life force energy—once vibrant and open—becomes constricted, guarded, or fragmented. We learn that to be alive is dangerous.
Children in unsafe environments often learn to suppress or disconnect from their feelings to survive. This becomes a form of somatic bracing, both emotional and physical. Over time, the body forgets how to feel deeply, express freely, and take in nourishment. We become strangers to our own desire. To protect ourselves, we shut down the very energy that connects us to life.
Trauma lives in the tissues. The fascia holds the imprint of overwhelm, freeze, and unfinished impulses. Chronic tension, inflammation, or collapse are all signs of blocked life force—places where the body still holds the story of what it couldn’t complete. These are the areas that no longer respond with elasticity and rhythm, but with rigidity, shutdown, or pain.
When complex trauma is internalized, it shapes not just how we see the world, but how we see ourselves within it. If our early experience taught us that we are too much, not enough, unlovable, or unsafe, these beliefs become internal barriers to vitality. We stop reaching. We stop asking. We stop trusting that we are worthy of impact, rest, or connection.
Trauma isolates. It creates a closed system—internally and relationally. The fear of being hurt again, rejected, or misunderstood leads to withdrawal. And yet, life force energy is inherently relational. It wants to move between bodies, not just within them. Without mutual exchange—without reciprocity—we slowly lose access to our own radiance.
Disconnection from life force often shows up as an imbalance in our capacity to embody consent—to clearly feel and express both yes and no.
Some people say yes to everyone else’s needs but cannot find their healthy boundaries. Others say no to protect themselves but cannot access their authentic yes. Both are expressions of energetic imbalance. We need both to thrive.
To say yes is to open, to receive, to be impacted. To say no is to protect, to contain, to assert selfhood. Life force is the interplay between the two.
When developmental trauma shuts down one or both of these energies, we lose our sense of relational agency—and with it, our connection to joy, creativity, and desire.
Somatic Therapy Techniques for Trauma Recovery Somatic therapy offers powerful tools for reconnecting with your life force energy:
Trauma healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about remembering what was never actually broken—your inherent belonging to the web of life, your right to take up space, your capacity to trust the energy that created you.
It’s about stepping outside and letting the sun remind you that you are held. It’s about slowing down enough to feel your body’s wisdom through somatic awareness. It’s about reclaiming both your yes and your no, your capacity to receive and your right to impact.
You belong here. You always have. And your healing—your remembering—is not just for you. It’s a gift to the interconnected web of life that needs your full presence, your authentic expression, your unique contribution to the world.
The earth is waiting to embrace you. Are you ready to come home through somatic healing?
The Core Connection Approach integrates somatic therapy, trauma-informed care, and nature-based healing to help individuals reconnect with their life force energy. Through body-based trauma therapy, we address the root causes of disconnection and support your journey back to belonging.
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