Our language doesn't have many descriptive words for certain feelings, which can make it hard to define what we feel. It took me a long time to understand some of what I felt as a small child.

I was born on a farm in New York, to young parents who had no idea how to relate to me. My grandfather – my father's father – used to come over daily to sit with me. Surprisingly, I remember him clearly, even though we left the farm when I was 13 months old and I never saw him again, as he died four years later. My grandfather was the only person I felt connected with as an infant.

Leaving him devastated me. The feeling, which I much later identified, was of being shattered – of my heart breaking into a million pieces. I became very ill at that time and almost died, which created a deep fear of someone I love disconnecting from me.

Since an infant can't handle being shattered, I numbed out the feeling and forgot him – until I was 10 years old and we visited the farm again. But even though I remembered him, I didn't remember feeling shattered. That came much later.

But my body did remember, and I became a very good girl to make sure that people didn't disconnect from me. My mother, being a narcissistic rageaholic, consistently disconnected from me with her anger, and I spent my childhood feeling very anxious. The moment she got angry, I would try everything I knew to calm her down. I became addicted to caretaking as my way of trying to have control over people disconnecting from me.

The Challenge of Staying Present as a Loving Adult

As an adult, one of my biggest challenges has been to stay present as a loving adult when someone I'm deeply connected with disconnects from me. Now, having developed my loving adult, I can manage feeling shattered – which I still sometimes feel when a loved one disconnects from me. While today it's not life threatening, as it was as an infant, it's still a very painful feeling that needs much compassion from me. My wounded self still wants to find a way to stop the other person from disconnecting, and I need to be very conscious of what is happening within to not move into my wounded self and disconnect from myself.

Bodywork and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) have been helpful to me in being able to stay present for the very painful feelings, and to help my inner child know that she will be fine even if someone I love disconnects from me – as long as I stay connected with her.

Discovering when you might have felt shattered, and being open to the depth of the feeling, is vital for being able to deal with it today.

If you don't know what feelings you are avoiding, then you will keep avoiding them with your various addictions/protections. When you find yourself not being able to be a loving adult in a particular situation, look for the deep and painful feeling that you have learned to avoid. Making friends with this feeling will be extremely helpful to you in not automatically getting triggered into your wounded self.

Take a moment right now to tune into the situations in your life where you go on automatic pilot – giving yourself up, getting angry, defending, explaining, withdrawing, numbing out, turning to a substance or process addiction – and look beneath the wounded behavior to the feeling that you are avoiding. It might be loneliness, helplessness, heartbreak, grief, or it might be feeling shattered.

I hope you have the courage to feel your feelings with deep compassion for yourself – each time they come up. This is the way to shift out of being automatically triggered and into being able to maintain connection with yourself.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

Image by Marek Studzinski from Pixabay