What is connection?

[trenton]

I am exploring this question because I have felt very alone for a long time. I often felt as if I were essentially invisible and I mattered very little if at all. What I see right now is that what my family showed me is not connection. It involves things like saying "I love you" out of social conditioning while selectively invoking family values at my expense. I also received messages that both asked me to be more open about my feelings while simultaneously being punished if I expressed sorrow or anger. Connection seems to be essentially impossible in a narcissistic family system because the narcissistic identity is built on lies and thus requires constant deception. It creates a situation where I am wanted not for who I am but rather for the role I would be forced to play as the scapegoat who is too honest and truthful.

I started with loving myself and I seem to have made significant progress. Self-love often involves unconditional acceptance of all aspects of myself which may be tempting to condemn. Sometimes it is temporarily unpleasant to admit harsh truths about myself, but the key is that it ultimately leads to greater inner harmony without different parts fighting each other. I noticed that my primary ego defense mechanism is "othering." It leads to disassociating and limiting my identity to what I believe I should be. I did this with other people such as those who were engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior in order to distance myself from them as a consequence of trauma. I also do this within parts of my own psyche. There might be something undesirable that threatens my dominate ego identity so it fragments and tries to separate itself. This gradually leads to increasing chaos because such an identity is based on the lie of separation. The division between myself and all of these other parts is imaginary and conceptual because I already am one with all of them. This was an idea I learned from spirituality and it likely extends to human beings who I othered. It makes sense that this pattern is happening as love is the realization that you are everything and that you were one with everything from the beginning, hence "you are already enlightened."

So, connection within myself involves unconditional acceptance and expanding my sense of self to include all parts which may have been deemed unacceptable. The key is that this behavior is inherently extrinsically motivated as the values being imposed necessarily reject my intrinsic and authentic desires. That said, I would imagine that loving another person and forming a connection to them is likely similar to unconditional acceptance regardless how their content may be seen or expressed. This would manifest as being very present and conscious with a clear focus and sense of engagement. I did this with someone like my Aunt. She has limitations in terms of the things about me that can be accepted, but when I sit with her I kind of just accept this alternate reality bubble she is describing as I see the world from that angle without fighting or trying to correct. If I do try to correct it then one sentence might lead to a tirade, so it becomes kind of one-side as I cannot express my view of reality. In fact my view of reality is either seen as too complex or I will be met with anti-intellectualism as is the case with my mother. This seems to be part of the dynamic I live with where love and connection is completely one-sided leaving me isolated even as others insist that they love me while they seem to have little interest in who I am.

If connection needs to be mutual in order for all parties to be felt and seen, then I might need to think of what it would be like if another human being loved me. I noticed that apparent love often takes the form of "you can tell me anything." The problem is that sometimes this is said with an agenda to manipulate myself or others while weaponizing my vulnerabilities as in the case of my father or sister. When love seems hollow, manipulative, or meaningless it might contribute to the "I want to kill myself" attitude. It seems that the problem is that apparent love is what love would actually be if not for the fact that it was a lie to achieve some other goal. In such a situation the false connection reveals that deep down you truly are alone and you are not loved.

When I think of somebody who loved me very deeply, I might think of my grandpa. He seemed to be invested in ensuring that I grew up to be a decent human being despite the family dysfunction. He wanted me to be good unlike my father who broke my grandpa's heart through his criminal acts. This became similar to how my internal world worked. I would have an identity around being good but I would then have thoughts and desires that seemed bad. Ultimately my identity is not limited to being good because this identity was formed partially in defiance to the behavior I witnessed. From this point of view, my grandpa's love served a purpose, but it can become restrictive if the moral compass is too strict in what is considered bad. My regret became that I did not realize how much he meant to me until it was too late, causing me to feel that I did not reciprocate the love he intended for me. I cannot imagine anybody loving me in this kind of manner, so I may need to look for love in another form.

I know that I experience connection through teaching. I might teach people different board games that I learned to master and we can have fun interactions in the process as they improve. I enjoy the mutual enthusiasm, but most of the time I seem to be the one with the most enthusiasm. I also like sharing my findings in research with others and I especially like it when others engage in the exploratory process without needing to rigidly defend any particular position. It becomes a learning experience and a method of self-discovery. I do the same thing with all kinds of modes for understanding myself and the world. I could do it with religion, science, philosophy, politics, psychology, and many other fields. Given the fact that I invest so much in self-discovery it might implicate that I cannot receive love because I do not who I am and what exactly needs to be seen and loved. If I fundamentally lack a cohesive identity, then what exactly needs to be shared? Apparently, I am supposed to come up with intrinsic values, but I seem to be in the process of discovering those. Open-mindedness and exploration seem to be a couple of them which never changed at any point in my life. It seems that purpose was a value imposed on myself to compensate my worth.

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to love someone and actually mean it. In the case of my grandpa he seemed to value my well-being whereas other family members would dismiss me, make me feel invisible, and weaponize my depression against me. I take a similar approach to my grandpa by valuing the well-being of others and finding ways to support them even if I myself have nothing to gain from them. It is often through sharing important wisdom that allows them to navigate intense suffering as my grandpa would do. I don't know if this is why I'm drawn to teaching or not. I do find it kind of odd that I also am committed to open-mindedness like my grandpa was as he was also constantly learning through various fields. It is starting to sound like my values mirror my grandpa in many ways because that is the purest expression of love I ever experienced, hence it becomes what love means to me, hence it becomes my identity and how I act. I don't really know what else love would be because that is love as I have experienced it.

At the end of the day I am stumped. If I speak with another human being seeking connection and love, then what exactly am I to expect or look for? Maybe I will need to ask people what exactly love means to them, how they express it, and what it would look like if someone loved them unconditionally. That might be the beginning of connection.

What do you think?

[Riccurdo]

I was resonating with your story a lot. I'm having the same problems right now in my life and I find that I need to practice self-love more. 
 

Maybe you are right with the last paragraph.