"It feels like we are living in a time where the primary relationship skill people learn is how to protect themselves. We are trained to look for red flags, to not be "too trusting," to stay guarded, in control. And sure, some of that is necessary. But we do not realize that we have become very good at protecting ourselves...and very bad at connecting with each other."
"In that moment, I felt something shift. My body went numb. Every emotion shut off. It was the freeze response, one of the body's natural survival modes, where the nervous system shuts down feelings and movement to protect you when a situation feels too overwhelming to fight or escape (Corrigan et al., 2011). That day, without knowing it, I learned a lesson that would follow me for years: When things get too intense emotionally, disappearing feels safer than expressing."
"Many of us are walking around half-open, half-available, half-alive emotionally, scared that real love will hurt us the way old wounds once did. But those wounds did not begin in adulthood. Most of them began long before we were old enough to call them " trauma." When I was around thirteen, my mom, who was going through a difficult period in her life, became overwhelmed during an argument. She reacted strongly."
Social media emphasizes manipulation, narcissism, gaslighting, avoidant attachment, and emotional unavailability. People increasingly learn self-protection as a core relationship skill, training themselves to spot red flags, avoid trusting, and stay guarded. Some self-protection is adaptive, but excessive guarding impairs emotional connection. Early relational wounds often originate in childhood; an adolescent experience of a caregiver's overwhelmed reaction can trigger a freeze response, producing numbness and emotional shutdown. That survival pattern teaches disappearing is safer than expressing. Over time that pattern appears in adult relationships as half-open vulnerability, partial trust, withheld emotions, and fear of full intimacy.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]