Confessions From A Month in Seattle

On navigating intimacy with a trauma wired nervous system

I've spent the last not-quite-month in Seattle, mostly staying with friends in their homes for the holidays. I have been paradoxically full—with gratitude and with discomfort. I’ve been sitting with a string of curiosities: about my attachments. About the impact of childhood trauma on my ability to feel secure in shared space without hyper-attuning to others for signs of distress, for signs of not being wanted, for signs that it is time to flee.

I’ve been unsure where the lines are—between needing space as self-care, and when my smallest self is simply caught in her habitual cycles of shut-down and retreat.

I’ve been afraid that some unanticipated landmine will shatter the relationships of care that I have built. That too much intimacy will result in recoil. Abandonment. And perhaps worse—that I will have earned it.

If my vulnerabilities make me human, there are days I would rather be a machine.(Okay not really, but yes—my smallest self is that dramatic.)

Intellectually, I know that hyper-attunement is a trauma response. I know that the landmines I fear are remnants of a volatile past in which I no longer live.

But—my body has not caught up yet.

My smallest self still struggles to de-center the narrative that if others shift energetically, or in tone, it is in direct response to my own wrongness of being. Unsurprisingly, there have been spirals and overwhelms—quiet ones. Ones I have tried to conceal from view. 

Intellectually, I know that I feel most secure when I know what people’s needs are. When I don't have to guess or attune because I know the boundaries and that if I respect them I am doing my part to enable relationships to continue with minimal harm. Knowing this, however, has not been enough for me to engage vulnerably in the conversations required to glean this information or even introduce the possibility of navigating it together. 

Instead I've been engaged in an elaborate dance–leaning in, then stepping away. Deep togetherness, then sudden silence. There is an intimacy to being in people's homes. A kind of pulse. An ongoing feedback loop in the form of other breathing human beings. And I have been afraid. 

That I do not actually know how to love the people I love in the “right” ways. That my intonation when I said that thing the other day landed out of alignment with my intention. That I am too close for comfort and totally inept. I've been unsure of the lines between boundaries and the necessary expression of care. I’ve been too slow in untangling my triggered places. I’ve been trying not to run. 

If we don’t heal in silos, and are biologically wired for community, then how do traumatized people step out of isolation and into intimacy—when closeness feels like a crisis so much of the time? When our smallest selves are screaming “not safe not safe not safe”?

Someone once told me that I have an obsessive personality, among other things. At the time I laughed it off. But from my insomnia I combed the internet. I think they meant that it’s clear I was socialized in environments where perfection was a prerequisite for being loved.

I know (in my head) that perfection is a myth.And yet I still want to get so many things right. So badly.

I care deeply—about how I show up, about the quality of my work, about how I make others feel.And I’m also a Black woman. The standards for me are different.

It’s silly, I know—but I still want to believe that I can just know how to best show up.That I can respect boundaries the first time, even when others don’t know how to communicate them. That I can intuit when to disappear or stay, when to see or not see, hear or not hear.  Mostly, I want someone smarter than me to hand me a guidebook. A crash course in the rules, so I can bypass the messy, risky, trial-and-error work of being in real relationships with real people.

Until some expert provides me with a solution, I will keep reminding myself that most things are not about me or anything I have done. That when people communicate how I’ve impacted them, I can respond with care—even if there are activations, even if there are projections. Because I’m activated too.

Mostly, I will try to interrupt my spiraling mind.I will try to assure my smallest self that she is worthy of more than recoil.That she is, perhaps, even wanted.

Mostly, I will try to be tender with myself through imperfection.Because trying is better than fleeing back into the isolation I have known so intimately, and for so long.

I read somewhere (probably The Body Keeps the Score) that people healing from trauma need to have new experiences that oppose their existing traumas. But that’s not possible if I can’t breathe through my relationships long enough to stay in them.

It does not work if I’m not willing to risk the discomfort of getting so much wrong.

The truth is, I am still patiently waiting for the day when being cared for ceases to cause me confusion and discomfort. When I can fully exhale into the love I am being offered.

Until then, I am grateful to the brilliant people who continue to love me in so many practical ways.

Thank you for sharing your homes with me. For home-cooked meals and laughter. For so much softness.

Thank you for the silliness and dancing. For fancy cocktails and almost-tears.For mental health walks and curious questions.

Thank you for letting me read you hilarious and then tender poems. (Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be—Ross Gay.)Thank you for picking me up from the airport.For tea and coffee with milk in your kitchens.For hugs that feel like arrival.

These relationships are healing me—however slowly.