Emotional Monitoring & the Stress Response
When you experienced a lot of trauma around silence, meaning that when your caregivers were silent it meant something bad, ie that they were judging you, emotionally and energetically disconnecting from you, thinking a bad thought that led them on a downward thought spiral of fear, panic, hatred, envy… they misunderstood you and made false assumptions and didn’t communicate this, if they got quiet right before yelling or becoming physically violent or acting erratically, or anything else that led to unsafety and disconnection in your relationship… it is natural to have a trauma/stress response any time anyone is “too” silent in your present-day life. Please know this is a totally normal natural response and is completely valid. It is natural for your body and nervous system to go into a flight/flight response fearing something bad is happening or is about to happen, fearing that you are unsafe and that you are disconnected from someone you love. It is scary to suddenly be disconnected from someone you love especially without any reason, context or pattern. It’s scary to have an inconsistent pattern of connection/disconnection with someone you love. When we feel this way, we tend to ask the other person, “You seem quiet. Are you okay? Is something on your mind?” in a pursuit to reassure ourselves that we are safe and that we are still loved and connected and secure. This is called emotional monitoring.
If you are with a safe aware person who is honest with you, often times they will probably say, “Yes, I’m fine. No, nothing is really on my mind. I’m just a bit tired.” or something to that effect. Yet, this often won’t be enough for us because of our trauma with unaware people from our past maybe saying, “Yes, everything is okay” when it wasn’t. So perhaps we question, “Are they just saying that or is that really true?” So not only do we have a trauma response to silence, we also have trouble trusting and depending on others. How can you trust someone who is unaware (they don’t know what they don’t know) of their inner world? How can you trust someone who isn’t attuned to your inner world? How can you trust a people pleaser? You can’t.
For example, lets take someone feeling stressed yet they are so used to and numbed to feeling stressed that when you ask if everything is okay, they respond, “Yes, of course. Everything is fine” because they have tuned out so much from their body and emotions and are used to living with this feeling that it is their normal for them. Uh-oh. Now that is gaslighting on top of it all. This can be a very complex issue if you are highly sensitive or empathic and you are dealing with an unaware person. Lots of layered, ellusive emotional and psychological dynamics could be taking place.
But for simplicity sake, lets just talk about in general dealing with a genuine self aware person. Even then, if we have this trauma we may very easily be in a constant hypervigilant state of scanning their inner emotional world. We are very outward focused, rather than inward. We are so keyed into the energy in the air. Any small change may put us on high alert. So we ask questions to try to get reassurance, but that reassurance rarely calms our nerves. The other person probably doesn’t even know why we keep asking and they don’t know what we are feeling our why. And they probably don’t even know how to fully reassure us.
Here is the process of healing this dynamic:
It was very shocking for me to realize not everyone feels energy, let alone as strongly as I do. Not everyone is hypervigilent and so keyed into others and hyperattuned to others and their surroundings. The first step is becoming aware that some or most people perhaps are not aware of energy to the degree that you are. So even if we are keyed into someone else, does not mean that they are able to be as keyed into us. That takes practice.
Some people even had to tune out as a coping strategy of survival. Yet you had to majorly tune in to survive. This often translates to avoidant attachment (for the one who tuned out, they will most likely have a freeze stress response) and anxious attachment for the one who majorly tuned in and they will have a fight/flight/fawn stress response. Avoidant attachment is usually formed from enmeshment trauma - not being able to be authentic and have an identity apart from their caregiver while remaining in connection with their caregiver. So it created a war between connection vs authenticity. We need both attachment and authenticity to live a happy healthy life. Anxious attachment on the other hand is formed from abandonment trauma either physical, emotional, mental or energetic abandonment or disconnection or all of the above. This person could not get their attachment and connection needs met and could not feel a sense of safety, permanency, stability and overall sense of wellbeing in their body. These are people who are highly suspectiple to becoming people pleasers, yet not always.
Unfortunately, you ( if you have abandonment trauma) will most likely attract a partner who will be avoidant and who will tune out and won’t be sensitive to energy as you are and will most likely always choose their own best interests over the best interests of the relationship, ultimately abandoning you and repeating your core trauma and you will unintentionally most likely repeat their core trauma. Their nervous system will be wired to shut down, where yours is wired to be activiated and heightened. You need to be very very careful when choosing a partner. I recommend when dating to have every person you date to take an attachment quiz. If they are avoidant, run away. You can also research and learn the signs of avoidant people and ask about their childhood. You want someone who wants connection as deeply as you do and who will be committed to you and who will never give up on you and the relationship. Be up front with everyone you date. Don’t play hard to get. Don’t act casual if that is not what you really want. Be open, honest and direct about what you want. If you want marriage, say that. Talk about how you have abandonment trauma and share what you are looking for in a partner. Yes, it will drive away some people and that is a good thing. You want to weed out incompatible people as fast as possible. We are not here to waste time or waste other people’s time. Your true wonderful comptatible partner does exist!
2. Communicate and share with the one(s) you love how silence makes you feel and why. Tell them that when you ask if they are okay, you are really wondering if you are still safe with them, if they still love you, if the two of you are still connected and that nothing has changed if that applies.