Connections

I lose my sense of 'self' when I don't connect with another human in a pretty solid, real way EACH DAY. It can be as little as a meaningful email, or possibly a personal phone call (not business related).

It's as if - trying to find words - little hooks of human interaction pull me along, from one day to the next, and without them, I am lost. I forget who I am, where I am, what day it is. I lose my sense of self, of time and meaning.

And yet, human interaction, much of the time, exhausts rather than restores me, unless *I* am in control of how, when, where, with whom and for how long it happens.

So I am wondering:

Do children who don’t ‘attach’ as children (through no fault of their own, but because their *parents* don’t know how to parent properly) not develop the little ‘hooks’ that make people feel connected to each other?

Which is not to say that such a child could not *ever* develop that ability to connect.

But maybe it’s harder? And that the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, moment-to-moment connection with other humans is *just as important* for adults as it is for infants?

Only, in our culture, which is *full* of poorly attached people (product of isolationist Western child-rearing practices, among other things), nobody *notices*. Because it’s considered ‘normal’ to be so isolated and alone much of the time.

But really, it *isn’t* normal to be as isolated as many Americans are.

And those of us who didn’t have good, solid attachments in infancy simply don’t know how to do it.

So we sort of flail around with our little tentacles (hooks), trying to find something to hook to, but they don’t stick.

Because, never having experienced ‘continuity’ on a moment-to-moment, hour-to-hour basis as infants, we don’t ‘contain’, or have inside us, what that sense of continuity *feels* like.

I’ve read that we develop our ‘sense of self’ as infants from how well our parents respond to our needs – our cries for attention, food, care – and that we either become self-sufficient or learn a sort of helplessness (and all shades in between) depending on how responsive our parents were.

Not only do we develop the sense of ‘wanted’ and ‘lovable’ versus ‘unwanted’ and ‘unlovable’ from how we are treated, but we also develop our sense of competence based on *how well our needs were met*.

Much, if not most of this happens during that extended non-verbal phase, where most communication is via body language, touch and eye contact, before the age of two.

***
A baby with UNRESPONSIVE PARENTS learns that SHE DOES NOT GET TO CHOOSE

WHO she interacts with
or HOW
or WHEN
or WHERE.

She, in effect, LEARNS to have

NO BOUNDARIES.

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Babies, ideally, are IN CONTROL of the interaction with the parents.

In other words, it is the BABY who teaches the PARENT what is needed, not the other way round.

A baby who does not have responsive parents DOES NOT GET WHAT SHE NEEDS.

So she learns a ‘broken’ pattern of interaction with others: Non-sensical.

The interaction does not make sense to her inner sense of ‘rightness’ that is (I believe) inborn in all (or at least most?) humans.

In other words: A baby does not have to be taught to flail her little arms – she just does it.

A baby does not have to be taught to scream when frightened or cry when hungry – she just does it.

Partly because these are the only ways she can communicate, at least in the beginning.

And a newborn has even fewer options – opening or closing the eyes; or possibly turning her head away from an unwanted stimulus.

***
My sense is that the isolation cycle is a vicious one - kind of like, "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer."

In other words, those who had good attachment as infants continue to have good attachment as adults; where those of us who had poor or possibly non-existent attachment as infants have a heckuva time with continuity as adults.

And it affects *everything*, not just relationships.

Because I think, at foundation, we almost *perceive* ourselves via our attachments and connections to others.

I can't seem to think of a better way to say that, it seems unclear, best I can do just now.

***
I guess I'm trying to say, it seems to me that the length of time between meaningful and substantive nteraction with another human in some way mimics? or mirrors? or recreates?

the sense one had as a child of
unpredictability
unreliability

Possibly. Not sure those are the right words.

*If* one's self-sense is, to large extent, dependent on reflections of the self from other humans (think about how much time we humans spend telling our stories to each other - mirroring, right?)

then lack of continuity becomes like trying to make sense of a very grainy picture with such low resolution that it just looks like a bunch of random, unrelated dots.