Self-Belonging: When Self-Love Means Choosing Something New

“Don’t stay too long where you don’t belong.”

I saw this quote one night and it hit me in the gut. (It was by @girlbosshustle.co)

See, I’ve been a stayer.

My trauma has been abandonment.

My parents left me and my brother when we were in our single-digit years.

In coping with this, I overcompensated...

by never wanting to abandon others.

I've stayed.

I put the needs of others before my own.

And this has bitten me in the behind, again and again.

The one positive side to this is that any animal who befriends me will discover that I will always be there for them. They can rely on me for friendship, food, water, and looks of love. But that’s animals.

People are tricky.

Each of us comes with our own baggage and trauma.

And in all kinds of ways, we relive and re-enact our trauma, perpetuating it over and over.

Why???

Because, well, think about it...

When we re-enact our trauma, even flavorings of it, we're doing exactly what we learned to do, when we first learned to "do life" as children!

Making matters worse, we often feel isolated and alone in the experience, because each of our experiences is unique.

Healing trauma often feels like a very lonely road.

And when we feel all alone, we naturally search for a sense of belonging. 

Let’s face it...

Even though, as empaths and HSPs (Highly Sensitive People) and HSCPs (Highly Sensitive Cat 😸 People) we love our alone time, we’re still social animals whose very survival depends on the safety and protection of a larger band or tribe.

We search for belonging because it's a basic human need.

The nuance, though, is this:

We subconsciously think "belonging" should look and feel like what we saw and experienced as children.

We instinctively look for the kind of "belonging" that feels familiar to us.

That makes sense, right?

If it doesn't feel familiar...

it won't feel like "belonging!"

But often, what feels "familiar" isn’t healthy.

So we end up looking for belonging with others that remind us – even unconsciously – of our caretakers.

That perpetuates old cycles.

That's how we get stuck.

When I was growing up, I often sought love and belonging from people who were incapable of giving it to me. (This instinct grew from the trauma of being abandoned by my parents.) 

What's crazy is: when I lift my head and look around, there are so many other people in my life who are loving and know how to express it. They want to give me exactly what I need and want.

But oh no, guess what?

That’s not like my childhood!

They’re so available, so capable, so present and attentive and communicative, nothing like my childhood. So I don’t naturally gravitate or attend to them.

I gravitate towards those who will repeat the hurt of abandonment and neglect, and give me that (familiar) pain again.

Why is this? Our nervous system is attuned to the environment and experiences we had as we were growing up. Anything outside of this is deemed to be unsafe even if it’s good, safe, and healthy for us! Crazy right?

We will naturally gravitate and attract situations and people who perpetuate old cycles until we can teach our nervous system that what’s healthier for us is actually safe.

How do we do this? We need to "titrate" – start with small similar experiences to show our nervous system that it’s safe. As I was thinking about this though, I thought of something else that has been foundational as we titrate our experiences - self-belonging.

To belong, one must feel safe.

When it comes to belonging with others, there will always be unknowns and vulnerabilities. And this is okay. It’s normal. It's par for the course, as they say. We need other people in our lives.

But one thing that’s really helped me feel safer, even amidst the unknowns, is this:

I start with myself.

 

What does it mean to belong to oneself?

I get so excited writing that, because when I learned about this, it truly set me free in so many ways.

Self-belonging involves cultivating a deep connection with oneself that includes self-compassion, self-awareness, and self-acceptance - all things that create the foundation for self-love.

Self-belonging is about creating safety in your own nervous system that you carry and manage everywhere you go. You bring the sense of safety with you into every situation, with every person. It’s showing up for yourself, knowing and loving all your younger “parts,” and being there for all of them, and all of you.

When you do this, you belong to yourself.

When you belong to yourself, you have kinder self-talk, better self-care practices, better boundaries, less people pleasing, and so much more self-forgiveness.

Even though everyone naturally does belong to themselves, many of us never experienced it or learned about it.

And even when you do learn about it, it takes time and practice to start creating new habits that support self-belonging.

It’s truly a life-long practice of self-love. 

This practice helps create a solid, safe foundation for those who didn’t have one growing up.

Self-belonging ultimately nurtures and nourishes our inner child and other younger parts of ourselves. When we do this, we create safety for our “grown-up” self.

This healthier foundation allows us to explore and find true soul family with others who genuinely meet our need to connect in a healthy way, instead of our unhealthy “need” to re-enact old unhealthy patterns. 

Self-belonging acknowledges our inherent wholeness. It’s this wholeness that can contribute to others in an edifying way, witnessing their wholeness, creating a beautiful synergy, an organic matrix of soul connectivity.

We all want to belong.

It's a beautiful, generative, life-affirming desire. (Which I wrote about in a previous post here.)

Healthy belonging is a beautiful phenomenon, and  I've come to learn that it's what emerges in symbiosis with belonging to ourselves.