Disconnected: Can Developmental Trauma Cause Someone To Disconnect From Their Body?

If someone was to get into a relationship, what could soon stand out is that they don’t have a good connection to their needs and feelings. Before this, they might not have realised how disconnected they were.

But, now that they need to be in touch with both of these elements, it will be something that they are only too aware of. For their relationship to last, let alone to them to form a deeper connection with their partner, this will probably need to change.

Severed

Ultimately, this will mean that they don’t have a good connection with their body, as this is where most of their needs and feelings will be found. In general, then, they are going to spend a lot of time up top, so to speak.

By living in their head, they will be deprived of a lot of information and this will make their life far harder than it needs to be. In addition to this having an effect on their ability to form deeper connections, it will make it hard for them to know what they need and want and, thus, to deprive themselves.

Another Challenge

What they could also find is that it is hard for them to experience closeness as they soon start to feel smothered and trapped. So, while they will find it hard to feel, this won’t stop them from having these feelings.

At the same time, it wouldn’t be right to purely describe these as feelings, as there will be what takes place at a physical level. It can be as if their body has been hijacked by an external source and they have no boundaries or control.

The Outcome

When they have this experience, they can end up going into flight mode and end up pulling away from their partner. There will also be the effect that this will have on their partner and, over time, their relationship could end up falling apart.

Of course, what happens can depend on how aware they are and if they are able to do something about what is going on for them. If what is going on for them is super intense, they might not be able to continue with how things are and could end the relationship.

Settling Down

If so, it could take a little while before they are able to settle down and once this has taken place, they could be completely baffled about what happened. What could enter their mind, if this is their first relationship, is that the other person made them feel this way.

Therefore, if they find the right person, they won’t feel this way and will have a very different experience. Nonetheless, if they don’t have a good connection with their body, it is unlikely to matter who they end up with.

It’s clear

They could then find someone else and not feel smothered and trapped but this won’t allow them to be embodied. Upon realising this, they could wonder why they experience life in this way.

If they haven’t had a good connection to their body for as long as they can remember and perhaps have felt smothered and trapped in the past, there is the chance that what took place during their early years has had the biggest impact. This may have been a stage of their life when they were deeply traumatised.

Way Back

Practically from the moment they were born, they may have often been left and when they were given attention, it might have largely been misattuned care. This would have stopped them from being able to bond with their primary caregiver and overwhelmed their nervous system in the process.

To handle the pain they were in, their brain would have automatically repressed how they felt and they would have gone into a shut down, disconnected, frozen and collapsed state. Their awareness would have left their body and their body would have tightened up.

Inner Conflict

Being left would have been painful and they would have felt alone and hopeless and helpless. When they were given attention, they would have felt smothered and trapped and needed space.

As they were powerless and totally dependent, they were not able to change what was going on, they couldn’t speak for one thing, and they were unable to find another caregiver who could attune to their needs. This is why they had to automatically lose touch with their body and freeze up, to allow them it keep it together and not die.

A Brutal Time

What this will illustrate is that this was a stage of their life that was anything but nurturing and as their brain and nervous system were in an undeveloped state, they had to rely on very basic survival instincts. If it wasn’t for these, there is a strong chance that they wouldn’t be alive.

Many, many years will have passed since this stage of their life but their brain and body will still carry most if not all of the pain and arousal that they experienced. This will need to be gradually dealt with for them to reconnect to their body, develop boundaries and be able to handle closeness.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.