Want To Feel More Connected To Your Partner? Watch this.
The more we chase connection, the more we chase these feelings, the more we're going to feel disconnected.
[00:00:07] Hi, everyone. Welcome to Awaken into Love. This is the place to be if you're looking for education, support, wisdom, compassion and an incredible community of people all around the world who experience relationship OCD and relationship anxiety and are looking to transform their suffering into deeper awakening, fulfillment, joy and love within themselves, their partner and their relationship.
[00:00:31] I am so happy to be here to talk to you all about connection today. I did a video about a couple of months ago all on feeling disconnected. So if you haven't seen that video, check that video out. But today is an upgraded version of Connection, and I've been seeing a lot of people recently talk about the word connection and not feeling connected to their partner and asking if their disconnection is too long. Asking questions like what does connection mean, feeling anxious when they're not feeling connected and feeling anxious when they feel disconnected? And as always, I'm reminded so much of myself when I had ROCD and I really wanted to sit here and talk to you about a couple things that you might be missing within your journey with ROCD along the word connection.
[00:01:20] Connection is such an interesting buzzword that I don't think a lot of the ROCD community or relationship anxiety community members really speak about, but there's so much behind it that you might not realize is really holding you back from your own awakening and your own journey. I do feel as though connection is important in a relationship. I do, I think that in order for us to feel fulfilled within our relationship, connection is important. But with that being said, there's a lot of misconceptions around the word connection. And if you experience ROCD and relationship anxiety, then the feelings of connection and even the word connection can be so triggering. And I'll be talking all about that today on why it may be triggering for you and how you can really start to work on this. We need to spread more awareness on ROCD. We need to spread more awareness on relationship anxiety, and a lot of people who experience ROCD feel just isolated and feel alone. And that's really why I want to talk to you specifically about connection today.
[00:02:27] When I was starting to create this video and I was introspecting on what I really wanted to say, I was reminded back to when I really struggled with ROCD and anxiety. And in the beginning, a big part of my struggles had to do with not feeling infatuated or not feeling in love or not feeling feelings with Joel and being so fixated on that. Eventually, over time, those words started to fade out because I knew that infatuation wasn't expected or even normal all the time within a relationship. But I knew that being in love was an ebb and flow process, and that it was compulsive to latch on to those feelings. But I didn't realize that connection and the word connection was really equal to those feelings, and I think a lot of us get stuck in feeling as though connection is separate. Because when we go to a therapist or we go to a couples therapist, it's easy for a couples therapist to say, Oh, well, you know, it's normal to not feel in love all the time or feel infatuated all the time. There's usually the topic of the different types of stages of love; the Honeywood phase, the power struggle phase, and a therapist is usually telling you that it's OK if you're not feeling infatuated all the time. But when we bring up the word connection, we usually hear a therapist saying, OK, like what are some ways that you can both feel connected? What are some ways that you can both go from feeling disconnected to connected? And I think that we tend to miss how similar the word connected is to being in love and being infatuated, and we're actually using it compulsively.
[00:04:09] Before I talk about ROCD and the compulsion and a lot of different, really juicy stuff I want to talk about today. I really want to talk about what we believe connection is at Awaken into Love. The first thing I want to say is that we believe that connection is unique to every single person and every single relationship. I don't believe in having this checklist where you say, OK, this is what connection is. This is what it feels and this means I'm connected or not. I really believe that every single relationship has the choice and this beautiful ability to create what connection means to them. Sometimes it might be that hand on the shoulder, sometimes it might be those little laughs in between or feeling seen or having the sense of recognition of your partner's essence and your own, I mean, every single couple is different. I can tell you a couple of things that are part of the way Joel and I connect, but that might look so different to you and your partner. And I think we need to start off with that recognition again and again and again. That connection is going to be what you create within your relationship, and it's not so black or white. It's not this checklist that you get to make sure you're connected or not, because in reality, that's really a compulsive way for the brain to make sure you're in the right relationship and for you to feel more safe and secure. And again, a real connection is something that you and your partner really create together. And I find that to be so beautiful and so powerful.
[00:05:48] At Awaken into Love, we really believe that there are four really strong core components to love and what it means to be in a loving, fulfilling relationship. The first one is the timeless quality of loving kindness, giving loving kindness to a partner, doing different acts to our partner that are loving and being of service to our partner, even though we might not feel like it. Another one is compassion, having an endearing feeling toward our partner where we feel a sense of compassion and we feel it, feel a sense of just a heartfelt intimacy with our partner. And this one can be again a little bit muddled because with ROCD, we may not feel that at all, and that can feel really confusing. But there's still this underlying sense of an essence underneath that is full of loving kindness and compassion within our hearts and also for our partner as well. The other third timeless quality is the timeless quality of joy, which is really feeling in gratitude and of joy when we see our partner in joy and creating those moments of joy together. And the fourth one is equanimity, which is this overall essence of ebbing and flowing in the different phases within the relationship and holding space for it all. And I want to get a little bit more into equanimity because when we bring connection into love, we think that in some way we need to be feeling a certain way all the time. We need to be on all the time. We need to be feeling connected. We need to be feeling this pull. We need to be feeling this magnifying attraction to our partner. And I think that in a society, especially because we see so many movies all about that passion and that love and that infatuation and that Honeywood phase, we start to get confused on the fact that connection ebbs and flows. And that disconnection is a huge part of the fourth timeless quality, which is equanimity. Disconnection is equally important as connection within the relationship. And we tend to get so fixated on needing connection. Again, I'll talk a little bit about why we get fixated with ROCD on this a little bit later, but we tend to get so fixated on needing connection without feeling to recognize that disconnection is equally important for our relationship to thrive and for us to feel fulfilled and in intimacy within a partnership. If we were able to recognize that every relationship goes through seasons of disconnection, seasons of this ebb and flow of feeling close and feeling far and pulling and pushing and doing this dance within the partnership, then we will start to recognize that disconnection is actually an important fertile ground for us to create and sustain a loving relationship. There's this beautiful quote that I love that I'm going to read to you, which is all about connection and disconnection, which is:.
[00:09:34] . So we need this ebb and flow within our relationship in order for us to actually create something sustaining, create something fulfilling, create a ground for our relationship and we get so caught up in the moments of disconnection. Again, I'll talk about this soon. We fail to recognize that disconnection is extremely important for our relationship. Now again, connection and disconnection can be different according to different relationships. I might feel disconnected with Joel if we haven't had more emotional quality time together. He might feel more disconnected with me if we're not having any physical intimacy. Every relationship is different. And what is the connection for you and your partner may be different for me and Joel. But the beauty of it is that you get to both work together in creating something that works for you. It's this art piece. It's this incredible art form. It's this dance. It's this creation that you both can create together that doesn't have to look like anyone else's, and that's really the beauty of it. Now what's hard about that for a lot of people with ROCD is it lacks certainty. It means that you go more into the gray of relationships and you go into the gray of life. There's again, no checklist that says that this is when you feel connected and this is when you feel disconnected. And this is what's right. Again you're leaning into different times when you're feeling disconnected and connected and trusting in the ebb and flow of the relationship. I also think that some people get fixated on the time of disconnection and how long it is. And why is it not coming back and fearing that it's not coming back? And I do believe that this is a distrust in the ebb and flow of life, and this a lot has to do with the nervous system and attachment styles and a lot of the work with ROCD and anxiety is actually to start to lean into the disconnection and let go of the need to feel a certain way.
[00:11:45] A really big thing that we see with ROCD in relationship anxiety when working with clients and members is attachment styles, especially the anxious, disorganized attachment style coming up where connection equals safety. So if you think about a child and their caretaker, usually a child and their mother, if a child is not feeling that sense of connection to the mother, and if a child grew up having that disconnection, being distorted or feeling the mother's anxiety, then a child is most likely going to feel as though they need to feel connected all the time. They might have anxiety if they start to feel disconnected from their mother. This is equally true and evident where we see a lot of children who have anxious attachment styles or disorganized attachment styles replicating this anxiety onto their partner, where their unconscious is mirroring that inner child wanting that sense of connection and safety from their mother or their caretaker. So there's definitely a lot of that transference. There's definitely a lot of that projection that we see within partnerships, where if a child didn't get that secure attachment from their caretaker, then in many cases they will project that onto their partner. So if you think about it, the sense of needing to feel connected for a child equals I'm safe. If a child is feeling disconnected, then in a lot of ways the mother isn't there, right? The mother is gone. So the nervous system registers that as possible death or a threat to their survival.
[00:13:21] The second part to this with ROCD is that we've associated connection as being safe. This goes alongside the first point I was bringing up, but we have conditioned our brain over and over again that if we feel a certain way and we feel connected that we are safe. And reality with ROCD work and anxiety work, which I'll talk about soon, is the effort and the action of starting to train our nervous system that disconnection is actually OK and is safe.
[00:13:52] So another part that can be interesting as we go into this introspective process around connection is asking yourself what connection means to you. What does it feel like? And sometimes this can be this kind of flashlight into the darkness where you start to recognize that you're associating connections with feelings, with infatuation, with love, with the in love sensations. And actually, this is more of that gateway to a compulsion where you can use connection compulsively in order to get that compulsive fix.
[00:14:26] So as we understand those three things, we can start to understand why connection would feel so intense for an individual. So for a lot of people with ROCD, they've unconsciously trained their nervous system to need that connection because for them, if they have connection in their brain, it means that their partner's safe, they're in the safe relationship, they're not going to be abandoned and they're not going to leave their relationship. So that's really what a person with ROCD and anxiety has conditioned their mind to go into. Again it's not your fault. These are unconscious patterns that tend to come up specifically with different wounds we had in the past with different trauma and different types of pain that has been brought from our past into our present and current relationship.
[00:15:15] So when we start to talk about ROCD and anxiety, something really important that I want to bring up is that the more we chase connection, the more we chase these feelings, the more we're going to feel disconnected. So the more we highlight the fact that we're not feeling connected, the more our attention goes on us feeling disconnected and needing connection, the more we're actually going to feel disconnected with our partner because the brain is actually constantly scanning for connection that it focuses its attention on the lack of connection. So again, the more we chase connection, the more disconnected we're going to feel.
[00:15:57] Now we unconsciously do this and in a lot of cases with ROCD, with compulsions, we don't recognize that we're compulsively chasing connection. And that's why we constantly feel disconnected from our partner all the time. I used to personally tell Joel all the time, I feel disconnected from you. I want to feel connected. I want to feel connected, I want to feel connected. And I didn't realize that what I was doing was compulsively chasing these feelings, and it was this endless game where I would feel connected, feel really excited, feel as though I was in the right relationship, feel as though I was doing something wrong when in reality I was training my brain that disconnection was unsafe when we now all know that disconnection is needed to have a secure relationship.
[00:16:41] So how are we going to start to do this? How are we going to start to work on this? The first thing that I want you to pay attention to is the idea now that leaning into disconnection is the way to break through the cycle of needing connection. So we need to start letting go of this attachment to needing connection and learn how to soothe your own nervous system to feel OK and secure in disconnection. And what happens magically over time is that the more we're OK with disconnection, the more we give space and our nervous system starts to settle when we feel disconnected. The more, in turn we feel connected with our partner. Now I know that that itself can be triggering for some people, and that can be a little bit compulsive. So I'm going to add this in here, even if you still feel disconnected with your partner. It's not designed to run OK because a lot of people do this work and they're like, OK, I'm doing exposure work. I'm leaning into disconnection, but I'm still feeling disconnected with my partner. There's still an attachment there on needing to feel connected, and it's about working on this compulsion. And slowly, over time, feeling OK, we're still feeling disconnected with your partner, even though the connection isn't there.
[00:18:01] OK, so these are some tips on how you can start to work with disconnection, and how you can actually use this as exposure work. The first thing is starting to introspect, so you can journal around this. What are some ways that you try to compulsively connect with your partner? Be honest with yourself, write it down. When you're starting to feel disconnected. What does that feel like? How do you know you're feeling disconnected with your partner? Do you start feeling anxious? Do you start feeling this need to connect? Do you start making jokes? Do you start clinging to your partner? Do you start saying certain things to get your partner's attention? How do you know you're feeling disconnected and what do you do compulsively in that moment to try to connect with your partner? So those are two things I'm going to invite you to journal on. How do you know you're disconnected? How do you know you feel disconnected and how do you try to urgently find connection with your partner? Write those down.
[00:18:59] The third part is to start to train your nervous system to feel OK with disconnection. Now this is the exposure work. The tip before was more so about understanding our triggers and the compulsions that we go into. Now what we're going to do next is we're going to start to do exposure work around disconnection. So what does that mean? That means whenever you're starting to feel disconnected, that is your opportunity to get better. That is your opportunity to help the ROCD go away. So what you're going to do is you're going to celebrate when there's disconnection. The next time disconnection is there, you're going to raise your hands and you're going to go, okay, yes disconnection was supposed to come in, and this is my opportunity. As hard as it is, as difficult and challenging as it is to do the exposure work for me to get better.
[00:19:50] The fourth part is how you can start to train your nervous system to be OK with the disconnection. So a really great tip is to even just label that disconnection is there, label the obsessive mind that comes in telling you to bolt. You're going to label that as obsessive thinking as the intrusive thoughts coming in. You're going to celebrate that it's there because, you know, this is your opportunity for exposure work and you're going to start to be with the moment with the feelings that are here, with the disconnection that is here.
[00:20:19] So as we start to work on the exposure work of leaning into the feelings of disconnection, you're going to notice that you're going to have more anxiety. So you're leaning into the discomfort. And when you're leaning into disconnection, your brain is going to tell you all of these things to get you to check for connection. It's going to most likely tell you that you're doing something wrong. You need to have more connection. You feel dull, you feel stagnant, you feel more disconnected from your partner. And it's going to spit out a lot of obsessive thoughts to get you to go after the feelings of connection. So a big part of this is again celebrating, right? Just like we're celebrating disconnection, knowing that it's important for exposure work. We're also going to celebrate our brain, telling us in every angle that we need to compulsively check for the connection or we need to make sure that things are OK or that we're doing something wrong. So this is the brain's tactic to get you back into the familiar, to get you back into the comfort of compulsively checking and obsessing. Again when we get to this stage, we're going to celebrate it. We're going to say, Oh yes, I know that this is going to happen, Kiyomi told me this was going to happen and we were going to label it. We're going to breathe. We're going to take our time exposing ourself to the disconnection, and we're going to ease ourselves into the present moment. So these are a lot of tips that I teach you in the ROCD course level one all about the exposure work and the A.W.A.K.E Technique that I really teach a lot of our members that have been so helpful for them. But this is a big part of the exposure work, which is leaning more into the discomfort in training our nervous system that discomfort is safe and discomfort is OK.
[00:22:04] Now, another step that can be so helpful, especially when things feel really heightened is to ask yourself what you can do to soothe your nervous system. So the nervous system and the inner child is most likely screaming and fear saying, "This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong". And what you can do to help the nervous system deeper is to give yourself compassion, which trains the nervous system that there's no threat. Because when you're giving yourself compassion, you're giving yourself a sense of safety that things around you are OK. And so you can embrace yourself. You can embrace your inner child, your nervous system, and give your inner child that sense of safety and that love and compassion to help your nervous system regulate. So it's not in such a heightened state. So some things that can be really helpful are affirmations telling your inner child, telling your nervous system that you are safe. Maybe, just maybe I am safe and really breathing and allowing your nervous system to settle which it will, and it will take time, but it will settle.
[00:23:04] So something that I really want to add as long term, we're not doing this to get connection, right? So I add this specifically because a lot of people again can get really caught up in, OK, if I do this, then I will get connected next week or if I do this, I will feel connected next month. And the truth is that with ROCD work, a lot of times what happens is that when you start to lean into exposure and you remove the compulsions, you might feel more dull and you might feel more stale and you might feel more intensity with the different emotions that are coming in. And we start to believe that if we're not feeling a certain way, we're not feeling connected, then we're doing something wrong. So again, just keep this in mind, because these different thoughts can be so sneaky within our mind when we're going into exposure work. But if we can celebrate it and see it as something good, as a good sign that you're doing the important things to get better, then things get a lot easier. Things feel easier as we're doing exposure work.
[00:24:03] OK, so I want to talk just briefly about the difference between the ROCD and also gaining connection in just a relationship because again, connection is important within a relationship, right? But if we have completed that first step that I was talking about, which was ROCD and the ROCD is most likely gone for you and you're not really experiencing anxiety, then these are just some ways that can really help you and your partner gain more connection. Now, the first step again because we're working with ROCD is just checking within yourself. If you didn't have a connection or you weren't feeling connection, would you feel OK? If you didn't have a connection right now or for a week or for a month, would you be OK? If your nervous system flares up and it goes, No, it would not be OK, I might have to leave my partner. Everything will be bad. Then we're most likely still working with the ROCD and the obsessive thoughts. But if your nervous system says, Yeah, it's OK, I don't even need to be connected with my partner this week or this whole month, there might be a little bit of sadness, a little bit of longing, but there's not that urgency coming up, then we can start on just creating different ways to connect with your partner. So I apologize for that edit part. My battery ran out and I'm back, but I really wanted to emphasize on really the first point being if we didn't have that connection or those feelings, would it still be OK, right? And when we do that monitor and when we check in with ourselves, we can recognize that we're not coming from that compulsion of needing to feel a certain way. It doesn't feel so urgent.
[00:25:31] The second piece that I want to bring up within all of this is that it is more important for us to feel connected with ourselves before we're seeking that connection with our partner. A lot of people with ROCD and anxiety feel really disconnected from themselves and rightfully so, because anxiety and even depression, obsessive thoughts tends to take a person out of their body and into the mind, and this creates that disconnection. So whenever we're seeking that connection, it's equally important to ask yourself how you can connect with yourself. Are you feeling connected within? Are you feeling a disconnection with yourself? And if so, how can you come back into that connection within yourself? And sometimes it can be really connecting with the fear, connecting with the discomfort that as you're connecting with the disconnection that you feel, creating a sense of space within that, a sense of intimacy with that and then coming from that place to connect with our partner.
[00:26:26] And then the third piece is, in what ways are you watering the relationship? We all know that relationships take work. They take time. They take patience. And it's really about actively putting inner work from both partners in order for the relationship to grow. So how are you watering the relationship? How are you doing different things together, right? Your partner might have different love languages than you. How are you honoring theirs? How were they honoring yours? And how are you creating that together to work within the relationship for it to flourish and feel more fulfilled?
[00:26:56] And the last part is really letting go of this need for the relationship to be a certain way embracing the messiness of how a relationship can be. There are going to be different mistakes. There's going to be just different feelings of vulnerability and not feeling perfect. And a lot of times people with ROCD and anxiety really cling to the sense of needing things to be perfect because it creates a sense of certainty and control. And relationships can really teach us the true ebb and flowing and the messiness of being a relationship in order for us to realize that it's safe. That's a really, really big, important piece with safe and secure relationships is it can teach us so much about life and our self and how we can help awaken ourselves within.
[00:27:37] So hopefully, these tips and these tools and this insight was helpful for you in terms of understanding more about connection, what you're really longing for deep down, how you can understand when ROCD comes in to needing that connection and how you can start working with it in a way to create more of that safety within feeling disconnected with your partnership. And then how you can just continue to work within the relationship to create more of that sense of intimacy together.
[00:28:05] Again, I'm so, so, so happy to be here. I hope again, this was helpful for you if you're new, feel free to check out the free ROCD checklist at www.awakenintolove.com. And if you're ready to take that leap and you're ready to find deeper freedom from ROCD and relationship anxiety, go to www.awakenintolove.com and click the courses at the top and go to the ROCD course level one. There's a lot of really exciting things coming, and I'm so, so, so excited to share them with you. As always, Here's to being human, everyone. You're not alone, and we will talk to you soon. Bye bye.