S2 EP261 – The Art of Connection: Deepening Bonds with Your Loved Ones

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Most of us want to feel connected with the important people in our life, and especially with a partner. Yet one of the most common complaints I hear from my clients who are in a relationship is, “We can’t seem to connect anymore.”

We are social beings, and our desire for connection is a deep and powerful force within us. Babies who do not experience connection with a caregiver do not thrive or may even die. Deep emotional connection with another is one of the greatest joys in life.

Yet for many people, this deep and joyous connection eludes them. Try as they might, they can’t seem to find the connected experience that they so deeply desire.

There are some very good reasons for this.

Many of us were brought up to distrust our own feelings and experiences.

I was consistently programmed to disconnect from and discount my inner feelings, experiences, and inner knowing. Instead, I was taught to trust an external source – my parents – to define what was right or wrong for me, good or bad for me. The more I learned to disconnect from my feelings and my inner knowing, the more I disconnected from my authentic self and sought connection from outside myself.

I tried to connect with my husband through being whatever I thought he wanted me to be, and he tried to connect with me by trying to have control over getting me to be what he wanted me to be. We were a perfect pair! No wonder our deep connection with each other rarely lasted for more than a few minutes at a time!

The problem is that we cannot authentically connect with another unless we are connected with our own authentic self. If we are not defining our self-worth from within, then we consistently attempt to define ourselves eternally, by doing whatever we can to have control over getting love, approval, attention, sex, agreement, and so on. We confuse true connection with the momentary good feeling that comes from getting what we want from another. We think that relating to another from the ego wounded part of ourselves and getting what we want to feel externally validated, is connection. It is not.

Connection with another is a mutual experience of sharing your authentic self with each other and each receiving caring, understanding, and support – the mutual feeling of being received and cherished for who you each are in your essence. It is truly one of the highest experiences in life. But this wonderful experience is not possible unless you are both able to share as your authentic selves. It is only when you are deeply connected with your own feelings, your own thoughts, and your own inner knowing and your spiritual guidance that you can authentically share yourself.

Sharing your ego wounded ego self is sharing who you have created yourself to be to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. There is no reality, no truth, no authenticity to your ego wounded self. Authentic connection is not possible from an inauthentic, controlling part of yourself. No matter how much you may want the joy of authentic connection with your partner or others, it cannot occur until you authentically connect with yourself.

If you want a deep and joyous connection with your loved ones, then first learn to create that deep and joyous connection with yourself. The practice of Inner Bonding is a powerful way of healing the ego wounded self and discovering your authentic self. 

Staying connected with myself is central to my life, because lovingly connecting with spirit and others is what much of what life is all about for me. However, there are times when connection with myself and my guidance has been challenged, and these times feel very hard for me. 

One of those times occurred some years ago when New Harbinger contacted me to write an Inner Bonding spiritual connection workbook for them. Of course, I was delighted to be doing this and plunged right in to write it during the same time my previous book, Diet for Divine Connection, was nearing being released. I love writing and because I allow my guidance to write through me, writing this book was very exciting – almost like taking dictation! It’s all I wanted to do and as a result, I burned the candle at both ends, with ideas coming up even in the middle of the night. 

I rarely get sick, but during this time, due to not getting enough sleep or enough down time, I got a cold. Unfortunately, I got it right before flying to Orange County for a Three-Day Intensive. In order to be able to talk and not cough too much, I had to take some strong over-the-counter medications – which ordinarily I never take. I’m very sensitive to anything that isn’t natural, so while the meds got me through the Intensive and I was able to stay mostly connected while working with the participants, as soon as I got home the toxicity got to me and I felt disconnected from my guidance.

Oh my, it was awful! What a terrible experience this was for me! For a long time now, my mind is generally quiet, and I live being guided by spirit. But with the toxicity of these meds, my wounded self started to chatter day and night. I could hardly sleep, and when I did sleep, I woke up terrified. I was shocked at the fact that just a few days of taking these medications could have such a drastic negative effect on me. 

It gave me the experience that I haven’t had in years: the way so many people live every day, due to toxicity from processed foods and medications. It was terrifying for me to feel so lost, alone, anxious, and depressed. I felt like I was living blind, unable to tap into my source of love and wisdom for myself. Fortunately, it lasted only a few days, and then I was back to feeling connected, but I really hated that experience.

Normally, I feel happy and peaceful with a wonderful lightness of being. I often get waves of bliss that I call a state of grace. During those few days, none of this was happening, and it made me realize even more clearly that so much of the pain people go through is coming from toxicity. During that time, I could not move out of my wounded self. My frequency, due to the toxicity, was too low to access my guidance, too low to operate as a loving adult. Too low to connect with myself, and therefore, I could not connect with the loved ones in my life. Life felt dark.

I was so relieved when all that junk moved through me, and I was again able to come fully back into myself and my connection with my guidance and others.

If connection with your loved ones is important to you, then I encourage you to do the research on how you might be creating toxicity in your body that might be lowering your frequency too much to have a connection with your spiritual guidance, with your inner guidance, and with others. I’m truly appalled at how many people live in the way I lived for a few days. I want everyone to experience the joy of inner and relationship connection.

And I know that most people do want the joy of connection. Yet all too often, many people feel lonely around another or others, wanting to connect and not knowing how. You may have learned numerous dysfunctional or unsatisfying ways of connecting and wonder why you still feel lonely around someone when you are trying so hard to connect.

Emotional connection is an experience of the heart, an experience that results from inner and spiritual connection. While you may feel intellectually connected with other when you are in your head, this form of intellectual connection may leave you feeling emotionally unsatisfied when you are with a loved one.

Often people try to connect in the ways they might have learned from parents, peers, or media, such as:

• Gossiping
• Storytelling about things that don’t relate to the person you are talking to
• Going on and on about yourself
• Discussing details about mundane subjects
• Discussing superficial topics, such as the weather
• Complaining, whining
• Interrogating, which is asking questions with an agenda from the wounded self rather than from the loving adult with curiosity
• Pulling for attention in various other ways

None of these ways lead to satisfying emotional connection. 

If most people want to be connected with someone special in their lives, why do so many complain of feeling lonely and disconnected from their partner and others? What needs to happen for them to connect?

We all know that it is generally easy to connect at the beginning of a relationship – before all the protections and defenses come up. But what do you do to reconnect once you feel disconnected from each other?

In order to answer this, let’s first look at what creates emotional disconnection.

Emotional disconnection occurs when one or both partners have closed their hearts. We emotionally connect with each other from our hearts – not our heads. As I said, we can connect intellectually from our heads, but when people complain that they can’t connect, they are generally talking about emotional disconnection, which doesn’t happen from our head. It happens from our heart and soul.

When your heart is closed, you have disconnected from yourself. The heart is the channel through which love and other feelings come in, so if there are feelings you don’t want to feel, you close your heart in order to not feel them.

What are the feelings you don’t want to feel?

It took me a long time to understand why I would close my heart. I had been closing off from some very painful feelings for so long that I didn’t even know what the feelings were. Upon exploration, I thought that I might be closing myself to avoid feelings of anxiety, fear, hurt, guilt, shame, or anger. But with deeper work, I discovered that it was actually my disconnection from myself – my closed heart – that was causing my anxiety, hurt, guilt, shame, and anger. So, if I was causing these feelings by closing my heart and staying in my head, and by judging myself or by turning to various addictions, why was I closing my heart in the first place? What was I avoiding feeling?

It took me much time of inner inquiry to discover the deeper feelings that my closed heart was protecting me from feeling. These were the feelings of intense loneliness I had experienced as an only child, with angry and distant parents and no siblings to play with. These were the feelings of heartbreak when my mother screamed at me, blaming me for her misery, and the heartbreak of my father’s sexual abuse. These were the feelings of helplessness over their disconnection from me and over not being able to ever get them to see me. These were the feelings of grief at having my beloved pets suddenly disappear because my mother didn’t like them.

I could not handle any of these feelings, so I learned to disconnect from my heart and stay in my head. I learned to turn to various addictions rather than feel these feelings. I learned to be a very good girl, to try to get the love that I had not received, and didn’t know how to give to myself.

When two people do this in a relationship – each partner protecting against feeling their deeper feelings with each other – the existential feelings of painful life events that are generally under anger, blame, judgment, withdrawal, or contempt – they feel emotionally disconnected from each other. 

So, disconnection happens when:

• One or both people are focused on controlling and not being controlled, and are protecting against being hurt, rejected, or controlled with anger, blame, withdrawal, resistance, compliance, work, alcohol, drugs, TV, food, daydreaming, ruminating, over-talking, people-pleasing, and so on
  
• Also, when one or both are coming to the other disconnected from themselves—empty and needy, looking for approval, attention, validation or sex. Both are abandoning themselves rather than loving themselves
  
• Disconnection also occurs when one or both come to the other to complain and be a victim
  
• Or, when one or both people are more intent on being right, or not being wrong, than on being loving
  
• And of course, disconnection occurs when one or both partners are more interested in punishing than in connecting.
  
• Or when one or both are trying to get love rather than be loving
  
• Or, when each is waiting for the other to initiate time together
  
• Disconnection also occurs when one or both are afraid to reach out with physical affection
  
• And when one or both withhold expressions of caring and support
  
• And of course, disconnection happens when one or both won’t risk speaking their truth to the other
  
• And also when one or both people are willing to lose themselves rather than risk losing the other
  
• Disconnection will occur when neither partner has done the inner work to cherish their own true soul self and therefore cannot see their partner’s or others’ soul essence. They are relating from their wounded self to their partner’s wounded self
  
• And also when neither person has done the inner work necessary to not take the others’ behavior personally
  
• Disconnection will occur when one or both people are not compassionate toward themselves, nor empathetic and compassionate with each other
  
• Or when one or both doesn’t listen to the other.

The challenging truth is that we cannot connect with another until we connect with ourselves. This means that we need to open our hearts to feeling and learning from all of our painful feelings – the wounded feelings we create and the existential feelings of painful life experiences.

When you learn to fully embrace all of your painful feelings – with a compassionate intent to learn – you will be able to keep your heart open with your partner and others. When your partner or others are also able to keep their heart open, the two of you will connect.

Connection with your partner and others will occur easily and naturally when both of you have the courage to fully embrace all your feelings with a deep and compassionate intent to learn. You will easily and naturally connect with each other when you are both openhearted and connected with yourselves.

Satisfying emotional connection with others occurs when you talk and act from your heart, such as when you:

• Listen attentively and empathically
  
• Ask kind questions about meaningful things
• Speak your truth from your heart
• Let the other in on your learning and healing process
  
• Share in a creative project
  
• Do fun things together, laugh together
  
• Do kind and caring things for each other
  
• Want to understand, when things may be difficult between you and another person, staying open to learning with them, even when it’s challenging
  
• Support each other in things that are important to each of you
  
• Experience joy for another’s joy and pain for their pain
  
• Show caring for the other’s feelings
  
• Care about how your words and behavior affect the other person

I find that I can engage in many of these behaviors even in more casual encounters, such as when I’m at a social gathering. There is a huge difference for me between talking about the weather or complaining about something and being truly interested in another person. Being aware of whether I’m coming from my head or my heart is what makes all the difference between a superficial connection and a meaningful connection.

In a primary relationship, connection happens when:

• Each person is taking responsibility for their own feelings and needs and comes to their partner or others full of love to share. Neither comes as a complaining victim
  
• Connection easily occurs when people come together already connected with themselves.
• And when each person comes to the other open hearted and open to learning about themselves and each othe
• Connection occurs when each person has their own highest good and their partner’s or others’ highest good at heart
  
• And when each person wants to lovingly connect, more than they want to avoid the pain of being hurt
  
• Connection can occur when each person is willing to risk being honest
  
• And each person is willing to risk being spontaneous with their expressions of love and caring
  
• And each person is willing to risk losing the other, rather than lose themselves
  
• And when each person is more interested in loving and connecting than in being right or not being wrong
  
• Connection cn occur when both people have done the inner work necessary to not take the other’s behavior personally.
  
• And when both people cherish their own and each other’s soul self and have learned to be non-reactive to each other’s wounded self
  
• Of course, true connection can occur only when both people are capable of compassion toward themselves and of empathy and compassion toward each other
  
• And, when both listen well to each other.

If you want connection with your partner but find yourself often feeling lonely and disconnected, then be honest with yourself about whether your heart is open or closed, and about whether your intent is to control or to be loving, and about whether you have done the inner work necessary to keep your heart open.

While you cannot make your partner do the inner work necessary to lovingly connect, there is nothing to stop you from doing the work. You never know what the outcome will be regarding connecting with each other, but what you can count on is that if you continue doing what you’ve been doing which leads to disconnection, it will certainly not get better, and it may get worse. What do you have to lose by becoming a person available for real loving connection?

I grew up hearing, “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”

The message was, “Protect yourself from getting hurt, by staying in your head. If you share your heart with people, you will get hurt.” I learned this lesson so well that I ended up being completely disconnected from my body and my feelings, wondering why I could never feel connected with anyone.

Staying in my head disconnected me from my own heart and soul and disconnected me from others’ hearts and souls. In order to reconnect with myself and my own truth and feelings, and feel the joy of connection with others, I needed to be willing to feel the deep loneliness of disconnection – which I had staved off my whole life. I also needed to be willing to feel the loneliness and heartache of experiencing others’ unwillingness to come from their open hearts.

Today, I’d far rather experience the loneliness and heartache of experiencing others not connecting with me, than the emptiness and aloneness of my own disconnection from myself. It’s only in staying connected with my own feelings that I can experience the joy of connection with another, when that person is open hearted. The joy of connection with another is so fulfilling that I’m willing to risk getting hurt if they are closed to connection with me. The joy far outweighs the pain that might occur, when I come from my heart rather than my head.

If deep and meaningful connection is important to you, then I hope you have the courage to do your own Inner Bonding work to develop your loving adult who has the strength to learn from and manage painful feeling rather than close your heart to avoid them, because the true joy is life is about connection – with yourself, with your guidance, with others, and with your loved ones.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

I invite you to heal your relationships with my 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself, creating loving relationships, and healing from my newest book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.