Healthy relationships and trauma renegotiation are not about perfection or getting it right 100% of the time. It’s impossible to do so. Even the most well-intentioned, well-informed individuals can make mistakes.
In trainings, I often share about how neurodivergence and stimulus stacking can layer for me at times, resulting in moments where I am not at my best and where misattunements and ruptures occur no matter how skillful or aware I am of the complexity and nuances playing out, and in spite of my best attempts at attending to them.
I speak to this in a recent interview I had with EQUUSOMA® faculty member, Ines Kaiser, at The Place of Grace in southern France:
“It’s not that we’re immune to something happening,” I said, “but more about how do we get through it? How are we trying as best as possible to model the very thing that we try to present and be in the world? And it’s an ongoing journey. And there are times where we’re not going to be perfect at it. And times where we are better at it.“
Indeed, the path to attunement is paved with misattunements that allow us to gauge thresholds, learn about needs, and offer opportunities to build trust through repair.
A complex profess
In the interview, Ines and I also discuss how we have navigated moments of rupture and have strengthened our own relationship through accountability, humility, awareness of our own nervous system states and patterns, and a commitment to integrity.
Repair requires a willingness from both parties to own what is in their locus of control without shame or defensiveness, something that I name in the discussion. It’s not so much about the intention but the impact, however inadvertent or accidental it may have been. Apology and repair are supported by genuine, active efforts to course correct and change behaviour.
Repair is made all the more complex when one or both parties are not recognizing how their own patterning and unresolved hurts may be leading to binds that create self-fulfilling prophecies and confirmation bias. “See? It’s happening again, just like it always has. I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t.” Often embedded in this projection are vexatious criticism, scapegoating, or blame shifting that may actually reflect how the individual feels towards their own failures or mistakes that they have difficulty bringing attention to, especially if they themselves were criticized, scapegoated, or unfairly blamed at other times.
Allowing the right amount of time and space to support repair is essential, to not act on the urgency that might be driving or exacerbating the rupture, and to allow the nervous system to settle while ensuring that there is communication of intentionality in the process. This, of course, requires us to have a “secure base” in our own nervous system, the ability to trust that what goes up (activation) will come back down (deactivation). If we haven’t experienced a secure base in relationships, this physiological “secure base” within ourselves may understandably be absent or unreliable, making repair a challenge. Developing this capacity is a core part of the Somatic Experiencing® and EQUUSOMA® models.
It is also essential to recognize the risk for re-enactment, especially if there are power differentials between the parties. Any personal feelings of guilt or shame in the individual with the most power in the dynamic or the person who is most responsible for the rupture (these may or may not be the same individual) are not for the less powerful party or for the injured party to resolve. While these are deserving of compassion and support to work through, this must be done as a separate process. It is not up to the individual who experienced harm to absolve the other party of discomfort. This shifts the focus away from the accountability, containment, and self-regulation required in that moment to hold space for the harmed party’s experience.
Sometimes, there isn’t enough capacity and/or safety established yet for repair to occur, or it might occur by degrees over time. This requires our own ability to continue to track and with patience and compassion tend to the emotions, sensations, images, behaviours, and thoughts that come up for us while trust is in the process of being rebuilt at its own speed and pace. Sometimes repair simply isn’t possible, and may require additional support to work through the anger, grief, sorrow, remorse, injustice, and whatever other tender responses might emerge when that is the case.
Key quotes
I have been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work through the rupture and repair process with a number of trusted colleagues and loved ones, Ines being one of them. The following are a few of the points I raised in our interview as I reflected on this process:
“I’m still so moved by moments of rupture that we’ve experienced in our relationship and how we’ve repaired it in these very public ways for the students who have seen it happen. It’s not been often. We have such a good relationship. And like you said, we have these parallel processes, and we’ll go apart and have learning, and we come together and we are in similar places and have similar themes, and we seem to keep evolving.”
Ines and I at her farm in 2022
“It’s so amazing that we’ve had these moments that have happened, and it models something very different. I know the times it has occurred, students have said ‘wow, this is really transformational to get to watch a rupture and also a repair occur in real time.'”
“We model the very thing that I think people seek out community for, only to find themselves disappointed because that’s not what happened. There was rupture with no repair. There was not a modelling. It was a presenting of lofty ideals and maybe they used a lot of buzzwords, and there was a lot of talk, and it sounded legit, but when they got there, there were bits and pieces missing. And there were blind spots. And the integration wasn’t there.”
“That’s one thing I know you and I work really hard at, is acknowledging our humanity, our mammalian-ness, our humility, our vulnerability, and our imperfection. We are very much humans in states of becoming. I really appreciate that from you, this piece around modelling that it’s not this perfect community or this perfect thing.”
“We get to keep showing up. We get to keep showing up and go, ‘oh wow, I missed that, what can I learn here, please share, and how can we do this?’ It’s powerful for me because that’s where the safety and trust get built. It’s not in the avoidance and in the buzzwords and in the lofty guru culture of ‘we’ve got all the answers’, oh gosh no. That’s not this. It’s much more gritty and authentic and honest. And I really just appreciate that about our collaborations.”
“I wanted to name that cause I think that that’s basically where I look, where I find safety is where we bump up, we have rupture, and then we go off and we grumble and we have our moments, and we try to communicate, and then we figure it out, and we let time elapse, and we allow time and space for the nervous system to come down and find clarity, and then we reconnect. It’s like ‘oh! Yeah, that’s how it’s built.’ And then there’s a greater clearing. And a greater ‘oh, here we are again.’ And that’s speaking safety to the nervous system. It’s not about getting it right. It’s about being willing to keep showing up.”
A space of grace
I’ve become well-known for this quote: “Attunement is about being seen and heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten.” Or some variation thereof.
That said, joining the EQUUSOMA® herd is not a guarantee of perfect attunement (shocker!).
Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately!) our trainers and assistants, myself included, will not magically manifest all the traits that a student may have been seeking in their family of origin or in various adult relationships, from coaches, trainers, communities, or other authority or attachment figures.
We are not able to be surrogate parents or partners, someone who will live up to the fantasy bond that might still linger from unmet childhood needs, traumas, or other ruptures. It’s not that those needs were not valid, and it’s not for lack of desire to offer such attunement. In fact, part of what we teach in EQUUSOMA® is about becoming more and more nuanced and attuned — within ourselves and with others of various species.
However, we will fail at times. It’s a given. In spite of our best efforts, we won’t get it right every time. We’ll misattune. We’ll make mistakes.
But we are committed to keep showing up again and again. To integrity, accountability, and making it right. And to continuing to grow our own capacity to model rupture and repair as part of trauma renegotiation.
Thanks to everyone who has ever extended grace to me when I have erred in spite of my best intentions.
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Repair is made all the more complex when one or both parties are not recognizing how their own patterning and unresolved hurts may be leading to binds that create self-fulfilling prophecies and confirmation bias. “See? It’s happening again, just like it always has. I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t.” Often embedded in this projection are vexatious criticism, scapegoating, or blame shifting that may actually reflect how the individual feels towards their own failures or mistakes that they have difficulty bringing attention to, especially if they themselves were criticized, scapegoated, or unfairly blamed at other times.