Blue Zone - The Bridge, Step 4

 Cyndi Bennett writes in her article 'Clean Up on Aisle 9':

The External Mess

". . . . Creating relationships with secure attachments is difficult for someone with complex trauma, and it takes a long time to get there. Once we have those secure attachments, like I do with my therapist and coaching friends, they can still be impacted by a rupture in another relationship, like it did for me with a co-worker.

The doubt starts to creep into your thinking because you trusted the person you now have a rupture with, so it causes you to wonder whether your other friends will do the same thing or if there is something wrong with you that makes you unable to maintain secure relationships.

When this occurs, I try to reassure that little, scared part of me that this is not bigger than it is and that I will work on the repair."

The external mess is the craziness that results from being triggered, from thinking that the other people are not safe - it is the mess caused by the behaviors. The angry outbursts, the hypervigilance, the dissociation, .... 

When I first read this, I thought that only the last sentence applied to me. But after reading it through a few times, I realised that I have very few relationships with secure attachments. Most of my relationships feel insecure, especially when I'm having trouble with emotions, and I do often think that there must be something wrong with me, that I can't maintain relationships. And I do make it very hard for people to feel like this is a relationship worth working on. Ugh.

Elpis, perhaps a child of Nyx, was the personified spirit (daimona) of hope. She and the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of the first woman Pandora. When she opened the vessel all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis (Hope) who remained behind to comfort mankind.

She seems to be the perfect one to reassure the little scared part of me that things will be okay, that people love me despite my hurtful behaviors, and that I should keep trying. Hope is the thing that keeps you trying.

(Image is Thalia Took's, but I switched the name so it fit my process. It is actually Thalia Took's 'Arohirochi')