Connection is a multi-layered pillar of self-care and it’s where we start to branch out from taking care of ourselves to taking care of others. It’s where the rubber starts to meet the self-care road.
There are 5 points of connection:
Connection to self
Connection to a higher power
Connection to a partner
Connection to family
Connection to community
Like this star diagram, each one is connected to the other. If you make a change in one, it will affect the others. This concept is important to understand before we dive in because we often project our feelings about one connection onto another.
For example, if you’re feeling disconnected from yourself and don’t take the time to reestablish that connection, we often take out our anger and frustration on our partner and family. Also, the disconnection from ourselves leads to feeling disconnected from our higher power, which can lead to more anger and frustration.
Connection to Self
Similar to how Nutrition is the pillar of self-care that all the other pillars are built on, your connection to yourself is the basis on which all your other connections are created. This connection is also where the most work is required to create and maintain.
To start creating a solid connection with yourself, you have to be willing to do the work. The work consists of 2 major parts (for the purposes of this class): emotional healing and inner child healing.
Emotional healing consists of working through the layers of emotion and trauma we all carry so we can access our true selves without the emotional baggage. Doing this work allows us to feel our emotions without acting irrationally (what we usually say as acting “emotionally”).
Inner child healing is similar to emotional healing in the sense that we have to process childhood memories of trauma and misunderstanding but also we tap into who we were as kids and our perceptions of ourselves from back then. We each carry our inner child with us for our lifetime and our inner child usually has a clearer perspective on who we believe we are underneath all the coping mechanisms and layers of “self” we’ve created over the years.
Tools we can use to connect to ourselves include (but not limited to): therapy, hynopsis, meditation, journaling, prayer, movement & nutrition.
Connection to Higher Power
Whether you call it God, Universe, Source, Spirit, Nature, etc., we have a connection to a higher power. This is, by no means, a religious connection either. In fact, I’d argue that religion makes it harder for some of us to connect to that higher power.
Whatever term you use is up to you. As long as you’re comfortable with it and are open to maintaining that connection, that’s really all that matters. Why do we even need this connection?
We all go through phases in our lives where we can feel hopeless and lost. Loved ones die, our life circumstances change drastically and we don’t know what will happen next or if we’ll be able to handle it. The connection to your higher power gives us a North Star in turbulent times – it gives us hope that while today and tomorrow may suck, the day after may not and we must hold out for that.
Hope for a better day is the driving force behind humanity and that hope comes from this connection. If this connection makes you wary or uncomfortable, that’s a good place to start in. Why do you have these feelings about this connection? Be willing to explore to find out more about yourself in the process.
Tools that can be used to create and maintain your connection to your higher power are meditation and prayer. Don’t be afraid to make prayer into your own kind of prayer rather than the one you may have learned. Making these tools your own makes it easier to stick the practice of connection.
Connection to Partner
This connection is the foundation of every family. Whether you have kids or not, the connection you have to your partner is where you learn how to give and receive unconditional love outside of yourself. Partners can also be the most effective mirrors we have that allow us to see how others may perceive us.
Your connection to your partner also encompasses (hopefully) a mix of a couple of key relationships: friend and lover. It’s a connection where we have to be willing to be open and vulnerable while also feeling safe to be both.
Tools you can use to maintain your connection with your partner: Love languages (see resources section), counseling and communication skills.
Connection to Family
Family connections are usually fraught with issues. We may or may not get along with our parents and siblings. We may or may not ever get to a point in our lives where we’re willing to learn what our parents and siblings perspectives are without feeling some kind of way about it. These connections are usually the closest ones we have, especially during childhood, where we start to put up layers of facades to deal with perceived insults and miscommunication.
A lot of the inner child healing work I discussed earlier stems from family connections. If we don’t heal our inner child, we perpetuate dysfunctional family patterns for another generation.
If you’re willing to create a clear and solid connection with yourself, you can actually help heal the fractured connections within your family of origin (the family you were born into) and the family you’ve created with your partner. It creates a ripple effects that allows your family members to heal as well. At minimum, you can bring to light where their issues may lie and while they may or may not appreciate that, healing begins with awareness.
Tools you can use to help with family connections include: counseling, therapy, soul coaching, life coaching, meditation
Connection to Community
The connection you have to your community is an important one that sometimes can get lost. It can be as simple as saying hi to your neighbors to watching a friend’s dog when they go out of town. These connections are what make life interesting and get us out of homes and into the world.
Community connections are the safety net of society. No man is an island and we all need each other. These connections are also where we practice all of our connection skills I’ve mentioned earlier – communication, holding space, understanding, unconditional love and support.
In order to have reciprocal community connections, we have to establish connections in the areas that precede community. Each builds on the one before it. While we may not live in the same tribal communities as in the past, we are all still one unit of humans who all need each other, thus making it imperative that we learn how to have happy and strong connections within our communities. When things go really well or really bad, these are the people that will be there for you.