What My Momma Said
October 15th 2022
One of the hardest parts about losing someone you love is re-learning how to comfort yourself without the support of someone else.
When babies are born, it is impossible to self-soothe during moments of distress, hunger or pain. Their brains have simply not developed enough to understand how simple actions can impact how they feel in the moment. By the time they are six months, it is common for babies to have developed self-soothing techniques like sucking on a thumb or finger or rubbing a soft blanket on their face. Without these techniques, a child would never learn to sleep through the night. The difficulty of a parent is creating boundaries as a child grows to allow for the development of independence and comforting skills.
We can see how this issue resurfaces later in life, because as soon as there is any form of attachment to another human being in a way that creates comfort during these times of distress or pain or emotional turmoil, we start to develop habits of turning towards a person because we know that we feel safe and we feel comforted when they help us to navigate these difficult times. I am not saying that a relationship should never have aspects of support or comfort as these ARE important in building a healthy foundation. Rather, in a relationship one should never lose themself so much that if the other person were to leave, they would be lost in a world where they cannot comfort themself. Never rely on someone else so strongly that if you lost that person, you would have no choice but to need them again because you no longer know how to heal yourself without them.
I remember something my mom told me following one of the worst breakups of my life: the end of a four-year relationship of developing habits based in co-dependence and that influenced a loss of “self”. When this relationship ended, it was impossible for me to feel comforted, because the person who had been “comforting” and “soothing me” for the last four years was no longer in my life and I could not turn to them. Subsequently, in the years that followed, in any moment of confusion or stress or misunderstanding, my instinct was to turn back to the person who made me feel comforted. Unfortunately, that person was someone with whom I had developed unhealthy habits and who continued to have this influence on me because of the co-dependence that we had created in that relationship. I remember so clearly my mom telling me when we broke up, “I know that you want to go back to the place where you feel good, but that place is no more. You need to relearn how to comfort yourself.”
I have since learned a lot and I have matured a lot but I will admit that there are days when I feel I have not matured quite enough. No matter how good a relationship may be or how strong the connection may be or how healthy the boundaries are and the independence is that exists, I find that in times of confusion and stress, I still revert back to where I found comfort in the past. For this reason, I have had multiple failed relationships with messy endings. A new relationship simply cannot last if your own strategies for comfort and self-soothing have not been developed. You will always be stuck grasping at something that is out of reach.
Thankfully, not all stories have to end this way. The greatest aspect of maturing and growing is admitting to unhealthy coping skills and habits. You are in control of your reactions to hardship in life. You are in control of developing necessary lifelong skills rooted in independence and grace that are required for healthy relationships. You are the author of these experiences and this life and, when you’re ready, you will know that no one can take that power away from you.
“In accepting our aloneness, we accept that no one can protect us from ourselves—and that no one can live our lives for us. “Aloneness” simply means that we cannot depend on others for our joy or sorrow. We are the authors of our actions, attitudes, and experiences and not the “victims” of fate or circumstance.”
Liane Cordes on Aloneness and Quality Time
