In the past year, I’ve learned about myself. I mean, who hasn’t? We’ve had so much time to very inconveniently (yet opportunely) cull over our deepest darkest secrets, pains, and the depths of our personalities.
One of the things I’ve learned is that I constantly crave deep connection with/from other people, such that a relationship or group in which we are not constantly growing, expanding, learning, experiencing, and deconstructing our connection feels stagnant, uncomfortable, and un-satisfying. Is that a word?
Indeed, one of my greatest fears in the world is being bored. And it’s easy to be bored when other people are boring. That sounds harsh, but if you are reading this it’s because you’re just like me. I love all people, but please don’t make me have a full-length conversation with everybody.
Anyways, enough with the jokes (by the way, did you know that I tried my hand at stand-up comedy? it was a complete fail). Some of us are actually wired to crave deep connection. The rest of the world appears to be indifferent about the matter. When I say, “indifferent”, I mean that all human beings benefit and need a sense of emotional safety, belonging, love, etc. All human beings need love! But not everybody craves deep, intense connection.
Let’s dig into the idea that some of us are wired to crave deep connection. Have you ever gone into a group and thought: there is so much tension and discomfort in this room and nobody is saying anything about it? Have you ever felt the desire to blatantly discuss or address the interpersonal dynamics of friendships, relationships, group settings? Are you the middleman, diplomat, peacekeeper who translates your family and friends’ interactions and wonder why they can’t see what you see, feel what you feel? Do you ever get upset that nobody seems to have an interest in both connecting and deconstructing the intricacies of that connection? And do you ever get miffed when you thought you were going to have a deep conversation or interaction with somebody and it ends up being superficial, surface-level, or just not challenging or expanding?
Well, you’re just like me. And a lot of other people. And also nothing like most of the world, it seems. If most of the world were like us, I wouldn’t go to stores and think “What are they even doiiiiiing?” If most of the world were like us, there would be more artists, more “spiritual” humans dancing in forests, more activists creating spaces where people deeply connect. But there are not. And that is perfectly fine. Every human is wired differently.
There always seems to be a segment of the population (the artists, the activists, the “spiritual”, the rebels) that crave deep connection. These people are always sensitive people. They feel things more deeply and therefore they desperately or at least fervently want things to change. They may identify with the terms “highly sensitive” or “empathic” or “neurodivergent” or “intuitive”. Let’s take one of these terms – for instance, “highly sensitive person,” which is defined as a person who “… has a sensitive nervous system, is aware of subtleties in his/her surroundings, and is more easily overwhelmed when in a highly stimulating environment“. This person displays “increased emotional sensitivity” and is thought to be more disturbed than others by violence, tension, or feelings of being overwhelmed. Essentially, we notice more, we feel more, and whatever we are around has an effect on us, because we are so deeply connected to what is going on around us.
Whatever the term, I’ve read that these sensitive folk typically represent at most 15-20% of the population. Maybe it’s a bit more, but, if you are alive in a body and reading this and you are in some way sensitive or a deep feeler, you are well-aware that, by definition, most people don’t seem to see and feel the world the way we do. Everyone, in fact, sees the world differently, hence the obsession with personality tests and types, astrology, numerology, neurotypes, etc. Anyways, being extremely sensitive, deeply feeling – in other words naturally deeply connected to all that is, means that we crave who we are. It is not that we crave deep connection. We are deep connection. And we desire to express that and be seen in the fullness of of who we are.
In addition to the variety of labels that communicate people’s sensitivity to their environments, another potentially useful way to understand our need for deep connection is “giftedness”. I hesitate to say that word because it feels like a tool of domination but it isn’t about some people being better than others. It is just about different people having different gifts! And it doesn’t just mean “intellectual giftedness” but also includes emotional, intellectual, creative, existential, physical, and sensual giftedness. Anyways, some people are born with the natural desire to process and make sense of themselves, their relationships, and the world. Some people are born with what is called “relational-emotional” giftedness, which means we need to be deeply challenged within our relationships to feel fulfilled and require and emit a certain level of intensity within our relationships.
So there we are. Some of us – the sensitive, the “gifted” (any ideas on a new word for this?) actually need deep connection. Or rather, we are deep connection and need to be able to express it. And while many of us have not always gotten exactly what we needed from our relationships, we are proudly moving forward knowing that it is not just a habit or a pattern, but an intrinsic part of who we are. We are deeply connected and we are structuring our lives and spaces to allow for that deep connection. May we find each other, we who desire to deeply connect.
These ideas and questions are central to Raw Movement, an approach to inquiring about and experimenting with co-creating spaces of deep connection through collective (movement) practice. If you’re in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family, and desire to experiment with co-creating spaces of deep connection, find out more about Raw Movement (soon) at: www.rawmovement.org.
This writing is a part of my Conversations on Deep Connection series. If you’re also in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family and would like to get notified of new conversations, click here to get notified of new conversations.