How we learn to disconnect from ourselves, and what it means to find our way back
Have you ever noticed how you can lose yourself in a relationship? Someone is disappointed in you, and suddenly you're anxious. Someone criticizes you, and you get defensive. Someone pulls away, and before you know it you're replaying the conversation, trying to figure out what you did wrong and what you need to do to make it right.
Or maybe you go the other direction. You withdraw, shut down, get angry, or tell yourself you don't care. Then later, once things settle, you look back and wonder, Why did I react that way? Why does this keep happening?
After more than twenty years of sitting with people in their pain, I've come to believe that much of our emotional suffering is tied to patterns that formed long before we had words for what was happening inside us. Somewhere along the way, we learned how to protect ourselves. We learned to avoid certain feelings, manage other people's reactions, push down our own needs, or brace against threats we sensed around us. Those patterns made sense at the time. They got us through hard experiences and helped us hold on to some sense of safety and connection. The trouble is that what once protected us can eventually become the very thing that keeps us stuck.
When Connection Costs Us Ourselves
We were made for connection. From the very beginning of life, we depend on others to help us feel safe and settled. In the best case, we experience the steady presence, warmth, and strength of people who care for us, and over time that becomes an inner sense of security we carry with us.
But when relationships are unpredictable, emotionally unavailable, frightening, or overwhelming, we adapt. Some of us learn that if people are happy with us, we'll be okay, and if someone is disappointed, we're not safe. We learn that we have to take care of everyone else to keep them close. Others learn something quite different: don't trust anyone, stay in control, and never let them see you weak.
These lessons don't stay in childhood. They follow us into our marriages, friendships, families, and workplaces. And here's what I find so striking: in our efforts to stay connected to others, many of us learned to disconnect from ourselves. We stop paying attention to what we feel. We lose touch with what we need. We get so focused on managing what's happening around us that we hardly notice what's happening inside us, and after enough years, we may not even realize we're doing it.
Getting to Know Your Parts
One of the most helpful frameworks I've found in my work comes from Internal Family Systems, or IFS. It starts with the idea that our inner world is made up of different parts.
You probably already recognize this in yourself. Part of you wants to speak up, but another part is afraid of conflict. Part of you feels angry, and another part feels guilty for being angry. Part of you longs for connection, while another part wants to pull away before anyone can hurt you. Sometimes it can feel like these parts are at war.
Many of them have taken on protective roles. Their job is to give us a felt sense of safety, usually by managing our emotions so we don't have to experience something that once felt overwhelming. A part of you may have learned that expressing anger leads to rejection, so it works hard to keep everyone happy. Another part may have learned that vulnerability is dangerous, so it keeps you guarded, defensive, or in control. These strategies get deeply ingrained, and our protectors often resist change because the familiar feels safer than the unknown, even when the familiar is painful.
So here's something I've learned over and over in the therapy room: we don't need to fight our protectors. We need to get to know them. Instead of criticizing yourself for being anxious, defensive, controlling, or overly accommodating, you can start to get curious. What is this part of me afraid might happen? What is it trying to protect me from? What does it believe about me, about other people, or about the world? In my experience, protectors relax when they're understood, not when they're attacked. And that's where reconnection begins.
You Are the Mountain, Not the Trees
I often use a simple picture with my clients. Imagine a large, solid mountain with trees growing all over it. The mountain represents the deeper, grounded center of who you are. The trees represent your parts. Some carry anxiety. Others carry anger, shame, fear, sadness, or powerlessness. Some of them have been battered by storms for years.
When something triggers you emotionally, your awareness can get completely caught up in one of those trees. It's as if you've climbed up into the branches and you're seeing everything from that one part's point of view. You become the anxiety, the defensiveness, the overwhelm. But the mountain is still there. It hasn't gone anywhere.
In IFS, that deeper center is called the Self. When we're connected to Self, we tend to experience qualities like calm, clarity, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness. And from that place, we can relate to our emotions differently. Instead of being swallowed by anxiety, I can recognize that a part of me is anxious. Instead of being consumed by shame, I can notice that a part of me is carrying shame. Instead of fighting my anger, I can get curious about what it's trying to tell me. It's a subtle shift, but it changes a great deal. I'm learning to recognize the trees without losing my connection to the mountain.
Healing Takes More Than Understanding
There's another piece of this work I want to emphasize, because I think it's often missed. We can spend years talking about our feelings without ever actually feeling them. We explain, analyze, intellectualize, and try to make sense of our stories. Understanding matters, but insight alone rarely changes how we feel.
You may know in your head that you're safe, and yet your body still reacts with anxiety. You may know you have choices, and yet something inside feels powerless. You may believe you're loved, and still carry a deep sense of shame or unworthiness. That gap between what we know and what we experience is where a lot of the real work of therapy happens.
So in session, I often invite people to move from talking about what happened to noticing what's happening inside them right now. What are you feeling? Where do you feel it in your body? Is there tightness in your chest, heaviness in your stomach, tension in your shoulders? What does this part of you believe, and what is it afraid might happen? I sometimes describe it as going downstairs, out of our heads and into our emotional and bodily experience. Not to overwhelm ourselves or force painful feelings to the surface, but to begin building a different relationship with what's going on inside.
Learning to Sit With Yourself
Most of us learned to handle uncomfortable emotions in one of two ways: we suppress them or we react to them. We push them away, distract ourselves, get defensive, withdraw, or let them take over. But there's another option. We can learn to sit with our emotions. Not fixing them, not pushing them down, and not letting them run the show, but staying present, curious, and compassionate.
Picture sitting beside a frightened child. You wouldn't lecture that child about why they shouldn't be afraid, and you wouldn't demand that they calm down or explain everything they're feeling. You'd simply offer your presence. I'm here. I've got you. You don't have to face this alone. That's a picture of what we're learning to do with the parts of us that carry pain. We're learning to approach them from the mountain.
Sometimes, as we stay present with an emotion, it begins to soften. Our breathing settles, the intensity eases, and something inside feels a little safer. Other times we need more time, more support, or more preparation, and that's okay. We're not trying to force an outcome. We're learning to stay connected to ourselves even when something difficult is happening inside.
Where Faith Comes In
For those who share a Christian faith, I believe there's an even deeper dimension to all of this. Scripture tells us that the one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). I understand the mountain not only as a picture of our grounded center, but of our deepest spiritual identity: our spirit joined with Christ. Through His finished work, we're invited into an ongoing relationship of connection, acceptance, and security. Not as a reward for getting everything right, but as a gift.
And yet so many believers know these truths in their heads while their bodies keep carrying anxiety, shame, unworthiness, or abandonment. I hear it all the time: I know God loves me, but I don't feel loved. I know I'm accepted, but I feel unworthy. I know He's with me, but I feel so alone.
This is where I believe therapy and spiritual formation meet. We're not simply trying to talk ourselves into believing something different. We're learning to bring the truth of who we are in Christ into contact with the places inside us that are still carrying old pain, staying present with those wounded parts rather than rejecting them, and resting more deeply in the reality of Christ's presence and our union with Him. My hope is that what we know in our heads will increasingly become something we experience in our bodies.
Healing the Trees From the Mountain
Let me come back to the mountain one last time. The mountain is that deeper place of groundedness, stability, and connection. The trees are the parts of you that may have spent years carrying painful emotions and beliefs. As you learn to stay connected to the mountain, you can begin turning toward those trees with curiosity and compassion. You don't have to be frightened of every feeling, fight every protective response, or abandon yourself when something hard comes up.
The goal isn't to cut down the trees. The goal is to help them become healthy, grounded, and deeply rooted in the mountain, so the fear, shame, and powerlessness they carry can loosen their grip, and those parts can begin to experience the calm, compassion, and security that become available as healing unfolds. That, in a nutshell, is the work of therapy.
Maybe that's a good place to start today. The next time something triggers you, instead of rushing to fix it, suppress it, or figure it all out, see if you can slow down long enough to ask yourself a few questions. What's happening inside me right now? Can I notice this feeling without being completely consumed by it? Can I approach this part of myself with a little curiosity and compassion?
You don't have to do it perfectly, and you don't have to force yourself to heal. You're simply learning something new: that you can stay connected to yourself, even when life gets emotionally hard.