I have seen pieces of my wounds more times than I care to admit. And most certainly I do not enjoy!!
Amethyst and I have had repeated conversations over the course of our dynamic how we continue to see evidences of our past patterns and traumas we believed we have healed. Over and over again they would raise their ugly little heads to try and get in the way of trusting one another.
And THAT'S the thing I have come to discover. Most traumas have to do with trust. Our inability to trust we won't make the same mistakes or poor choices or failure to see what we have since learned of others manipulation. Our fear of trusting someone enough to believe them when they say they care for us. Our inability to trust others with pieces of who we are, because frankly we do not believe those pieces within us should be trusted! Often we do not!
Healing our past traumas is like peeling an onion. Layer upon layer. We think we are seeing the same exact thing repeatedly, when in actuality we are just seeing another layer. Our focus is on the onion. Not on the fact that we have seen and shed so many other layers before. And each one of those layers has brought tears to our eyes. The deeper we go the tighter those layers are wound around who we believe we are......and it takes a long time to discover those do not need to define us any further.
We talk about trust being a bedrock for our foundations within our dynamics. And I would absolutely agree. But I think we have a glamorized view of what trust actually is.
Trust is a courageous choice. Because trust flies in the face of fears. And let's be very clear, fears are going to exist. They will have to be navigated. One way or the other. We can avoid them all we like but they will ALWAYS be present and nagging. The ONLY way to face those fears is to commit to trust.
Trust in what, you may ask?
In the commitment to face the fear with courage. Your personal fear. Your personal trauma. A commitment with a partner that says, "I agree to fight my traumas and be courageous enough to extend trust to build this relationship." It is NOT a trust in a person. Because if one thing is certain you can trust people to be human. Faultful. Mistaken. Without all the answers. To trust in the infallibility of someone is to set yourself up for deepening your trauma. But you CAN trust yourself to work on building trust between you and others. But that takes a commitment of courage. We need to be brave. Because I can attest personally, we will not always 'feel' safe or like we want to trust someone else with who we are. But it will not change that in order to peel back the next layer and lose a piece of who we thought we were by revealing this trauma we will need to trust we are going to be ok on the other side. Not in whether the other person is going to handle it correctly. Or navigate this space with us perfectly. Rather, that regardless how the tears from this layer affects our lives we will pull through.
This requires courage. Because we WILL be afraid. We WILL not want to see all the things. We WILL want to hide. We WILL panic. We WILL not trust the other person to protect us. We WILL have the same old stories scream at us.
And we get to CHOOSE to be courageous and extend trust to ourselves. That today, we will navigate it differently and better than we have in the past. That we CAN heal by looking ourselves in the face, shed as many tears as we need to but also to take a step forward instead of run away.
In MY lens, THIS is what a trusting connection within our dynamics is about. Not that we have it altogether. Or can find perfect bliss. But that we can stretch ourselves beyond our own borders with the comfort of a partner beside as as we ugly cry with snot bubbles and all about how scared we are, yet determined.
This is what holding a space as a dominant can mean. When your submissive is broken, frightened, spiralling, can you allow them to peel a layer off, losing a piece of themselves that no longer serves them, including holding them safely while they figure out just who the hell they are actually going to be now that they have lost those pieces that were such an integral part of their identity?
And know, this process in some form or fashion will repeat itself. They will get the opportunity to learn to trust deeper and deeper. The more layers they unravel.
How will you handle it?
And
How can you hope to support them with encouragement if you have not navigated similarly. Because, to be sure, we ALL are afraid to be abandoned and vulnerable.
How courageous can you be to trust yourself to process this healthily? Or to begin to learn how to process healthily?
Wherever each of you are on your journeys, may you find the courage needed to face each layer before you today.
Namaste
Drago and Amethyst
