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CONNECTION: OUR DEEPEST LONGING AND DEEPEST FEAR
Book One: Contact

by Dr. Laurence Heller with Dr. Aline LaPierre

The spontaneous movement in all of us is toward connection. No matter how withdrawn and isolating we have become or how serious the trauma we have experienced, on the deepest level, just as a plant spontaneously moves towards the sun, there is in each of us an impulse moving toward connection.


Chapter 2

Checklist for seemingly unrelated symptoms that may indicate difficulty with the Contact life theme.


Do you prefer to recharge your batteries by being alone rather than being with other people? Yes No
Did you need glasses at an early age? Yes No
Do you suffer from environmental sensitivities or multiple allergies? Yes No
Do you have migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, or fibromyalgia? Yes No
Are you aware of prenatal trauma such as intrauterine surgeries, prematurity with incubation, or traumatic events during gestation? Yes No
Were there complications at your birth? Yes No
Have you had problems maintaining relationships? Yes No
Were you adopted? Yes No
Do you have difficulty knowing what you are feeling? Yes No
Would others describe you as more mental than emotional? Yes No
Do you have disdain for people who are emotional? Yes No
Are you sensitive to cold? Yes No
Do you often have the feeling that life is overwhelming and you don’t have the energy to deal with it? Yes No
Do you prefer working in situations that require theoretical or mechanical skills rather than people skills? Yes No
Are you troubled by the persistent feeling that you are on the outside looking in? Yes No
Are you always looking for the why of things? Yes No
Are you uncomfortable in groups or social situations? Yes No
Does the world often seem dangerous to you? Yes No


Chapter 4

The Beginning of Our Identity
A person who experiences early trauma, regardless of its source, does not feel welcomed into the world. When, at the beginning of life, for whatever cause, we do not feel welcomed, we find it difficult to develop a sense of our right to exist, of our sense of self, and of our entitlement to fully live. The degree to which we feel welcomed into the world becomes the foundation of our identity.

The life theme of this earliest survival style develops in relation to the issue of contact. Our earliest experiences of life in utero, at birth, and with early attachment shape our relationship to feeling secure in our capacity for contact. When this capacity for contact is in place, it supports our right to be and is the foundation upon which the healthy Self is built. Early trauma compromises our sense of safety and existence in the world and our capacity for contact : we do not learn how to connect to ourselves, to our body, or to others.

Our earliest trauma and attachment experiences form a template for our lifelong psychological, physiological and relational patterns. The identity of individuals with early trauma is shaped by the distress they experienced in early life. Difficulties at this initial Contact stage of development undermine healthy progression through all later stages, impacting self image, self esteem, and the capacity for healthy relationships. Trauma in this Contact beginning phase is the basis for many seemingly unrelated cognitive, emotional, and physiological problems.

Early Events That May Cause Long-Term Traumatic Reactions

Caregiver Related
A family where one or both parents struggle with Contact issues themselves
A mother who is chronically depressed, dissociated, or angry
Being the result of an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy
Attempted abortion
Mother abusing alcohol or drugs during the pregnancy
A psychotic mother
Attachment failures
Being made to feel like a burden

Environmental Failures
Premature birth
Long, painful delivery
Extended incubation without caring physical touch
Early surgery
Significant traumatic events for one or more members of the family during pregnancy or early life
Death in the family
Global events such as being born into wartime
Intergenerational trauma such as the being born to Holocaust survivors
Natural disasters

Even with loving parents, trauma can find its way into an infant’s life. For example, a premature infant may require incubation. Until relatively recently, it was not known that premature infants needed physical contact and that touch had a powerful impact on their nascent organism. They were untouched in the incubator, sometimes out of fear of infection or out of the belief that it would be overwhelming to them. Having loving parents can ameliorate a traumatic impact but the effect of inadequate contact at the beginning of life remains in the physiology and psychology of the developing child and later adult.

Biological Dysregulation
The fetus/developing infant is completely dependent on its caregivers and on a benevolent environment. As a result of this total vulnerability, the infant’s reaction to rejection, failure of connection, and early trauma is one of terror. This terror is overwhelming to the nascent organism and its nervous system. It leaves its mark on every level of experience as a core withdrawal, contraction and frozenness throughout the entire body. This frozenness and contraction is the only way an infant can manage the high arousal of terrifying early trauma. This profound state of contraction, high arousal, and freeze creates systemic dysregulation that affects all of the body’s biological systems. This underlying biological dysregulation is the shaky foundation upon which the psychological self is built.

When a fetus or an infant experiences early trauma and/or attachment wounding, the source of the threat is the environment in which they live, the only home they have. Whether the threat is intrauterine or takes place in the early months of life, there is no possible safety independent of what is provided by their caregivers. They are completely dependent. From the infants’ point of view, the danger never goes away and there is no possible resolution. They can’t run from the threat, they can’t fight it; the fallback position is to go into freeze. When there is chronic threat without possible resolution, the nervous system goes into a high state of arousal and the entire organism is trapped in a defensive-orienting response. Being locked in perpetual high arousal is a painful state which the infant manages by numbing itself and going into freeze.

A fetus/infant cannot know itself to be a good person in a bad situation. The roots of lifelong feelings of shame and deficiency are found in the distress states caused by early environmental deficiencies. Infants experience early environmental failure as if there were something wrong with them: later cognitions of “I am bad” are built upon the somatic sensation: “I feel bad.” Understanding this concept alone has helped many people who suffer from patterns of low self-esteem, shame, and a sense of deficiency begin to see themselves in a new compassionate way.

Chapter 3

There are two subtypes to the Contact survival style. Though utilizing two different coping strategies, both subtypes experience a great deal of emotional, psychological, and often physical pain. Physically, both subtypes appear disembodied and absent: They have an overall frozen appearance that can be reflected in their sometimes painfully thin bodies which may look fragmented, disjointed, pale and under energized.

1) The Thinking Subtype manages their high levels of arousal by disconnecting from their body and living a life of the mind. This Contact subtype relates in an intellectual rather than a feeling manner and is drawn to professions that emphasize thinking over feeling. They can be the stereotypical scientists and engineers who are contemptuous of emotions and oriented to what they consider the objective “facts”: “The Universe is empty and cold. There is no such thing as God.”

Having developed their thinking component from a very early age, they can be clear and powerful thinkers, often quite brilliant. Being disconnected from their bodies, and comfortable being by themselves, they are drawn to professions where those capacities are assets.

2) The Spiritualizing Subtype manages their high levels of arousal by completely disconnecting from the body and living in the energetic field. They tend to be otherworldly and ethereal. Because they have never embodied, they are drawn to spiritual movements and often have access to very real spiritual and psychic states that “normal” people are not aware of. They can use this access to spiritual and psychic states to “spiritualize” their pain. Supporting their disconnection, a common underlying spiritualizing belief might be: “This planet is a cold and painful place, but God loves me.”

Though meditation is a means to become increasingly present, many in this spiritualizing subtype are drawn to it because, having never been welcomed on this planet, it is more comfortable for them to live on non-physical, otherworldly planes. In this way, they turn to meditation to reinforce their dissociation.

Both subtypes experience a great deal of fear, sometimes even terror, particularly of intimate contact: They avoid people, especially crowds, being more comfortable one-on-one if at all. They either have difficulty making eye contact or lock on to eye contact in an unfocused way. Individuals with this survival style are uncomfortable being touched and may even experience physical touch as painful.

Chapter 7

Moving to Resolution
Regardless of the symptoms and surface issues, holding in mind the overarching organizing principle of reconnection to our bodily self and to others makes the therapeutic process richer and more efficient.

For those of us who struggle with the Contact survival style, there are two parallel and complementary aspects to the organizing principles that can bring us back to health: reconnecting with our own body and emotions and the parallel process of learning to experience contact with other people as an enriching reciprocal experience, not just as a source of threat. Reconnection with self and others enables us to heal the dysregulation caused by the systemic chronic high arousal and frozenness. In the process, we learn how to support healthy self-regulation as well as reciprocal regulation through relationship.

The NeuroAffective Relational Model ® orients toward supporting the process of reconnection in present time. To do this effectively, NARM utilizes a process-oriented approach that works with exploring coming in and out of contact. Tracking the process of connection and disconnection in the body and in the therapeutic relationship itself is an essential addition to traditional psychodynamic therapies.

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