True Belonging, Seeking Containment & How Modern Life Limits Connection
True belonging is that feeling where you know that your participation in life itself is completely welcome. It’s taking a breath of air and knowing that you have a right to it. It’s opening your arms and fully expecting a loving embrace. It is opening your mouth and knowing that the words that come from your heart will be received and heard. So few of us know what this type of belonging even means, and even less of us have ever tasted it, much less lived inside it.
We are always looking for containment in this modern world because we have lost community. True belonging is perhaps too complete and perfect of a concept to hope for.
We don’t really understand true belonging, because we don’t have it modeled for us and we don’t experience it. But we have lesser forms of it. We have lesser forms of containment – and connection.
The forms of containment available to us may be found where some form of belonging and connection meet. Containment is the primary reason why seeing a therapist does anything for us. And yet, you don’t actually belong there in a “true belonging” sense. Are you aiming for a relationship, but instead simply interacting with a human paid to be a reflection of you? You’re not allowed to know them in return; you are told that your relationship must be limited in order for it to be healing.
Maybe your experience is the exception, but for most of us, “therapeutic relationships” are chained up by rules and regulations, forced to eke out the bare minimum of connection from a sterile, unidirectional relationship. When one-direction relationships are the ones that are “allowed” to be healing, is it any wonder so many of us are caught up in para-social relationships, or living codependently to someone who doesn’t really see us? After all, aren’t healing relationships limited to flowing in one direction? That’s what the modern therapy model tells us.
There is a reason that so many people don’t want to pay for intimacy of any kind. We want to belong totally, and have multi-directional relationships. We want to trade everything in ourselves for everything outside ourselves. That’s what a true social species is about. Sure, it’s still a barter, but it’s everything for everything. My soul for yours, and yours for mine.
We belong with each other, but we also belong to each other. Ownership is no longer a bad concept when you would never act against the best interests of your fellow humans. Ownership means to take the utmost care, to shepherd those who belong to you, to take a position as protector.
Perhaps the closest we get to belonging is to start our own family. We can say that our children belong to us. If we are fortunate, we can say that our spouse, and parents, and maybe even siblings, and grandparents, are ours as well. This is where we belong. It is our home. It is our family dinner. It is our family tradition. These are our family values. These things are deeply soothing to the social animal that we are.
We are one of the most relationally dependent species to ever walk the earth. Our nervous system demands human connection. Our brain’s chemical balance requires it. Our microbiome symbiosis expects it. Our ability to thrive absolutely depends on it.
When we have true containment and belonging at home, we don’t feel so afraid.
Grief can only happen with containment. We will only grieve insofar as we find containment, and lacking community, we may do our best with the containment offered by music, a journal entry, a parts work session, a bath, a walk in a forest, a cuddle with a cat, or in singing a song. We’ll make do with the catharsis of watching other people grieve on television, or reading about a character in a book with whom we identify. We’ll make do, make do, make do. But all of us are still carrying so much unprocessed grief because none of us have the true belonging which would allow us to express everything in our hearts and feel truly spent, wholly seen, finally complete.
Imagine people who have had the sense of total containment, total belonging their entire life. They’ve never felt disconnected or isolated. These healthy individuals would never agree to go do work that doesn’t speak to their conscience – much less work for a stranger who does not hold their best interests in their heart. These strong people would never need to turn to more ephemeral senses of containment or connection, like I do with social media. They wouldn’t need to chase fame, seek meaning through academic validation, or grapple with their grief through thousands of pages of journaling.
People are so starved for belonging, for a container to hold all of their emotions, they will turn to whatever alternatives are available. These alternatives may carry religious or political connotations – yet the desperate inner child inside each of us may sacrifice one’s ability to critically assess what is happening, as long as we can soothe our biggest inborn need: to be part of the social group.
A baby that is not touched, regardless of whether it is fed and otherwise healthy, will die. Social needs are the biggest ones we have, which is why people will lie to themselves, hurt themselves, lie to others, and stay in abusive relationships. We will do anything to continue to receive whatever limited belonging we are getting. We hold onto it like it is our life itself – because it is.
It may be a relationship where you are beaten daily – verbally, emotionally, mentally, or even physically. Yet any form of belonging is better than none.
When you understand that everyone needs this so desperately, so completely, it becomes easier to have compassion for every person.
