Placing Demands on the World
Relating evokes feelings of togetherness. But this does not mean that I feel what you feel one hundred percent. Often, we ask people to meet us in this way. Most of the time people can meet each others’ needs with ease. Although, sometimes the ask becomes too much for someone else given their current availability and life circumstances. We place an expectation of how they should be for us to feel good, which not only puts them in a difficult place but also disempowers us. With this, we lay a demand on the world that implies the world needs to look a certain way for us to express ourselves fully. We feel we have to hold back parts of ourselves because it’s not safe enough.
However, the truth is that one person cannot feel or meet your internal space completely. To ask someone to attend to all of your needs is asking them to do the impossible. Some of us try to be everything for someone, though. This is a big mistake that has its lagging developmental correlates.
Usually, this is the perfect piece to the puzzle for someone looking to be met fully. On the surface, it may look like one person holding space for another, but underneath there’s a lot of effort and inauthenticity. This will cause difficulties in the relational framework, either immediately or down the line. A trauma bond, where the attachment is based on child-like relational capacities. “I need you to hold me fully to feel safe” and, on the other end, “If I disappoint you, by not holding you fully, I will not be loved.” In this dynamic, both people are disempowered. They will cycle in a survival level of relation.
Perhaps more importantly, if we’re waiting for the world to look a certain way before we can step fully into it, we’ll be holding ourselves forever. The landscape and conditions that make up your inner environment are personal and connected to your unique karmic makeup. You are here to inject such things into the world. The space for you to do so is inherent in your existence, regardless if societal structures indicate otherwise. This is your purpose.
So, it’s clear that the ask to be fully met comes from a young place. The level of development that needed everything from mom and dad. As an infant, we were completely dependent on getting nourishment and sustenance from our parents. If we didn’t, we would not have survived.
If we have a disruption in the development process (i.e. attachment trauma), we will find that this function influences our actions as an adult. What was once intelligence helping us land further in life through the attachment to our parents, becomes a stress reaction. Then, when survival-level fear is triggered, we ask the world to be everything for us. Everywhere we go, we ask people we know or don’t know to meet us fully.
It’s not to banish this part of us either. We can see that it was formed out of necessity. The key is to first become aware of the process and stay there. We stay at the edge of our conscious reality and honor that – not trying to push beyond who we are now – and then the next step arises. We find space to choose differently.
Trying to Save the World
The other end of the spectrum (i.e. those of us that fear disappointing people), is the perception of overwhelming expectations and demands from the world. Where the ‘right to be’ is compromised and we feel that we need to mold ourselves to the world's needs. From this place, it’s difficult to maintain our individuality, which then inhibits us from bringing forward what we have to offer the world.
Of course, this is only how it seems though. The pressure is all inside and enables us to create a perception of such in the world. We say “the world is asking too much of me and because of that I am paralyzed in bringing my purpose forward.” From a mature adult view, we can see that we have an eternal permission slip to be here, clear of all expectations.
The overwhelming expectations are also a defense mechanism created in childhood. This happened to us when we were parentified as children – where we had to ‘take care’ of our parents when an experience triggered them to regress into a lower level of development than us. An existential threat – taking care of the ones that were supposed to be caring for us. The high stakes helped create high sensitivity to the needs of those outside of us, ensuring our safety. How intelligent it was to change our view of the world – impractical expectations – so we could not possibly miss a chance to support it.
These two projections, the expectations we feel from the world and the expectations we place on the world, intersect within the foundation of our childhood attachment. They are projections because it is the way we learned to be within the framework of attachment to our caretakers. These are not realistic ways to meet or be met by the world, but learned processes. If we have not been able to regulate and update these processes, they will continue to run our adult life.
In any given situation, we could find ourselves trying to be everything for everyone or placing demands on life. I’m sure we have all been there. However, we must find space to see that in either case, we are not taking a new step. We are in a repetition compulsion – in the past. To update such mechanisms, we have to notice this process. In other words, we have to feel the underlying fear that drives us. It will update itself once we do.
Crossing the Line
Often, I see that boundaries are actually defenses or walls to the outside world. Meaning, they come forth only after we have crossed our own internal boundaries. So they commonly come out as a way to create distance between us and the other person because we have ‘crossed the line’ in a way. Out of our insecurity and fear the wall comes up and we think that is the boundary, but the actual boundary was crossed some steps back.
A boundary doesn’t mean we have to distance or separate ourselves from someone. Limitations connect us. A true boundary, in my opinion, is holding at the edge. An honest strength. Where we stay true to what feels like too much and don’t use effort to override that. We have to be with our process to do this, though. Beyond the ideas of how we should be – present to our somatic sensations, intuition, and mentation.
It’s humbling and uncomfortable to stop where we’ve reached the limit of our conscious universe, but at the same time, our power is kept with us when we do. If I go beyond my conscious edge into a free fall, then you and I are in an inauthentic space, no longer related, and without the emergence of life behind us. The unconscious, or past, takes over.
The statement of a boundary usually comes up after this free fall. If we’re talking about boundaries, it’s likely that we’re not feeling each other. If I feel you, I will know when you’ve reached your limit. I won’t push further and honor your right to be where you are. Of course, I’m not touching on the more extreme examples where boundaries are crossed in our culture. But even these are also signals or symptoms of our inability to feel each other.
To tie this back into the topic of being met and meeting the world, it’s beautiful to see someone being true to their limitations. Someone who has the capacity to let another person down. Like I said earlier, we often fear this so much that we override our own process. But if you have ever seen someone stay with their edge – having the courage to meet this fear – you know how refreshing it is.
This is the space where something new is becoming. If we’re uncomfortable because it feels like something is ‘not working’ or we feel stuck then we will miss a great opportunity to witness the miracle of life. From what I can tell, we are constantly blowing through processes like this in modern-day culture.
However, by relating in a mature way, we can find ways to meet each other and accept not being met. The impossible-to-reach expectations fall away. Otherwise, we will validate our instability in the world by seeing all the ways we are not being seen or heard, but not taking responsibility for how we can create the soil of safety within ourselves.
At the core, it’s urgent that we create a culture that is nuanced, unhurried, and sensitive enough to the complexities of human development. We naturally have to start with ourselves, but moreover the communities we find ourselves in. This is not an individual endeavor. If we can find people and places that are safe enough to explore these processes inside of us, we will soon realize that we can go anywhere in the world and be who we need to be. This is what our culture needs most, people who don’t hold any part of themselves back.