Connect With Your Aliveness By Being You

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

There’s a constant human impulse to change ourselves in order to be loved. As children, we have no choice but to adapt to survive. As my teacher, Dr. Laurence Heller, founder of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) for healing attachment, relational, and developmental trauma—explains: If I just show up less, have fewer needs, avoid being a burden, not be dependent, or look perfect, then I’ll be loved.

He goes on to say that this is the fantasy that helps the child keep going, holding on to hope. The point isn’t to judge ourselves for this, but to understand it. Self-judgment is actually part of the same failed strategy of self-improvement: If I’m not loved, it must mean I’m not doing a good enough job. So we criticize ourselves, and in doing so, we fall right back into the old attachment dynamic.

From my trainings in NARM and NeuroAffective Touch® (NA Touch)—developed by Dr. Aline Lapierre—I’ve come to see that the journey toward being able to be ourselves involves reconnecting to our Essence. Essence is the core of our being: the deep, authentic qualities that are innate to us before conditioning, trauma, or survival adaptations cover them over. Some describe it as our true nature, characterized by aliveness, love, joy, peace, strength, creativity, and curiosity. Essence isn’t something we have to earn or achieve.

From Dr. Lapierre's trainings which focuses on womb and preverbal attachment ruptures, I'm intrigued by how our life force already carries the developmental blueprint for us to grow and thrive. This blueprint shapes us—from cells to embryo to fetus to the baby who instinctively knows when it’s time to push out of the womb. But early trauma can disrupt that connection, cutting us off from our essential self. In some traditions, essence is spoken of almost like a birthright: the soul qualities we’re born with.

When clients begin to reconnect with their essence, there is often a deep ease—a sense of wholeness and vitality—because so much energy is freed up from the exhausting cycle of thinking, fixing, and striving.

I’ll be writing a series that explores how we disconnect from our essence—our real self—and offer some tools to begin returning home to ourselves.

Brianna Lia Ho, MBA, BBA-PSYC is a NARM Master Practitioner & Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, also certified in Integral Somatic Psychology as well as in spiritual counseling with One-Spirit Interfaith in NYC. She’s also trained in somatic attachment, including Neuro-Affective Touch, the Experienced-Based Brain & Somatic Resilience Regulation. She works with clients internationally via Zoom. www.Essence-Alive.com.