Life lessons from burrow to bedroom
Soooo, I accidentally killed a kitten this month… Yes, there, I said it and it feels just as nauseating to say now as it did a few weeks ago when the incident occurred. The experience was absolutely awful and it left me thinking a lot about the concept of attachment and impermanence in its aftermath.
I just started a house-sitting gig here in Baja for the summer. A small kitten climbed up into the undercarriage of my car and somehow got crushed and killed when I drove away. It was a gut-wrenching and horrible circumstance, which I could not have anticipated. But it left me feeling traumatized and terrorized regardless of it being no particular fault of my own.
The usual blaming, shaming voices began to surface and scold me. And although I logically knew that I had not made any mistake on my part to cause this incident, the thought of killing a kitten created a menacing dark cloud of guilt that shadowed over me nonetheless. The grief was real and sometimes you have to simply honor the sadness and allow for it. So, that is what I did. I sat quietly with myself and stayed in tune with the slow stillness of my breath.
However, it can be a truly disturbing thing to witness death, and having to process another creature’s impermanence can bring up difficult existential questions and realizations. This was actually the second time I had to say goodbye to a cat that week, since I had just moved out of my apartment to house-sit and had to leave my neighborhood “rent-a-cat”. Chuck Norris, as I affectionately call him, has been coming to see me for three years in a row and is the closest thing I have recently had to a consistent life partner. I adore that cat and it always breaks my heart when I have to leave him for the summer. I secretly say a little prayer to the universe, hoping he will be there when I come back the following year.
The temporary nature of life is particularly salient in my area of southern Baja, Mexico due to the transient and harsh characteristics of this environment. As the seasons shift, so does the weather and likewise the people that come here to experience it. During the winter and spring, there is a large traveler community that comes to interact with the wind and the water before the weather gets too hot and the rain and hurricanes come. In light of this, much of the area becomes a bit of a ghost town for the summer and fall seasons since the population becomes thin and thus the surrounding services that are available shrink in size as well.
Consequently, the community you interact with is constantly coming and going, and there is no certainty that anyone you become friends with at the beginning of the season will remain as a constant in your life once they leave. Likewise, because there is a lack of services, there is a huge dog and cat overpopulation issue and there are often numerous rent-a-pet companions available at every corner and borough. It is impossible to know whom, if anyone, these animals belong to; and although some of them do get adopted, for many of them street survival is simply a way of life. And it is a harsh way of life sometimes, since in the spring, summer and fall there are days where the heat can feel unrelenting and the air is stagnant as it clutches onto the humidity that it will eventually squeeze itself into droplets of rain. Although, it could take weeks or months for any precipitation to actually occur, and in the meantime, the rubber seals on your windows crack, the paint of your car begins to peel and you find a thin sandy film of dust on everything you own, shortening the lifespan of material possessions considerably.
Knowing that this is how life works here though doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye to my friends or furry companions, however, as change inevitably comes and must occur. Strong sensations and emotions can and do come up, but I have realized that it is my relationship to these feelings and my perception of them that need not be fixed or static.
In her recent book How Emotions are Made, psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about how our emotions are predicted when multiple parts of the brain emit sensation and then we associate a collection of concepts with these sensations, which gives them meaning. These concepts are created by the way we have organized the experiences of our lives and the language we use to talk about the sensations as our feelings.
So, if I can shift the relationship I have with death and impermanence, for example, then I need not register the sensations that come up as bad, awful or debilitating. Instead, I actually have the power to soften my reaction to the feelings that come up in my body to one of acceptance and peace instead. And this is exactly what I tried to do when things got hard this month and I started to recognize the weighty familiarity of grief.
Instead of thinking about the impermanence of life as something awful and scary (which I 100% used to do, for years…), I have been able to shift my perception and now see it as something that simply IS. Our transient state is part of being alive and my personal human experience. I have also softened to the idea that my energy, which is part of the same life force that has created all living beings, will likely not stop abruptly when I pass on. Instead it will continue to flow beyond my mortal body and into the air that creates our earth’s atmosphere and beyond, connecting all the planets and the universe as a whole. And when I think about death and change in a more interconnected way, then to me it is no longer terrifying, and in contrast, I am now able to accept it and see it as part of the ebb and flow of life as a much more expansive energetic entity.
This has actually helped me with the way I see my romantic relationships these days as well. I no longer see them as something that has to last “until death do us part.” I now try to see the way I love and move in my relationships as beautiful in their full temporal capacity also. Sure, I would love a partner that could be my companion as I grow old; however, I am willing to accept the beauty of being in love, even if it does not hold the potential for permanence. Although, believing this way fearlessly is sometimes scary as hell!
I think it’s a sign of emotional growth, however, when you are able to recognize your default attachment patterns and are willing to work with them to try to move beyond them. The foundation of these theories stems from studies by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth in the 1960s which observed the way that infants reacted when separated from their caregivers. The bond that each infant has with their caregiver predicts whether they will behave in a secure, anxious (avoidant or resistant) or disorganized (unpredictable ) manner if they are abandoned. Whether our caregiver was someone we could reliably count on or not affected the wiring of our autonomic nervous system as we grew up, and the way we were most inclined to react when we were very young shapes the way we move in our relationships in the present moment still. After all, our romantic partners do usually become our primary attachment figures.
Since these theories were initially presented, there have been numerous other researchers who have now created their own spin on these concepts. Psychologist Stan Tatkin, PsyD MFT and author of the bestselling book Wired for Love refers to our attachment styles as having the characteristics of anchors, waves and islands. I personally love these metaphors and find it much easier to visualize attachment styles when I think of them:
Anchors - possess secure attachment, have learned that relationships are important and it is safe to be in a relationship. They are collaborative and cooperative and comfortable with physical and emotional intimacy.
Waves - anxious attachment style that may sometimes seem angry and resistant, or look like dashed hope. Have issues with trust and believe they are going to be abandoned and so become dependent and cling to others. Sometimes look for proof of impending abandonment, which reinforces their desire for contact - although they might be hostile and distancing even as they seek it. Relationships may feel like a roller coaster ride with waves.
Islands - anxious avoidant attachment style where it may be hard to connect with long term romantic partners. Have issues with trust, but believe if they depend on someone else then their independence will be taken away and they will feel trapped or suffocated and so in order to avoid this an island will seek distance.
It turns out that although you may be predisposed towards having a certain attachment style, it can change as you continue to love and live your life, however. Knowing where you are and where you have come from can empower you to change your behavior as you move forward into the future. If you are unsatisfied in your relationships and start noticing some distinct patterns then you can shift both your behavior and your way of thinking so that you can settle your nervous system to try to become more secure.
Personally, I have spent a lot of time vacillating between being an island (and sometimes a wave) in the past, but these days I am working on being my own secure anchor. In order to do so, I have been working hard on cultivating joy, which comes from within me versus an external source. I am getting more comfortable with the tranquility of stillness and am not always chasing my next dopamine fix—although it is quite fun to do so, I must admit! I am able to recognize that I am awesome (both inside and out) and I am not interested in trying to change myself to live up to someone else’s vision or fantasy standards. In some ways I am really in love with myself, but know that by loving myself with complete and utter self-acceptance I am training myself to be able to love another human wholeheartedly without depleting the heartfelt space where all my love needs to come from.
So, I feel open these days to the possibility of love in all of its many relationship manifestations, but I don’t NEED romantic love in order to feel like I am living a rich and fulfilling life. And I believe that having enough love within myself will liberate me to be vulnerable with my partners when I need to be in order to move slowly in intimacy, so I can both express and fully feel when it comes to the sensations of touch as well as difficult conversations.
You can actually cultivate “earned security” in your attachment style, but it can only come from personal growth in your body and brain as you boldly try to engage and evolve in maturity with both your new and current relationships. Our brains have incredible plasticity to reshape and rewire to adapt to our present experience with our environment and community. So, if we work on cultivating healthy relationships where we value both connection and boundaries in our romantic, familial and friendship spheres daily, then we can use every day to model what healthy relationships should look like. It all starts, however, by really working on the health and well-being within ourselves and opening up our hearts and minds to love and life being experiences that are flexible and fluid.
With that said, however, I would like to honor a creature that has found comfort with less change and more stability in its life and whose mating behavior also inspired much of current attachment theory research. The prairie vole is one of nature’s quintessential poster animals for lasting social monogamy and attachment, which is actually exceedingly rare in the large scale animal kingdom with only 3% in this category. They thrive in companionship and mating for life (despite their occasional outside sexual dalliances). So, what is this compact, pocket-sized creature’s sexy little secret?
Like most species, some of their mating and bonding behavior has been influenced by the sparse availability of resources in their expansive mid-western environment. However, it seems that there is something especially unique about the prairie vole in the way they interact with the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Hormones influence the function of a body’s cells and oxytocin has long been known to influence lactation, birth and maternal care, but there is an extra special role that it plays in pair bonding too.
After much courting, the prairie vole actually engages in an unusual amount of vaginal and cervical stimulation for sex (up to 40 hours worth!), which releases a noteworthy amount of oxytocin over their 1-3 year life span, where they will produce a litter of young at a rate of approximately once a month. Apparently, the prairie vole has an extra special amount of vasopressin receptors as well, which also encourage attachment and bonding. The more vasopressin receptors you have, the more likely you are to be monogamous too, as evidenced by the prairie vole’s nearly identical cousin the meadow vole, as well as the still “single and swinging” bachelor prairie voles who do NOT have as many of these receptors. These hormonally-led trends have been seen when it comes to bonding tendencies in humans too.
Numerous studies of the prairie vole have now shown that the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin work symphonically with their entire brains to influence their preference for mates, as well as the way they seek out touch and affection. And although some of their monogamous paired preference is hard-wired in their brains at birth, other parts of their brains begin firing their reward centers (an area affecting addiction in humans) after the prairie vole’s mating bond becomes more stable and established later in life. Sex and even desire are reinforced by their brain’s overall stimulation and interaction with these reward centers as well. The effect being that their neurobiology later influences the way the prairie vole develops emotionally with their partners and the way they interact socially on a larger scale as well. When a prairie vole loses its partner, it even experiences something that closely resembles grief.
Because of the in-depth way that scientists have studied the brains of the prairie vole, we have been able to extend our understanding to humans as well regarding the way they live and love. Humans get a rush of oxytocin from both physical touch and orgasm, but also from eye contact with those we care about. When we activate our neurological systems responsible for empathy and perspective shifting we can broaden the areas of our brain that experience emotion as a whole—and vasopressin and emotion mobility are closely related.
And although much like the prairie vole, humans use more than just specialized parts of our brains to process attachment and connection. It is uniquely human to be able to incorporate choice into our experiences, which can still affect the way our brains continue to be wired in the future. When we are flexible with our perception, it affects the overall plasticity and function of our brains, which can lead to an expanded relationship with attachment with our partners, friends, children and parents, and even those in our lives that we love and lose—like our pets and kittens.
