The Disconnection at the Root of So Much

Welcome to It’s Not What You Think. I’m Julie Cochrane, a clinical hypnotherapist and trauma-informed RTT therapist. This is where we look beneath the thoughts, reactions and patterns that can make life feel harder than it needs to and begin to understand what may actually be driving them. Because so often, the thing we think is the problem... isn’t really the problem at all. And today, I want to talk about something I believe sits underneath far more of our struggles than we realize. Disconnection. Not necessarily disconnection from other people. Disconnection from ourselves.

You can have a really full life and still feel disconnected from it. You can have people who love you. Friends you can call. A partner sleeping beside you. Children who need you. Work that keeps you busy. People texting you throughout the day. You can be needed by a lot of people. And still have this strange sense that somewhere along the way, you’ve become a little bit absent from your own life. Maybe you wouldn’t even call it disconnection. You might just say you’re tired. Or overwhelmed. Or you’ve been feeling a little off lately. Maybe your mind never really switches off. Maybe you find yourself thinking about everyone else all the time. What they need. Whether they’re okay. Whether they’re happy with you. What needs to be done next. Maybe you’re actually very good at life. You get things done. People rely on you. You manage things. You solve problems. And if I asked you what everybody around you needed right now, you could probably tell me. But if I asked you... What do you need? There might be a pause. And that pause is interesting. Because I’ve seen it so many times in my work. I’ll ask someone what they want and they’ll start telling me what makes sense. Or what their partner wants. Or what would be best for their children. Or what they think they should do. And I’ll say, “Okay... but what do you want?” And sometimes they genuinely don’t know. They’ve just spent so long orienting themselves around everything outside of them that they’ve lost some of the connection to what’s happening inside. And when that happens gradually, you often don’t even notice it. You just keep going.

I’ve become increasingly convinced over the years that disconnection sits underneath so many of the things we struggle with. We tend to name the symptom. Anxiety. Burnout. Perfectionism. People-pleasing. Feeling overwhelmed. Never being able to switch off. Relationship patterns that keep repeating themselves. And then naturally, we try to fix that thing. How do I stop feeling anxious? How do I stop caring what everybody thinks? How do I become more confident? How do I stop doing everything for everyone? How do I get my mind to shut up at three in the morning? And those are completely reasonable questions. But sometimes I think we’re beginning too far downstream. Because what if some of those things aren’t actually the root problem? What if they’re what disconnection starts to look like after it’s been there for a while?

There’s a strange paradox here. Sometimes we learn to disconnect from ourselves in order to stay connected to other people. And I think that’s really important to understand. Imagine a child growing up in a home where Mum becomes overwhelmed very easily. That child might become very good at being easy. Or perhaps Dad gets angry when there’s disagreement. So the child becomes agreeable. Maybe there’s a lot happening in the family and one child becomes the responsible one. The helper. The one nobody has to worry about. Or perhaps love and approval are very connected to achievement. Good marks. Good behaviour. Doing things well. Making the family proud. Nobody has to sit that child down and say, “Here’s what you need to do to belong in this family.” Children are incredibly good at figuring that out. They read the room. They notice what gets warmth. They notice what creates tension. They notice what gets attention. They notice what makes someone withdraw. And then they adapt. Maybe being helpful works. Maybe achieving works. Maybe staying quiet works. Maybe being funny works. Maybe never asking for anything works. Maybe keeping everybody happy works. And those adaptations can be incredibly intelligent. They help us maintain the connection we depend on. But sometimes there’s a cost. Because if being connected to you requires me to continually override myself... I may eventually become very good at overriding myself. If expressing anger threatens connection, I may stop noticing my anger. If having needs causes problems, I may stop acknowledging my needs. If disagreement creates tension, I may become very good at agreeing. If being impressive gets me love, I may become very good at achieving. And then twenty or thirty or fifty years later, I may simply say: “That’s just who I am.” “I’ve always been the strong one.” “I’m just really independent.” “I’m a perfectionist.” “I’m the one everybody comes to.” “I’ve always been good at reading people.” And maybe those things are genuinely part of who you are. But sometimes there’s a history underneath them too.

Take being really good at reading people. That can absolutely be empathy. But sometimes it’s also something you learned because knowing what was happening with everybody else felt important. You walk into a room and almost automatically scan it. Who’s upset? Is something wrong? Was that comment directed at me? Why did their tone change? Are they annoyed? Did I do something? Do I need to fix this? You may not consciously think any of those things. You just notice. Your attention goes outward incredibly quickly. And when you’ve spent years doing that, you can become remarkably attuned to other people. But while all that attention is going outward, there may be very little left coming inward. What am I feeling right now? Did that hurt me? Am I actually comfortable with this? Do I want to do this? Am I exhausted? Am I angry? Do I need something? And even when you do notice, there can be another automatic response. “It’s fine.” And I hear that one a lot. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s not a big deal. They didn’t mean anything by it. I can handle it. And maybe you can. You probably have. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was fine.

This is one of the reasons disconnection can be difficult to recognize. It doesn’t always look dysfunctional. Sometimes it looks extremely functional. It can look like the person holding everything together. The successful professional. The mother everyone depends on. The friend who always answers the phone. The person who never asks for help. The person who anticipates what everyone needs before they even ask. The person who can handle anything. And there can be enormous pride in that identity. There can also be enormous exhaustion. Because if your sense of safety or belonging has become connected to being useful, capable, agreeable or needed, stopping can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. Try doing nothing for an afternoon. Not productive resting. Not listening to a podcast while cleaning the kitchen. Not catching up on emails from the sofa. Actually doing nothing. For some people, that feels wonderful. For others, within about fifteen minutes, something starts happening. Restlessness. Guilt. A sense that you should be doing something. And that reaction is worth noticing. Because sometimes we’re so accustomed to functioning that we don’t quite know who we are when we’re simply being.

Then we take all of this and place it inside the world we’re living in now. A world that makes disconnection incredibly easy. We’re more technologically connected than humans have ever been. You can wake up and, before your feet touch the floor, know what happened overnight in five different countries. You can know what someone you went to high school with thirty years ago had for dinner. You can see what your friends are doing on vacation. You can read hundreds of opinions about something you hadn’t even thought about five minutes earlier. There is almost no limit to the amount of information, stimulation and access we have to other people. And technology itself isn’t the villain here. I think that conversation is too simplistic. Technology connects us in wonderful ways too. It allows me to work with people all over the world. It lets families stay connected across continents. It gives us access to communities and information that previous generations could never have imagined. The issue isn’t simply that we have phones. The issue is that our attention is almost constantly being invited somewhere else. And attention matters. Because whatever repeatedly gets your attention begins to shape your experience. If every quiet space gets filled... if every uncomfortable feeling gets interrupted... if every moment of boredom gets replaced with scrolling... if every question immediately gets answered by somebody outside of you... there are fewer opportunities to hear yourself. And if you already learned early in life to orient toward everybody else, modern life gives you endless opportunities to keep doing exactly that. So now you have these two things working together. An old pattern that says, “Pay attention out there.” And a world that says, “Absolutely. Here’s an infinite amount to pay attention to.” No wonder we can lose the thread back to ourselves.

And that disconnection eventually shows up somewhere. Maybe it shows up as anxiety because your attention is constantly scanning ahead for what could happen. Maybe it shows up as resentment because you keep saying yes when some part of you wants to say no. Maybe it shows up as exhaustion because you’ve built your identity around being the one who handles everything. Maybe it shows up as perfectionism because getting things right became connected to feeling okay. Maybe it shows up in relationships where you’re so focused on whether the other person wants you that you forget to ask whether you actually want them. That one is a big one. We can become so preoccupied with being chosen that we forget we’re choosing too. And maybe it shows up in quieter ways. You’ve created the life you thought you wanted and somehow it doesn’t feel the way you thought it would. Nothing is obviously wrong. But something feels missing. And sometimes what’s missing isn’t another achievement or another relationship or another change. Sometimes what’s missing is you. Your own presence in your life.

So what does reconnecting actually look like? I don’t think it begins with some enormous life change. And I definitely don’t think we need to turn reconnection into another thing to get right. Because we’re very good at doing that. Now I need to meditate. Now I need to journal. Now I need a morning routine. Now I need to walk in nature every day. Now I need to be more present. And suddenly reconnection has become another performance. Another standard we can fail at. That’s not what I mean. I think reconnection often begins much more quietly. It begins with noticing. Imagine somebody asks you to do something this week. Before the automatic “Of course” comes out of your mouth, just notice what happens inside you. Maybe there’s a tiny tightening in your stomach. Maybe your shoulders tense. Maybe there’s a split second of irritation. Maybe your first internal response is actually, “I really don’t want to.” You don’t even have to do anything about it yet. Just notice it. That’s information. Or maybe someone says something that hurts you and your immediate response is to explain it away. “They’re just stressed.” “They didn’t mean it.” “It’s not worth making a thing of.” Again, you don’t need to immediately confront anyone. Just notice that something in you was hurt before you rushed in to make it okay. That’s connection. Or maybe you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day and instead of immediately pushing through the next thing, you stop for ten seconds and actually feel how tired you are. Not fix it. Not judge it. Notice it. That’s connection too.

The goal isn’t to become completely self-focused. Healthy connection isn’t about turning away from other people. It’s about being able to remain connected to yourself while you’re connected to them. I can care about what you need and still know what I need. I can love you and disagree with you. I can understand why you behaved the way you did and still acknowledge that it hurt me. I can help you without automatically abandoning myself. I can belong without disappearing. That’s a very different kind of connection. And for someone who learned early that belonging required adaptation, it can take time to discover that. Because somewhere inside there may still be an old expectation: If I’m fully myself, will I still be loved? If I say no, will you still want me? If I disappoint you, will we still be okay? If I need something, will I become too much? Those aren’t intellectual questions. You can know perfectly well that you’re allowed to have boundaries and still feel incredibly uncomfortable setting one. You can know that rest is healthy and still feel guilty when you stop. You can know that you’re worthy regardless of what you achieve and still feel anxious when you aren’t producing. That’s why logic alone often doesn’t change these patterns. They were learned through experience. And changing them requires new experiences too.

So perhaps over the next few days, rather than trying to fix anything, you could become a little curious. Where does your attention naturally go? When something happens, do you immediately check everybody else before checking yourself? When you make a decision, how quickly does “What will they think?” enter the equation? When you’re tired, do you notice? When something doesn’t feel right, do you trust that feeling or immediately argue with it? When somebody asks what you want, do you know? There are no right answers here. This isn’t a test. It’s simply a way of beginning to hear yourself again. Because reconnection doesn’t necessarily mean becoming someone different. It may mean becoming more available to the person who has been there all along. And I want to add something important to that. For some people, the idea of “returning to yourself” doesn’t quite fit. Because what if you’ve never really known what it feels like to be connected to yourself? What if you learned to adapt so early that there isn’t some previous version of you that you remember coming home to? Then maybe this isn’t a return. Maybe it’s a discovery. Maybe you’re getting to know yourself in a way you never had the opportunity to before. And I think there’s something incredibly hopeful about that. Because it means you haven’t missed your chance. You’re not trying to recover some version of yourself that disappeared years ago. You can begin exactly where you are.

And that’s where I want to go in the next episode. Because once we begin talking about disconnection, the obvious question becomes: How do I know if I’ve lost touch with myself? What does that actually look like in ordinary life? Because usually there isn’t a moment where you suddenly realize, “Oh. I’ve become disconnected from myself.” It happens slowly. Quietly. Through thousands of tiny moments where your attention moves away from you and toward what everybody else needs, expects or wants. Until one day, perhaps someone asks a very simple question... “What do you want?” And you realize you’re not quite sure. Next time, we’re going to talk about what happens when you’ve lost that thread back to yourself and how you can begin finding it. Not by fixing yourself. By beginning to notice yourself again. And if some of what we’ve talked about today feels familiar, this is also the kind of work that sits at the heart of Noma. I created Noma to support you not only in the difficult moments, but in understanding the patterns underneath them. Through guided audio experiences, Noma helps you recognize what’s happening, understand where some of those thoughts, feelings and reactions may be coming from, reconnect with yourself and begin responding differently over time. It’s not therapy and it’s not meditation. It’s a different kind of emotional wellbeing support designed to meet you where you are and help you create meaningful change in how you experience yourself and your life. You can explore Noma at mynoma.health. You can also find the original article behind today’s episode and more of my writing at JulieCochrane.com. I’m Julie Cochrane and this is It’s Not What You Think. Thanks for spending this time with me. I’ll see you next time.