When you look at a forest, it looks as all the trees are individuals, standing there in the ground all alone. What you might not know, is that underneath the ground, they are all interconnected.
Did you know that trees operate through an intricate system called the “wood wide web”, which consists of a symbiosis of fungi and their root system?
Through this interconnection they make friends, wage wars, communicate and help each other, and even keep their long gone relatives alive by providing the stub with nourishment, for hundreds of years after the tree has fallen.
We humans are the same. Our connection doesn’t show on the surface, but just like the trees, we are connected to the people around us. One negative word from someone you love, and your insides can go haywire but when is the opposite and is your significant other, you can’t have enough places to have sex on and have fun.
This is what’s called “interpersonal neurobiology” and is turning out to have more impact on an individual’s health than previously was known.
If a tree’s root system is unhealthy, you cannot expect the tree to be healthy either. Same goes for us humans. We need our tribe. Be it our families, friends, church or whichever group of people sees us, lifts us up, nourishes us and supports us. When a group of people do that for each other, the results can be magical.
This fact is very important when it comes to trauma and healing from trauma. Linda Bacon, PhD, said it very well:
“Defining resilience as the ability to bounce back from difficulty is insufficient; resilience also requires the having resources to support you in bouncing back. If you define resilience as an individual trait, individuals get blamed for their inability to recover from adversity.”
What this means is this, and this is an unescapeable fact: You do not heal your wounds in isolation. Human beings are not meant to go through that sh*t alone.
