Distancing was survival. When the present was too dangerous to inhabit fully, when being present meant feeling things that would break you—you developed the ability to watch your life as if it were happening to someone else. Now you accomplish without experiencing, achieve without satisfaction, move through days feeling like a spectator. You are physically present but experientially absent, going through motions without inhabiting them.
Living at distance means missing your own life, achieving without fulfillment, having experiences that do not feel like yours.
Returning to presence means risking the pain of feeling, discovering that you can handle more than you believed, learning that presence is the only way to truly live.
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Content informed by trauma research, polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges), somatic experiencing (Peter Levine), and nervous system regulation studies. For comprehensive citations and further reading, see Unfiltered Wisdom: The Book.
About the Author
Robert Greene is the author and founder of Unfiltered Wisdom, a US Navy veteran, and a trauma survivor with over 10 years of experience in nervous system regulation and somatic healing. He is certified in Yoga for Meditation from the Yogic School of Mystic Arts (Dharamsala, India, 2016) and affiliated with Holistic Veterans, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving veterans in Santa Cruz, California.