From Weak to Strong to Powerful

Evolving from Survival to Fulfillment

When We Were Young

As babies, we develop our habits of connecting and communicating with others. We absorb information from the people and the world around us. And we do our best to fit in. Fitting in, and learning the rules, is essential for our survival.

We learn to express ourselves and notify others about our needs and preferences through our voice, our gestures, body language, and facial expression. Without being aware of it, we are also learning to connect and communicate with our families energetically.

On all three levels, the vocal, the behavioral, and the energetic, we copy what we perceive, we experiment with different methods, and we develop the habits that then take over and direct our relationships—often for the rest of our lives. Typically, the habits we develop are not significantly different from those of our parents. This is true even if we try really hard to break away from our families.

Unfortunately, our family members and teachers are not ideal teachers for us.  After all, they, subconsciously, learned their connection patterns from the generation before them, who learned from the generation before them, and so on, all the way back to the beginning of humanity. Humans at that time, as history teaches us, were mostly concerned with their survival. Sure enough, many of the ways we habitually connect and communicate with others are survival-oriented.

Even if we have some stability in our lives and careers, even if we are generally confident and kind, when we are stressed, we revert to connection and communication patterns that arise from the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid of needs, the survival and safety needs. These patterns are the ones that worked best for us when we couldn’t walk or find our own food. And they are the ones that our families accepted and responded to.

Survival-oriented communication is a function of the Survival Operating System. In the Survival OS, we are governed by our Sympathetic Nervous Systems (SNS). We are geared up to fight, to flee, or to freeze.

If it is our natural propensity to be fighters we may communicate verbally through aggressive words, curses, sarcasm, cutting remarks, teasing, discounting, loud volume, non-stop talking, insults, name-calling, aggressive questioning, or dismissal. Non-verbally we may communicate through angry gestures and facial expressions, or aggressive body postures and movements. We may even lash out physically, hitting or slapping another person, or damaging property. Energetically, whether we strike out physically or not, we are pushing outward, trying to take control through force, trying to impose our will on the other person. We try to survive by being the stronger force.

If, instead, our propensity is to flee or freeze, we may communicate verbally through conceding, clamming up, appeasing, pleading, justifying, or blaming ourselves. Our words may be passive-aggressive or entirely yielding to the other person. Non-verbally, we may take a defensive posture, turn away, wring our hands, sink into ourselves, make appeasing gestures, or completely disappear. Energetically we are becoming as small and invisible as possible. Instead of striking out, we turn the attack inward. We try to survive and control the situation by avoiding it completely—or by trying to change ourselves, focusing on our own faults.

All reactive, or survival-oriented connection patterns have flimsy boundaries, whether the tendency is toward aggressiveness or non-assertiveness. Aggressive patterns overreach psychologically and energetically, imposing on another’s energy field. Non-assertive patterns are porous, allowing energy to be drained inappropriately.

Almost everyone has one of these default patterns deeply ingrained in their subconscious mind. Because these survival-oriented interactions are not satisfying and are usually followed by waves of shame or regret, many of us have worked to find better solutions to the inevitable ruffles that occur in any relationship. But even if we have developed communication skills and we manage our emotional energy gracefully, when we encounter situations that stress us out, we still find ourselves falling back into the old patterns.

Stronger and Wiser

Survival Operating System connection and communication patterns do a fair job of ensuring survival and sometimes safety. But most of us realize at some point that they don’t do a good job of helping us satisfy our higher needs, like the social, esteem and self-actualization needs at the top of Maslow’s pyramid.

We learn to manage our emotional energy. Maybe we learn some strong communication skills. We learn to shift into the Success Operating System. We become more aware of the needs and feelings that drive our thoughts and behavior. We develop the capacity to observe ourselves and make conscious choices about the words and gestures we use. Energetically we are more aware of any power differential that may exist between ourselves and others.

The SNS and our survival mechanisms may still pull and tug at us, but we have greater goals in mind. We want to forge meaningful connections that transcend our attempts to meet our basic needs. We want to create relationships that last. And we want to like ourselves more; we’re tired of blaming ourselves and judging everyone else.

The Success Operating System takes ownership of its experiences. It can learn how to take full responsibility for its responses to the world. It begins to recognize that many of our perceptions of other people are actually projections of our own fears and wounds.

Success-oriented communication is emotionally intelligent. When we are identified with our Success OS, we recognize and process our own emotions and we can be present to help others with their feelings too. We can identify when someone else is trapped in a reactive, survival pattern and we can wait until a better time to try to connect, understand, and be understood.

The Success OS uses kind yet assertive words, tone of voice, and body language, though it is still actively, and emotionally engaged in its interpersonal interactions. It knows how to set personal boundaries for itself and how to respect them in others.

From Wiser to Powerful

As we become more consciously deliberate in our lives, our attention is drawn upward to becoming a better and better version of ourselves. Maslow refers to this as Self-Actualization or Self-Realization. We are no longer driven by our survival needs or our stored emotional charges. We have begun to recognize the types of thoughts that hold us back from our dreams. We feel pulled by our dreams and our drive to create. We want our relationships to match our upward focus.

When we shift into our Fulfillment Operating System, we can see through the eyes of unconditional love, forgiveness, celebrating differences, and intuition. We don’t see conflicts; we see opportunities to grow and to increase intimacy and love. This is true for us, in the Fulfillment OS, regardless of which OS others around us are identified with.