Why care isn’t enough: what we’re really starving for

While walking down the street, we witness a stranger suddenly get hurt. It is instinctual to want to offer understanding and support.

When a loved one is sad, it is instinctual to feel their pain and want to make them feel better.

Whether we follow through on that instinct depends on our intention and circumstances. But that is a different thread of exploration.

The instinct itself?

That is human nature.

We call it care.

Care is our ability to offer support, inspiration, and protection to another letting them know their existence matters to us.

With a rise of trauma awareness and healing modalities why is it, that even with this instinct, we still feel lonely and misunderstood?

Could it be that care alone is not enough to help us feel deeply connected?

What might be the missing piece?

Attunement

Our first introduction to attunement is through our mother or caregiver - when their awareness brought harmony and connection to our specific needs.

When we were little, our needs weren’t just limited to being fed, cleaned and put to sleep.

Our survival also depended on skin-to-skin contact, eye connection, mirroring our little coos and aahs, and smiling when we smiled.

Essentially, it was about matching our energy, in the process developing our sense of connection and bringing awareness to our growing individuality.

This brings us to understanding what attunement really is.

Attunement is presence.

Connecting with who we really are, not forcing ourselves to fit into external expectations or projections.

It is a felt sense.

The ability to feel the inner workings of another and establish a connection from that place, through our sensory alignment.

It rests on responsiveness.

Responding to the subtle energy cues, feeling as they are, not as we want them to feel.

This responsiveness is often subtle. For example:

When you say ‘I’m doing ok’ and you are not, and your loved one can feel your sadness. They don’t ignore it but instead choose to acknowledge it. It may be as simple as a hug without words, a loving touch on the arm, or even a pause to breathe with you. They are not trying to track your emotions to change how you feel or becoming your therapist. They are simply present with where you are at.

Or:

When you tell a loved one that you are going through something, perhaps grieve or anxiety, and instead of saying ‘you are strong, you’ll get through it,’ or ‘speak to your therapist about it’, or changing the topic, they say ‘how I can support you during this time?’, ‘I feel you, and I want you to know am here’.

It’s in these moments.

In the intention, feeling and resonance that invites connection and deepens intimacy.

Often not even spoken, but deeply felt.

When there is a lack of attunement in our care, we miss the most vital piece that sustains connection.

Respect for us as unique, highly individualised hearts, with needs that may be similar but still very different to society’s expectations, judgements or perceptions.

This lack of respect creates tiny little ruptures in our relational field and when these little ruptures accumulate over time, they leave us feeling confused:

‘But they care about me, so why do I feel so alone?’
’Am I being too much?’
’I am so petty; I shouldn’t rock the boat.’
’No one understands me’

This further leads to self-silencing, isolation, hyper-independence, hopelessness and disassociation. And longing? It quitely lingers.

And we unknowingly approach connection with thoughts, concepts and ideas while our hearts ache in silence.

If you’ve lived this, you know the ache well.

You’ve probably felt this. The sting of being cared for but not truly seen.

Conversations where the right words were there, but missing resonance.

Moments when you felt more alone in company.

This is where the real fracture lies.

It’s not that we have forgotten how to care.

It’s that we have forgotten how to be with someone in the way their heart actually needs.

Which leads to the question, why do we struggle with giving and receiving attunement?

Our childhood experiences (overtly traumatic or ordinary) pave the way we relate in our adult relationships.

Often we are not aware of what we need to feel emotionally safe and connected.

We lack practice in expressing these needs. And deep down, many of us fear that if we honour our needs, we will be attacked, belittled, shamed, rejected or abandoned.

We also live in a culture where many acquaintances are mistaken for friendships.

And true friendships are treated as casual acquaintances. Without this clarity we are blind to where to commit our consistent effort, time and presence to build mutual reciprocity.

And perhaps most subtly, we misunderstand the difference between care and attunement. Both are expressions of love, but care is generalised and universal, whereas attunement is more personal and deeply individualised.

Without attunement, care can feel hollow but the good news is that this capacity isn’t all gone.

Even if we didn’t receive enough of it while growing up, or it feels foreign in our adult relationships due to years spent numbing ourselves against disappointment, attunement is a skill that can be remembered, practiced and reclaimed.

And how do we begin to reclaim attunement?

It starts with becoming aware of the body, as though it were your beloved.

Not to manage or fix it but to know its language well so you can feel the whispers before it even speaks.

You slowly build your internal capacity to feel everything, not just emotions but every subtle movement, every whisper of sensation as though your life depended on it.

You let go of trying to understand the body, and instead practice what it is sensing, feeling, responding and attuning with, just like the delicate sensors on a butterfly’s wing.

It’s presence, not performance.

It’s not about becoming something or mastering a skill.

It’s about learning how to simply be.

At its core, it is the healing balm that is missing in so many of our relational interactions.

Heart of Presence is just such an offering.

A space to practice this way of being. To feel your own presence as deeply as you wish to be felt by another.

It’s not about perfection, it is responsiveness.

A new kind of intimacy, one that not only sees, but feels and responds from that place.

If something in these words stirred you, you are welcome to join me in Heart of Presence.

We gather online, once a month, every third Thursday, to explore what it means to be attuned - with ourselves and with one another.

You can find the details at this link or send me an email and I will add you to my mailing list to be invited in.

In the end, its not care alone that heals us.

Its in the moment someone meets you exactly where you are. And then stays there long enough for you to believe you are worthy of being met.