Questions for When Community Feels Like *No Thank You*
A written and voice love note to all the parts within us that find community hard. May we see them, meet them, and head toward intertwining ourselves for the coming times.
For an audio version of this article with some extra snippets here and there:
It is almost universal to the human experience that we were hurt at some tender or pivotal time/s in our lives, and hence tucked parts of us away that no longer felt safe to be fully, vulnerably seen or held by others.
We’re a social species that requires co-regulation and the other for our individual and collective health.
But trauma and hurt, plus wider systems of capitalism etc has so many of us turning to hyper-independence instead of inter-dependence.
We become the cancer cell, functioning as a sole aberrant unit, as opposed to a cell within a wider mycelial network, that contributes to the wider thriving of all.
One creates pathology, the other homeostasis.
(If our individual actions are the microcosm, the wider human population and all we play out is then a macrocosm, this hyperindepedence hasn’t created the best of circumstances, yes?)
The chaos and collapse that will come before a newer form of our world and humanity will emerge is asking us to return to inter-dependence. To mimicking, rediscovering and redefining the systems we see in nature, mycelium, indigenous ways of being.
We hear the cry for rebuilding community everywhere, but this article wishes to address the fact that even the thought of doing so can press many buttons in our nervous systems about how safe it feels to rely on others, or to be relied upon.
We’ve, in varying degrees, lost the capacity to feel okay and safe enough to turn to each other in our deep, messy, vulnerable humanity and relate to each other, work together, hold and support each other.
My current musings and current work: find the gnarly bits, the parts that feel scared or get their back up at the mere thought of being close, creating and living more with others. To get to know them, tend to them, meet and soften and heal them.
Because we need these parts on board. All of us need each other’s nervous systems okay with being together again, to make it through this and out the other side.
I invite you to make 2026 the year to tend to your inner world so you can tend to community, so it may tend to you in return. Repeat ad neaseum.
Hoarding resources, which many of us are feeling the call to do right now, is actually the antithesis of this.
I do not think you can pay or prep your way through this. The consciousness of earth and thereby humanity is shifting, and we’re being asked to change and flow with it. (Read this for some great expansive views on this).
There are people in my life who are natural community builders, connectors. I am this to some degree, more than others I know, and a lot less than others I know. Some in my life would share whatever they had, even if it was little, to ensure I didn’t go hungry or cold. Some others I feel would struggle internally to do this.
Community is one of my highest values, and the strong pull and ache I feel to be fully seen, accepted, held by others is so alive. Its there so have those things, and then do them in turn. To really be apart of something.
I then see the part of me that freaks out, starts thrashing and scratching and absolutely wants to fight or flight the fuck out of there.
Having people too close is too much. It might not be safe. It will be uncomfortable. They will see too much.
“Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it” - James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long The Trains Been Gone
Or, another pattern I can slip into, is inhabiting the Rescuer and deciding I’m going to swoop in, insert myself and decide I will be the hero in someones story, leading to me giving my time and energy from an ungrounded place. I then act from stress, give beyond my capacity (which actually at times has been very limited), and burn myself out. Then I feel like community is the soul sucking demon that’s made me fatigued, when really, it’s my own choices and energy I inhabited as I entered that space.
Of course you don’t have to be someone’s highest idea of a friend on confidante to be in community with them. You don’t have to be perfect, to have healed all your trauma. Community is a group of people coming together due to some shared or vested interest (work, neighbourhood, hobby) and bumbling along together whilst the bump into each others joys and gnarly bits.
We’ve all had the person at the workshop, workplace or 3 doors down on the street that you wish would just shut up, move away or quit.
But, if push came to shove and they had the right sized ladder for when you lock yourself out of your house and need to climb in through the window (I may or may not be speaking from personal experience here), and they are decent enough to lend it to you, there is community in action. You don’t have to be best buds, you just have to head toward your common goal or look after each other.
And, I know by virtue of you somehow landing on this page, that you’d do the same for them, dear reader.
Your nervous system might feel like and tell you that it wants to hide and do it all itself.
But truly, underneath it all, it really does want to be in reciprocity, community.
It wants to sit across the fire from others and do it with them.
So here are some questions, if useful to you, that I am currently reflecting and pondering.
That reveal the parts of me that find being in community alarming in some way. So I can get to know and acknowledge them. I don’t have to magically heal it all, to be perfect, to be best friends with everyone I connect with, but I know if these parts soften, even just a little more, that I will be able to inhabit the energy of community more fully. And that feels worthwhile at this current juncture.
Questions I’m asking:
How stressful does it feel to imagine not prepping at all, and instead relying on the strength of your community and networks to all band together and get each other through this?
What part and how much of you feels afraid to rely upon or deeply need someone else? As if your survival depended on it?
To have someone who isn’t your child, partner or family rely on you? As if their survival depended on it?
How can I show up for the other even when it’s a bit inconvenient, and build that community muscle bit by bit?
How can I invite people into my life to see me in my imperfections, so my nervous system can build safety around being with others in my vulnerability and humanity, and thereby giving others permission to do that too?
How can I enter community from a place of openness, not still secretly hoarding my energy or resources, or not unsustainably over giving either? (this one didn’t make it into the audio, sorry)
Building community and networks that last, that are as strong and reflective of vast numbers of intertwining and in-conversation tree roots takes time.
But for so many reasons, to so many of our nervous systems, we’ve ended up in a place where stripping off to plunge our soft fleshy body-roots into the earth feels alarming and itchy and uncomfortable and a no.
If this feels resonant, to any part of you, spend some time getting to know these parts of your psyche, as this is the first step toward furling around fellow roots in a way that creates thriving for all involved.
These coming times may also just force us into these networks, and when this happens let us give ourselves grace as we figure out how to inter-relate in real time.
But spending some moments understanding how you may soften and yield to this process with more joy than fear will surely have us in good stead for the period that awaits us.
Being right alongside you,
Claire xo