To Be Held Series: Understanding your Deep Desire

I came across this photo of myself with my mom a couple of years ago. I had never seen it before. In the photo, I am a chunky one-year-old, with thick thighs pouring over my mother’s arms. My mother holds me tightly and gently gazes at me. I am close to her chest and I appear perfectly at rest. I am so attuned to, my entire being, embraced. 

I didn’t know why at the time but I immediately was filled with so much emotion. I found myself imagining what it must have been like to depend on my mother so completely and to be so comforted by her touch.

As I reflected on this experience, I discovered what I saw in the picture was the personification of a deep desire within me; I want to be held.

In fact, I am not alone in this. We all do. You might not realize it but inside each of us is a desire to be swept up, to be seen with eyes of compassion, and to have all of our needs attuned to. We want to be at rest, in a loving embrace. 

In order to better understand where this innate desire comes from, we need to understand attachment.

Attachment refers to our bonds with people whom we depend on. The people we know will be there for the long haul. 

From the moment we are born, we form attachments to our caregivers. In the first six weeks of life, we are trying to understand whom we can depend on, who is safe, and who will provide security. God created us with this innate desire for nurture, safety, and security because it is necessary to live and thrive as humans. That’s why by 7 months of life, after learning from our caregivers’ response, we form a unique attachment style with our caregivers, an unique attachment style that helps us to survive.

If our caregivers respond to us with nurture, attention, and comfort, we securely attach to them. If our caregivers are inconsistent then our attachment to them becomes insecure. This can lead to an Ambivalent or an Anxious Attachment style. If our caregiver responded to us with violence, abuse, or extreme inconsistency, then our attachment to them not only becomes insecure but Disorganized (I recommend reading this article to learn more about attachment).

Depending on our attachment style which can change over time, especially as children develop more experiences with other adults, we will readily seek comfort or become anxious,  ambivalent, or disorganized with seeking comfort as adults. However, our innate desire will always be the same: we want to be held.

Yes, nurture, attention, and comfort, in a nutshell, is being held. Physically, it looks like my mom holding me tight in her arms, and emotionally, it looks like my chunky, one-year-old self, feeling loved and cared for deeply.

So it makes perfect sense, that no matter how old we are, we still long for this. This doesn’t make us weak, desperate, or deeply flawed. It just makes us human. Pretending that we do not have this desire, wrestling with it, or numbing ourselves so we do not have to feel it, only will make our hunger for intimacy and connection stronger. 

Therefore, there is no shame in wanting to be held. 

Our need for “holding” helps us to stay connected with others and points us back to God’s great design and the relationship He wants to have with each of us. 

So if you find yourself feeling an insatiable need for connection and for intimacy, whether it be physical or emotional, you are not alone. This insatiable need serves a purpose and ultimately connects you to others and to God himself. 

Which leads us to the question, how do we get this deep desire filled when we are no longer children dependent on our parents? 

Well to answer this question, I am going to lead you on a series all about being held. The next blog post in this series will be about tapping into your inner child and the following week will be about letting go of the negative things you are holding unto or being held by. The hope is that you will discover not only is desiring to be held a good thing but that it is necessary for your mental health.

I also hope you will discover ways in which you can be held as an adult and experience healing from the ways you might not have been held well as a child. The truth is that there are ways for you to still get this desire filled in healthy ways. Just like you did when you were a child, you deserve loving arms to hold you tight and embrace you for all that you are.