**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Developmental > **🌱 Planted:** Sat 1 March 2025 --- Our eyes are the windows to our earliest experiences of connection (or disconnection). Well before we understand and learn any language, our [[Nervous System]] understands the gaze from our mother's eyes as it takes in the emotional messages from our environment and we learn essential truths about ourselves: Am I safe? Am I welcome? Am I wanted? Am I too much, or not enough? These early messages live on in our bodies and can be explored through the [[Early Gaze Dynamics — Your Mother's Eyes]] experiment which gives insight into how these patterns continue to show up in our present experience. When our early attachment style is disorganised through [[Developmental Trauma]], our eyes develop embodied patterns which stay with us and show up in the way we connect to others. It quite literally changes how we see. Attachment researchers documented how a mother's gaze impacts a developing child, especially when the [[Our caregivers don't need to be perfect, they just need to be good enough|holding environment is not "good enough"]] and those eyes are conveying chronic anger, depression or [[Dissociation|Dissociation]]. Hans Selye reconfirmed what [[Wilhelm Reich]] already observed decades earlier—our visual field both narrows and distorts when under stress. This stress in our early development creates chronic muscular contractions around the eyes (the ocular segment), which is also part of a larger pattern of tension throughout the face, neck and shoulders. This response manifests in two primary eye patterns[^1]: 1. **Hypervigilant eyes** are always scanning for danger. They can appear as chronically angry or squinting, frightened, darting, predatory or excessive blinking. 2. **Hypovigilant eyes** can be more disconnecting and can indicate [[Dissociation|Dissociation]]. They can appear as a contactless gaze, eyes that look without seeing, or the fixed stare that desperately tries to maintain connection without true presence. So the way we see isn't just about our vision, it affects our physiology and connection styles too. These defensive adaptations and patterns are wired into our nervous systems, and they influence our capacity for intimacy, trust and authentic connection as we engage with others throughout our lives. --- **➡️ Next:** [[]] [^1]: [[Healing Developmental Trauma by Laurence Heller & Aline LaPierre]]