Therapy grounded in real inner work and genuine human connection.
There’s a lot of advice about not bottling up your emotions, being vulnerable and telling people how you feel. But when does this cross the line into emotional dumping? Here are 3 signs of emotional dumping and what to do instead: 1 – Talking about …
Gaslighting is a term that has been thrown around a lot on social media lately. But most people don’t really even know what it is or how it compares to other behaviors, so let’s clear things up a little bit. Let’s start by defining gaslighting. …
And there is good reason for it!
Have you seen these? Do they pertain to you?
What’s Underneath the Cat and Mouse Game Present in Most Relationships?
Why Do You Need to Know the Difference Between Thoughts Feelings and Behaviors?
What is Emotional Flooding? Are You Doing it?
Do You Get Irritated a Lot? You Are Not a Monster.
If you find yourself thinking “ya, this is me and I should know more about this” in any of these posts, contact us.
We’d love to support you in going deeper into using this information to create more peace, stability and emotional well being in your life.
A few weeks ago, we talked about how important it is to consider the possibility that what other people do is not always about you. People are responding to you in accordance to their own past, their own assumptions and their own tendencies. This is …
There are so many reasons. And, so often we take it personally when someone doesn’t share. We think it means something about us. Well, sometimes that is true. Very often, it isn’t. We’ll talk about both sides. When it is not about you: There are …
The fear of intimacy.
I know. Most people have a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that people experience a fear of intimacy and a strong desire for it at the same time. What makes it even more crazy is fear that shows up in relationships and intimacy is often hidden from conscious awareness.
Author David Rico is my favorite expert on the specific fears that create the cat and mouse game you see can see to varying degrees in most romantic relationships: the fear of engulfment and the fear of abandonment. The level of commitment or longevity of the relationship do not seem to inoculate us against these fears.
Most people are familiar with the fear of abandonment.
David Richo says the fear of abandonment is “the fear that someone will go away and we will not survive it. (“Not to survive” is defined as being defenseless and resourceless)” (From his book: When Love Meets Fear: Being Defenseless and Resource-full p.122).
So, in essence, once we are attached to someone, we fear that we will not be able to make it through a separation from that person. In addition, we will respond to anything we may perceive as someone leaving, whether it is physically or emotionally.
If you tend to experience the fear of abandonment, you might perceive someone leaving even when that is not the case because you are have gotten good at trying to predict and protect against the pain of separation.
This fear is actually just as widespread and, in my experience as a therapist, seems even more difficult to notice for the person experiencing this kind of fear.
The fear of engulfment is defined as “the fear of someone getting too close” (p. 122). So, it is the fear that someone will invade our inner space, take us over in some way, or diminish who we are.
Again, this fear is triggered by someone’s perception that they are getting crowded, when that might not be the case in reality.
Both of these fears do not necessarily represent any real threat. They are fears that relate to experiences in the past, ones that already occurred because, as David Richo points out, “An adult cannot be abandoned, only left, not engulfed, only crowded” (p. 123).
As adults, even if someone leaves, we can take care of ourselves whereas a child’s survival would be compromised. If someone intrudes on us, we can speak up to create space whereas a child has to tolerate the conditions until he can find another way to survive.
David Richo says that most people experience these fears to some degree in their intimate relationships, as they are simply a condition of being in relationship with another. Also, it is possible to be on both sides of the dynamic at different times, although, you may tend toward experiencing one fear over the other.
The fear of abandonment is easily recognized since this person is the one who is often trying to fix things, will compromise themselves to hold onto their beloved, and the words they use to communicate about what is bothering them matches the fear: they do not want their person to go away.
Some of David Richo’s words to demonstrate how the fear of engulfment shows up are: aloof, harried, showing anger, entitlement, “coldness, refusals to make commitments, need for more space and more secrets, indifference, intolerance, rigid boundaries, embarrassment about affection in public” (p. 125).
The person who experiences the fear of abandonment will usually be the one to leave the relationship. That usually happens because the person who fears engulfment can tolerate the situation because they continue to run and have gotten good at it, so they don’t get engulfed…but they also don’t experience the reward of intimacy. Ultimately, the person with the abandonment fear gets fed up with fighting for the relationship, not getting their needs met and compromising themselves, so they are the one to walk away.
Another interesting point that David Richo makes is that “the fear of intimacy is directly proportional to the fear of abandonment” (p. 124). That means the person upset about their partner going away is just as afraid of their partner being close. Except, it doesn’t feel that way, so their fear of intimacy is usually masked until they choose a partner that is willing to stay present or, who experiences the fear of abandonment to a greater degree, pushing them into the fear of engulfment.
Essentially, these fears are two sides of the same coin.
David Richo says that the person experiencing engulfment fears (usually they do not experience it like fear) may have had an experience of having over protective or helicopter parents. This is part of why people will defend their parents and their childhood because it is not a question of deprivation or abuse; it is a question of too much.
Their natural human drive toward independence and growth may have been stunted and compromised by over involved parents. This causes a very unpleasant internal experience but it is hard for the conscious mind to perceive this since it does not seem like anything is “wrong” on the outside, it just feels bad inside.
Another reason people may have this fear is if parents were very critical when they got close to them. So, allowing someone to come close equals someone finding that something is wrong with you.
Another formula that seems to cause this fear is if someone had a parent who may not have been very aware of their child’s experience because they were dealing with their own overwhelming experience of addiction, domestic violence, chaos or financial struggle. So, closeness in this experience was the equivalent of being bulldozed by the parents’ needs.
In all of these scenarios, I don’t mean to suggest that parents of someone who experiences the fear of engulfment are bad, evil people. No. They are probably great people doing their very best who love their kids a lot.
We are all human who are beautiful and flawed raised by humans who are beautiful and flawed. It is our job as adults to be aware of these injuries that caused the fear and work through them so that we can love healthfully.
There is a formula that David Richo suggests: admit it out loud, stay with it for a second longer than you can stand and act as if the fear was not holding you back in that second.
That means, you let your partner have space and attend to yourself while you are afraid of them leaving or you let your partner get a little closer by holding them, sharing what you have inside or take a tiny step in committing to your relationship and breathe through it! This literally helps to rewire your nervous system and the neural pathways in the brain.
Finally, David Richo instills some hope when he says that we have a program for dealing with these fears as adults: “When you go, I grieve and let you go.” “When you get too close, I ask you to give me more room” (p. 121).
If you find yourself experiencing these fears or this dynamic in your relationships, contact us. We’d love to support you in working through it.
I have a lot to learn. And unlearn. I have been spending time this week listening, seeing and digging deep around the issues of racism, white supremacy, white fragility, what it means to practice being an ally and anti-racist. As I hope many people in …
We’ve all been through some significant life adjustments in the months of quarantine. Some of them difficult to assimilate. And, there might be a couple that you found might suit you. No matter where you are in your stance toward the pandemic, the reality is …
I get that. If you are one of those people who is not totally convinced that feelings are that big a deal, this is for you.
I explain it this way often to my clients…
Usually the answer is: not that hard.
Right. It isn’t.
But we also resist it sometimes. Maybe it is the repetitive nature of the task or the fact that it is never done. There are always more dishes that need to be done, as long as we eat or drink, which we do because we have to sustain human life. Feelings are similar, they are always coming up, never done.
Then I ask: what would happen if you stopped doing the dishes?
First off, you run out of dishes and utensils that are clean. Which means no one can cook anything and you are eating and drinking straight from the fridge. A slight regression, but not THAT big of a deal.
If you live with anyone, more than likely, people are already bothered at this point. Maybe arguments even start up. Whichever kind your home culture prefers: the nagging type, the loud kind or the silent resentful variety.
The other thing that is happening is that you are now eating out. More expensive, probably less healthy than what you could make at home. In the long run, money and health issues coming up.
Maybe not horribly at first, but remember, you are not doing the dishes, so this is where things are headed for the long haul.
Now you have to think about what happens with those dirty dishes. At some point, they are likely going to attract pests. And that’s a whole new level of hassle.
Recently a friend and their family had to evacuate their apartment and pack out or wrap all the perishables (with an infant!) so their apartment could be fumigated because of cockroaches. They lived next door to an apartment unit that is a corporate apartment so people only live there for short periods. Somebody must have left food or dishes that were not cleaned up (or missed by the cleaning staff) and an infestation started. My friend’s family moved back in after being vacated for the better part of a week and there were still cockroaches. So they had to move their ENTIRE apartment (with an infant) to another unit in the building.
So, now you are potentially dealing with infestations in your home and your neighbors are impacted?
Just like the dishes, dealing with our feelings as they come up are not that big of a deal. Just like doing the dishes, not dealing with them leads to big issues that impact multiple areas of your life: relationships, finances, physical health, your home environment. Not to mention your internal world and your daily lived experience.
So, you practice (practice being the key word) recognizing them. You practice allowing them. You practice communicating them.
It might be: “I feel pressured and rushed right now, can we talk about this later?” Or “I felt sad when you said that”. Or “I feel frustrated”. Just simple little things. Like washing a dish.
I know feelings can be unpleasant, but don’t let that be the end point of that experience. There are lots of things in life that can be uncomfortable. Does that mean you stop right at the first sign of discomfort? No, you show up.
This is emotional health. Recognizing that you feel. And doing what you need to do to care for whatever is coming up whether it is just having to do with you or it is something coming up between you and someone else.
Just do the dish. Sometimes it’s a pan with lots of stuff crusted on it and it takes some effort. But I promise it’s worth it.
If you need support figuring out how to recognize or care for your feelings, we’ve got you. Contact us.
Also, check out this post about the messages your feelings are communicating to you, that could be a good next step too.
If you want a guide to what your emotions mean and where they show up in the body so you know when they are present, sign up for our email list (refresh the page and there will be a little banner that drops down). You will get a little cheat sheet for that you can save on your phone.
We all know there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to productivity. But do you act on the signals your body is giving you to take a break? It’s hard to do that, isn’t it? While we all might ignore hunger, thirst …