Intimacy: Can Emotional Repression Sabotage Intimacy?

Although the need to experience intimacy is one of the strongest needs that someone can have, it doesn’t mean that this is a need that will always be fulfilled. For some people in the world, intimacy will be part of life and something that is simply taken for granted. And as long as they can remember, it has always been a part of their life.

But for others, it will be an experience that seems more or less impossible to have. And this is inevitably going to lead to the creation of moderate, to extreme pain. Because even though this need may not be getting met, it won’t simply disappear.

The Mind

One thing is for certain here and that is that, the mind will come up with all of the reasons under the sun as to why one is not experiencing intimacy. And these can range from being ones that sound fairly legitimate to ones that are somewhat farfetched.

Here one can feel like a victim and that they haven’t got what others have. This can include: looks, money, status, intelligence or some other thing. One can even come to the conclusion that there is something inherently wrong with them; that they are defective in some way.

And if one is not experiencing intimacy, then it is not much of a surprise that the mind would form these ideas and perceptions. The mind observes what is taking place and then labels these occurrences.

Other Factors

As well as what’s going on inside ones head, there can also be other influences. But while these can validate what is taking place, they will do little else and can just cause one to stay where they are; not moving on or progressing and actually experiencing intimacy.

These can be: friends, family, colleagues and other people. The media can also give reasons and supply its own version of solutions, typically through material consumption. Here, the problem will be seen as solvable though buying different clothes, having the right perfume/aftershave or in displaying the right jewellery for instance.

More recently this has gone onto include changing ones appearance through some kind of surgery or in the latest craze of gaining the ‘perfect’ body through endlessly going to the gym. And then there are numerous diets to enable one to finally look ‘right’.

The Story Maker

To the mind, everything is external and the answers are always outside somewhere. The body on the other hand, is completely different. Whereas the mind has ideas about life, the body is life. There is no separation when it comes to the body and life.

The mind views life from a place of separation and disconnection. For example: a travel guide can describe what certain countries are like, but this guide will never match up to the experience of actually travelling those countries. It is just someone’s ideas about the places and not the places themselves.

So the mind simply assumes and has no real insight into what is going on. The real answers as to why someone is not experiencing intimacy are in the body and not the mind.

The Rejection

However, if one lives in their head and therefore rejects their body, then the body’s wisdom and the answers that it possesses are going to be ignored. But while this is often normal in today’s world, it doesn’t just happen.

There is a reason for it and it is typically due to the occurrence of some kind of emotional pain. It could be an experience that was extremely traumatic or it could just as easily be an accumulation of experiences that were painful. And through not dealing with this pain, one can gradually became stuck in their head.

The mind can use all kinds of different defence mechanisms and escapes to push these emotions out of one’s conscious awareness. But while the tendency can be to avoid these emotions; this can also keep one stuck and unable to move forward in life.

Repression

Just because these emotions have been repressed and may no longer be registered at a conscious level, it doesn’t mean that they are not having an effect. They can become stuck and frozen in every part of one’s body; in the bones, organs, muscles and skin for instance.

While the mind can have no recollection of what these emotions are, they will show up in other ways. How emotionally healthy someone is can be known through how functional their relationships are.

Intimacy

So, in order for one to experience intimacy, the body has to feel comfortable with it. And if the body is carrying around feelings and emotions from situations in the past where one didn’t feel safe, then it is not going to allow intimacy to take place

The body it is simply protecting itself and part of that process will be to keep people at a distance. And the majority of these feelings can come from when one was a child and in how they were treated by their primary caregiver.

Childhood

Here, one could have had a caregiver that was emotionally unavailable, conditional in their love and unstable. So their needs and wants could have been generally ignored. And this can then mean that as a child one was: invalidated, mismatched, rejected, abandoned, isolated and even abused in some way.

This figure was then not someone who one would have felt safe with, but someone to be feared and kept at a distance. And their sense of trust in people could also have been destroyed through having this kind of caregiver.

While the emotions and feelings that one experienced also had to be pushed out of one’s mind in order to survive; as their caregivers may have emotionally invalidated them and not regulated their emotions. So they just ended up being built up and stored in the body.

Self Made Prison

So during these early years it was beneficial to keep a distance, as it was a matter of survival. But although time has passed, these feelings still exist in the body and as this is what is familiar, the mind has associated it as what feels safe. So it now feels ‘comfortable’ to keep people at a distance.

And these feelings and emotions can cause one to re-create their reality in a way that mirrors these early experiences. The people that one attracts and is attracted to will be a consequence of these repressed emotions and feelings.

Awareness

These feelings will need to be released from the body and as this takes place, one will be able to feel comfortable with intimacy. This may require the assistance of a therapist or healer that will allow one to feel their feelings and release them.

As what is going on inside the body changes, what is going on in one’s life will change.