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The Burden and Necessity of Intimacy

14th Nov 2006, 19:29 GMT

I'll be posting more about my meeting with the Weiland family soon. In the meantime, I'd like to write about an article I wrote a couple years ago that I came across while doing some housecleaning at my blog. It struck a deep chord with an insight I'd had while I was on the road to see them. I would not have made the trip if I were still working as a psychotherapist. Ironic, yes, but absolutely true. I would have been afraid of getting drawn into possible dysfunction, afraid of the mess of it. I wouldn't have wanted a "working weekend." My role as a psychotherapist and my identification with it, particularly in such a situation (a woman had been murdered in a domestic assault), would have stopped me from showing up as a human being. I would not have been able to show up simply as a woman profoundly touched by what had happened. I couldn't have been able to be there in whatever way was needed, no matter that these people were strangers to me. Let me state for the record that I understand and fully agree with the legal and ethical reasons for having strong therapist-client boundaries. But I will say that therapists, and several coaches as well, identify so strongly with the role that they have difficulty entering into psychologically difficult situations without it. You know the saying: when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Therapists start to see pathology everywhere they look, just like police officers see potential criminals. It's an occupational hazard and one that takes vigilance to overcome. And coaches are so afraid of being accused of doing therapy with their clients that they are even more vigilant where these issues are concerned. The article I re-discovered, which I will summarize here, relates very much to this phenomena and how so many of us struggle with intimacy. I had just been talking in a discussion forum about the way I like to be in relationships. I mentioned having fun when kids braid my hair. I also mentioned I haven't yet met any adults brave enough to do that, although I did have my hair pulled and was smacked with a pillow by one of my hiking buddies while I was in Utah. I got a reply from a member saying: "Oh, Laura, let me at your hair!!!!!! I just love to braid and comb and brush people's hair! (OK, now who's sounding a bit mushy, lovey, touchy-feely, here!?!?!?!) This is one of those things that just tends to make BOTH people involved feel really good!! And it's so playful and fun and rawly human." Rawly human. Too often we are afraid of being rawly human. Fear dominates so much of how we relate to each other. I'm not talking about the fear of whether a person will attack you from the bushes or whether you shouldn't walk in the parking lot at night. I'm talking about the fear that we won't be liked, loved, or retained as an employee or spouse or friend if we aren't careful. Too often we fear being authentic and genuine in our relationships with each other. We fear intimacy. We associate the word so readily with sex that many of us even hesitate to talk about it, much less write about it online. In fact, a fellow coach said he was afraid to use the word "intimacy" in his web site materials even though he wants to address relationship issues. I know what he means. People who deal with relationship issues have to really struggle with this. Will I come up in a Google search now in an unfavorable way? Am I willing to take that risk in order to be rawly human and talk about the basic fact that we need intimacy with other humans in order to be optimally healthy? It is a fact that infants who receive inadequate human contact fail to thrive. We need each other. We need the connection. But can we talk about it openly? Intimacy involves some risk for everyone. It can feel safer to avoid intimacy because this lets you avoid risking rejection, abandonment, conflict, or whatever you feel is at risk when you are being completely open with someone. Isn't it ironic how, in the hope of obtaining a true sense of connection with another, we can be tempted to hide those parts of us that we think are too dangerous to share? "Here, I'll give you this illusion of me that I think you will really like and keep away all the messy stuff, now please love me. Even though a good part of me is invisible, please think I'm a good person." When I was starting out as a blogger, which absolutely would not have happened if I were still a therapist, I was afraid of writing about personal things because I was representing myself professionally. What would you think of me if I wrote I liked it when people played with my hair? Wouldn't it be better to just spout professional opinions and made sure you knew all my professional credentials? Is it okay for you to know that I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind if you want to grab a bite of something off my plate? Would the public be able to handle knowing a former psychotherapist is a woman capable of experiencing the full range of human emotions, with opinions, and hopes and dreams and fears and desires, and goals and doubts? I know it sounds crazy, but I have yet to meet a therapist or coach that has avoided this angst. In the grand scheme of things, my human experience has been easy to share even if it's been painful sometimes. Compared to what the Weilands are dealing with, my occasional neurotic hiccups are nothing. Many of us in the helping professions have learned to hold back, diagnose, form opinions and essentially put a nice clinical distance between ourselves and the folks in the trenches. I have heard coaches say, "Whoa, not sure I can help them (at age 50) if (at age 5-9) they had that trauma." Heck, I've seen therapists do that, too. Even lay people have come to adopt such language and make assumptions about what trauma means in terms of a person's ability to function. We assume trauma leads to dysfunction and that dysfunction leads to psychological instability. And many of us decide it's too heavy and we don't want to be anywhere near it. Of course, sometimes the process goes precisely as outlined above and yes, sometimes it is too heavy for some people to handle. A traumatized person may be in a state of psychic injury that is too great for a particular individual to be around. Even professionals can be traumatized by hearing about trauma. But sometimes our fear of what we think might be there stops us from really seeing that health and strength may be coming through loud and clear. Our fear of what could get messy stops us from what seeing what could be powerful, beautiful, deep and human. Too often we fear the responsibility of each other. We fear the risk and the liability. We fear potential dependency and we fear being used up. To be rawly human may mean that you sit and braid someone's hair and end up in a tickle war. It also means we have to stop being afraid of each other's pain. It means we have to stop equating being injured with being damaged forever. It means that we have to embrace all the possibilities of what can happen to each other and ourselves. It means we stay with each other when the going gets tough. It means we have to stop being afraid of words like love and intimacy. It means allowing each other to be visible, even when part of what we need to show is hard to see. Because when you stay there long enough, you will also see power and strength that will leave you awestruck. It's worth the risk. Isn't that why we are here? To immerse ourselves in the humanity of our existence? Stay open. Laura Young is a life coach, author, photographer, and "deep water fish". If you enjoy her articles and are chewing over some big questions in your own life, please pay her a visit at Wellspring Coaching, where she has many additional resources for you. To view her photography, please visit Holy Moment Photography.

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