Is Your Self-Protection Keeping You from Intimacy?
“If we have ever been hurt in a relationship, we naturally fear being hurt again. Consider how your fear is keeping you from deep connection.”
By Abigail Cole Hardin, CLC; PNLP
By Abigail Cole Hardin, CLC; PNLP
We can only be good at relationships by being in them. Yet to be good at healthy relationships, we must allow ourselves to be all in. We cannot hide the parts of ourselves that we want no one to see. We must face our imperfections, own our mistakes and our ability to hurt, and let ourselves be loved—especially the parts that seem unlovable. We must also be willing to swallow our pride, forgive and keep no record of wrongs, and allow the other to be different from ourselves. This is not easy when we have been deeply wounded in relationships.
Our brains, whether we are conscious of it or not, remember emotions and store them in the amygdala, the house of our emotional memory. Emotions can be stored as early as in the womb. For example, a baby needs to feel that his mama is there for him. So, if our parents neglected us, if we were bullied at school, if we were turned down by our crush, if we were ridiculed or betrayed at all under the age of 12 —every single emotion that was experienced at that age would be stored in the amygdala, and decades later could resurface if a present experience triggered the similar emotion.
Thus, our past relationship wounds are the bricks to our self-protection walls. The painful emotions may have shaped how we see ourselves and how much we let people into our lives, yet there is hope.
If we have been wounded in relationship, we can only fully heal in relationship.
Neuroplasticity means that through repetitive, positive experiences, we can change how our brains think and react. We need to be in healthy, emotionally and physically safe relationships (with a partner, a close friend, a family member) to create new brain patterns. In these relationships, we get to practice and experience being vulnerable and accepted while also accepting another. Over time, we gain the benefits of being in a healthy relationship which repairs our past hurts and losses.
To be in a healthy relationship, we must be willing to know and be known.
Willing to Know
Being in relationship is the commitment to know another without assumptions. It is easy in relationships to assume someone operates the same way we do, or sees the world the same way we do, or moves at our same pace of personal growth. Our assumptions limit people. We must let people unfold. They must be able to evolve and grow and change.
We might try to control another so we feel safer in the relationship. We might be trying to manage another’s reactions versus being direct. We might interrupt versus listen. But we can improve how we respond to others by being willing to know them and let them be known.
Willing to Be Known
Being in relationship is the commitment to show up each day to be known. Letting ourselves be known might take tearful storytelling, gritted teeth not to blurt our irritations, a humbled apology, laughing uncontrollably, and patience when we are not fully heard or understood.
If we expect that our partner or our family will understand us the first time—and we don’t have to explain ourselves again—we are wrong.
Having misunderstandings is actually the entry point for better communication. We cannot be known without communication. Thus, we must articulate who we are and our feelings or unmet expectations with the discretion to grow the relationship.
The goal is intimacy —not self-protection.
Self-protection is the enemy of deep relationships. It is a product of our fears that we may not even know we have, but we have picked up along the way. If we have ever been hurt in a relationship, we would naturally fear being hurt again. One of the worst hurts is abandonment.
In our Hardwired to Heal workshop, we address that there are two responses to the fear of abandonment. We can become like Teflon, the hard substance that coats a nonstick pan: “If I don’t fully let you in, you can’t hurt me,” or we can cling like Velcro morphing into whatever we can to make the relationship work: “The only way I can have my needs met is to hold on.”
Whether we are nonstick or sticky, both are stances of self-protection. Neither way allows us to be fully known because there is no trust or vulnerability, only control.
We must risk stepping out of our style of self-protection to be in deep relationship. If we wait to have it all figured out with everything in order, we will never experience deep, healing connection with others —the kind of relationship God calls us to.
Relationships that are real get messy. They demolish the bricks of self-protection walls so there is new space to build.
3 Steps to Breaking Down Your Self-Protection Walls
Step 1: Notice if you are Teflon or Velcro.
A. Teflon: private, aloof, selectively shares emotions, usually has shallow or surface relationships, does not discuss meaning or personal details, avoidant, can be insensitive
B. Velcro: accommodating, people-pleasing, usually says yes, always wants to be with than alone, fawns, grovels, co-dependent, adapts self to make the relationship work, does not respect or ignores others’ boundaries
Step 2: Confess Your Self-Protection Style.
The first step for change is awareness of yourself so you can open up the lines for communication.
Step 3: Ask a trusted partner, family member, friend or counselor for help.
They will be able to share what they need more from you to feel closer to you. Plus, in order to heal, you must be in relationship and let others into your healing process.
God’s very identity is relational, as He is three-in-one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He created us in His image, which is to be relational. He desires full, real, messy and intimate relationship with us.
Don’t let your walls keep you from the deepest, most intimate relationship that you were created for.
Jesus already broke down the walls of sin, so, we can be in free relationship with the Holy Father. Accept the gift and allow yourself to know and be known.
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1 John 4:11-12
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Abigail Cole Hardin is a Certified Life Coach and a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner for Hardin Life Resources
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