Fear Not

It’s kind of weird how I am able to step on stage in front of a thousand people, and tell my testimony – but it’s hard and a near impossibility for me to sit in front of three people and share my story…

I think the difference is intimacy.

I, like many others, fear intimacy. We fear intimacy because…

… intimacy means opening up, risking the danger of getting hurt. Usually those of us who are overwhelmed by fear of intimacy have been hurt by intimacy. So we have two conflicting biological reactions and needs:

The need to defend oneself from, and the need to open up oneself to others.

I’ve learned how to cope with hurt by using emotional dissociation as a defense mechanism to protect myself. Which isn’t a skill at all – it becomes a difficulty, it becomes a means of shutting people out and isolating myself, but most dangerously it allows me to ignore and suppress my feelings, hence the term emotional dissociation, maybe emotional repression/suppression would better fit…

What I’ve come to learn is that by simply acknowledging my feelings, taking a step back from them before reacting to them, allows me to then evaluate my circumstances, context, and situation. Then to decide, if dissociating is the best decision.

Sometimes it is, but most of the time, I’ve found it’s not.

Living in reality, living through action versus living through dissociation, is far better than simply “sleep-walking” through life…

When we get out of our own way, we become more connected with and to others, and in result we’re happier, more compassionate, and loving, we come to find that the stress in the end was just a feeling, an emotion, this fear was not reality, so don’t allow it coerce you into avoiding reality.

I think as I dig deeper into this a question, and gain control over my emotions, that helped me and hopefully will help you too is – “What is the root cause of my emotional dissociation, in specific instances…?”

What about you guys? What’re your thoughts? What’re you struggles? Do you have anything you might add?