177. Understanding our fear of intimacy
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s. The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.

New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we dive into the psychology of our 20s. This episode today, we are going to get quite vulnerable. If you are a frequent listener of the show, you will know that I'm always looking for episode suggestions, things that you guys, my fellow 20-something-year-olds, are going through as inspiration for the podcast.

Someone sent in this suggestion, actually multiple of you sent in this suggestion, and I read some of these messages and just thought, how have we never discussed this before?

What we're talking about today is a fear of intimacy. So many of you have been waiting for this episode and there is just a wealth of research, content, articles, theories that go along with it. And I also think it's something that so many of us in our 20s struggle with in silence and might not even realize that we are going through.

I think a fear of intimacy is so valuable to understand because it's also one of those ideas that has become misconstrued, misunderstood, overused in recent years. And with that overuse, sometimes we don't always know the facts and of course the science and the psychology behind why it occurs, how it presents in our lives and also ways to move forward, potential solutions.

It's one of those classic catch-22 problems in psychology. We want more people to have a label for what they're experiencing, but that label still needs to be an informed one, and we want people to have the correct information about what they're describing. So that's what we're going to talk about today, because I think so many of us struggle with the fear of intimacy in our 20s, and I don't always think we have the right information. A fear

A fear of intimacy during this decade shows up in a lot of different, often invisible ways. Maybe you have found yourself in like a constant cycle of situationships. You push people away when they're trying to get to know you, both friends and people you're dating. You can never bring yourself to go on first dates. You start fights when things begin to feel safe. You

may have placed all of these conditions on yourself for when you'll be allowed to date. You know, I can't date until I've lost weight, until I fix something about myself, until I love myself more.

All of these actions and habits is a fear of vulnerability and it is secretly keeping us from being vulnerable, intimate with people around us because we are scared that when we get too close, we get hurt or that perhaps we aren't worthy of the love we think we deserve. So we shy away from any opportunity for us to be proven wrong.

I think to be emotionally intimate with someone is to essentially give ourselves and give other people the guidebook on how exactly to hurt us.

If you have been left, you know, scarred or burned by a past relationship, attachment problems in childhood, even if you're just feeling particularly insecure, I think that love can be one of the hardest things that we can put ourselves through because there is so much opportunity for disaster, so much opportunity to be hurt. So much so that we avoid that crucial source, that being love and meaningful connection.

It's actually quite devastating, really. I think a lot of us know this is going on behind the scenes. We are not blind to how this pattern of behavior and fear is active in our lives. We want to be open. We want a witness to our lives. We want to be seen. But it also comes with the realization that allowing ourselves to go through this might actually do something to hurt us

Sometimes that fear is too strong to push past. So my hope is that this episode is of some help to you because I don't think big problems like this are overcome in a day. But the first step is actually being able to diagnose and understand the problem and having enough background information to proceed. So without further ado, let's get into it.

So fear of intimacy is known by a few other names, the most common one being avoidance anxiety, which is sometimes applied to a lot more than just love. Avoidance anxiety really gets to the heart of how a fear of intimacy is sustained. When we have an excessive fear, concern, worry towards a particular object or subject, the easiest way to actually regulate that anxious response is to kind of avoid the

anything that triggers it. So in that way, avoidance becomes a coping mechanism whereby we are so paralyzed by what would happen if we encountered our fear that we act in the most rational way we can, which is just to avoid that from ever happening. In the case of a fear of intimacy, the trigger is not an object though. It's not some fear like snakes or spiders or planes. It's

It's the feeling or a situation that being in an intimate social contact with someone else might jeopardize our sense of security and safety that we have created for ourselves internally. Now, a fear of intimacy is actually quite multifaceted. It can be emotional, sexual, even intellectual or spiritual fear.

So if we fear emotional intimacy, what we're fearing is sharing our innermost feelings and true emotions with someone and perhaps scaring them off. Maybe because we are not accustomed to our feelings being important or respected or we're scared of what they will be able to do to us with that information.

A fear of sexual intimacy, it's also known as genophobia, is where we have this very serious anxiety about sharing that part of ourselves with someone else.

Maybe we are worried about being hurt. We are reflecting on really hard and traumatic past experiences where we weren't given the respect that we deserve. And so now we see any time that we're having sex or any opportunity to be intimate with someone as possibly creating the same outcome. And that's an outcome that we want to avoid. We also have that fear of intellectual intimacy. And that's not a facet of this that I think a lot of us typically think of.

intellectual intimacy is this exchange of big ideas and thoughts and core beliefs that is actually such a vulnerable squishy deep down part of ourselves that very few people I think ever really get access to in our lives and there's a lot that they can do with that information we might worry that someone will be dismissive or use these things against us

We might worry that they won't agree with us, they'll embarrass us, that we'll realize that we're actually not as connected as we thought. The root of all these fears is very subjective, whether you have a fear of emotional intimacy, intellectual intimacy, sexual intimacy, it's based primarily on past experiences and a history with a whole bunch of things that can influence our approach to being loved and accepting love.

When we have this fear of intimacy, it prevents us from engaging in behaviors that will create a lifelong or sustaining bond.

And fortunately for us, you know, to be loved is to be intellectually intimate, is to be emotionally intimate, is to sometimes be sexually intimate. And sadly, a relationship does have some core parameters and necessary foundations. And we will have to kind of get past this fear of sharing those deep parts of ourselves if we ever want to truly feel like we should accept or feel like we can accept love into our lives.

We mentioned some of the indicators of a fear of intimacy briefly before, but to dive into it a little bit further, some of the signs that you might be struggling with this, whether consciously or not, includes a series of really short relationships that all end because of insignificant things. They gave you a small ick. They didn't finish all their food on a date. They didn't like the same music as you.

These icks, these reasons that you think are valid may actually be protecting you from a deep explanation, a deeper explanation, which is that you don't feel ready. You're getting too close to the edge of tipping out of your comfort zone. So you are searching for what you see as a valid reason to end the relationship that has nothing to do with you and won't require you to actually look at your contribution to this relationship fizzling out.

This may also be linked to a level of relationship OCD or perfectionism. Relationship OCD is something that I am really, really fascinated about because I do think that at times it's been one of the reasons I've sabotaged relationships. What this form of OCD means is that we have a lot of obsessive thoughts about our concerns and doubts when it comes to a romantic partner that are really difficult to manage, that feel very much out of our control.

We often end up existing in this state of hypervigilance towards very small signs that us and our partner are not compatible. We are looking for reasons that this isn't going to work before they blindside us. We are looking for reasons to break up with them before we get hurt.

Even in the early stages of dating, we may hold potential partners to a really high standard, perhaps even an impossible one, because we still feel like we're being open. We're still saying like, yeah, I'm ready for a relationship, but I just don't want to settle. My standards are so high that I just don't want anyone who's below that.

And that's what we tell ourselves when actually there really isn't anyone who could ever meet our expectations. Sometimes our standards actually are opposed to each other, but it gives us this opportunity to keep people at bay. Now, that's not to say that you don't deserve to be picky and you don't deserve the most exceptional, amazing form of love. But it's interesting when we start to see contradictions in the things that we want from someone. Those contradictions are pretty good evidence that this is not the right thing to do.

The standards we're setting for ourselves are a lot more protective than they are kind of informative. They're trying to stop us from something rather than trying to keep us open to something. This always, for me, resulted in a grass is greener mentality. You're constantly thinking about how your relationship should be perfect. How if you're missing one thing, it's a failure.

You have these fantasies about a flawless relationship that probably doesn't exist. But by continuing to invest in the delusion, you keep all these other possibilities for love at bay. The thing I always think about when it comes to this is this concept known as the 90-10 rule. Now, there was a video about this that went super viral on TikTok recently. And I think for the best kinds of reasons, because so many of us fall into the trap of the 90-10 rule.

The premise of this is that you can be with someone who is like 90% everything that you wanted, everything that you ever dreamed of, everything that your childhood self wanted from love. But there is this 10% that just isn't quite right. And those things aren't deal breakers, right? They're just small things like, oh, they don't do the dishes exactly when I want them to do them. Or, oh, they're not as like spontaneous as I am.

And you let that 10% dominate over the 90% so that you go out looking for someone who fulfills the 10%, but then they are only 10% of what you actually want. You've given up something that is actually incredibly good for you over small reasons. Sometimes I would say that's a sign of a fear of intimacy, even if it doesn't look like it on the surface.

Here are some other things that would tell me that someone is struggling with this. When you are in a relationship, you may also withhold information or avoid sharing your feelings because it's going to make you too vulnerable. You also might test your partner through emotional bids. So emotional bids are these attempts to connect with your partner by gaining their attention in a way that is actually indirect.

I always like to use the example of starting fights. It's not that you even have anything to be mad about. It's just that you are feeling insecure, you're feeling stuck and you want reassurance. You want that, you want to kind of challenge your relationship to see if it can push through this argument, see if it can push through this fight, whether that person is going to stay by your side. Once again, I think all of this has its roots in a fear of intimacy. Now, we need to talk about where exactly this comes from.

There are quite a few experiences that create this pattern of behavior or this reaction to intimacy and love. Some of them actually seem to be in opposition with each other. So it is very subjective and based on your own mix of experiences. A lot of these concerns, though, emerge in childhood. But even things like our teenage relationships, past relationships, and a fear of engulfment, insecurity, they also contribute.

Before we get into this, it's also important to understand this concept known as commitment readiness. So commitment readiness is a fairly new measure in clinical and research psychology, and it essentially refers to our openness and receptiveness to a relationship. Every single one of us has a level of commitment readiness, has this somewhat preformed or predetermined judgment of our ability to be in a relationship.

If you have low commitment readiness, it's going to be difficult for you to, you know, for someone to convince you to take this next step in your love or in your connection because you just don't feel equipped. Whereas we have these people who have a high commitment readiness. That means that they are the first ones to jump into a relationship. They are ready for that commitment. They are ready for that label. They want to be dating. They want to be in a relationship.

Now, a fear of intimacy reflects a low level of commitment readiness, and that factor, that measure is impacted by the following. So the major theory when it comes to a fear of intimacy is that all of these quote unquote problem behaviors began in childhood, normally as the result of a neglectful, disorganized, overbearing parenting style.

If as a child you did not receive the love, the care, the reassurance, the compassion, the security that you needed from your primary caregiver, you may have implicitly learned that close relationships are not something that you can rely on for your needs. You really only have yourself. So you push away people who might try and get close. That's very indicative of an anxious avoidant attachment style.

This emotional neglect that you have experienced, it may cause you to unconsciously seek out relationships that mirror your past experience. So if you grew up in an environment with emotionally unavailable parents, this may unintentionally cause you to be drawn to emotionally unavailable partners in the future because it's just creating a familiar pattern.

And these people, you can also keep at a distance when, you know, maybe you are actually the emotionally unavailable one. What you're doing is seeking out partners who allow you to stay in what is familiar, what is comfortable and what you know, which is that they will never fulfill your needs. They will never be someone who is going to ask you how your day was, who's going to push past the boundaries and the kind of barriers that you've created. So you continue to feel safe when really you're actually avoiding a deeper level of intimacy that will

I think we all have some basic understanding that emotionally unavailable caregivers are going to create fearful and avoidant patterns of love and connection. And I think that's a very important thing.

But in the complete opposite direction, there's also been some emerging research that being raised by parents who were overprotective, smothering, overbearing, also creates a fear of intimacy because we fear for our independence and we fear for our freedom because we have been taught that close relationships cause us to have to give up parts of ourselves or feel closely monitored, feel closely observed.

So I came across this theory a couple of years ago in a PhD paper from someone in Australia, and they talked about how overprotective parenting is actually really linked to an insecure attachment style, particularly in young men.

Maybe it's because they resent how closely observed they were. They don't want that to be replicated in their romantic relationships. Or perhaps it's this retrospective rebellion or protest against what they found unfair as a child that manifests in them continuing to push people away who want to get close to them in adulthood.

Whatever that may be, it obviously differs from person to person, but it can lead to what some researchers call a fear of engulfment, whereby we are afraid of being controlled, dominated, of losing ourselves to a relationship, and then being unable to find our way back when the relationship inevitably ends because we have that core attitude that love does not last.

I don't think it's any surprise that if you are an especially hyper-independent person, someone who pushes back against requests for assistance, who prefers their own company, who believes on a very deep level that they don't need anyone but themselves, it's obvious that you are more likely to appear as if you are actually afraid of intimacy and you are afraid of what a relationship might cost you.

A lot of people who are hyperdependent, some therapists call it a trauma response, but they may not even recognize that this is an issue because as a society, we express a lot of approval and respect for traits like independence, especially in highly individualized Western cultures.

independence is incredibly positive and it can actually show a great level of security when it comes to knowing yourself and what you want. But with anything, I think balance is key. And when your need to be independent outweighs your primal need for connection and for community and for intimacy, that is when we begin to see these patterns that mimic a fear of vulnerability and a fear of love or avoidance anxiety.

I used to actually have a friend like this and she was actually she continues to be. I will say that one of the most wonderful and accomplished people I know. This woman runs marathons. She has her own business. She was studying full time. She had a million hobbies. She could bake. She could make music. She could teach you incredibly complicated economics without like even batting an eye. She's obviously I'm just singing her praises. She was amazing.

But she was so protective of her independence that she kind of rejected anyone who tried to get to know her on a really intimate level because she was convinced that a relationship would eat into her freedom and her ability to make decisions that were best for her. I honestly think that on some level, there's a lot of respect for that. And she had a great level of dedication to herself there.

And honestly, love shouldn't mean compromising those things. But the thing is that the right person won't ask you to. What she thought was protecting her, keeping romantic love at bay...

was actually something that she ended up really resenting. And she couldn't quite square, she couldn't quite make sense of these two very loud forces operating within her that were very opposed. She wanted to be loved, but she also wanted to be free. And she couldn't quite figure out, I think, in retrospect, how those two things could be equal because she had all of these negative beliefs and perceptions of what love was.

would do to her. And I think that that hyper-independence, that fear of engulfment, that fear of losing freedom, is an aspect of a fear of intimacy that we don't really discuss.

Past relationship trauma, not just in childhood, can also contribute. We often really like to focus on childhood as the only source of our attachment wounds. But equally, I think a lot of psychologists, a lot of researchers are beginning to realize that those teenage relationships, those first relationships, our early experiences with love, when they turn sour, when they are particularly difficult, when they are traumatic, they can equally shape how we connect with people.

If your first boyfriend or girlfriend was this like intense whirlwind of huge feelings and commitment and then they ended up cheating on you or they ended up saying terrible things about you, severely damaging your self-esteem, it is going to be hard for you to trust or love other people, even if you had very welcoming, beautiful, loving, emotionally available parents. Because that was still a really formative and core memory for you when it came to your opinions on intimacy.

Especially when we talk about someone injuring your self-esteem, that stuff lasts, can last, a lifetime.

it creates insecurity and it creates this need, this survival instinct to protect ourselves from future hurt, from someone else getting too close to us, coming into our lives, feeling love for them and then having them just completely break us down. And sometimes those experiences also actually convince us that

we don't deserve to be loved. That anyone who loves us, we have deceived them. We have lied to them so successfully and one day they're going to wake up and they're going to see it like that person from our past did. They hurt us so badly that anytime someone else wants to come through that door, wants to show us what we're missing, show us what we deserve, we see it as a threat. So we push away, we run away, we don't want to be confronted with

by these thoughts, by this potential for a bad outcome. All of this leads to a level of emotional unavailability.

I think we often villainize people by calling them emotionally unavailable, which completely overlooks so many of the aforementioned factors and experiences. A lot of which happened to us, we're not exactly active in. We're passive to how other people have treated us, how other people have taught us to be loved and to receive love. No one wants to feel unlovable. No one wants to hold back.

But they're doing so in a lot of cases to protect themselves. And it's often based in a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear, patterns of avoidance that we can actually recover from. If you haven't worked through these things, if no one's ever said this to you, if no one's ever told you that this is how it was, this is how it is, this is how it works, you're going to continue to end up in those relationships that aren't fulfilling.

to keep reverting to the status quo, the easy thing for you, which is to be alone. So we're going to discuss some of the consequences of that after this short break, as well as deconstructing your fear of intimacy and how to move past it in just a second.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

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Even though a fear of intimacy is a largely unconscious process, we can still observe how it affects our behavior and our experiences. Fear of intimacy is such a struggle. There is so much shame involved. Questioning why am I like this? And also a comparison to how everyone else in their 20s is, you

you know, looking like they're living their best lives. They're finding partners. They're telling us their love stories. They're getting married. They seem really happy whilst we stay in this hypervigilant, anxious, avoidant state simultaneously, wanting a relationship and petrified of what that might entail, what we could lose, getting hurt again, the courage to put ourselves out there and just the strength that we might not have at this moment.

Some other impacts include, you know, a cycle of emotionally shallow relationships that actually keep reaffirming what we already erroneously believe, which is that love is not fulfilling. It is going to hurt. It will end. It is not worth the commitment. We're actually accidentally creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in those moments because we are pursuing the kinds of relationships that never really challenge us, that match what we have come to expect from love.

And so we never give ourselves the opportunity to know any differently. The foundations of our fear of intimacy, they remain unchanged. Even if it looks like we are putting ourselves out there. Even if we're serial dating. A lot of people who I've spoken to who struggle with the fear of intimacy, they also talk about a persistent loneliness underneath it all. They do want more. They do want those relationships that are nourishing.

but they keep self-isolating or self-sabotaging without even realizing that they're doing it. And they feel like they're doing it all wrong, that they're the ones who make mistakes, that they are just not worthy of love. They were just meant to be alone.

I want you to be really gentle with yourself when those thoughts emerge. You are not alone in this. You are not always going to be alone in this. So many people, people that I know, people I've spoken to find fulfilling and wonderful and lifelong love out of a place of a fear of intimacy, moving past a place of a fear of intimacy. And it's not a death sentence. It's just something to be aware of and approach with kindness and forgiveness to yourself.

So what can we actually do about addressing our fear of intimacy both within ourselves and also maybe within the people we're dating? Firstly, you need to do the deep internal work to firstly identify the root of this feeling. We've given kind of a selection of different explanations, but you are the only one who can understand how far back this spans, where this has come from, why this has occurred.

I think professional assistants, a therapist during this journey is incredible because they're going to be honest with you. They're going to prompt some of those larger epiphany moments. They're going to bring a neutrality to your situation that will be really helpful. That is going to break your self-shame, Michael. Maybe break your pity party, break your self-sabotage.

I know though that therapy at the moment is quite inaccessible. It's expensive. The wait lists are super long. So in the meantime, here are some questions that you can ask yourself to help get to that point of identifying where this feeling may have come from. So the first question I want you to ask yourself is what is the worst thing that could happen in a relationship? Is it the pain of it ending? Is it the fear that you will lose yourself?

that you will have to share parts of yourself that are vulnerable. Why are you so scared of being in love and being seen? What are you actually worried about? Secondly, do you actually feel lovable? And if the answer is no, why is that? Is it because you are nursing a deeper insecurity that is actually the main issue here, but is just manifesting in avoidance?

Is it because someone has taught you in the past that you are unlovable and you have taken that to be truth? Is it because your parents created an environment where you felt undeserving of attention and care and emotional safety? Once again, this is really revealing. It helps you get to the core of the problem here. Where did this come from?

Throughout this process, I think it's also valuable to start breaking down and really examining some of those false beliefs that we all have when it comes to love. Some of those examples, some examples of this include, you know, love is easily broken. It's always going to disappear.

Um, if my relationship fails, that's going to prove that I'm unlovable. If I keep my distance, I'm safe and in control. Um, I'm going to be, people, people are going to be embarrassed of me if they're dating me. People are going to cringe at me. Marriage, relationships, they never work out. They always end.

These beliefs all keep us in a place of fear. And of course, if you've had past experience with hurt, if your parents got divorced, if you've just had someone treat you really badly, it's not that you've actually, you know, been conscious in accepting those fears and accepting those false beliefs. They're something that you've learned unconsciously and implicitly from your environment.

But you need to prove to yourself that they are not the whole truth. And the way we can do that is by visualizing ourselves in a relationship where none of this occurs, where none of this comes true. What would your ideal relationship look like? How would it feel to be loved and cherished? And is that desire bigger than fear for you? Is that something that you really, really want?

What activities would you do with your partner? What small ways would they show you love and you show them love in return? How would it feel to say, you know, in five years, like I confronted my fear and I proved it wrong. And now I have this really good thing. And would you be okay if it didn't work out? Yeah, you totally would be. You totally would be.

Now, part of this is also about questioning whether this relationship is actually possible. Have you seen an example of this? Or is there a version of this person that you would actually want? Would you be willing to compromise on some of those things that you really, really think are necessary in a relationship?

I'm going to say this again. You're allowed to want big things for yourself, but don't let that hold you back from a relationship that might not look perfect straight out the gate, but takes time to grow. Like I said before, sometimes we create such impossible standards to actually keep our walls high. This does not mean that you need to settle by no means, but actually that you should examine yourself.

what conditions for love you are unfairly imposing as a way to actually protect yourself. This links to my next piece of advice in a way. Be wary of doing a complete 180 when it comes to dating and just artificially accelerating any form of intimacy or connection you have with anyone to just get that label.

I think that what we're doing here when we're like, okay, I have a fear of intimacy. I'm just going to get into a relationship and work it all out. What we're doing is putting ourselves through flooding or exposure therapy. So this term flooding is actually something that we borrow from phobia treatment. When people are scared of snakes or flying or dogs or whatever, clowns, whatever it may be. Some therapists engage in this technique where they force us to confront our fears in their most intense and severe form.

For example, if you are scared of enclosed spaces, they make you sit in an elevator for hours as a way to bring on panic and then help you work through it.

This really helps with objects. The thing is, is that love is not an object or a singular situation. It is so much more nuanced and multidimensional than that. But sometimes we try to almost flood ourselves with a really intense relationship to speed up the recovery process and this kind of like DIY healing kind of vibe. Like, I'm just going to take the crash course here. I'm just going to put myself on the accelerated path.

This actually might backfire and it will cause you to just reinforce all the previous ideas that you had about love, that it ends, that it is not good, that it is shallow. It might sound counterintuitive, but I actually think you need to take a break from dating for a while to perhaps interrupt that cycle of emotionally unfulfilling relationships or situations or that pattern of bad dates, that pattern of self-sabotage.

Sometimes it's important to ask yourself, are you actually just burying yourself in these temporary feelings in these swipe-based dating apps to ignore what's really going on? Are you trying to expose the fear of intimacy out of you, flood it out of you, or is it something else?

I think be wary of going completely in the opposite direction as you move through this journey. And instead take six months, starting today maybe, starting tomorrow. Let's say starting tomorrow so you have some time to prepare. Take six months to just really focus on building yourself back up, to regain your confidence, to recognize that you're amazing, to nourish those secret gardens as we call them, to reconstruct and reform and remold yourself

All of those negative, unhelpful attitudes you have about love. There is this amazing resource online. It's called Psych Alive. I will leave a link in the description, but they put it really well. You need to challenge your negative opinions and attitudes towards yourself before you can really let people in. Because half the reason we resist connection and love is because we feel undeserving.

Or we are terrified that we don't have what it takes to be properly seen and loved and cared for. When you are in a relationship and perhaps you're noticing the urge to push somebody away, that pattern of conflict, of emotional bids, of self-sabotage, over-communicate as much as you possibly can.

Sometimes the only way out is through and what we fear here may be vulnerability, but we kind of have to prove it to ourselves that we can raise our concerns, we can talk about our anxieties and we will receive the reassurance that we need. It's not going to be the end of the world to let someone in. It's actually going to be such a catharsis, such a relief to finally let go of all those things we keep to ourselves, all of those fears and have someone listen and respond.

Now, if someone can't provide you with that reassurance and that just like space to listen and understand, it's not you. You are in the wrong relationship and staying until it falls apart may only further entrench the core beliefs that are causing you to run away from love and intimacy. We do see a fear of intimacy being caused by adult relationships.

And honestly, you can't risk all the work you're doing towards, you know, deconstructing your fear of intimacy on someone who might be emotionally unavailable, but not doing what you're doing, which is healing and moving past that and actually taking the time to really understand the origin, understand how it manifests, understand how it is creating unhealthy patterns or behaviors in you.

You know, the chances of that happening, of you actually being in a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable whilst you were healing a fear of intimacy, it's actually a lot greater than we might expect because we see a lot of people explaining that emotionally unavailable people are more likely to date and be attracted to other emotionally unavailable people because you know that they will never challenge you.

So if your partner is the one who exemplifies intimacy avoidance, remember you are an ally in this, but you are not their therapist. You cannot solve their problem for them.

I actually think pushing them too hard to do the deep internal work that you might be doing to counteract their negative beliefs and attitudes towards love may actually have the reverse effect you intended and cause them to borrow further into their fear, especially if the root of that fear is a fear of engulfment. I think instead you need to practice staying emotionally present for your own sake and

And sitting with your own fears and working through them and letting your partner do that work for themselves in parallel.

communicate what you need ask them what they need it's the age-old rule of aloha ask listen observe help and ask again that is all you can do and when I say help what I mean is ask them what they need you to do is it reasonable is it something you can help them with can you reassure them can you maybe give them some space if that's what they need to just process things but if they're asking you like hey actually I want to break up for like a

No, that is not your job. Like you are not their sounding board for the techniques that may or may not work in making them more emotionally unavailable. You are not their test dummy. You are not their guinea pig. You are someone who is worthy of love in yourself, in of itself. You're worthy of love even if that person isn't able to provide that yet. And I think that staying in those relationships is actually going to keep you in a version of yourself that you're ready to outgrow.

You don't, you know, it's kind of a hard reality is that you can't always bring the person you're with or bring the person you want to take with you on this journey. They might not always be ready or prepared or at the level that you are. And I think that as hard as it might be, sometimes you need to walk away. You cannot heal someone who is not yet at the stage of believing that anything is wrong. You cannot heal someone who is not committed to growth the way that you are.

And maybe you would be better breaking your own heart, being alone for a while, so that you can find someone who matches where you are at and who can give you what you need and who can show you how deserving of love you really are without you needing to beg for it. Don't stay in those situations just because you don't think you deserve better. Just because someone in your past has taught you these negative false beliefs about your inner worth. You really do owe yourself so much more than that.

You really do. You're a wonderful person. You know, the fact that you're listening to this episode shows me that you are committed to actually learning more about yourself, shows me that you are sensitive, that you are vulnerable with yourself, that you are self-aware. Those are all incredibly positive attributes that you don't want to waste on someone who is emotionally unavailable.

So some final rapid tips here. Process, don't avoid the shame or pain. Keep a journal of what you're thinking. Write down those negative false beliefs and those attitudes because I think you might be better able to rationalize them. Take a chance on yourself. You don't need to hide away or disappear. Take risks, share more, invite people in even when it's hard. Slowly accustom yourself to what vulnerability might feel like for you.

Put yourself in situations where you are celebrated, not just tolerated. Even if that means leaving friendships that you feel safe in right now because they aren't as emotionally fulfilling as you deserve. And write down some affirmations about your openness and receptiveness to love and keep them somewhere visible as a reminder. My favorites are pretty simple, but like I'm worthy of love. Love flows effortlessly into my life. Love is joyful. I am enough.

I am worthy of a love that reflects my true value. My heart is open to receive love in all of its forms. I know that when we talk about affirmations, it sounds pretty wishy-washy, but there is really something to be said about creating your reality through the words that you speak to yourself, through the thoughts and cognitions that you have about yourself.

If anything, it can't hurt. I think that it's incredibly helpful. I think that it's incredibly powerful to remind yourself without needing that external validation that you are deserving and that there is love coming your way that will make you the most open, honest, vulnerable version of yourself.

So I really hope that this episode has been of some help... That you've learned a little bit more about... Where a fear of intimacy comes from... What it creates... The behaviors that are associated with it... But also how to heal... The first kind of initial steps to moving forward... You're already there... Like you've already recognized this... And if you've recognized it in a partner...

Have some grace, have a level of forgiveness, but also take care of yourself and realize that it's not you. It really isn't you. This person has...

probably learnt a lot of what they are projecting on you from past relationships, from childhood. And at some point you might need to, like I said, break your own heart for the better, for the better for yourself. So thank you so much for listening. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you are following along for future episodes. Make sure you leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. And if you have someone who needs to hear this episode,

please feel free to share it with them. Maybe they can take something out of it the way that you have as well. This episode was actually a suggestion from quite a few listeners. So if you have a suggestion, please feel free to message me on Instagram at that psychology podcast, or you can follow me at Gemma Spegg to see more of what's going on. We will be back on Friday with another episode.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.

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