How many people do you connect with?
How many people can you share anything with, including your crazy thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and know you will not be judged or criticized? How many people do you feel truly accept you just the way you are?
I began to wonder this about people. And so, I would ask my clients who else they talked to about personal matters and what they were feeling. The typical answer was “No one.”
Sometimes someone will have one or two people they feel they can really talk with. This might be their mom and a friend. But sometimes, that one person is a therapist.
I understood it. You want to be loved and accepted by your partner. Their love is precious, and to lose it would be painful. So we have these strategies of giving a good impression and hiding the stuff we fear they will judge us for. And so, our relationship is made “comfortable” in that space of keeping up a false impression and hiding our negative feelings and thoughts. However, it’s not comfortable long-term living in these masks and false versions of ourselves.
Yet we aren’t sure it is safe to take the mask off and be more truthfully raw.
How do we navigate these vulnerable moments of connection, so they don’t lead to disconnection?
Eva Beronius and I explore this in our second podcast in the series on Relationship Connection.