Speaking Your Truth in a Relationship Can Be Scary as Hell
Why it’s hard to be ourselves — the cutting edge research on attachment & authenticity. Plus ways to practice
*This is an extended version of an earlier published piece.
Awhile back when I was hosting Q & A’s in my Love, Sex and Soup column, someone asked me this:
When I’m in a relationship, my fear of losing my partner often gets the best of me. I have trouble expressing what I need and act in ways I think my partner expects me to. I guess I’m scared if I assert myself or act too needy, I’ll be left in the dust. Do you have any tips on how to navigate these fears which can be overwhelming when they come up? I want to stop losing myself in my relationships!!!
We’ve all been there. The moment when you want to say something but saying it feels too scary. Or threatening. Or stupid. Or dramatic. Or just a waste of time.
I’ve done my inner work. I’ve been a diligent student of psychology. I was a psychotherapist for fifteen years. I gave workshops on these topics. I’m 45 and feeling stronger than ever. Still, when it comes to love and to the relationships I value most, I sometimes find myself in these mind-numbing mazes:
Should I or shouldn’t I say something? How should I say it? When should I say it? Am I being too much? Anxiety. Overanalyzing. Frustration. Rehearsing ad nauseam. Emptiness. Arrrgghhh…
The struggle is real
Intimate relationships evoke our deepest, most disturbing fears when it comes to love. In other words, relationships elicit our early childhood attachment patterns. Even if well-meaning, they’re the dysfunctional ways our caregivers required us to be and act as children in order to receive love and attention.
Inevitably, many of us end up questioning how worthy we are of love because as young ones not every part of ourselves was allowed expression.
Sound like a bunch of psycho-babble?
Hear, hear….The last several decades has produced mind blowing research on the brain when it comes to early childhood experiences and its effects on mental health.
What’s obvious, research or not, is we are social animals. We feel and do better (mentally and physically) when we have people in our lives we connect and feel safe with.
The science is not only showing why, it’s saying our biology is, in fact, interpersonal!
Whaaaat?!
That is, not only does the interaction of our genes with the environment shape our brain’s circuitry, it is critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult-child relationships. In other words, emotional interaction serves as the mind’s primary architect where brain structures and neural pathways get activated and develop only in relation to the other’s emotionally mirroring response. — Gabor Mate, M.D. Allan N. Schore, M.D, Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. et. al
Feeling and hearing each other out is king!
Not smart, fancy pants intellectual, culturally sophisticated convos (which can be fun) but have absolutely nothing to do with emotional intelligence or mental health.
Something our world, in particular our leaders, are noticeably lacking.
Now, let’s break down this “interpersonal brain” bit…
We Have Two Primary, Biologically Wired Social Needs
The need for attachment
Attachment is, says Dr. Gabor Mate, the drive for connection, closeness in the physical and emotional sense. Its primary purpose is to facilitate caretaking. Without reliable adults moved to care for us and without our impulse to be close to these caregivers, survival wouldn’t be possible. Our drive for attachment is hardwired into our brains and is mediated by complex neural circuits governing and promoting behaviors (crying and cuteness, for example) designed to keep us close to those without whom we cannot live.
The need for authenticity
Authenticity is the quality of being true to yourself and the ability to shape your life based on that deep, inner knowledge. Authenticity’s only rule is that we, not externally imposed expectations, be our life’s true author. As children, we often receive the message that certain parts of ourselves are acceptable while others are not.
You could come from a loving family without hard core trauma and still suffer. The truth is most of us were never taught to value our emotions. We’re living in a world that doesn’t encourage authenticity, particularly in the west and in general, as a civilization, we’re proving to be highly intelligent but emotionally pretty dumb.
Each family has its script where roles get assigned (scapegoat, caretaker, victim, etc) and rules about how one must act in order to be loved get established. These patterns which get fixed in childhood, play out in adulthood, often unconsciously, forging new scripts that feel eerily similar to the old.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” -C.G. Jung
In some stories, anger isn’t allowed. In others, being logical or self-sacrificing gets rewarded. For some, emotional expression is acceptable but without boundaries or purpose. Family members “connect” emotionally but no one actually feels heard or understood.
The kicker
When young, attachment comes first. So if the choice is between “hiding my feelings even from myself and getting the care I need or being myself but going without care”, we all chose the former. -Gabor Mate
Attachment reigns king in this regard.
We don’t consciously choose to hide or be inauthentic. It’s a coping mechanism that keeps us feeling safe through our early years, forming over time personality traits and habits. Later as we mature, some of these same traits and coping mechanisms cause suffering. We may no longer need them, but we don’t yet know another way of being in the world.
The Consequences
Dr. Gabor Mate in his enlightening book, the Myth of Normal, dives deep into the effects on our biology. When there’s an ongoing lack of responsiveness, he says, ranging from mild to severe neglect, emotional and/or physical abuse (individually or collectively), parts of our developing, biological hardware gets frozen in time and wired in wonky ways. As a result, our nervous systems stop functioning properly, chemically and hormonally we begin to pingpong, our immune system gets compromised and all of sudden…we are oh so terribly lost or oh so terribly ill.
Petrified of being abandoned, a state so unbearable, we’d rather lose ourselves in our partners. We may over-communicate and push our partners away. Or withdraw and shut everyone (including ourselves) out leaving no room for intimacy to develop. We may blame others for our problems or escape into our work and become wildly successful but deeply depressed. We begin suffer from autoimmune problems and other ailments that science has yet to find the cure for. We acquire eating, drinking, drug, gambling, sex addictions…
So, What To Do?
Take small risks
You’re feel disappointed or angry with your partner. You have a sexual wish that’s been buried for years and is clamoring to get out. You want more emotional responsiveness. You can’t breathe — you need way more space. You want to say yes more. You want to say no more. You want out.
If what you’re about to try on is entirely new, it can be overwhelming, sometimes unbearable to express parts of yourself that have been tucked away for decades. Being direct on the first shot might be setting the bar too high. Instead try one of these approaches to test the waters:
Write a letter or an email to your partner but don’t send it. Monitor how it feels to put your feelings into words.
Write a letter or email and do send it, perhaps checking with someone you trust first if what you’re communicating is clear.
Read books on your topic if the above options feel too risky. Good books are like best friends. They normalize and help put words to difficult experiences. Shame, in particular, is one of the most challenging emotions to manage. I want to run as fast and far away as I can from my partners when I’m feeling humiliated to my core, unworthy of being loved for acting or being some way I deem ugly or unforgivable. It takes time to digest and be with triggering, disorganizing, self-hating emotional states. Baby steps is the way through.
Start a conversation with your partner. Tell him or her how hard it is, for example, to express anger but that you want to learn how. Simply putting the meta-discourse on the table (the conflict about the thing you wish to express) does wonders. You may find that your partner is open or even welcomes it.
Use humor. Find funny names for your fears, make light of your neurotic tendencies. Life can be absolutely ridiculous!
Walk and talk. Maintaining eye contact when you’re feeling vulnerable can be triggering and disorganizing . Facing forward while talking lessens the intensity. This more relaxed, therapeutic approach, can empower you to talk more freely while your body also has a chance to process your emotions through movement.
As you practice expressing the vulnerable parts of yourself, this way of being will become the new habit, the new you. Loving and being yourself over fear of losing another begins to rule.
But first! Be prepared to feel scared shitless and awkward as hell. Expect messiness for quite some time. Speaking of time, give yourself that. Patience and compassion too. Show up for the journey. There are no short cuts to healing our old, deeply wounded parts.
Feeling vulnerable is not a bad thing even if it feels bad. It’s a sign you’re a human being.
Get help
If you’re emotional states are too overwhelming to bear or difficult to understand, it might be time to seek professional help. Early traumas get unconsciously embedded in the body and become hard to access yet play out in ways that are confusing and hard to handle alone. “To know (and empower) thyself” in these cases often requires first the skills of a professional.
There are many forms of trauma therapy doing wonderful things: EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Psycho-energetics, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, and Emotional Freedom Techniques to name a few. For good reading, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk on how trauma lives in and affects the body and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate on trauma and addiction.
Though the choice to change lies within each individual, it never happens in a vacuum. We need others. Whether you’re an infant, a young child, an adolescent, a grown adult or elderly, the need for authenticity and connection, the reflections of another bearing witness to your life, especially when life gets brutal is like air to our lungs. Go without it for too long and life gets pretty damn rough.
