Although most people have the desire, indeed the need, for loving, intimate relationships, the achievement of intimacy is a formidable undertaking, and many individuals are afraid of intimate encounters. In my office, I see many patients who have difficulty with finding or maintaining intimacy.

What is intimacy?

Intimacy is the capacity of an individual to exchange feelings and thoughts of personal significance with another individual who is highly valued. It is the capacity to know the other’s internal world, including feelings and thoughts, and, at the same time, to allow our partners to experience and understand our internal world.

People may unconsciously reject intimacy, using behaviors such as judging, criticizing, or being suspicious. These unconscious behaviors are a way to avoid what we fear is associated with intimacy: abandonment, engulfment, or vulnerability.

Abandonment

Those who fear abandonment seek to ensure that their partner will always love them. As a result, they may test their partner in a variety of ways. They may be jealous, suspicious, or angry. They also fear that, if they expose their inner world, their partner may use it against them and may even abandon them.

Engulfment

Those who fear engulfment are conflicted over separation versus merger, otherwise understood as a conflict between preserving self-identity and enhancing the self. Fear of engulfment is the opposite of the fear of abandonment. Those who feel that the boundary between themselves and their partner is blurred and fuzzy will become afraid that closeness will lead to engulfment.

Vulnerability

Those who fear vulnerability believe that there is something inside of them that does not deserve to be loved or respected. They avoid intimacy so that their partner will not get to know what they perceive as their shameful aspects, the knowledge of which will make them feel vulnerable.

Overcoming the fear of intimacy

Whether your fear of intimacy is based on a fear of abandonment, engulfment, or vulnerability, it is interfering with your vital relationships. To begin to overcome your fear, you must learn to accept yourself and to feel comfortable with who you are. You must carefully develop trust in others as you open to them. You also must learn to establish boundaries that will enable you to cope with fear of abandonment, prevent engulfment, and overcome your sense of vulnerability.

Therapy is a means to establish such boundaries and, most importantly, to come to grips with past experiences that may be at the root of your fears.

Our sessions will be based on mutual respect and trust, which are essential to the process of healing. I will work with you to help you to accept your past experiences, to understand them, and to move past them and grow. More specifically, I will, through initiating a series of small, gradual steps, help you to work through your fear.