Emotional Intimacy with Autonomy

Does emotional intimacy require us to lose ourself ?

Just what allows us to experience Emotionally Secure Human Intimacy?

An aligned, stable, secure, yet open sense of our Self. A self that is capable of meeting another with openness, warmth, understanding and resonance.

It is that deep connection where we feel unguarded. Where we feel safe emotionally, and we trust that we are seen, held, and listened to with respect and care. And we want to be a Self that can empathize with others. A self that perceives the feeling state, the experiential state of another, with understanding, caring and compassion.

We want to be able to be emotionally intimate, emotionally caring, emotional resonant, without losing connection with ourselves. And we want the capacity to care deeply about someone, without feeling responsible to caretake them emotionally.

What may hold us back from this deep communion is our fear of becoming enmeshed with another. This is a condition where we lose our own Self to the other person; where we completely join them in their emotional experience, often believing we must do so in order to meet them where they are. Yet when we enmesh, we lose our own Self, our agency, our own connection and identification with our unique, distinct, autonomous self.

If you have an insecure Attachment Style or Pattern, building Secure Attachment requires positive corrective experiences, takes time, and takes a willingness to risk trying out new behaviors.

But before we are willing to risk, we must feel sufficient emotional safety and trust in our relationship with another. And that sufficient sense of trust and safety with them arises where there is enough warmth, resonance, and attentive caring accompaniment from them.

Only when you’ve experienced that, can you safely allow yourself to embrace yourself fully; with awareness and self-compassion, and to risk expressing your truest deepest feelings, even when it still feels uncomfortable, and even in their presence.

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