~ Intimacy: Lowering Your Barriers ~
By John R. Ballew, M.S.
Copyright 2005 all rights reserved
|
Opening yourself to what you are feeling is an important first step towards increasing your capacity
for intimacy. Take a breath. Notice what you are feeling in the moment. Learn to recognize the
sensations, including the bodily sensations, which accompany emotions. Shallow breathing may
indicate anxiety, for instance. In fact, psychotherapist Fritz Perls called anxiety “excitement without
the breath.”
The next step towards lowering the walls and increasing the intimacy in your life is to become more
comfortable with sharing your feelings with others. Take responsibility for what you are
experiencing rather than attributing it to someone else. Keep it simple and direct. Remember that
emotions don’t always have to be monumental things; sharing your feelings about a piece of music
or a movie you’ve just seen with a friend can be a great way to gain more experience.
If you develop greater capacity to communicate your feelings with others, you’ll soon find that
people do one of two things. Some folks will reciprocate and share their feelings. Others will not,
and may even feel uncomfortable with your “opening up.” Don’t allow others’ responses to put you
off-track. People choose different levels of intimacy with one another. If your goal is to open up
the walls and have more intimacy in your life, look for people who respond positively to your
initiatives. These are the people who have the greatest potential for giving you what you are
seeking.
Intimacy requires being genuine and sincere with people. Genuineness and sincerity require
telling the truth. Learning to tell the truth about your experience can be challenging – especially if
you’ve been raised with the belief that “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!”
Small wonder that learning to speak truthfully about your feelings, experiences and desires takes
practice for some of us.
Someone once said, “Sincerity is the most important thing in life. Once you can fake that, you’ve
got it made!” Beware of false intimacy. False intimacy can easily develop in online chat rooms, for
instance. It seems you are having a heart-to-heart conversation with someone. Then you make
plans to meet and they don’t show up, or they aren’t who they represented themselves to be. Or
the chat-and-email connection is suddenly just dropped without explanation. These folks aren’t
practicing intimacy. For them, relationships are simply a source of entertainment or diversion.
The party drug Ecstasy also can lead to a false sense of intimacy. One of the things many men
like about X is that it increases their sense of well-being, connection and affection. The problem is,
Ecstasy produces this out of a neurochemical reaction, not a relationship. I’ve known men who
despised one another and would do well to avoid each other who, under the influence of X and a
driving musical beat, resurrected unhealthy relationships that should have been left dead and
buried. If you rely on Ecstasy to provide opportunities for experiencing intimacy, you are only
fooling yourself.
With practice, experience and occasional coaching, we can learn to open our hearts and develop
closer relationships. You have a right to healthy, affectionate closeness with others. Don’t let the
fact that these don’t happen automatically talk you out of getting what you want.
John R. Ballew, M.S., is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Atlanta. He specializes in issues related to coming
out, sexuality and relationships, spirituality and career. He can be reached via the web at www.bodymindsoul.org or at (404) 874-
8536.
© Copyright 2005 John R. Ballew, M.S. All rights reserved.
The BRC extends thanks to John R. Ballew for his gracious consent to display and archive his contributions on this site. Any
duplication in any form is prohibited without express written permission of the author and is a copyright violation.