Title: Overcoming Fears of Intimacy Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2005 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 749 Category: Relationships

Overcoming Fears of Intimacy Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Sam, age 42, had never been married. It’s not that Sam had never fallen in love. But every time a relationship had started to move toward commitment, Sam ran.

When Sam’s loneliness became overwhelming to him, he called me for help.

“I want to be in a relationship, yet every time I get close to someone, I run away. I’m not even sure what I’m so afraid of, but I must be terrified of something!”

“Sam, what happens inside you when you like someone?” The following answer and resulting dialogue came out over time, but I’ve condensed it here.

“I think that if this person really knew me, she wouldn’t like me. I do all kinds of nice things for her so she will like me. Then after a while I start to feel trapped and I pull back. She gets upset about my pulling back and I then feel even more trapped. Once she gets mad at me, I stop feeling in love with her. That’s when I decide she is not right one for me. This has happened over and over.”

“So first problem is that you believe that she won’t like you when she gets to know you. Out of your fear of rejection, you try to control how she feels about you by doing nice things for her. But then you feel trapped and your fear of engulfment – of being controlled by her and losing yourself in relationship – kicks in. Then you run. It sounds like your underlying fears of rejection and engulfment are controlling your life and not letting you share love.”

“That’s exactly right! So what do I do about this?”

During these months, though, I've learned a couple things. First, writing about procrastination is pretty dangerous for someone as good at it as I am. When I'm not focused, it's easy to become distracted by things that simply aren't very important to me. But I also noticed that for me, at least, procrastination isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Come on, don't you sometimes thoroughly enjoy not doing something?) And there are times when I've found that putting something off actually worked out for best. So I say, let's procrastinate! One rule, though: if we're going to procrastinate, let's enjoy it. Here's how:

1 - Step away

If you're procrastinating, one thing's for certain. You're not very primary about your task. It's not a ‘must' or you'd be doing it. Think of last time you procrastinated. Just how critical was thing you were procrastinating about? At time, other things were no doubt more urgent, more important - or just more fun. So you did them instead. Good for you.