You can’t evade the profound uncertainty of love, and, more importantly, of life.
Those with avoidant personalities fall into two camps. One camp is composed of individuals who retreat at the slightest sense of pressure. And the other of people who believe they can transform their lives into their fantasies. But both share the same goal: the cultivation of a life with no risk and heartache. When you don’t believe you can tolerate your so-called negative feelings, you envision a life wherein effort negates them.
If you tend to be obsessed with safety, even after you’ve created the seemingly perfect life, you’ll still be preoccupied with it. They say it’s harder to hold on to your status than it is to gain it. And if you believe you’ve totally avoided danger, you’re likely deluded. Imagine a world where you’re stuck in your room, with no responsibilities, for an entire year. Would you feel afraid that whomever you’re depending on to care for you will one day stop? Would you feel like a failure for resolving to discontinue trying to succeed? And would that engender a depressive episode if you also begin to believe that you’re wasting your life?
Also, consider how often many of us run away from being loved, convinced that we can foster self-oriented affection on our own. (Again, there’s that wish for total control.) The defense is one against an actual inherent need. As noted above, some flee altogether, and others strive for complete dominance. Additionally, however, some flee their anxieties in attempts to merge with another, into their benign clutch. Describing these individuals, psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams posited, “Their behavior shows evidence of the survival of archaic and rather desperate efforts to counteract internal terror by the conviction that some attachment figure is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, and that through psychological merger with this wonderful Other, they are safe. They also hope to be free of shame: A by-product of idealization and the associated belief in perfection is that imperfections in the self are harder to bear; fusion with an idealized object is an attractive remedy.”
Many of my clients ask why they can’t have both love and security, or better yet, love and no vulnerability. They want a world in which their partners can just read their minds and know what they want, a world where they can’t be rejected. Yet, one can’t both be in love and in control; aloofness is antithetical to the extreme passion and pain felt in any romance. Can you really be in love when you don’t feel its risks?
Even though I’m mainly a CBT therapist, lately, I’ve come to conclusion that some feelings don’t even necessarily need to be managed or talked out of (reframed if you’re using a CBT term). Like anything else, they can just come and go, even those that seem to linger. In arguing for this perspective, philosopher Krista Thomason writes, ” …emotional realism means accepting that our feelings have a life of their own and that they don’t always fit into the neat categories we create for them. We also need to learn to listen to them rather than try to boss them around. Just because we feel something we think we shouldn’t feel doesn’t mean the feeling is wrong.” Think about what heartache is teaching you. It’s telling you that you’re truly living and are worthy of love (even when it questions whether you’ll experience it ever again). If that individual can love you, so can another. It’s informing you of your courage to love and also be corny as fuck, which romantic love apparently can’t do without. Your heartache notes your mistakes as much as your strengths. It’s our fault that we tend to only hear its self-doubt.
In this vein, it must be noted that it’s a misconception to think that therapy’s purpose is to help the client cultivate a sense of self-love, which I’ve argued elsewhere is nothing more than a drug. Its actual purpose is to help the client loosen her grip on her obsessive need for control, to open the doors to her fortified city and accept the risk that her inner sanctum may be ransacked. Ultimately, therapy helps one accept the inevitability of existential despair, the resultant feeling of knowing that your dreams will never be captured. What all of us should want isn’t a drug to help us escape our pain, but an increased assurance, or evidence, that we can carry it.
Check out our episode with Krista below:
And before her upcoming book release, check out Krista’s book on shame!
https://capitaloneshopping.com/p/naked-the-dark-side-of-shame-and/MGXVMC7Q5D
Leon's Existential Cafe 