Investigating And Healing Reasons For Relationship Avoidance

Relationship avoidance may arise from unconscious patterns related to a fear of intimacy, dating anxiety, and loneliness. Learn to foster a more secure approach to connecting with others through mindful exploration.

Transcript

So go ahead and find the meditation posture.

Push the crown of the head up towards the ceiling.

And now take a deep,

Deep breath in.

And exhale.

Once again,

Super deep breath in.

And exhale.

And then once again,

Super deep breath in.

And exhale.

Good,

Then one more time,

Super deep breath in.

And exhale.

OK,

Good.

So here we're going to work on relationship avoidance.

So now feel into your own avoidance of relationships,

Your own reticence,

Like the reasons why you think it's like,

Oh,

Better to stay away.

And here we want to take the pro-symptom position.

So let the belief,

Let the emotions come up,

But do so in a way that you kind of allow yourself momentarily to believe them.

And now notice the reasons that you produce.

And now notice how for you,

What you've given,

What you've known,

What you've learned in your life,

These reasons make sense.

I'm not saying that they're totally right,

But they make sense for you,

At least in some way.

Now notice that.

And now stay with the beliefs.

And as you're feeling into these beliefs and thinking about them,

Check in with the body.

Now notice what are the emotions that come up.

And here,

Be kind and patient with yourself.

OK,

And now one more time.

Notice the reasons why you avoid relationship.

Avoid closeness,

Avoid intimacy.

And now just for a moment,

Suspend internal criticism and see how for a part of you,

This makes sense.

OK,

And now focus on one of these beliefs in particular.

And this is very important.

Connect this belief that you have with earlier experiences,

Probably from childhood,

But maybe the experiences date back to adolescence or earlier adulthood.

It's totally fine.

So now go ahead and float back to a scene where you picked up this lesson.

And this is very important.

This scene can be,

Or this memory can be like an amalgamated composite memory of the kind of things that would happen.

You don't need to have like a firm episodic memory.

So,

OK,

Go ahead and float back to this scene.

OK,

And now in this old scene,

Go ahead and have the perfect nurturers there with you or the ideal parent.

And they're going to support you as you reflect on this old scene.

All right,

So there you are in this old negative scene.

Notice what's happening in the scene.

Notice how old you are.

It's actually really important to remember how old you were.

When we're very young,

We're much more vulnerable,

Much more easily overwhelmed.

So,

Notice who you're with.

Who's in this old negative scene?

And now one more time,

Notice the thoughts.

Like what are the beliefs first about self?

What do you think about yourself in this scene?

What did you learn about self?

And now this is very important.

I want you to notice how in this old scene,

Given your age,

Given the situation,

This negative belief about self that you developed is pretty reasonable.

It makes sense that you develop this belief.

We're not saying the belief is good,

But it does make sense.

And now take a moment to see how it makes sense.

And now allow for body tensions to come up,

Emotions,

Other related thoughts.

Allow for all of this.

And now notice your beliefs about other.

How do you view the other in this old negative scene?

Also notice how this belief about other makes sense given the circumstances.

And now notice your beliefs about the world,

About life itself.

And likewise,

Notice how this belief about life,

About the world,

How it makes sense given your circumstances in this old negative memory.

Again,

Notice the emotions,

The body tensions.

And now in this old negative scene where you learned to avoid relationships,

Where you developed a tremendous sense of ambivalence towards connecting and towards relationships,

Notice what did you want back then?

What was your desire?

Your desire was probably just to be supported,

Secure,

Loved,

Safe,

Understood.

But notice what was my desire at the time?

Again,

Notice the body tensions,

The emotions.

And now in this scene,

Notice how the other responded to your desire,

Your wish.

And now it's not important whether or not the other understood your desire.

But just notice how you perceived that they responded to your desire.

That's right.

And now given their response or lack of response to your desire,

How did that impact you?

How did you respond to their response?

Where do you feel it in the body?

What emotions come up as you see your response to how you were treated?

And now just for a moment,

Imagine that you float above this scene.

And now you review your whole life between that scene,

Between that memory,

That time,

And the present and see how this early experience went on to affect you.

And as you see this,

Again,

Take the pro-symptom position of being like,

Yeah,

Oh,

Okay,

I see.

Oh,

Of course,

This makes sense.

Given these old experiences,

Given these old negative learnings,

I see and understand how this affected me.

Ah,

Yes,

This makes sense.

Keep examining how these early negative learnings affected you.

How did you cope?

What did you do?

The assumption is that there's some sort of distortion that you learned.

And now notice how that distortion affected you.

What were the costs of this negative belief?

Okay,

Good.

And now go back to the old negative scene.

One more time,

Notice what's happening.

Notice who you're with,

How old you are.

Notice the emotions and the thoughts one more time.

And now have the perfect nurturers or ideal parents come into the scene and remove you from the scene and take you somewhere totally safe.

And now notice how you are safe with them,

How the perfect nurturers will protect you.

Now,

This is very important.

The perfect nurturers really want to understand and want to listen to you.

And now given that,

Go ahead and explain to them how this early negative experience affected you.

Give voice to whatever is unfinished.

Well,

Keep giving voice and keep seeing how the perfect nurturers listen.

And again,

They want to understand,

They want to be there with you.

So keep going.

That's right,

Keep going.

Keep giving voice.

Now,

As you're explaining this,

The perfect nurturers attune to you.

So they help you feel seen and known,

Understood.

And they can understand why and how you saw things as you did.

It makes sense to them.

And now see how there were certain distortions.

And now these distortions are completely understandable.

But these early experiences that were probably scary and overwhelming,

Where there was a threat of abandonment or rejection.

See how there were,

One more time,

See how there are these kind of distortions,

These ways of viewing the world that were a little bit off.

Now again,

It's totally understandable,

But still there's this kind of clouding of your vision.

And see if you can understand that and express it to the perfect nurturers.

You can see that they understand and also see how they help you forgive yourself.

That they really help you be kinder and more compassionate towards self.

It's like,

Yeah,

Of course you came to these conclusions.

Of course you dealt with this the way that you did.

It makes sense.

Okay,

And now this is important.

Have the perfect nurturers feed back to you what you've said and when they do,

They also will add a few insights.

They'll add a few things that you maybe did not see otherwise.

And they do this with total love.

And here the only thing that they care about is helping you heal,

Helping you feel better and so forth.

And also there's no pressure.

They would never pressure you.

So go ahead and have the perfect nurturers feed back to you what you've said.

That's right.

Keep going.

Good.

And now have the perfect nurturers say something that's soothing to you.

It helps you feel a little bit better and maybe start moving towards letting this go,

Moving past this.

But again,

No pressure.

They meet you exactly where you are.

Very good.

Good.

Now check back in with the belief that like,

Oh,

It's better to avoid relationships.

It's better to be.

And on my own,

It's better to not be too close.

And once again,

See how given your experiences,

It makes sense.

Of course you think that.

But see if the belief is a little bit less overpowering,

A little bit less strong.

All right.

And now see yourself moving forward in your real adult life.

And now notice how things feel a little bit easier,

A little bit lighter.

And now imagine yourself connecting with others.

Being close,

Both in terms of friendship and also in terms of romantic relationship.

Notice how you're a little bit less fearful,

More grounded,

More centered,

More present.

Take a moment with this visualization.

That's right.

Keep going.

Good.

Could make a deep impression of this.

Now go ahead and dissolve the meditation and imagine that you float up above the meditation.

And now review.

What was this like?

What did you learn here?

Very good.

Good.

Now I'll count from five to one.

When I get to one,

You'll be awake and present in the room.

Settled in the experience.

Five,

Four,

Three,

Two,

One.

Awake and present in the room.

Settled in the experience.