THE WAY TO ANOTHER OR ABOUT PROXIMITY (THE TRAP OF LONELINESS)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

THE WAY TO ANOTHER OR ABOUT PROXIMITY (THE TRAP OF LONELINESS)

Between I and the Other

There is an abyss of images

From the text

What do we know about brothers, about friends, What do we know about our only one, And about his dear father, Knowing everything, we know nothing …

E. Evtushenko

THE PROXIMITY OF TEMPORATING AND FIRING

Talking about intimacy is both easy and difficult at the same time. Easy, because this topic is familiar to everyone. Difficult, since everyone has their own understanding of what it is.

It is important to note that the ability to intimate relationships is one of the basic criteria for mental health.

To begin with, a person needs intimacy and something else. This is an axiom. The need for intimacy is a basic human need. In the same case, if this need cannot be satisfied, the person experiences loneliness.

Closeness and loneliness are not polarities. Loneliness and merging are more polarities. Proximity is the art of balancing between these polarities, without falling into any of them.

People both strive for intimacy and avoid it. This phenomenon is well illustrated in the famous parable of the porcupines by Arthur Schopenhauer. There she is.

One cold winter day, a herd of porcupines lay in a tight heap to keep warm. However, they soon felt pricks from each other's needles, which forced them to lie farther apart. Then, when the need to keep warm again forced them to move closer, they again fell into the same unpleasant position, so that they rushed from one sad extreme to another, until they lay at a moderate distance from each other, at which they could most comfortably endure the cold.

Intimacy is both attractive and frightening, heals and hurts at the same time. Keeping close is not easy. This, as I have already noted, requires art. The art of balancing on the verge between merging and alienation, loneliness. People most often find themselves, due to various reasons (more on this below), incapable of close relationships, falling into the trap of loneliness and "running away" into various forms of "pseudo-proximity".

FORMS OF AVOIDING PROXIMITY

Here are some of the most common ways to stay out of intimacy:

• One way to avoid intimacy is to distance yourself from other people. The less often you meet people, the less likely you are to be vulnerable and traumatized.
• Another (polar) way not to meet other people is to quickly get closer to them until the moment when you can feel yourself in these relationships, your desires and feelings, the readiness of the other for contact. This path leads to merging and creating dependent relationships.
• The next way to avoid intimacy is to try to contact not with a person, but with his image, for example, through idealization. An ideal image tends to be easier to love than a real person with their flaws.
• Attempting to be in contact with several people at the same time is also a form of not meeting another. Real contact is possible with only one person who stands out as a figure from the background of other people.
• Using surrogate feelings in contact with other people is one of the most effective ways to avoid meeting them. This type of contact in everyday life is called hypocrisy.
• Actions that replace experiences also "insure" against contact and intimacy. Going into action saves a person from experiencing intense feelings (shame, guilt, anger, resentment, etc.)

These are just the most typical forms of intimacy avoidance. Each person, based on the unique experience of their relationships with loved ones, creates their own individual forms of non-meeting with them.

REASONS TO AVOID CLOSE

The main reason for avoiding intimacy in relationships and falling into the trap of loneliness is the negative, traumatic experience of such relationships with significant others in early childhood. This kind of relationship forms a certain type of attachment, which in turn determines the nature of the relationship with another.

Attachment types were first studied and described in the late 1960s. by the American-Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth during the "Strange Situation" experiment. The experiment was conducted with young children who reacted differently to the fact that their mother was leaving. It turned out that the identified types of attachment remain in adulthood, determining the nature of a person's relationship with other people:

1. Safe (secure) attachment.

People with a “secure attachment” are active, open-minded, independent, intellectually developed and self-confident. They have a feeling that they are protected, they have a reliable rear.

2. Ambivalent attachment.

People with this type of attachment are internally anxious and dependent. They often feel lonely, of no use to anyone. And sometimes they unconsciously "hook" others, trying to attract them and provoke negative reactions in order to be in the spotlight.

3. Avoidant attachment.

People with this type of attachment strive to emotionally isolate themselves from the "hurting" world, they cannot trust others enough to establish close, trusting relationships with them. Outwardly, they look emphatically independent, even arrogant, but deep inside they are very insecure. They behave in this way in order to never again experience the extreme pain of rejection.

4. Disorganized attachment.

People with this type of attachment tend to have chaotic, unpredictable emotions and reactions that often confuse the relationship partner.

5. Symbiotic attachment (mixed type).

People with this type of attachment have a very strong anxiety caused by separation, and the need to constantly confirm and evaluate their “I” to others and the desire to merge with him.

The most important factor for the formation of reliable attachment in childhood is the emotional availability of the mother, her sensitivity, the ability to respond to the baby's signals, establish visual, bodily and emotional contact with him, and withstand the strong emotions of the child. The personal qualities of the mother are also of great importance - self-confidence and correctness of their own actions (and the ability not to lose this confidence in difficult situations), trust in oneself and people, the ability to regulate one's condition, set priorities, and build relationships.

The type of attachment formed in early childhood is not eternal, it is dynamic and can change depending on various factors.

Nevertheless, this is the basis on which the further development of mental processes and the personality of the child then takes place.

If the experience of relationships in childhood was too traumatic, then repeated relationships in adult life can lead to the reproduction of previous traumas, and then the person becomes a hostage to his unconscious needs and periodically reproduces the trauma experienced in his life.

There is a definite relationship between the trauma experienced and the feeling of avoiding intimacy. So, for example, for people facing narcissistic trauma, which is characterized by a situation of depreciation, the leading feeling of avoiding intimacy is shame, which in a situation of unawareness will manifest itself as arrogance and pride.

For clients experiencing the trauma of rejection, the main feeling of avoiding intimacy will be fear, most often unconscious, which will manifest itself in the strategy of clinging (addiction) or avoiding intimacy (counter-addiction).

The highlighted mechanisms for interrupting contact are not the only reasons that affect the nature of establishing close relationships. There are a number of feelings that make intimacy with another person problematic.

FEELINGS WITHOUT PROXIMITY

Resentment is a complex feeling with manipulative overtones. Resentment contains unmanifest aggression and a desire to get attention from a significant object (the offender). Resentment arises from the inability to directly state the need expected of the significant Other. Another in this situation must guess for himself about the unnamed need of his partner.

Shame - contains the idea of a negative assessment of oneself as inappropriate, defective, inadequate, incompetent, etc. Shame is the result of an unacceptable self-image. For this feeling to arise, a real other is not at all necessary. The other in shame is often virtual. It is either the image of the other - the evaluating, non-accepting, or the introjected (uncritically accepted) other, who has become a part of the I, his subpersonality.

Guilt - unlike shame, does not generally refer to the rejection of the Self, but only to its individual actions. Guilt, like shame, is a social feeling. Feeling guilty of something in front of another, a person avoids contact with this feeling, replaces his experience with actions in an attempt to get rid of it.

Fear - the experienced fear of another is associated with a real or imagined threat emanating from him.

Disgust - a feeling of rejection, causing the desire to move away from the other.

Most often, relationships are charged with several feelings at the same time: shame and fear, guilt and resentment … But this cocktail of feelings always contains love as an invariable and obligatory component. Otherwise, the object would hardly be attractive.

Intertwined feelings are the result of early experiences with significant people in which it was impossible to receive pure love from them.

The reader may get the impression that feelings destroy or hinder intimacy. This is fundamentally wrong. Rather, the inability to experience feelings in contact with another, to present them to another leads to this.

It is important to remember that feelings always represent a need. Unmet need. In this regard, feelings paradoxically perform a contact function - they are directed to the object of the need, marking one or another need. The contact is destroyed by poorly realized feelings that cannot be placed in contact with another. Unconscious feelings are not controlled by a person and become a source for his emotional, bodily and behavioral response.

Sensitivity and awareness are the main criteria for the quality of good contact. Lack of sensitivity to the reality of one's I and the reality of the I of another person and lack of awareness of their feelings and desires does not allow people to meet and achieve intimacy.

The less clear and conscious the contact is, the more opportunities there are for manipulation in the relationship.

The less sensitive a person is to himself and the other, the stronger the distortion of reality occurs and the more difficult it is to understand the other and stay in contact with him.

As a result, often in life, two people are unable to actually meet each other. Sometimes this meeting becomes a meeting of two images - the image of the I and the image of another person. And between the I and the other lies an abyss of images, fantasies, expectations …

The desire to maintain these invented images and the fear of confronting the reality of the self and the reality of the other person are often stronger than curiosity and interest in the real self and the other and inevitably leads to disappointment. However, such disappointment is a condition of the actual Meeting. Meetings without the prism of images. Meetings where intimacy is possible.

Those who dare to follow their curiosity and interest and experience disappointment with the image of the Self and the Other will be enchanted. The charm of the authentic Self and the authentic Other.

The full text of the article is in my new book "The Pitfalls of Life: There Is a Way Out!"

For nonresidents, it is possible to consult and supervise the author of the article via the Internet.

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