Fear To Love

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

Author: Ekaterina Dashkova

Fear to love. What's behind it? Why, it seems, people want love, but there are those who want it with their minds, but are afraid to let their hearts in? Or they are so afraid that they do not want this feeling to come into life, to happen

In science, this type of fear has even been given its own name - philophobia. A huge number of people deal with it, they just do not consider it a problem and therefore usually do not try to "treat" it. The idea that “I’m missing something in my life” can only emerge from time to time in consciousness, in sensations, or when a person sees happy lovers or when someone asks for love from him and reproaches him for not receives. In a word, so - from time to time I remember

It is extremely rare that a phobic fear of love acquires a panic form and literally a phobic fear of love. This is due to the fact that with her there is no object of fear as such - love, no beloved. Both the source of fear (object) and fear itself exist in the consciousness of the person himself.

And when love comes, then there is no place for fear itself, since everything has already happened, the very thing that was feared, and the person already lives in this new reality. This combines the fear of love with the fear of death - when it is not yet there - there is fear, when it came, there is no longer a person - the one who was afraid. In general, love and death have a lot in common - it is not for nothing that there is even an expression:"

Two things irrevocably change a person - this is love and death. "Indeed, having fallen in love or" after love, "no one remains the same, love greatly changes ourselves, our life as a whole.

And not only in the sweetest period of bouquet and candy, the period of licency, as it is called in psychology - when "rose-colored glasses", you want to sing, fly, scream from overflowing feelings, "butterflies in the stomach", when the lightness is unimaginable, the happiness of pure water, and euphoria around the clock, and creativity, and so on, and so on. Not only this, somewhat altered state of consciousness makes a person different, but the very experience of opening the heart, the experience of devotion to another, the readiness for self-giving, the experience of intense happiness and a feeling of inner integrity changes a person. Of course, both the pain of love and the personal tragedies associated with it leave their mark, more often a trauma deep enough that they change a person, his perception of life, and sometimes fate.

Why are people afraid of love, avoiding it consciously and subconsciously.

The reasons most often lie in the past - in an already accomplished experience - in a personal drama in the past - that is, the person himself once suffered from love or, in front of his eyes, someone (often very close and dear) experienced severe pain from love or its consequences …

The memory of this can be both explicit and repressed - that is, you do not want to love in life, you perceive love as a disease, but you cannot remember anything like that in the past. The experience itself was, but the psyche supplanted it as traumatic, interfering with normal life.

In rare cases, this "experience" a person has gleaned in literature and cinema about the suffering and misfortunes of love, our consciousness is especially sensitive to such information in adolescence, in early adolescence.

RJ Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale University, who deeply studied the issue, proposed such a model - a triangle of states from which love is composed: Intimacy, Passion, Commitment. All three of these states are active in love. Intimacy is a feeling of deep intimacy, a perfect peculiarity of relations with this particular person, trust, interpenetration.

Passion is a component of desire - to be together, to possess, to give oneself, the desire to merge and experience unity in this merger, the strongest physical attraction. Obligation (responsibility) is an internal choice - a sincere and free decision to be with a person, keep love, cherish, create relationships.

So, with the fear of love, first of all, attention should be paid to the anxieties and fears that exist in these three areas. The topic of obligations is difficult for someone - it is perceived as imprisonment, for example, or the person does not trust himself that he will be able to fulfill these obligations. Since philophobia exists precisely in life "without love" or "before love", then in this aspect it is rather necessary to talk about your illusions, about your fears-fantasies about how I will have it when I fall in love. When a person falls deeply in love with reality, with a concrete Other, this aspect, as a rule, does not cause any difficulties at all, is perceived as a desired good.

But while a person is not in love, not in love, as they say "head over heels," the theme of obligations can really cause a lot of tension inside and hinder the creation or development of relationships.

Is it possible because of this fear not to create a long-term loving relationship in a lifetime? Yes, you can. The defensive reactions of the psyche can overpower the desire for development and transformation in love. There is no trouble in this if the person himself does not consider it a problem. Not all people come for the experience of love, not for everyone it is an obligatory "part of the program" of life. However, people who have chosen this for themselves, still at times feel that they are missing something in life, as if something passes them by.

On the other hand, love is not something to be earned in life. I mean working on myself now. You can change your attitude towards obligations and, thereby, facilitate the path of love, the path of its coming into life. But, nevertheless, life shows that love often simply comes, happens, bursts in, covers, whatever you call it, and this does not depend on how much a person has “worked through” his fears at the level of consciousness. Love breaks down internal barriers, does not ask a person - "ready-not ready" and frees from the fear of obligations by the fact that this responsibility becomes desirable, as part of happiness in love.

When the root of philophobia is in the realm of Intimacy, the main anxiety is associated with trust, with the fear of mental pain, rejection. The deeper aspects of this are often rooted in our relationship with the very first person in our life, in our first love - in the relationship with my mother.

Also, this area is most vulnerable just for experiences - first love that ended in pain, unrequited love and others, from which we learned that love is a misfortune and illness.

Here is the time and place for another term - intimophobia - the fear of intimacy, intimacy, depth and trust. A very widespread phenomenon now, one of the reasons for the "departure" of people to work, virtual life, addiction. This is the desire to avoid relationships with the world of meaning.

Another, to have these relationships only in the layer of formal, friendly or purely sexual. The desire not to allow anything in them that can change, transform the person himself. A completely healthy desire to preserve one's integrity, boundaries, self-identity with intimophobia acquires the character of avoiding everything that could violate this integrity.

A person then hinders his development through relationships, through the world of feelings, believing that he will preserve himself in this way. From my professional experience, I know that a person always has a reason and meaning for this. It also happens that once the choice in favor of closeness saved a person's life in the literal sense. At the same time, biologically, psychologically, even economically, it is open systems that thrive in our human world. Whether through a crisis of this closeness or through an inner desire for development and greater freedom, people sometimes strive to overcome intimophobia and let changes into their lives.

In the sphere of Passion, the physical aspect of love, the experience of merging, losing oneself, giving oneself and the fears associated with this is also of great importance. This layer is recognized by us to the least extent usually. Except when there were real events - rape, incest, other sexual trauma and abuse. When this was not in personal history, but there is tension, it is more difficult to realize the origins, but you need to look especially sensitively at the topic of corporeality - how we perceive our body, how merging is felt - like heaven on earth or as the loss of ourselves. This aspect is associated with sexuality, with the taboo in this area, with the experience taken from the parental family. If there is a blockage or difficulties in this area, the most beneficial will be body-oriented practices, which in modern psychology certainly affect the aspect of relationships with the mother - physical relationships (affection, caring for your body in childhood, care and physical punishment).

Also, the causes of stress in the topic of passion, its reluctance in life, must be sought in the experience of previous "passions", addictions. If it was painful, the person will subconsciously tend to avoid anything that in one way or another resembles passion, any form of "losing oneself."

For all three spheres, one common fear can manifest itself - for example, the fear of losing control - over oneself, over one's life. It is especially strong in people for whom this type of injury is primary. Common can be fear of pain, rejection, abandonment. Which also depends more on the type of our trauma, and not on love as such. And in a global sense, our suffering in love is associated not so much with it, as such, but with the fact that it intensifies, exacerbates our main problem area - the trauma of the experienced misfortune "in love", in early childhood, as a rule.

What else do all types of love resistances have in common? They are united by the fact that almost all of them are fantasies - they are ideas, solutions and memory of the Past, which we mentally transfer to the Future. We think "if it was so (for me or for others), then it will be so" - it hurts, or difficult, or with consequences.

The irony is that it will be somehow different - in real love. Commitment can be enjoyable, intimacy can be a delight and experience of maturity, sexuality can be more open than ever, and a passion for a person can be different from a passion for play, for example, and does not destroy life. There will be pain too, but about something different than before, because you are already in something different over time.

Since we are afraid not so much of love as of the exacerbation of the previous wound, we are afraid of our own internal trauma, that it will again make itself felt, then we can heal its best, our soul as a whole. Not even to open up to love, or intimacy, or sexuality, not to “do something with yourself that will allow you to fall in love,” no. More like a manifestation of love for oneself, with a desire for oneself to have a holistic experience of being. It is not important whether love will come as such - like a romance or a family, it is important that you allow it to yourself, as the luxury of being in this life, as your generosity - to love, as your kindness - to accept the love of people, as the courage to open up and be loved ones, as a passion to live, to create.

Through the experience of a loving relationship to ourselves, we learn that it can be somehow different, that not only "loss of consciousness" and illness this thing is love, but there is something else and something else in it, and that love is real may be very different from what we thought or assumed about it.