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Fear of Intimacy - The Wounded Heart of Codependancy
 The simplest and most understandable way to describe intimacy~is how we open and share ourselves~with the outside world around us~ That is what intimacy is all about -allowing another person to see into us, To see who we really are~the ability to share who we are ~with another person.It is hard for many people to share a pure form of intimacy~because at the core of our relationship ~with ourselves and who we think we really are~Many of us hold feelings ~that we are somehow defective, unlovable and unworthy -because of emotional trauma suffered during childhood~We were programmed during early childhoodto believe that we were powerless~And withdrawing into our own little world~became a defense mechanism that helped us to survive~It is based upon the feeling that we are shameful,that we are defective, unworthy, and unlovable.Our co-dependent defence system is an attemptto protect us from being rejected, betrayed, and abandonedbecause of our unworthy, shameful being.
 
We have a fear of intimacy because we were wounded,emotionally traumatized, in early childhood -felt rejected and abandoned -and then grew up in emotional dishonest societiesthat did not provide tools for healing,or healthy role models to teach us how to overcome that fear.Our wounding in early childhood caused us to feelthat something was wrong with our being - toxic shame- and our societal and parental role modelstaught us to keep up appearances, to hide our shamefulness fromothers. Toxic Shame - defective, unlovableIt is very important in recovery to start making a distinction -drawing a boundary - between being and behavior. Growing up indysfunctional societies taught us to equate our worth - and judgethe worth of others - based upon external appearances. Weexperienced love as conditional on behavior. Someone who behavesbadly - i.e. not the way we want them to - is a bad person. Someonewho behaves the way we want them to is a good person.It is very important to stop judging our worth based upon thedysfunctional standards of societies that taught us it was shamefulto be imperfect human beings.Our behavior and additude has been dictated by our childhoodwounds; it does not mean that we are bad or defective as beings. Itmeans that we are human, it means that we are wounded.It is important to start setting a boundary between being andbehaviour. All humans have equal Divine value as beings - no matterwhat our behaviour. Our behaviour is learned (and/or reactive tophysical or physiological conditions). Behaviour, and the attitudesthat dictate behaviour, are adopted defences designed to allow usto survive in the Spiritually hostile, emotionally repressive,dysfunctional environments into which we were born."
 
At the core of codependency is toxic shame - the feeling that we aresomehow inherently defective, that something is wrong our being. The emotional trauma we suffered in early childhoodcreated within us the feeling of toxic shame."We do not need fixing. We are not broken.Our sense of self, our self perception, was shattered and fracturedand broken into pieces, not our True Self.We think and feel like we are brokenbecause we were programmed backwards.We are not broken. That is what toxic shame is- thinking that we are broken, believing that we are somehowinherently defective.At the foundation of our relationship with our self - and thereforewith other people and life - is the feeling that we will die if we revealourselves to other people, because then they will see our shamefulself. I felt deep within me (in those rare instances of breakingthrough my denial and blaming to a moment of honest clarity), thatif I let anyone see who I really was, they would run away screamingin horror at the grotesque, deformed, shameful being that I was.Our lives have been dictated by an emotional defense system that isdesigned to keep hidden the the false belief that we are defective.We use external things - success, looks, productivity, substances - totry to cover up, overcome, make up for, the personal defectivenessthat we felt caused our hearts to be broken and our souls woundedin childhood. And that personal defectiveness is a lie. That feeling of toxic shame is a lie.It was so painful that we had to lie to ourselves about it. We wereforced to be emotionally and intellectually dishonest with ourselvesby the codependent defenses we adapted. We had to learn how tolive in denial of the pain and shame at the core of our relationship
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