This is the second in a series of articles featuring real-life stories of healing and transformation based on actual people I’ve helped over the years in therapy.
Last month we explored Fear of Anger, and you can read the article here.
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THE SITUATION:
“This is going to sound strange,” ‘Nora’ told me, her eyes wide and filled with tears. “But there’s something about me saying ‘thank you’ to my husband that feels scary.”
‘Nora’, a client of mine in her early 30s who was experiencing marital problems, had been telling me about how her husband had gone with her to the doctors the previous day. She was very anxious, having found a lump in her breast, and the doctor was going to share the results of the mammography.
She said that her husband agreeing to come with her was a little out of character for him, as things weren’t going so well in their marriage. But he came along and thankfully they both heard the good news together as the doctor gave her the all clear.
As they left the doctor’s office, ‘Nora’ experienced a surge of relief as the tension that had built up over the previous few days dissolved. It was replaced by gratitude that she had her health and a sense that things between her and her husband could begin to improve. She wanted to thank him for being there when she really needed him, and remembered how in one of our earlier consultations, I’d encouraged her to tell her husband how much she appreciated his efforts to improve their relationship and be responsive to her needs.
‘Nora’ felt the phrase ‘thank you’ rolling on the tip of her tongue, but she simply couldn’t get the words out. She said it was like a force field had enveloped her, freezing her body with fear and stopping her from being able to communicate her appreciation. She looked at me with bewilderment, shaking her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why couldn’t I just say ‘thank you’?”
THE ISSUE / PROBLEM
‘Nora’ was experiencing a fear of being emotionally open and vulnerable with her husband. She was struggling to connect more deeply with him to such an extent that the idea of thanking him felt dangerous to her.
THE PROCESS
I knew that to get to the heart of Nora’s issues, we’d need to consult with the wisdom of Nora’s body. I shared with her that while having difficulty saying ‘thank you’ might not make sense on a rational level, there was clearly something about expressing gratitude to her husband that she found scary. “Your body seems to know more about what’s going on than your head,” I said.
I then suggested that ‘Nora’ close her eyes and picture that moment when she couldn’t thank her husband. I asked her to imagine trying to thank him, and to notice what she felt when she did this. She closed her eyes and within seconds felt something that caused her to open them again, wide with fear: “My chest feels tight, and my heart’s racing,” she said. “It’s that same panicky feeling I get sometimes.”
“What’s so scary?” I wondered out loud, encouraging her to ask her fear that question, not her head.
“I feel like something bad is going to happen,” she replied. “Like I’m going to be rejected.”
I knew that to find the answers as to why ‘Nora’ felt this way, we would need to explore her earliest relationship experiences and discover how and when she had learned to suppress and conceal her feelings. The groundwork for her fears were likely set in motion by events that occurred when she was a baby, before she was old enough to remember. But our work together focused on events she could remember, and through recalling these, a picture of her early life emerged that shed light on the origins of her struggles.
I helped ‘Nora’ stay with, understand, and manage her fear in the moment so she could trace her life back to her earliest memories. She told me that her parents weren’t married and endured a rocky relationship. Her mother, who was barely 20 years old when ‘Nora’ was born, was 15 years younger than her father, whom ‘Nora’ rarely got to see. When he was around, ‘Nora’ remembered both her parents arguing a lot. ‘Nora’ longed for her father to pay her attention and to love and care for her, but he never seemed to have the time. Eventually, she discovered why. Her father lived with another woman in town and they had children of their own with whom he spent most of his time.
When she was six, Nora’s parents finally separated, the painful moment of goodbye – when she and her mother boarded a train bound for her grandmother’s while her father waved goodbye from the platform – haunted ‘Nora’ throughout her childhood. Her young mind reasoned that there must be something wrong with her for her father to let her go like this.
She never saw her father again, staying with her mother who she described as anxious, unpredictable, and often overprotective, regularly warning ‘Nora’ about the dangers of the world while remaining unaware of ‘Nora’s’ emotional needs. When ‘Nora’s’ needs did register, often her mother would dismiss them or criticize ‘Nora’ for being unreasonable. At other times, her mother would show affection, but it felt excessive and smothering to ‘Nora’, more about having to meet her mother’s needs rather than her own.
As the picture became clearer, we could see how ‘Nora’ learned to avoid explicitly communicating her needs for closeness and care, and to inhibit any displays of affection. She learned to dismiss her own emotional needs which became her standard way of responding, leaving her disconnected from her emotional experience.
THE RESULTS
Early on in our work together, I helped ‘Nora’ turn down the dial on her anxiety and make room for the feelings inside of her. We made sense of her struggle through looking back at her past and seeing that her fear was being triggered by memories of early experiences in which she learned that having and showing her feelings was a scary prospect. Her brain had become wired in such a way that when she experienced certain feelings even now in adulthood, her nervous system responded as though she were in danger. By staying with, understanding and managing her feelings, ‘Nora’ saw more clearly how the fear she felt with her husband came from this old, outdated wiring in her brain.
One evening, while having dinner with her husband a few days after the doctor’s visit, she thought about our work together that day and how she wanted to be someone who was able to express her feelings. At the dinner table, she leaned into the present moment and even though she felt her old fears begin to stir, she now knew where they were coming from. And instead of dismissing them, she stayed with them. She took a deep breath to help calm her rapidly-beating heart and said to her husband: “I meant to say this before, but I just wanted to thank you for going with me to my doctor’s appointment. It meant a lot to me.”
Her husband smiled, put his hand on hers and said: “Anytime.”
‘Nora’ had taken a big step toward identifying and expressing her true feelings and connecting with her husband in a genuine and productive way. We still had more work to do to help her break free from the fear that had governed her life for so long, but she was on the way toward having the kind of relationship with her husband she always wanted.
CONCLUSION
Like ‘Nora’, so many of us become afraid of being emotionally open in our relationships. But it’s an often-unconscious fear that’s based in the past, not in the present, that’s constricting our behavior. Most of us do not start out in life afraid to express our emotions, something that’s evidenced by how free and expressive children can be with their emotions. Of course, as we mature, the way we convey our feelings becomes more sophisticated. But to find the answer as to why many of us are afraid of being in touch with our feelings and sharing them with others, we need to follow our fear back in time to when it started.
By tracing our fear back to the environment in which we were raised in our early years, we can begin to shine the light of awareness and understanding on our experiences. This awareness will help us begin to disentangle ourselves from our outdated fears and free ourselves to experience exciting and rewarding possibilities in our current relationships.
