3 Keys to Unlock Deeper Intimacy

Learn how to create an unbreakable bond by unlocking intimacy within your relationship.

Has anyone ever articulated their feelings in such a way that it inspired you to deepen your capacity for connection?

A friend of mine is able to paint a picture of his internal world with such clarity that it allows me to attune to his reality. I developed a desire to express myself in this way because I've rarely felt understood.

How could I possibly feel understood when I didn't even know how I felt?

The deepest form of intimacy isn't found beneath the sheets between two lovers. Intimacy is what you embody after you take off your mask, in-order to be fully seen by another (intimacy = in-to-me-u-see)

Intimacy is learning how to authentically communicate your internal experience, pleasant or unpleasant, without the fear of being rejected.

Most of us are unaware of triggers that cause us to temporarily shut down emotionally. If we shut down emotionally due to an unconscious reaction to an external circumstance we destroy all possibility for connection.

Experiences during our childhood shaped our current belief system. The structure of the subconscious mind is built upon these beliefs and form our unique individual perceptions.

Our perception creates our experience of reality. Almost all of our decisions are involuntarily made by the subconscious.

There are two unconscious fears controlling our thoughts, emotions, and decisions.

1. I am not enough

2. I won't be loved

The belief that we are not enough causes us to hide behind internal walls attempting to avoid expressing our deepest truths. Walls are boundaries that represent the fear of being unworthy of love.

If we believe in our worthiness we wouldn't revert to illusionary controlling behaviors in hopes of avoiding rejection thus causing a denial of our own sense of self.

Underneath all of our pretending we will find hurt, disappointment, and shame.

These fears cause hardships within relationships. Identifying our core beliefs can be difficult because we dress them up as external situations and blame the experience rather than our belief that beckoned it into our reality.

It's impossible to identify something outside of our awareness. Imagine searching a crowed picture for Waldo without knowing he's wearing a red and white stripped outfit.

Do you know what will happen if life calls us to expand but we choose to remain safe? We will continue to repeat the experience until we let go of our pain and allow our healing to contribute to the evolution of humanity.

We must transcend fear to experience true intimacy by courageously choosing to be vulnerable.

I had the equation backwards. I thought once I felt courageous my fear would disappear and I'd take action. The ability to be courageous is choosing to take action despite how we feel or what we think will happen.

When we take action the terrifying mountain crumbles into a dusty road behind us as we awaken to the truth of who we are and allow our hearts to lead the way.

The reason most people are terrified to take action is their attachment to the outcome.

Vulnerability is defined as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure by Brene Brown in her book, Daring Greatly:How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

Uncertainty can destroy fulfillment within a relationship because the fear of rejection causes people to deny their internal reality in order to not lose love from another.

Tony Robbins says, “the quality of your life is directly related to how much uncertainty you can comfortably handle.”

How do we experience the depths of intimacy if our subconscious mind is always seeking to make us feel safe?

While it may seem impossible, there is a path to creating deeper connections within your relationships. Choosing to do the right thing after doing it wrong for so long, will feel wrong. This is how you'll know you're heading towards growth.

The 3 Keys to Creating Deeper Intimacy

The 3 keys to intimacy is willingness, awareness, and transparency.

Willingness.

“Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and clarity of our purpose. The level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.” - Brene Brown.

If we want to create something new within our life we have to give ourself permission to head into a new direction. We must be willing to expand our awareness to include truths outside of what we want to be true.

If we don't, we can easily step into denial. Denial includes minimizing impact, forgetting it, excusing it, or rationalizing it.

The underlying belief that it's easier not to acknowledge the dark aspects of our personality in order to avoid pain, is the exact reason we suffer.

We must be willing to shine light on these suppressed parts of our personality so we can resurrect the full potential of who we really are.

Willingness Affirmations:

I am willing to see what I've been denying to avoid pain.

I am willing to be completely wrong.

I am now willing to be totally willing to see truth.

I am willing to evolve and develop myself.

Awareness.

Awareness is the ability to witness reality as it is while recognizing your internal experience and honoring it without judgement.

We find it difficult to see anything within ourselves that can be perceived as wrong or bad because we believe it will be painful or impossible to change.

Suppressed shame paralyzes us from personal growth because it requires us to deny how our actions contribute to others unpleasant experiences and our own.

We find it difficult to admit when we're wrong because it also threatens being accepted by our social groups. This pulls us deeper into unconsciousness.

Our awareness brings our unconscious patterns into the light allowing them to finally be broken.

Transparency.

This is the key to release perpetual shame cycles that inhibit our ability to experience connection. If we conceal anything we add fertilizer to our secret garden of shame and isolate ourselves from even the possibility of connection.

Shame breeds in secrecy but disappears if we speak to it.

Pain, judgement, anger, jealously, rage, disappointment, envy are emotional manifestations of underlying subconscious fears covering our own shame.

Peace and joy come from the realization that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could.

Transparency can be tricky. When we finally muster up enough courage to discuss our internal experience we think we're being transparent but most of the time we're just scratching the surface.

Why Do We Get Angry?

Let me explain. When we get upset, a majority of the time, we aren't even mad for the reasons we believe.

Lets pretend Kara was on the phone with Blake. Blake hung up because of how Kara was talking to him. Now Kara is upset because Blake hung up on her.

It's true Kara wasn't treating him with respect and it's also true that it wasn't nice of Blake to hang up on her. They both reacted in a way that continues a cycle of pain.

The interaction that happened between Blake and Kara is very common. This type of negativity happens far too often within relationships but it doesn't have to once the pattern is recognized and openly discussed.

Neither Blake nor Kara are really upset about what actually happened. Underneath the actions that triggered them is a “story” they've told themselves about what their actions mean.

It's not what happened to us that creates internal turmoil, it's what we choose to believe about ourself because of the experience.

What we choose to believe about a person, situation, or experience creates a story.

The first person to step into awareness could have easily been Blake. He could have chosen to become aware the moment he realized Kara was reacting out of her normal character.

It's easy to discern that Kara's actions made him angry, frustrated, or even sad. He instinctively hung up on her because the way she was communicating stimulated a suppressed memory within him, that has a negative narrative attached to it.

The narrative is the story.

The story was written earlier in life within our mind, that we keep reading in the present moment when an interaction feels like the painful past.

How The Story Was Written

At a point in Blake's childhood, a person he loved, most likely one of his parents, spoke to him in a negative way that emotionally wounded him.

Since our mind can't rationalize peoples behavior at such a young age we internalize it, blame ourselves, and create beliefs that diminish our own self worth.

Somewhere along the journey we end up believing their behavior would have been different if we were different.

If any part of us wants to be different before fully accepting and loving those aspects of ourself, then we don't believe we are enough just as we are.

This belief causes us to reject and suppress the aspects of our personality the adult didn't like in order to remain worthy of their love.

During the first few years of life we develop attachments with our parents and/or guardians. These attachments are necessary for the development of a healthy child.

While researchers were trying to discover why some orphanages had an infant mortality rate of 30-40%, the study revealed that a baby will stop growing and will eventually die without physical touch, even if it's receiving proper nutrition.

These underlying