Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

What does being intimate mean to you? I was so intimidated by that word. Physical intimacy was easy, but emotional intimacy? I couldn’t get my head wrapped around the concept. I had the feeling that exposing my feelings, my thoughts, my very self, that I would end up flayed. Not very encouraging. I was so sad that I had failed at intimacy.

I chalked it up on the side of Stuff I Can’t Do, and went on with my rather lonely life. I was in a couple 12 step groups at the time, and working on step 4, I took a moral inventory of myself as fearlessly as I could, then told a chaplain what I had done, and how I felt about it. I felt a little better. I found a sponsor and told her secrets. I felt a little lighter.

I told my secrets and shared the attendant feelings. And as I uncovered more secrets, I told those. My secrets, not yours. I made some kind friends, I found a wonderful therapist (my eighth, if you were wondering) and told my therapist everything, and I had a ton of secrets in my life, and I told my dear friends a lot. Little by little I turned my poisonous secrets into something benign. Little by little I integrated the traumas I had kept hidden. Little by little, I cleaned out my emotional basement. Lonely is often a result of a crowded emotional basement, and so I found myself feeling less lonely. (I define lonely as disconnected from ourselves, and lonesome as disconnected from others.)

Why am I intimate? What makes me connect? How do I engage?

One of the answers I get for all three of those questions is, I trust.

I sure wasn’t good at it, but I had to start somewhere; I was great at trusting the wrong people. So I went to professional people who seemed like they would have being trustworthy in their job descriptions. Babysteps. We want to move forward, but we don’t want to go too far too fast. If we scare ourselves, we will often just stop.

I didn’t trust me, I didn’t trust my gut, and I sure didn’t trust my judgment. And as I told my secret stories, and felt my feelings with someone, that started to shift.

Why am I soft? How do I enjoy feeling vulnerable? What makes me drop my defences?

I will say, I am not always running around defenceless. I am not always soft and vulnerable, but I am more often way more often than I used to be. I also have a lot of trustworthy friends now. I also know that I feel easier when I am vulnerable. I trust me, I trust that I can cope, I trust the universe will provide what I need to take care of me.

I enjoy a bunch of intimate friendships. I am good at them. Intimacy is now easy and pretty much second nature. I appreciate it as part of my natural life, but also as one of the paths to my natural life.

I now have a personal rule, namely, I have no secrets of my own. The secrets others tell me aren’t mine to tell, but my secrets get told to any one of several people. Sometimes I tell all of them. It keeps crap out of my emotional basement, it keeps me feeling fresh and light.

How have I changed from feeling isolated and lonely to feeling connected and close?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05042014

Have you found your trustworthy people to tell your secrets to?

If you found something of value, useful, or interesting in this contemplation, please +1 and share. How do you feel when you are doing good?