What scares you?
What scares you most in your relationship? What freaks you out? Maybe you get shaky imagining your partner might leave you. Maybe you freeze at the thought that the two of you will fight and break up. Or maybe you’re afraid that your partner sees you as a monster – not good enough, or too much to handle.
If you have any of these fears – or something like them – you’re not alone. We all have fears when it comes to our important relationships. We all need the safety and closeness of a solid connection with our partner. And when that safety and closeness feel threatened, of course we freak out!
When we freak out, we naturally move to protect ourselves. We put up a protective wall and pull away, shutting our partner out. Or we push aside our vulnerable feelings and go after our partner by poking them or turning up our volume.
Problem is, these protective moves don’t work. They don’t help us get closer, and they don’t help us feel safer. When our protective moves don’t work, we tend to do even more of the same. We make our wall stronger, or we pound against our partner’s wall more loudly. The more we reinforce the wall, the louder our partner pounds. The louder we pound, the more our partner reinforces their wall.
Neither of us gets the safety and closeness we need. Instead, we feel more disconnected, more unsafe, and more freaked out than ever!
So how can we get past our fears in order to create safety and connection with our partner?
We all have raw spots that trigger our fears.
One key to getting past your fears is understanding your raw spots. Raw spots are the tender spots inside each of us that get triggered when we don’t feel safely connected to our partner.
Usually these raw spots come from the past. Maybe from a moment of rejection or abandonment in childhood, or in a previous relationship. When we understand what triggers our fear, it helps us step back from our reactions and recognize what’s happening inside ourselves in those scary moments.
How to identify your raw spot.
To identify your raw spot, try this on your own, perhaps with a journal handy:
Close your eyes and imagine a recent argument with your partner, where you both did your usual protective moves.
Tune in to the feeling that comes up in your body when you think about this argument. Notice where the feeling it is located (your chest, stomach, head and shoulders, etc.). Focus on the feeling and let it expand, if you can.
See if you can name the feeling (Ex: fear, sadness, helplessness, shame).
Stay with the feeling and float back in time. See if you can identify the first time you felt this feeling.
Where does your mind take you? What event comes to mind? Who was involved? Your partner? A parent or caregiver? A sibling?
What meaning did you make of this event? (Ex: I'm not good enough; I'm on my own; I'm not important; I'm too much/not enough)
Jot down the feeling, the event that happened when you first felt it, and the meaning you made of it. This is your raw spot.
Share your raw spot with your partner.
Now have a conversation with your partner about this. Even better is if you both can do the individual steps above and then come together to share.
Tell your partner about your raw spot. Then see if you can talk about how your fears get triggered in arguments with your partner.
When we can have this kind of a conversation with our partner, we build understanding, and our fears begin to subside. We discover that being able to talk in this way is the path out of the scary place.
Let your partner know when your raw spot gets touched.
The more we return to these vulnerable conversations when our fears come up, the more familiar and predictable the path feels. We begin to see our partner as a safe person, someone we can count on to understand and team up with us to get reconnected.
Then, when our fears arise, we can face them together. We can join hands and walk the path out of the scary place together, back to the place of safety and connection.
