Why Do People Leave Relationships By Ghosting?

Technology has made it easier than ever to connect with others for job hunting, dating and connecting with friends and family.  However, technology has also made it easier to disappear without communicating in dating relationships, serious relationship--and even in therapy.

What is Ghosting?

Ghosting is a term used to describe someone leaving a relationship by suddenly disappearing without an explanation. People who use ghosting as a way to leave a relationship withdraw without any further communication.  

Being Ghosted Feels Sad, Confusing and Frustrating

In addition, people who use ghosting often don't respond to the other person when they try to find out what happened, which can create confusion, sadness, feelings of rejection and abandonment.

Being Ghosted Can Cause You to Feel Rejected

Why Do People Leave Relationships By Ghosting?

There can be many reasons why people choose to use ghosting as a way of withdrawing from a relationship.

Here are a few of the most common reasons:

• Fear of Confrontation: Many people don't have the necessary relationship and communication skills to end a relationship. Since they don't know how to communicate their feelings and they are afraid of a confrontation, they just withdraw.  This type of emotional avoidance allows them to leave without the messiness they fear if they were to communicate directly (see my article: Understanding the Avoidant Attachment Style of Emotionally Unavailable People).

Ghosting and Fear of Confrontation

• Avoidance of Responsibility: Some people don't know how to take responsibility for their feelings. So, they avoid taking responsibility by disappearing from the other person's life. 

• Poor Interpersonal and Communication Skills: Many people haven't developed the necessary interpersonal and communication skills to date or be in a relationship, so when there's a need for a difficult conversation, they choose to silently withdraw.

• A Lack of Empathy: People who use ghosting to leave a relationship often have problems putting themselves in the other person's shoes to anticipate how hurtful it is to be ghosted. In addition, due to their lack of insight, they often don't understand the confusion they create by ghosting or, if they understand, they don't care.

Are There Warning Signs That Someone Might Ghost You?

People who get ghosted are often surprised, but there are often warning signs that someone might ghost you if things aren't going well.

There is no one particular sign that points to the possibility of being ghosted, but if you see a few of the following dynamics, this could indicate someone who might ghost you:

• A History of Ghosting: Someone who has ghosted before will often do it again. If there's a history of ghosting that you become aware of while you're seeing someone, be aware they might do it to you.

• A History of Only Short Term Dating Relationships: If the person you're seeing has only been in short term dating relationships that last a few months or weeks, this could be a warning sign that they have problems committing and, therefore, tend to leave after a short period of time. 

• A Problem Forming a Meaningful Connection With You: If you're dating someone and you recognize that they have problems forming a meaningful connection with you, this could indicate that they don't know how to form connections and that ending a relationship will be even harder for them, which could lead to ghosting (see my article: Relationships: A Fear of Being Emotionally Vulnerable).

• Inconsistent Communication: If you notice that someone's pattern of communication with you is inconsistent or it takes them a long time to respond to you, this could indicate that they're about to fade from your life. Ghosting often begins with communication becoming more infrequent until they just slip out of your life.

• A Reluctance to Commit to Plans: If you notice that the person you're seeing cancels at the last minute or is reluctant to make plans altogether, this could indicate that they're ambivalent about the relationship and, possibly, they're planning to ghost you.  

How to Cope With Ghosting

Unfortunately, ghosting is common among people who don't know how to express themselves when they want to end a relationship and, as mentioned earlier, technology has made it easier for emotionally avoidant people to use ghosting as their exit strategy.  

Being ghosted can create confusion, self doubt and feelings of rejection, sadness and anger. It's also frustrating when you don't know what happened and the person who ghosted you is unresponsive when you try to contact them.

Being ghosted can also make you feel reluctant to date again because you fear it will happen to you again. 

Seek Emotional Support From Trusted Loved Ones: 

Talk to trusted loved ones and get emotional support. 

Close friends and family can help to validate your feelings and remind you how much they care about you.  

Emotional Support From Friends

Write in a Journal: 

Since ghosting can be so confusing, especially if you didn't see any warning signs, writing in a journal can help you to clarify your thoughts and feelings. 

It can also help you to release your hurt, anger and frustration.

Writing in a Journal

Get Help in Therapy:

It's not unusual for an experience of ghosting to trigger unresolved trauma related to feeling rejected and abandoned.

Getting Help in Therapy

A skilled mental health professional can help you to work through these feelings in a way you often can't on your own.

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a skilled psychotherapist so you can overcome emotional pain, release unresolved trauma, and move on with your life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Understanding Why Toxic Positivity is Harmful to Yourself and Your Loved Ones

I began a discussion in my last article, What is Toxic Positivity? by defining toxic positivity and giving examples of it. 

As a recap from my last article: Toxic positivity rejects difficult emotions (anger, sadness, shame, resentment, jealousy, envy and so on) with an attitude of "good vibes only."  

In other words, instead of dealing with actual emotions, toxic positivity only allows positive emotions at the expense of true emotions.

The Harmful Effects of Toxic Positivity

Why is Toxic Positivity Harmful?

Toxic positivity is harmful because it invalidates a person's real experiences.  Instead of being able to share what's really going on emotionally and getting emotional support, a person who is confronted with toxic positivity has their feelings dismissed, ignored or invalidated.

In addition, toxic positivity is:  

• Shaming: When someone discloses difficult emotions and they are met with toxic positivity, they usually experience their emotions as shameful. The message they get is that their feelings are unacceptable.  Instead of feeling cared for and emotionally validated, they are met with judgment which is presented to them as if it's helpful, but it's not.  

• Guilt-inducing: Aside from feeling ashamed, someone who reveals challenging emotions and is met with toxic positivity can feel guilty for feeling the way they do.

The Harmful Effects of Toxic Positivity

• Emotionally Avoidant: Toxic positivity is used to avoid uncomfortable feelings.  This often occurs because people have their own problems with challenging emotions and they can only tolerate "good vibes."

• An Impediment to Psychological Growth and Insight: Instead of dealing with challenging emotions, a person who uses toxic positivity doesn't grow psychologically. They also don't develop insight into their problems because they are avoiding them.

Clinical Vignette:

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many cases, reveals the harmful effects of toxic positivity and how therapy can help:

Nina

When Nina confided in her older sister, Jane, that she was sad about her breakup with Joe, she was seeking emotional support from Jane.  But Jane brushed off Nina's sadness by telling her, "I don't understand why you're sad. You're so much better off without him. You both want different things.  Just move on and get back out there to meet someone new."

Nina knew that ending her five year relationship with Joe was for the best.  She and Joe each had a very different vision of what they wanted in life, which was something Nina had ignored throughout their five years together.  

But when he told her that he knew he didn't want to have children and his long term plan was to move back to his small hometown in the Midwest, Nina knew for sure it wasn't going to work out between them, and she ended it.

Even though she knew she made the right decision, she also knew this was a significant loss for her.  At 28, she had only ever been in one serious relationship, which was her relationship with Joe.  And even though she knew that, unlike Joe, she wanted children and she wanted to stay in New York City, she still missed him.

After she spoke with her sister, Nina wondered if she was wrong to feel sad about her recent breakup.  She felt ashamed and guilty for feeling sad.  But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't to brush aside her feelings.

Whens she spoke to her best friend, Carol, Carol told Nina that her emotions didn't seem unusual, "Of course, you feel sad. Joe was a big part of your life."  Then, she suggested that Nina seek help in therapy to deal with her feelings.

Her therapist validated Nina's feelings and told her that she was having a common response to a breakup.  Then she provided Nina with psychoeducation about toxic positivity.

The Harmful Effects of Toxic Positivity

As Nina thought about it, she realized that everyone in her family--her mother, father, and older sister often responded in this invalidating way when she felt sad, angry or frustrated.

Each family member had their own way of being emotionally invalidating.  Her mother usually interrupted Nina whenever Nina was trying to get emotional support from her by saying in a cheerful tone, "It will all look better in the morning."  This left Nina feeling alone and unsupported.

Her father usually responded to Nina by telling her, "Instead of focusing on what you don't have, focus on being grateful for what you do have," which made Nina feel guilty and ashamed for being concerned about her problems.

Over time, Nina worked in therapy to grieve the loss of her relationship. She felt emotionally supported and validated by her therapist.

She also learned to accept her emotions instead of second guessing herself.  She realized her family responded to her the way they did because they had their own problems with challenging emotions.  She came to understand that when she brought up her difficult emotions, they felt defensive and relied on toxic positivity to avoid their own unpleasant feelings.

Eventually, after Nina grieved the end of her relationship, she was able to begin dating again.  

She also grieved in therapy for the emotional validation she didn't receive growing up.  This was part of her trauma therapy.

In time, she no longer felt ashamed or guilty for feeling sad and she learned to accept all of her emotions--not just the pleasant ones.

How to Avoid Toxic Positivity

• Accept All of Your Emotions: Accepting your emotions doesn't mean you like the discomfort you are experiencing.  It just means that, instead of denying your feelings, you acknowledge them without judgment or self criticism.  

• Cultivate Self Compassion: In the same way you would be compassionate towards a loved one who was suffering, develop compassion for yourself. 

• Know That It's Okay to Have Difficult Emotions: Know that you're having a common experience when you feel sad, angry, disappointed, frustrated or experience other challenging emotions. Having these emotions doesn't make you less than anyone else. It just makes you human.

• Be Assertive in Challenging People Who Are Toxically Positive With You: If someone is invalidating your emotions, you can set a boundary with them in a tactful way. You don't have to listen to advice that includes toxic positivity.  By being assertive, you will be asserting your right to have your own emotional experiences without judgment, shame or guilt.

Conclusion

Toxic positivity is a mindset which states that people should remain positive regardless of what is going on for them.  It invalidates people's genuine emotions with superficial platitudes and pressures them to do things like "always look on the bright side" when that's not what they're feeling.

People who engage in toxic positivity might have good intentions, but their platitudes leave loved ones who are struggling emotionally feeling alone, emotionally invalidated, dismissed, ignored, shamed or guilty.

People who use toxic positivity are often unable to tolerate their own uncomfortable emotions, and they impose their discomfort on others under the guise of "being positive."  

You can learn to be self compassionate by accepting your emotions and practicing self validation (see my article: What is Self Validation?).

When to Get Help in Therapy

Growing up with toxic positivity is traumatic.  You internalize these toxic messages at a deep level.  Often this results in self doubt about your emotional experiences, which leaves you feeling guilty, ashamed and unworthy.

If you have been traumatized by toxic positivity since childhood, you could benefit from working with a trauma therapist (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

In trauma therapy, you can learn to let go of the emotionally invalidating messages internalized so that you can accept your emotions, validate yourself and learn to be self compassionate.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a trauma therapist who works with individual adults and couples. 

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What is Toxic Positivity?

While there are many benefits to positive thinking, including stress relief and increased resilience, toxic positivity is harmful.   

Toxic positivity rejects difficult emotions with an attitude of "good vibes" only.  It aims to present a facade of inauthentic cheerfulness. 

Rather than allowing yourself or others to acknowledge difficult emotions, you invalidate these experiences with toxic positivity (see my articles: What is Emotional Validation? and What is Self Validation?).

What is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity only allows for positive emotions at the expense of your true emotions.  Over time, when you engage in toxic positivity, instead of being genuine, you create a false self (see my article:  What is a False Self?).

Signs of Toxic Positivity

• Minimizing or dismissing your own experiences or the experiences of others
• Denying genuine emotions such as sadness, anger, grief, feelings of loss or helplessness or other challenging emotions
• Shaming yourself or others for having difficult emotions
• Wanting to feel only "good vibes" all the time
• Feeling guilty for feeling difficult emotions
• Being intolerant of difficult emotions
• Feeling the need to be constantly busy in order to push down difficult emotions (see my article: Are You "Keeping Busy" to Avoid Painful Emotions?)

And so on.

Examples of Toxic Positivity

Toxic positivity can take many forms.  The following examples are just a few of the things that people say to themselves or to others, which are often meant to be helpful but which minimize, dismiss and invalidate genuine emotions:

• Death of a Loved One: Going through grief after the death of a loved one is a normal experience (see my article: Allowing Room For Grief).
• Invalidating statements include:
• "You shouldn't feel sad." 
• "She's in a better place."
• "He wouldn't have wanted you to be so sad."
• "It's been six months. Why are you still so sad?"

• Breakup of a Relationship: Ending a relationship, even one that was unhealthy, is a loss and it's important to acknowledge and work through that loss (see my article: 7 Reasons You Might Be Struggling With a Breakup).
• Invalidating statements include:
• "You're better off without him."
• "Why are you so sad when you were the one who broke up with her?"
• "Just get back out there and find someone else."
• "The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else."

• Loss of a Job: The loss of a job, even a difficult job, is still a loss (see my article: Job Loss and Loss of Identity).
• Invalidating statements include:
• "Look at the bright side. Now you don't have to deal with your difficult boss."
• "Cheer up. It's not the end of the world."
• "It's only a job. No one died."
• "It's not as bad as it seems."
• "Look for the silver lining. Now you have more time to relax."

• A Serious Medical Diagnosis: Getting news about a serious medical diagnosis can be frightening (see my article: Serious Medical Problems Can Change the Way You Feel About Yourself).
• Invalidating statements include:
• "Stop complaining. Other people have it much worse than you."
• "Stop worrying. Just be positive."
• "Don't make a mountain out of a mole hill."
• "Stop being so negative."
• "It will all be okay."

• Coping With a Traumatic Experience: Reactions to trauma are unique for each person. What might not be traumatic for one person--even someone from the same family--might be traumatic for another (see my article: When Your Traumatic Past Lives on in the Present).
• Invalidating statements include:
• "You think that's traumatic? When I was a kid, I had it much worse."
• "It's all in your head."
• "Stop being so negative."
• "I thought you were stronger than that."

Next Article:

In my next article, I'll discuss the harmful effects of toxic positivity and how to avoid them: Why is Toxic Positivity Harmful?.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapy).

I work with individual adults and couples (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

Becoming More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship With Experiential Trauma Therapy

The focus of my last two articles has been on emotional availability (What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available? and How to Become More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship). The current article focuses on how experiential trauma therapy can help you overcome unresolved trauma so you can become more emotionally available (see my articles: How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect How You Feel About Yourself and How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Relationships).

Becoming More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Ability to Be Emotionally Available

In my last article I discussed how being emotionally available in a relationship can be more challenging when you have unresolved trauma. 

Emotional survival strategies that were adaptive during childhood trauma, including emotional numbing and suppression of emotions, are no longer adaptive in adult relationships (see my article: Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies That No Longer Work For You: Avoidance).

How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Emotional Availability

In addition, emotional triggers, which are part of unresolved trauma, add to the difficulty of letting go of these maladaptive strategies.  When triggers occur, it's difficult to know if your reaction is from the past or the present (see my article: When the Traumatic Past Lives on in the Present).

Self help strategies are temporarily helpful in the moment to manage triggers, but these strategies don't help you to overcome trauma.

Experiential trauma therapies are mind-body oriented therapies which include EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, Somatic Experiencing, AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), Parts Work, and hypnotherapy (see my articles: Experiential Therapy and the Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind and Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy).

A Clinical Vignette: Becoming More Emotionally Available With Experiential Trauma Therapy

The following clinical vignette is a composite of many different cases with all identifying information removed:

Ted

After his girlfriend, Sara, gave Ted an ultimatum that either he get help in therapy or she would leave him, Ted sought help reluctantly in experiential trauma therapy.

In the past, Ted attended cognitive-behavioral therapy to deal with emotional triggers that often overwhelmed him, and he learned strategies to use when he was triggered.  

But even though Ted had these strategies, the triggers continued to occur, and when he was triggered, he withdrew emotionally from Sara, which was upsetting to her (see my article: Understanding a Partner Who Withdraws Emotionally).

Sara was working on her own unresolved trauma in experiential therapy and Ted's emotional withdrawal triggered her own history of early childhood emotional neglect.  

Sara told Ted that she felt hurt and angry when he became emotionally distant and she couldn't remain with him if he didn't get help.  

Initially, Ted believed he could overcome his trauma on his own, but since his attempts continued to be unsuccessful, he knew he needed help.  

Ted's therapist got a detailed family history to understand the origin of his psychological trauma, which included a long history of childhood emotional neglect.

Working Through Trauma in Experiential Therapy

At first, Ted felt defensive about his childhood history.  He knew his parents were also highly traumatized people themselves because of their own family backgrounds, and he felt disloyal talking about them in therapy.  

But his therapist helped Ted to understand that therapy isn't about blaming parents, especially parents who were struggling to do the best they could (see my article: Moving Beyond Blaming Your Parents in Therapy).

Ted also learned about intergenerational trauma, which is trauma that affects one generation after the next in the same family.  Until then, Ted didn't know about intergenerational trauma, and it made him think of his maternal and paternal grandparents and their own psychological struggles. 

Ted didn't want to keep hurting Sara, and he didn't want to lose her.  He also thought about his future. He thought about the children he hoped to have with Sara after they got married.  He told his therapist he didn't want to pass on his trauma symptoms to his children.  He wanted these symptoms to end with him, which increased Ted's motivation in therapy.

As a first step, his therapist helped Ted to expand his internal resources and coping strategies.  

She also helped him to expand his emotional window of tolerance so that, over time, he developed a greater emotional capacity to handle his triggers when they came up.  

With increased emotional capacity, Ted decreased his emotional avoidance strategies.

Since Ted was a perfectionist, like his father, who demanded perfection from Ted and shamed him when he couldn't live up to his father's expectations, his therapist also helped Ted to see the connection between perfectionism and shame.  

At that point Ted had developed sufficient coping strategies and expanded his emotional window of tolerance enough so that his therapist knew he was now ready to process his childhood trauma using experiential trauma therapy.

They began by doing Parts Work (also known as Ego States therapy or Internal Family Systems therapy or IFS).  Through Parts Work, Ted developed a sense of empathy and compassion for his younger self.  

He imagined being able to nurture his younger self, who was emotionally neglected.  Even though Ted was using his imagination, he had a genuine felt sense of healing. He also meditated on his younger self between therapy sessions and journaled about his experiences (see my article: What is the Felt Sense in Experiential Therapy?).

The next stage of his therapy involved EMDR therapy (see my article: How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain).

Using EMDR, over time, Ted and his therapist processed his childhood trauma.  Although EMDR and the other forms of experiential therapy tend to work faster than regular talk therapy, Ted and his therapist worked for over a year to complete his treatment. 

Becoming More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

Along the way, Ted saw improvements in his ability to be more emotionally available to Sara.  Sara was also happy that Ted was more emotionally present with her.  Instead of numbing himself whenever difficult emotions came up, Ted now dealt directly with uncomfortable emotions and remained present. He was also more outwardly affectionate and emotionally attuned to Sara.

Conclusion

Self help strategies can help when you're trying to be more emotionally available in your relationship, but they're not enough to overcome psychological trauma, especially unresolved childhood trauma.

In order to cope with trauma, people develop emotional survival strategies that were adaptive at the time of trauma to keep them from becoming even more traumatized.  The problem is that those survival strategies also create their own problems, especially in adulthood when people enter into relationships.

Experiential trauma therapy therapies are mind-body oriented therapies that provide a window into the unconscious mind.  This is one of the reasons why it tends to be more effective than regular talk therapy.  

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

If you have attempted to deal with unresolved trauma on your own without success, you could benefit from working with an experiential trauma therapist.

Once your trauma is resolved, you can live a more fulfilling life and be more emotionally available to yourself and your partner.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist

I work with individual adults and people in relationships.

I have helped many clients to overcome trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How to Become More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

In my prior article, What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?, I began a discussion about emotional availability, defined the term and compared it to emotional unavailability.  In this article, I'm focusing on how to become more emotionally available (see my articles: Emotional Vulnerability as a Pathway to Greater Intimacy in a Relationship and Emotional Vulnerability is a Strength in a Relationship).

Becoming More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

As a brief recap: Emotional Availability includes being:

• Open
• Honest
• Emotionally vulnerable with each other

Being emotionally available looks like this:

• Having deep and meaningful conversations with your partner about your emotions where you allow yourself to be vulnerable.  

• Allowing yourself to get emotionally close to your partner.

• Listening and attuning to your partner's experiences and being empathetic to their emotions--even if their experiences are different from your own.

• Allowing your partner to comfort you when you're going through a difficult time.

• Comforting your partner when they're going through a difficult time. 

How to Become More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

As I mentioned in my prior article, the healthiest and happiest relationships are between partners who are emotionally available to each other.

Becoming More Emotionally Available in Your Relationship

The reality is that emotionally availability isn't an all-or-nothing phenomenon.  

In other words, most people aren't either emotionally available or unavailable.  There might be situations where they're more open and other situations where they're not.  

No one is emotionally available 100% of the time, but a worthwhile goal for someone who tends to withdraw emotionally is to become more consistently open. 

Steps to Becoming More Emotionally Available

Here are some basic steps you can try:

• Become Aware of When You Distance Emotionally From Yourself: Emotional distancing or withdrawing often occurs within yourself before it occurs with your partner.  You can begin to recognize when this is happening when you feel cut off from your own emotions. You can practice checking in with yourself periodically throughout the day and asking yourself what you're feeling.  If you draw a blank or if what you sense is vague, you might be cutting yourself off from your emotions (see below: Learn to Identifying Your Emotions).

• Become Aware of When You Distance Yourself From Your Partner: Develop an awareness of when you tend to distance yourself emotionally from your partner.  Maybe it's when you feel criticized, ashamed, challenged, sad, angry, resentful or some other emotion.  Even if, at first, you don't recognize that you're withdrawing, think about it after an incident with your partner and be honest with yourself.  If you can do this by either journaling or meditating about it on a regular basis, you can eventually develop an awareness of when it's happening in the moment as a way to try to change your response.

• Learn to Identify Your Emotions: This can be challenging for someone who has spent most of their life suppressing or numbing their feelings.  Suppressing or numbing feelings might have been an adaptive survival strategy in a family that didn't tolerate the expression of emotions, but when you're an adult in a relationship, it's no longer adaptive.  By journaling or meditating, you can reflect on a recent memory of an uncomfortable emotion you felt.  Slow down and take your time. At first, you might only have a vague sense of the emotions in terms of feeling uncomfortable, but if you include bodily awareness (e.g., throat constricted or clenched fists), you can get a felt sense of what you were experiencing because you're tapping into the mind-body connection and possible unconscious feelings (The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

• Communicate With Your Partner: As you become aware and develop insight into how you withdraw emotionally and the uncomfortable emotions you're experiencing, talk to your partner about what you have discovered about yourself. This takes courage, so start with something relatively small and work your way up to sharing more vulnerable feelings. This will help you to feel safer over time. Being open and honest in this way will bring you closer and you're practicing being vulnerable.  Although this might be difficult at first, it's possible to get better at it over time.  Also, let your partner know that you're not asking them to fix you (in reality, no one can fix anyone).  Let them know that you're talking about it as a way to learn how to open up so you can get closer to them, and you just want them to listen. When you're sharing, stick to your own experiences as opposed to blaming or criticizing your partner (How to Improve Communication in Your Relationship).

• Provide Time and Space For Your Partner to Share Their Emotions: Becoming more emotionally available is a two-way street. In addition to sharing your emotions, you want to strive to get comfortable with listening and being attuned to your partner.  Once again, apply the same ground rules as when you're communicating with your partner: Your partner is sticking to their own experiences and not blaming or criticizing you.

When to Seek Help in Therapy

Becoming more emotionally available can be challenging, especially if you have unresolved trauma.

Emotional triggers from the past come up in a fraction of a second, which occurs before the logical part of your brain can determine if what you're feeling is from the past or the present.  This is part of what makes triggers so difficult to manage.

In addition, if you spent your early years surviving in your family by shutting down emotionally, you might not feel safe enough to be more open emotionally--even with a partner that you love and trust (see my article: How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect How You Feel About Yourself and How Trauma Can Affect Relationships).

Also, if you have a traumatic relationship history, being vulnerable with your current partner can be too scary to do on your own.  

If you have tried to resolve these problems on your own and you keep coming up against the same emotional blocks, you could benefit from working with a trauma therapist who can help you to process the traumatic events that are creating obstacles for you.

Working through unresolved trauma with a trauma therapist can free you of your traumatic history so you can be more emotionally available to yourself as well as your partner.

Next Article

In my next article, I'll provide a clinical vignette to show how experiential therapy can help you to overcome trauma and open up emotionally.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

I am a trauma therapist who has helped many people overcome unresolved trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?

The healthiest and happiest relationships tend to have one thing in common: Both people are emotionally available to each other.  So, I think it's worthwhile to define what it means to be emotionally available and contrast it with being emotionally unavailable in this first article about this topic (see my articles: Emotional Vulnerability as a Pathway to Greater Intimacy in a Relationship).

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?

Basically, being emotionally available means allowing yourself to be open, honest and emotionally vulnerable with a loved one (see my article: Emotional Vulnerability as a Strength in a Relationship).

Being emotionally available means you're able to share your deeper feelings with another person who is close to you and you also make room for their feelings.

When you're emotionally available you're able to:

• Have deeper, more meaningful conversations with loved ones about yourself where you make yourself emotionally vulnerable.

• Allow yourself to get emotionally close to your loved ones.

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?

• Take in your loved ones' experiences and be empathetic to their emotions, even if their experiences and emotions are different from your own.

• Allow your loved ones to comfort you when you're going through a difficult time.

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Available?

• Comfort your loved ones when they're going through a difficult time.

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Unavailable?

Let's contrast emotional availability with emotional unavailability.

When you're emotionally unavailable you tend to:

• Be uncomfortable with deeper, more meaningful conversations with your loved ones about yourself because you want to avoid feeling vulnerable. Emotional vulnerability scares you and you want to distance yourself from it (see my article: Fear of Emotional Vulnerability).

• Limit how close you allow yourself to get to loved ones. This is often an unconscious defense mechanism (see my article: Understanding Emotional Withdrawers).

• Be unable to take in your loved ones' experiences or be open and empathetic to their emotions, especially if their emotions or experiences are different from your own.

• Get defensive if your loved ones want to comfort you when you're having a difficult time because it makes you uncomfortable. You might even deny to them (and yourself) that you're going through a difficult time because being emotionally vulnerable feels unsafe for you (see my article: Pretending to Feel Strong to Avoid Feeling Your Unmet Emotional Needs).

• Have difficulty comforting your loved ones when they're going through a difficult time. You might minimize or dismiss their feelings because you're uncomfortable with difficult emotions.

Why Do People Become Emotionally Unavailable?

There are many factors that contribute to a person's emotional availability or unavailability, including experiences in their family of origin as well as experiences in prior relationships.

If a person is raised in a family where family members are encouraged to feel and express their emotions, all other things being equal, they tend to go into relationships being more emotionally available.  

But if they were discouraged from having and expressing more vulnerable emotions, they learned that difficult emotions are "bad" and if they express these feelings, they're burdening others and they won't be supported emotionally.

Even worse, they might be shunned or punished physically or emotionally for having and expressing vulnerable emotions, so they learned to suppress these emotions.

These experiences are psychologically traumatic (see my article: Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Emotionally Unavailable People).

In many families boys are especially discouraged from expressing their emotions or for even having emotions.  From an early age they're told they need to "be a man" or "boys don't cry."  So they are shamed for their emotions (see my article: Shame is at the Root of Most Emotional Problems).

As adults, they might not even know what they feel--with the exception of anger because in these families boys are sometimes allowed to feel anger, which is the one emotion they might recognize in themselves as adults.

Next Article

I'll continue to discuss this topic in my next article where I'll discuss how to become more emotionally available with loved ones: How to Become More Emotionally Available.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and people in relationships.

I have helped many clients to learn to be more emotionally available in their relationships (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.