Anxiety Therapy : What is Emotional Intimacy?

Throughout your life you have felt a sense of emptiness. You have used your relationships with others to fulfill this sense of loneliness. As an adult, you still hold hope that receiving emotional intimacy from one or both of your parents is possible. You want to understand where this emptiness and longing originates from and how to begin your healing journey.

It begins with gaining an understanding into how parents impact our relationships with others in our life. We learn about emotional intimacy from the emotional connection we have with our parents. Lindsay Gibson in her book, “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents” goes into depth onto this topic and the impact on our adult relationships. Working within the BIPOC community, this is a prevalent concern I have come across through my years working with them and how it pays into intergenerational trauma. 

Amongst first generation adults, there is a normalization of detaching ourselves from emotions. An issue prevalent in multiple generations. It is the difficulty in being able to provide a safe space, the unwillingness to connect with their own emotions and face the reality of them. Emotional intimacy then becomes a problem when trying to connect with others. Many of my clients have come to face this problem as they have gotten older; not feeling safe sharing their emotions with others due to fear of judgment or criticism.

Anxiety Therapy

How does this play into intergenerational trauma?

Think about situations where love felt as if it was being utilized as a weapon and how you now feel cautious around your own emotional experiences with friends, family, and romantic relationships. How it feels like you are trying to push against an invisible wall of creating an emotional bond with your parent(s).

Emotionally immature parents fear emotional intimacy and are uncomfortable with their emotions because they grew up with a belief that it demonstrated weakness. Children then grow up learning to preserve emotions due to fear of judgment, criticism, and misunderstanding. The impact this has on an adult is they will engage in behaviors that help them feel safe. It can be seen through keeping one’s emotional needs to yourself. A hyper independence due to having learned how to depend on only yourself since childhood. In addition, prioritizing others' needs above your own and taking on the helper role throughout your life is very common. If you think into depth about your childhood, you can see the similarities between your role with others now, compared to your role as a child within your immediate family. 

This is just the beginning. The topic of intergenerational trauma and emotionally immature parents is vast especially once we start incorporating culture and tradition within it. These concepts help one gain insight into our patterns of behaviors, emotional experiences, and thought processes. This then can help you consider how to create change around your habits and as well process how you would like a relationship with your parent(s). I hope this post helps you gain insight into understanding emotional intimacy and into yourself. If you are ready to target this sense of loneliness, you can read more about how I can help here and schedule a free 15 minute phone consultation here.

I wish you good vibes in your healing journey!

Ligia Orellana, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist