Intimacy and Fear of Exposure

This is not about that dream you have where you're naked and everyone else is dressed.

But you can read it anyway.

It didn't seem fair to have exposed you to my short list of the Intimacy Fears That Can Wreak Havok on Your Relationship and then not describe them more in detail.

Today's your lucky day.

Keep in mind that the psychological mumbo-babble today is very down on you blaming your family of origin (parents) for all that is wrong with your life. These days we are told that we're to own our emotions and our behavior, take responsibility.

And yet. . .

Parents do have us in their care for a major chunk of our lives. The things they do and say have tremendous power. I'm not saying that they don't have their own reasons and traumas and right to be the way they are.

I'm just saying they affect us when we're kids. It's inevitable. We're little. They're big.

Let's take a look at the fear of exposure, one of the psychological fears that make emotional intimacy difficult in relationships.

Fear of exposure and fear of rejection work together to muzzle perfectly talkative people when they should be talking about themselves. They're self-muzzled because they're thinking, If people only knew the real me, they’d for sure not want to be my (pick one) friend, lover, employer, etc. So this fear of exposure, people knowing who we really are, naturally leads to the fear of rejection, those same people leaving us in the dust.

Abandonment fears rule, capture our psyche, paralyze our ability to act naturally in social situations. They're almost always underlying anxiety disorders, especially panic disorder.

But let's stick to the fear of exposure. Those of us who have this fear might talk eloquently about other things, work, school, politics, religion, but not about our own weaknesses or faults. We don’t expose ourselves and we surely don’t over-expose ourselves.

We never tell what we might think is TOO much, even if we do tell a little bit of the good stuff.

Funny, in the days before digital photography we worried about exposing the negative of the photograph to light. There was a danger that light would blanch out the picture, ruin it altogether. Overexposed, the details of the photo were gone, the pic was whited out, we had to throw it away. That's how people think. If they're over- exposed they'll be thrown away.

But we’re in a digital age, which only means that with a click we can discard a pic. Considering that so many of our relationships these days can be on-line, "virtual" relationships, perhaps the metaphor still works.

Fear of exposure, like every other psychological concept is multi-variate, meaning there is no one reason that people have it. Therapists, however, usually jump to thinking about shame.

For example, people are ashamed of things that they did in their past so they'll hide them. An alcoholic in recovery will remember having missed appointments, embarrassing the family, making a general fool of him or herself while under the influence and may not want the world to know what life was like before sobriety.

But a thief will fear exposure to avoid the consequences of his actions, prison, hardship, fines, etc., none of which have anything to do with feeling shame.

We’ll look at shame. It’s more interesting to me than sociopathy.

Take the case of an A.C.O.A., an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. We'll talk for a moment about people who are A.C.O.A. s, who grew up in homes where one or both parents drank too much. These parents were supposed to be engaged in the job of parenting, but they were drinking at the time or were drunk from having been drinking. It is hard to drink and parent at the same time. People do it, but not well. Not if they’re drinking alcoholically.

Social drinkers can do the same, neglect their children or embarrass them. They're fuzzier to source in therapy as a cause, a reason their children have intimacy fears.

As soon as a patient tells me that he or she is an A.C.O.A. (or has parents who just loved to party, social drinkers, mind you) my mind plays a game.

Have you ever seen computer animation that can zoom forward in time to make a person look older and also zoom backward to make that very same person look younger? I do this in my head, adding freckles, acne, braces and all. It’s not really that hard to see people as children if your brain has this function. If it doesn't, ask your patients for pictures of themselves as children. I do that as a matter of course which may be why I have that zoom lens thing pretty well down.

Depending upon how people in the family related to one another and the other details a patient tells me, I’ll visualize my patient in one of several different childhood videos.

Take Suzie. Suzie could just as easily be a Sam. In this scene Susie is about nine years old and comes home from school in a pretty good mood. She’s doing really well and she has an “A” on a paper she wants to show her mom.

Her mom, however, is passed out on the couch. This is something new. Susie has seen her mother asleep on the couch before, but usually later, after dinner. She's never depended upon her mother for help with her homework. Susie is scared and may even try to wake mom. But if she does, mom might get testy. This happens again and again, until Susie gets it that mom is quite drunk.

She figures it out that she can't bring friends home to this, can't risk waking up her mother, can't risk having to explain the sleep thing. Since alcohol dependency is a progressive disorder, her mom gets worse over time. She acts drunk when she is at social functions (if she makes it to them), slurring her words and saying things that are inappropriate, stumbling physically. Susie’s mom misses social cues, doesn’t know when the class trip is supposed to be, forgets names.

Susie is embarrassed about this. Even if her mother is a kind person and Susie loves and worries about her, having an alcoholic parent isn’t something she brags about to friends. Not usually. And underneath is this notion that her mother does love alcohol more than she loves her.

Mom would never admit to that, but her actions speak louder than words. She chooses (even though she’s powerless, by not getting help she chooses) drinking over parenting.

A kid who grows up like Susie may choose NOT to drink as a teenager or an adult, although some studies put her at an 80% risk of either becoming an alcoholic or marrying one. The Susie I’m talking about may end up marrying an alcoholic but is likely to fall in that 20% that neither becomes an alcoholic or marries one.

Our Susie will do everything in her power as a child and as an adult to project NORMAL to the rest of the world. She acts as if her family is NORMAL. Her grades, of course, were better than normal, they were fantastic. Her behavior was and is beyond reproach. Susie is perfect. She tries like crazy to be perfect. This woman is the nicest person in the world, the first to volunteer to help others, the hardest working person on the committee. The best employee.

When F.D. and I could afford employees I would beg him, “F.D., please. Find an A.C.O.A. I’ll make sure you don’t exploit her. You’ll never regret it. Find a woman who grew up with alcoholics who just wants to fit in and be normal.”

It’s true. An ACOA is likely to be the hardest working, most loyal human being in the world. She will do anything for a little praise and appreciation, a little love and respect. And you'll give it to her. She's fabulous.

Parents who are reading this might be thinking, How do I create a perfect child like that? You don’t have to be an alcoholic but it helps. Shaming your children will drive them to perfection. Or suicide. You pick. (I had to throw that in there somewhere.) Children in emotionally trying families can suffer a myriad of psychological "issues" beyond not communicating well in relationships.

But back to our girl, to Susie and others like her. The need to Fake Normal isn't just a risk for children who grow up in addicted families. Some people peddle really fast to excel so that no one will suspect other things about their families of origin. We might keep our families a secret if we want to hide: (a) alcoholic or drug addicted parents, (b) class distinctions and/or poverty, (c) serious mental illness in the family, (d) violence and rage, (e) sexual perversion, (f) physical illness.

I’m sure I forgot something.

This is not to say that every perfectionist comes from a family with big problems or that you have to suspect all of your perfect friends. But this self-protectiveness is a personality trait developed while very young and it's unconscious. The process of personality development is way below our conscious radar. We don’t set out to be perfectionists. We simply can’t afford not to be. It’s a matter of pride.

Is there anything wrong with this? What’s wrong with wanting things perfect?

If you’re a perfectionist because you’re naturally competitive and need admiration or simply enjoy doing things, well, perfectly, then perhaps there’s nothing wrong with this characteristic at all.

As long as your children don’t feel they’re inferior because they’re afraid they’ll never quite meet with your approval, will never reach your gold standard, or be as good as you are, you’re okay.

But if they do have this issue, or if your spouse has the same issue, then well, Yes, There’s Something Wrong With Your Being a Perfectionist.

The most interesting thing about all of this for family therapists is that perfectionists usually have no clue how painful it is to be them. They don’t see how having to struggle so hard to be perfect absolutely messes with their relationships and dilutes their intimacy.

We family/relationship therapists are nuts about emotional intimacy. It's one of those feel-good things.

Here’s how a fear of exposure worked to mess up Susie, in case you haven't got it by now.

Susie was always on guard to make sure that no one judged her based upon her alcoholic family. All her life she worked against mortification, embarrassment, and shame. She didn't just lose that defense, that need to hide things about herself just because she found herself (by the grace of Someone) in a safe relationship. She’s hardwired to outwardly show perfection.

It is likely, by the way, that she will not find herself in a safe relationship since she's not looking for real intimacy. She doesn't get real intimacy, emotional sharing.

But she's a really attractive person, you know, a high achiever and nice as can be, so it's very possible that she'll also find a really nice person, commit, get married, and think that she can pull it off. And she might, too. Not all marriages have to be emotionally intimate.

All a person has to do to be in a relationship is not drink, right?

But he says to her, "A penny for your thoughts," and there's nothing to say. She's totally out of touch with any negative emotions or thoughts. She's always defending and she does a great job at this. He doesn't really know her. She doesn't really know her.

Then at some point she crashes and needs therapy. She'll call it a “nervous breakdown” a “crash” a “burn out” that she can’t afford, she'll tell me. She has no time to be so emotionally exhausted. She won't be telling me about her self-doubts, her fears of abandonment, rejection. Not initially. She might get there, but it'll take awhile.

That kind of sharing only happens when she's totally depressed, brought down, usually from working too hard, it's true. It seems to me that if a person's been working triple time since the age of 12 for approval and love, that eventually there HAS to be a burn-out. Yet Susie won't take off work even though I'm begging her to do this, to take care of herself. Take the Family Leave, blank it. TAKE IT!

No. Then they'd know.
Indeed, Susie hasn't been able to tell me about her fears because they've been unconscious until now. She'll finally figure it out when she says,

No. No Family Leave. Then they'd know.

See, until that point, she's perhaps talked about her problems in her relationship, her unwillingness to ask her partner to meet her needs, her reluctance to tell her boss that she can't do EVERYTHING. She doesn't tell me or others the many salient, very important things about herself that function for self-preservation.

Until she gets sick, emotionally exhausted.

It's easy to talk to a therapist or even a friend about job stress and wanting to Just Quit. It's easy for a Susie to tell someone else that she's sick of doing everyone else’s work, and bored with her own. But our girl won’t complain, won’t draw negative attention to herself as a matter of course.

The shame thing runs so deep that even when it would feel great to drop the façade, it’s virtually impossible. Susie can’t look less than to others. She resists letting herself be seen as vulnerable, a wreck, alone.

She's a person who has never really depended upon anyone else but herself and her trust in others isn’t very high.

She trusts herself.

Such an insult to a significant other, to someone who adores you, cares about you, not to be let in on the secret of you.

So I’ll encourage Susie to be honest about her insecurities, to get in touch with that whole childhood issue, and sure, throw a little blame at the family of origin for neglecting her emotional needs. I'll push the Susies in therapy to be more real, to let down the mask.

At first they'll give me that deer in the headlight look like Are You Out of Your Mind?

But after awhile? It feels really, really good.

Like anyone would reject a person like her, seriously.

It's what those people who have real friends, really close relationships have got going, you know? They share about themselves.

I didn't say it's easy. But it can be done. Just a little oil, a little flexibility, a short stretch, slight risk, and bingo, there's the payback.

But a caveat, okay? This does NOT mean that you blab your life story to just any ol' e-date of any new friend. Intimacy is a slow, trust-validated process. Trust is the key word and you can't just TRUST anyone with your life, your secrets, your thoughts. People really can hurt you, they can use your words against you. They can tell the world. About you.

So take your time. Be discerning.

Just something to think about.

Copyright 2007, TherapyDoc