How to become Emotionally Intimate with Yourself?

When we think about intimacy most people think about sex right away. Sex is actually a byproduct of intimacy. But intimacy goes deeper than just the physical. Intimacy stands for in-to-me-see. In other words, to see into someone. And how do we see into someone? We see into someone by hearing (listening), feeling and understanding someone. Intimacy is about a deep connection between two or more people. Or a deep connection (intimacy) between you and yourself.

The best way to make someone feel seen is when you are present with their entire being without trying to change, fix or solve their problem. It’s the best way to acknowledge their perspective and establish a deep connection. It may even help to repeat the words that someone uses to express themselves. You can give someone a short summary about what they said and to let them know you truly heard and understood them. It allows for someone to feel safe with you and share what is vulnerable about them.

The key to intimacy

Intimacy requires a high level of vulnerability. You may or may not agree, but vulnerability feels a bit like you are naked but then on an emotional level (emotionally naked). Being vulnerable with someone is similar to a feeling of having no clothes on and so having no masks (clothes) to hide under. And it involves transparency and openness. If someone doesn’t feel safe to share something with you then it kills vulnerability in relationships and so does the level of intimacy.

To acknowledge someone in their feelings and perspective is an incredible and quite simple thing that we can do for each other in any conversation and it allows for much better communication and connection. Only most people are so caught up in their own mental stories and are not living in the present moment, which doesn’t allow any opportunity for someone to feel seen. Most people still have to practice real attunement with someone before they can experience true intimacy.

Are you emotional available to yourself?

Emotional availability is essential for emotional intimacy. It’s a very similar feeling state and relationship practice. And we all want a partner that is emotional available. Our primary human need is connection first and foremost. It’s what lights us up inside and what makes us genuinely feel happy and safe. And to create a healthy long-lasting relationship we want to be emotionally available and intimate with our partner. But what about the relationship with yourself? What about being emotionally intimate with yourself? What about being emotional available to yourself? We don’t hear this very often…

Where did it go wrong?

We learn to numb our emotions when we grow up in an environment where emotions were not ok to feel. It wasn’t ok to feel, because that meant that we have needs. And if a parent or caregiver doesn’t know how to deal with a child’s emotions and needs, it creates conflict within the parent. In short, this conflict causes a parent to behave in dysfunctional ways towards a child, because they haven’t learnt how to emotionally self-regulate. Due to the dismissive behavior of the parent, the child then learns to not feel and so to not have needs to avoid conflict. In order to establish a connection with the parent and to feel safe, the child focuses on meeting the needs of their parent. We subconsciously focus on their needs to meet some of our needs. One of those needs is to establish a secure connection.

What to do?

So, when it comes down to being intimate with someone else we can only meet someone at the level that we are at. You can only see, feel, hear or understand someone truly to the degree that you are able to see, feel hear and understand yourself. In order to create emotional intimacy with someone else, you want to develop intimacy with yourself first. And this is a skill that you can develop by practicing.

How to become emotionally intimate with yourself?

Learn how to feel.

This is the one and only thing you want to commit to everyday in order to become emotionally intimate with yourself. This practice is going to teach you how to attune to your own emotions. To understand your emotions and then to process and regulate your emotions. Learning how to feel is essential in life, feeling IS life. You need to understand what emotions you are going through every day. And learn what sensation connects to what particular emotion and why it is there. In this way you learn how to be vulnerable with yourself. And ideally you practice this with your eyes closed and in a cross-legged position (meditation). This practice will help you truly create emotional intimacy with yourself.

Journal about your vulnerabilities.

If you have a really hard time being emotionally intimate with yourself and others then it helps to start journaling. Write down all the thoughts and feelings that you have and notice where are you not honestly writing down how you feel and what you’re really thinking. If you can’t write down how you truly feel and so be VULNERABLE with yourself in this process, it’s a hundred times harder to be sharing your vulnerabilities with someone else. Really notice when you stop yourself from actually writing down whatever it is that makes you vulnerable and uncomfortable.

It might make you feel like a bad person to write down what you actually think and feel. And being ‘bad’ makes us feel ashamed of ourselves and this is the enemy to the ego. Often the shame that we experience is about a vulnerable part of us being ‘highlighted’ or triggered. And shame is a biological reaction (not so much an emotion) which is making the ego feel unsafe.

Shame is part of the reason why we have a hard time being vulnerable. If we want to practice being more vulnerable we also need to practice compassion, since compassion is the cure to our shame. And you can start practicing this safely with yourself through journaling. So, start writing down your biggest secrets that you normally don’t admit too and see how liberating this practice is. It for sure will built a stronger connection between you and yourself.

Practice expressing yourself.

In general, you want to practice all kind ways of expressing yourself. Intimacy goes hand in hand with expressing yourself. Whether that is in a relationship with someone else or yourself. Again, journaling how you feel is one way to express yourself. But you may also benefit from talking out loud to yourself, maybe even sing to yourself. Or do mirror work and look at yourself in the mirror and dance, which is also a form of expression. You can also do mirror work by just staring into your own eyes and be intimate with yourself that way. Overall you want to find any other way that connects you more to yourself.

To summarize, the few ingredients that you need to have to create emotional intimacy with someone else or yourself is:

Feeling safe.
Communication by expressing yourself. Especially the things you feel vulnerable about.
See, feel, listen and understanding (by practicing acknowledgement and attunement).

Learning how to feel is the only thing you actually want to commit too if you want to truly create emotional intimacy with yourself. All the other things come second to that. Feeling is a super power. It’s your emotional guidance system. It’s a higher intelligence and it knows things that the human mind doesn’t know or understand. When you allow yourself to feel then you are fully and completely with yourself in the present moment, which is the opposite of self-abandonment. Abandoning yourself is also the opposite of emotional intimacy. When you run from your feelings, you run from yourself and this leads to an unsatisfied life without intimacy. Long story short, start feeling!

And with all of the above, it truly is easier said than done. We can understand something with the mind completely but actually doing it on an emotional level comes with its challenges. Welcome to being human 😉

Until next time.

With Love, Naomi

P.s. you may also want to read ‘7 ways to create a strong Sense of Self. And why you need to!‘.

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