This is important to build empathy. Empathy builds trust and trust build intimacy.
Stopping at only labeling someone as "they are hurt, that's why they did it" doesn't really get into the world of the other to build deeper empathetic relating tools: neither with yourself or the other.
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Intimacy is a skill and a nourishing nervous system regulating somatic embodiment of deep yummy... For all involved.
And if you don't care enough about building a language around your own pain that is self reflective and healing, bringing compassion to your own pain, triggers, source of pain, etc. how can you possibly consider getting intimately into the of the world of another?
Trust is needed for intimacy. Otherwise we close parts down. We stop being open in certain ways that would nourish us.
What exactly are you relating with that hurts in the other? What might they be perceiving? What might they be feeling? What childhood pattern might be coming up for them?
From the lens of a couples spiritual life coach, I observe often that the patterns and convictions that the couples build around the idea of what they think is going on in the world of their partner, versus asking and being open to the reality of what is going on in the world of the other, is a history of faulty thinking and old unhealed childhood patterning.
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There is a subtle and profound difference in thinking/projecting what is our truth and asking the other to show up in that story about them.
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Being open to hear with the heart, and feel with the mind, what the person is saying, with no agenda to fix or change them.
Getting into the others world and loving them in their smallness, can be the greatest gift to them and to the relationship.
Real intimacy is a somatic experience. And its a language that is worth learning.
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We can have cognitive empathy that doesn't touch the feelings. We can understand and the other doesn't get the resonance of where it hurts to feel met and heard.
There are many reasons why people move to the mind instead of being an embodied listener, like trauma where the person disassociates , but building intimacy is stretching all those muscles little by little to become more able and capable to feel all the frequencies of the world without closing off to any of them.
If you resist, it persists.
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Our empathy builds relatability, we grokk the other. We attune. When the other feels resonant with us, they open. No force necessary. Trust is a frequency that has patience, no agenda, attunement to the communication being shared and is an UNFOLDING.
Trust is an Isness AND an unfolding, a deepening and is natural when we listen.
It is not the ego enforcing spiritual values to align with that the body doesn't feel. When we demand ourselves to act against what our innate sensors say NO to it.
This is when we violate our own boundaries. And as an adult, this is where we perpetuate our own self betrayal...and often project it in others as crossing our boundaries. We have nobody present to protect the innocence. That is a childhood wound.
We are often asked to appease a parent to maintain some sort of loving connection with them despite our own seemingly conflictive desire/need that is met with conditional love if we don't meet that demand. Hug a grandparent that makes us feel gross to make them feel good.
Someone touches you inappropriately and you cannot tell them because you don't want them to feel bad or you think you created that and already feel bad.
And since we have all learned to take care of others first as a rule, often it's not a choice, and deny ourselves our needs making "self sacrifice" a virtue, we have lost touch with our own sense of integrity. The intimacy with our own boundaries of what we believe is right for us, places we won't cross for others and choices we make that also include and honor ourselves are paramount for healthy self esteem.
Boundaries maintain our sense of self. Our sense of identity. Who we believe ourselves to be in a container.
-No, not your formless transcendent self that is untouchable and beyond form and has no boundaries and is as equally true as the container.
-but if you have undervalued your container, and overvalued your transcendent self, you will be asked to equalize the value. Boundaries exist in this dimension and honoring them is key to transcending them.
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Empathy is vital to healthy relating.
The more forms of empathy we can embody, the more relatability is possible, the more trust is present and the easier intimacy unfolds as a result of all of that together
