Suppose someone has a resistance to letting themselves be loved. They resist affection. If you compliment them, they dismiss it. In digging deeper within, such a person might find they have a resistance to intimacy and vulnerability. How do you approach this? You can just be with the struggle, and that is helpful, but better still is to understand that whatever you resist, you have a good reason for it. The resistance is really trying to help you. Rather than not resisting, SUPPORT the resistance. Not in the sense like "hell yeah, I don't need your love" but rather "I am keeping away from these feelings for good reason. For whatever reason I pull away from these moments and that is actually trying to protect some vulnerable part of me. I am grateful for that." Explore that which the resistance is protecting. Understand that the resistance is there to help you and my no longer be required [to a some degree]. Because you acknowledge and support the urge to resist, the need to resistance, the urgency can quite down. You can perhaps then begin to explore what is like to let down a little. To repurpose that part of you that is taking care of some wounded place. When that occurs, reconciliation as you call it occurs automatically, spontaneously, and profoundly.
On Dec 29, 2014 brett wrote :
Suppose someone has a resistance to letting themselves be loved. They resist affection. If you compliment them, they dismiss it. In digging deeper within, such a person might find they have a resistance to intimacy and vulnerability. How do you approach this? You can just be with the struggle, and that is helpful, but better still is to understand that whatever you resist, you have a good reason for it. The resistance is really trying to help you. Rather than not resisting, SUPPORT the resistance. Not in the sense like "hell yeah, I don't need your love" but rather "I am keeping away from these feelings for good reason. For whatever reason I pull away from these moments and that is actually trying to protect some vulnerable part of me. I am grateful for that." Explore that which the resistance is protecting. Understand that the resistance is there to help you and my no longer be required [to a some degree]. Because you acknowledge and support the urge to resist, the need to resistance, the urgency can quite down. You can perhaps then begin to explore what is like to let down a little. To repurpose that part of you that is taking care of some wounded place. When that occurs, reconciliation as you call it occurs automatically, spontaneously, and profoundly.