5 Keys To Open Up To Others, Without Fear

No one can doubt the obvious necessity and importance of a genuine encounter between people. Our relationships with others depend on our learning, our growth, the pleasure of giving and the satisfaction of sharing what we have.

It is also obvious that without openness to others there can be no encounter, that is, that “we” essential to transcend the structures of our own and, in principle, more than a limited ego cannot be built or revealed. Therefore, being able to develop the ability and confidence to open our hearts to others is a condition for building a healthy life both personally and socially.

How to open up to others?

Certainly, if we do not dare to open ourselves to some wonderful “we” even if it is small and ephemeral, we will feel imprisoned, we will feel insecure, we will feel beggars, even if our house, our bank account and our garage are full of infinite material goods.

In our interior we often continue to perceive anxiety and concern about the possibility of a new encounter

Many are the thinkers, philosophers and therapists who warned about the need to maintain this open attitude: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Margaret Mead, Fritz Perls, Leo Buscaglia, Daniel Goleman, Wayne Dyer and my beloved Virginia Satir spoke to us in all tones about how the loving and trusting encounter between people adds surprising value to the simple arithmetic sum of You and Me.

1. Overcome the fear of contact

Everything said is true and to a great extent we know it; And yet, within us, we often continue to perceive anxiety and concern about the possibility of a new encounter, with people we do not know very well.

Surely this fear, to call it without euphemisms, is conditioned by the possibility of having to face the most feared of all our internal ghosts: the ghost of rejection and abandonment, the only one that scares us even more than the dreaded monster of loneliness. But it would be good to know that, in a high percentage, the fear of opening our hearts is intimately linked to a fear that walks just the opposite sidewalk.

Every bond, when it involves a sincere intimate encounter, evokes a quota of tenderness, compassion, and mutual influence that scares

And for the record, I’m leaving the flight attitude off the list; that of those who only think of escaping when it comes to assuming the responsibility and commitment that intimacy means.

The truth is that out of fear or conditioning, the statistics confirm that we have increasing difficulty in opening our hearts to deep and genuine contact ; both with acquaintances and with strangers. And these things happen, as I said, because of our lack of a true commitment to love.

2. A complex environment

Relationships are increasingly difficult; the relationships of parents and children, increasingly conflictive ; and family relationships, less and less solid. Like it or not, the latest measurements show that, in large Western cities, half of all children live in households where one of their biological parents is absent as a result of two out of every three new marriages ending in divorce.

New bonding models based on occasional uncommitted encounters replace long-lasting and transcendent relationships

And yet, more and more men and women continue to bet on the couple and loudly announce their desire to find the right traveling companion. More and more people, sometimes without the support of a partner, decide to take charge of the care, education and future of a child. Increasingly, the help of a counselor or therapist is sought so as not to resign oneself to difficulties.

It is true that anyone who works in a human group within a company may complain that the relationship with colleagues and colleagues becomes at times wildly competitive. It seems that the supreme contradiction of a society that is said to be concerned about the dangerous tendency to isolation of contemporary man is becoming clearer and clearer but works and builds increasingly technological, increasingly robotic and increasingly alienating environments.

3. Where is love found?

In an unforgettable example of the contradictory concepts of our society, Leo Buscaglia recounts the anecdote of a young man who, determined to learn to relate better with the young women of his university course, goes to a bookstore and feeling, paradoxically, incapable of resorting to Anyone who can teach him what he doesn’t know looks for a bibliography to help him. Finally, on a lost shelf at the back of the bookstore, he finds a book whose title catches him, it’s called From hugging to loving .

The young man buys the thick volume and returns home satisfied. Only when he sits in the armchair at home to enjoy the book does he realize that he has bought the second volume of an encyclopedia.

4. We all need each other

Allan Fromme used to say that his most painful loneliness was found five times a week in the middle of Manhattan when, on his way home, at rush hour, he found himself surrounded by twenty million beings who were also alone.

Now I realize that they suffer the same as me and surely they need me as much as I need them. But it seems to me that being aware of this not only represents the minimum consolation of feeling that at least “we are not alone in our loneliness”, but it opens the door for me, if I allow it, to find even an excuse to open my heart to others around me.

I once wrote that reading a book was like meeting a person. I used to say, back then, that there were surprising books and boring books, books to read only once and books that one always wanted to return to; books, finally, more nutrition than others.

Today, twenty years later, I say the same thing from another place: meeting another is like reading a book

But I add … and you can only enjoy it or learn something from it if we open ourselves to discover what it brings us. Good, regular, bad, every encounter with another nurtures me, helps me, teaches me, if I open the door to their presence.

It is not the wickedness, inadequacy, or incompetence of others that causes a relationship to fail. Failure, if we want to call it that, is the expression we use to say that the bond is no longer nurturing for either of us and that one or both of us have closed our hearts to the presence of the other.

It is not that this is reprehensible – in fact we are not for everyone all the time and we are not all for us all the time – but it is necessary to remember that we will not be able to remain closed to everyone or be enclosed in ourselves all the time.

5. The sense of privacy

When we become aware that each encounter with someone is something important in itself, we learn to value learning, tolerance and respect for the differences that delivery requires. We discovered the value of having taken the risks of opening ourselves up to the encounter. We can harvest each bond as a life lesson that leads us to be better people day by day.

As Virginia Satir wrote:

“Being in intimate contact does not mean abusing others or living happily ever after. It is behaving honestly and sharing achievements and frustrations. It is defending your integrity, nurturing your self-esteem and strengthening your relationships with those around you. The development of this kind of Wisdom is a lifelong pursuit that requires, among other things, a lot of patience. “

Intimate relationships are focused on the idea of ​​not staying on the surface, and it is this search for depth that gives them the stability to remain and transcend time.

An open-heart relationship is an affective bond that comes out of the ordinary because it begins with the tacit agreement of the cancellation of the fear of exposing ourselves and immerses in the commitment to be who we are, allowing and helping the other, the others, all They can also feel free to be who they really are.

In any case, that is love. The decision to create a space of freedom for someone, even knowing that their choices may not be the best for me