To Break Down Your Emotional Walls

“The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” -Deepak Chopra

I know what it feels like to be at the bottom of the bottom and to only have yourself to rely on. I know how it feels to be disconnected from your soul. I know how hard it is to find yourself when you feel so lost that you don’t even know where to start searching. Once you find the path that leads you to self-love and fulfillment, it’s hard to want to let anyone else in because you fear they could potentially become a roadblock on the way to your self-love destination.

Something I’ve struggled with personally is that I often lose myself in the pursuit of love because I start to neglect or ignore my own needs to tend to someone else’s. I used to have a distressing fear of abandonment. I was so fearful of being alone that I would consume myself in someone else only to prevent this feeling of emptiness. I would fall easily into people who would give me attention and love.  I would forget how to carry my own baggage because I tended to take on the weight of someone else’s. This is especially hard if you are an introvert who does feel reluctant to open up about their own mental baggage that they carry themselves. It is hard to explain the things going inside your head when you are not even sure yourself. So, I just ignore it, mask it, attempt to bury it with hopes that it will work itself out on its own. Once I’ve spent too much time ignoring and neglecting my own needs, I begin falling apart slowly, but I am too distracted to notice what is actually happening until it’s too late.

I am a walking paradox. I want to be loved, but then again, I want to be alone. I want to be seen, but at the same time, I want to remain unnoticed. I hate being vulnerable and I want to be independent, but I want to have someone I feel comfortable opening up to and being vulnerable with. I want to be close to someone, but I also want my space. I want to have peace in my life, but I don’t want my life to become too boring. I want to let my walls down but I also want to make them harder to get through. I want to stay home and be alone but I also want to go out, and have a good time. I want to take chances, but I also want to remain  in my comfort zone. I want to feel everything yet, some days I want to feel nothing. I want to be a dreamer, but I also want to be a realist. I want to feel understood, yet I want to remain a mystery.

When you’ve been standing too long and your feet begin to hurt, your knees grow weak, and you begin to feel tired, you might start looking for a place to sit and rest. We search for a chair or a place to sit, but what if there are none? We have no other choice but to keep standing. Think about those moments in life where we begin to fall apart and we are just hopeful that we have surrounded ourselves with people who are strong enough to catch us. If and/or when you fall into a dark hole, and you discover that no one is there to help catch you or to help pull you out, it will fundamentally change you. I like to think most of my issues trusting other people are rooted from the pain I’ve experienced, the losses that I’ve had, and the disappointment I’ve felt.

I have so much love to give. I’ve always been a person who could love someone for all that they are. I could love them for all of the trauma they’ve experienced, the pain they have endured, and for all of the good and bad characteristics that they possess. They could have a tunnel of darkness within them, and I would follow them into it, without a map, or even a flashlight, and I would do it without hesitation. I have never actually found anyone who would do the exact same for me though. I’ve always wondered why I could not find someone who truly loved and desired to understand me. While I would always give more of myself to someone else in hopes that they would give me love in return, I never got reciprocated for even half of the love I gave away. I found myself empty, lonely, angry, confused, and feeling very inadequate for so long.

When push came to shove and I did eventually fall into that dark hole of sadness, I begged for help getting out. I felt like I had figuratively called upon everyone I thought was close to me for even just a small amount of help to get out, but no one answered the call. Even those who did half-way attempt to answer my call for help were unable to help me, I was down in the hole too deep. I had to innovate. I knew the first thing had to do was to build a ladder out of whatever materials I could find. I had to not only build that ladder, but I had to have enough strength to climb it all the way out. It took a long time, a lot of energy, a lot of days where I wanted to give up and give in, but I didn’t. I had to work through this pain on my own. I had to build my own ladder, find my own strength, be my own emotional support person, become my own wall to lean on, and I had to do it before it was too late.

So, what does this story of me learning how to climb out of a metaphoric dark hole on my own have to do with anything? It has to do with everything. This moment was such a turning point for me. By having to solely rely on myself, I developed this deep sense of self-love that I needed to find. However, it also has made me very self-focused and emotionally closed off to connecting with other people. If the choice was between choosing myself and choosing someone else, I will always choose me. One of my biggest fears is that I will lose myself by becoming too consumed with someone else. I used to be able to give a lot of love away, but I also never knew the feeling of taking love for myself first.

The love I give and have for myself is also something that gives me a sense of pride. As a little girl, I always wanted to be “independent.” I really didn’t know that at a young age there was a difference between being financially independent and emotionally independent. While financially I can take care of myself, I did not used to feel like I could be independent emotionally. I always felt like I had to lean on someone else for comfort and in doing so, I found myself alone when I really did need someone there. I no longer feel that way, but like the paradox that I am, being alone is great, but having a partner that you can be open, happy and vulnerable with is also great. The problem isn’t that I would not trust my partner to stay when the times get tough, it’s that I know the only person who can get me through the tough times is myself because I have successfully done it before.

It is hard to think about depending on someone else or leaning on someone else after you’ve built up such tall, strong emotional barriers around you. I’m not saying that it does not get lonely or difficult sometimes carrying all of the pain and weight of the past and present by myself. I often do wonder if having someone who deeply wanted to understand me and listen to my story, and get to know me on a soul level would make me feel more whole. I also wonder if I am even capable of letting someone else in.

I recently found myself repeating the process I once used back in the day which is finding someone who I felt was very intrigued to understand me on a soul level, and I proceeded to unload a lot of my emotional baggage on them right away. What I’ve learned from this process is that after so long of holding it all in, sometimes you just let it all out even if you don’t fully want to. It simply just happens. Your mind gets foggy, your heart grows tired, and your soul needs to breathe. So, I let so much out so fast that it almost gave me whiplash. It makes me question if my solution to my problem is in fact creating a new problem.

My solution to my fear of emotional attachment is to close off and go it alone and to not allow anyone to get close to me. This method prevents me from feeling the deep pain and emptiness I always feel when I do lose people. It also forces me to channel any amount of love I have to give into myself, because in the end, I realized the only person I had was myself. My sense of self is the most important value I have and losing that would break me apart. However, I must ask myself this question: how does closing myself off emotionally, forcing myself to carry every ounce of weight alone, and holding onto this deep fear of losing myself if I give away love to someone else actually help me?

There is a reason that I unloaded so much of my emotions all at once on someone so quickly and without question. That reason is because after a while, those bags on our backs that we carry become heavy, and for a second, we just want to rest and catch our breath. Being strong all of the time is hard. So, while growing to love ourselves in order to fill our own voids and to carry our own baggage is great, we were not put on this earth surrounded by billions of people to do everything in solidarity for the entirety of our lives.

One of the greatest, most blissful feelings in the world is to be loved. Love is something that despite trying to fight it, it will always come back around in a different form. You could love yourself, your family, your friends, or you could love a partner. We all have some sort of love in our hearts to give, but we must find the right amount to share. Loving yourself is important and I wholeheartedly believe that without discovering my own self-love, I would not have survived the dark hole I was in and I would not feel as confident and secure in the person that I am today.

However, despite the fulfillment and sense of happiness I have within myself, I do have a deep desire to be truly loved. I want someone to genuinely put forth effort to dive deep to understand my soul, all while allowing me to also remain partially a mystery. I crave a deep soul connection with someone, one that is pure, and one that allows me to grow as a person, and challenges me in my own personal growth kind of way.  I want to be seen for who I am, for my flaws, for the things that make me unique. My standards are very high, because I desire to be loved as much or more than I truly love myself.

The first step is to find a person or even people that you surround yourself with who have only pure intentions. Search to find those people who deserve your love and who will not try to take away your bucket of self-love and satisfaction to add to their much-depreciated bucket of their own. Set standards for who you allow close to you. Do not allow just anyone to take your guard down, to see parts of your soul, or to take advantage of your vulnerabilities. Surround yourself with people who want you to be the best version of yourself by yourself, and only want to add to the greatness you’ve created.

The most important thing to remember when you are letting down those emotional walls that you’ve built as a fear-based coping mechanism is to trust yourself. Remember, YOU built your own empire, from scratch might I add, in the depths of total darkness, with barely any tools to use, and you did it on your own. YOU found love for yourself when you needed it and you should never lose that. This opportunity to overcome your fear of emotional attachment will only lead you to growth within yourself. If you find yourself falling back into a dark hole again and without anyone to lean on once again, remember who it was that got you out the last time. Do not fear the unknown, embrace it. You may even find more than what you ever thought possibly existed.