Why We Confuse Rescue With Intimacy—and How We Begin Coming Home to Ourselves.

There was a couple I worked with years ago that I still think about.

She struggled with overwhelming emotions that seemed to arrive like weather systems.

He loved her deeply. Whenever she became upset, he was very attentive Whenever she became frightened, he became steadier. Whenever she became angry, he became more patient. He seemed very available. People would most likel describe him as compassionate. I remember sitting with them one afternoon while she cried. He leaned toward her almost automatically and I can feel some fear and shock moving through hi system that he wasn’t yet totally aware of. There was something so immediate about it that it didn’t quite seem like a choice. His whole organism oriented toward regulating hers.

As I watched, I became less interested in her distress and more interested in the movement inside him. I wondered, "What happens in your body when she becomes overwhelmed?"He closed his eyes, as he was accustomed to doing in session to inquire with the deeper layers of what is arising…. And for a long time he paused….Then quietly he said,

"Everything in me starts trying to just make it okay."

We stayed there, Not trying to change it. Just becoming curious. As we invited him to tracked the sensation, his breathing changed. His shoulders softened. A sadness appeared that had not been there a few moments before…. Tears...

I invited him to allow himself to explore it, in mindfulness… go ahead and sink into that sadness and feel into what sadness says or needs…. He  stays with it… is there anything his sadness wants you to know or understand more about?..

Then something surprising happened.

He didn't speak about his partner. Memories of mother arose  

Not about events or stories… but about the feeling. A feeling that the emotional atmosphere in the home had somehow depended on him. He couldn't explain it…….No one had asked him to do it. Yet somehow he had become exquisitely sensitive to everyone else's inner world. And to all feelings that weren’t talked about, processed  or held or met...He knew when someone was disappointed before they spoke. He knew when someone was lonely before they admitted it. He knew when someone needed comfort before they asked.

It was almost like a sixth sense.

As we stayed there together, another realization quietly emerged.

The same sensitivity that had become one of his greatest gifts had also become the place where he disappeared. His attention had become so finely tuned toward the emotional field around him that he had stopped noticing the field inside himself. 

There was no accusation toward his mother. He had an awareness, neutrality…even  tenderness. He can feel that she was under resourced and unable to articulate or hold herself… Her own inner child … that she unconsciously carried burdens no child could understand. He understood she was moving in her own consciousness with the histories of her own fears and pains and that she was not really aware of her deeper world, her unconscious and her feelings… no one in her childhood helped her to be in touch with herself in that kind of way like most of us... 

For him as a child…he simply did what children do. He organized himself around preserving connection, and being a 'good son...

The room became very still.

I remember asking him,

"What happens if you don't make her okay?"

His eyes filled with tears.

He whispered, "Then I don't know what to do.” Confusion sets in..

It felt older than the memory. Almost cellular. We sat together without speaking for some moments so that he can give room to what was coming to him.

Something in him seemed to recognize that he had mistaken responsibility for intimacy. He was re enacting the mom dynamics of being for her everything she needed him to be...

He had learned as a little that staying connected meant staying vigilant. That love meant anticipating. Managing. Preventing. Saving. Repairing. He had become extraordinarily good at feeling everyone except himself.

The room became quiet again.

I remember feeling  something profoundly important had happened.

A younger organization of consciousness had been included inside a larger field. He became aware of the system a little bit more… Years later I still think about that session.

 so many of us are not searching for difficult relationships. We are unconsciously searching for the same kind of energies we are trying to heal with our parent but because we are conditioned as humans to look for “love” in places that feel like what love felt like in the home growing up…blame shame, accusation victim perpetrator saviour roles…subtle or clear controlling happening to not feel fear or loss or grief or guilt…etc.. we control eachother in subtle ways…   we unconsciously equate this with what love is… until a moment we begin to come home to ourselves in a new way and realise what love actually is.. 

It is  the moment we no longer have to leave ourselves in order to belong or be a "good person”. An honourable” person… This was so rewarded in the culture as something to be rewarded… when you self abandon and then tribe gives you positive feedback… you're so sweet..so kind...

Perhaps healing is not learning how to love another more.

Perhaps healing is discovering that love has been quietly waiting in the place we have been leaving every time someone else's storm begins.

Love is standing in love…

"standing in love” is one of the deepest practices of relational maturity.

standing in love is not a feeling. It is a stance.

It is the capacity to remain connected to your own integrity, your own worth, and your own loving center while facing another person's pain, defensiveness, criticism, withdrawal, or dysregulation.

 contrast standing in love with standing in fear.

When we stand in fear:

• We collapse into people-pleasing or appeasement.

• We become controlling or critical.

• We rescue.

• We withdraw or numb out.

• We abandon ourselves in order to preserve connection.

Standing in love means:

"I will stay connected to my own heart while I stay connected to yours."

It is neither compliance nor domination.

It is  "relational empowerment."

I encourage couples to ask themselves:

"Am I speaking from love or from fear?"

And by love, I dont mean sentimentality. I means the wise adult self that values both people equally.

"Loving someone is not the same as loving yourself less."

Standing in love therefore includes boundaries.

It includes saying no.

It includes leaving the room if necessary.

It includes refusing abuse without refusing the person.

It is the ability to say:

"I love you too much to join you in behavior that harms either of us."

Or,

"I can understand your pain without abandoning myself to it."

functional adults do not regulate themselves by controlling another person's inner state.

When we become responsible for another person's emotions, we leave the realm of intimacy and enter codependence.

Real intimacy sounds more like:

"I can care deeply about your suffering without believing it is mine to fix."

Or:

"I can stay open-hearted while allowing you the dignity of your own experience.”

Standing in love is the capacity to remain identified with the field of awareness rather than with the younger part that believes it must rescue, appease, or disappear in order to belong. It is standing as the larger Self that can include fear, doubt, longing, and tenderness without becoming them. It is not moving away from the younger adaptation, but increasing the capacity to hold it while remaining rooted in the truth of Being.

Or even more simply:

Standing in love is refusing to leave yourself while remaining open to another.

 not opposing the younger organization, but including it within a wider field of consciousness where both self and other can belong simultaneously.

And perhaps the child who learned to monitor everyone else's emotional needs has been waiting all along for someone to sit beside him and be curious about his experience and whisper, I am interested in your inner world and what you may not even know yet. Im excited to learn about your whole soul..who you are and to grow with you and get more free together..or You're not alone in this…I'm with you..

How Do We Heal Codependency?

Here's what to pay attention to and get curious aboout:

Control vs. Vulnerability: Saving or being saved provides a sense of control or purpose. Because being genuinely known is scary, taking on a "rescuer" role acts as a defense mechanism to keep real emotional exposure at bay. Oftentimes as a rescuer we don't even know how we feel or what we need becuase we spend most time outside of ourselves tracking for what other's are feeling and needing. And historically any needs or feelings were made to be about the other person if and when they wold arise. So we make a decision at that moment as young children that needs= wrong denial, judgement or just No "honey...thats not really true" and/or needs= I need to caretake the other's reaction...

Comfort in Chaos: Calm, healthy love can feel unfamiliar if you grew up with instability, emotional distance, or parents who never spoke openly about their feelings with maturity, sincerity, or a sense of being on the same team. If conflict was avoided, love was inconsistent, or emotional needs went unspoken, your nervous system may have learned that tension is normal and connection is uncertain. Constantly trying to rescue, manage, or anticipate others' emotions requires hypervigilance.

True intimacy requires you to speak for - on behalf of-- not from defenses --to name them as younger parts that are afraid of rejection and being made wrong of loss...and that that isn't the whole truth of who you are and that what you are needing is safety, respect, curiosity of what the deeper truth is here and also a mutuality a shared interest in doing what it takes in finding that together...

How to Come Home to Yourself

Coming home to yourself means learning how to be intimate with your own emotions before expecting to connect deeply with someone else.

Begin by Becoming Curious

Rather than trying to overcome your fear of intimacy or connection, begin by becoming curious about it.

Notice the moments when your body contracts, when you want to rescue, withdraw, over-function, appease, control, or disappear. Instead of identifying with these impulses as who you are, welcome them as intelligent frequencies moving through your field of consciousness.

Ask gently:

"What younger place inside me is organizing my experience right now?"

Allow yourself to wonder with awe and fascination rather than judgment.

Stay With Yourself While Staying With Another

Practice remaining connected to your own inner experience while in relationship.

Rather than immediately soothing, fixing, explaining, or managing another person's emotional state, pause.

Feel your own breath.Feel your own body.Notice your own sensations, emotions, and impulses.

Can you remain with yourself while remaining open to them?

This is the beginning of standing in love rather than standing in fear.

Become Curious About Your Adaptations

The parts of you that rescue, people-please, hyper-attune, withdraw, or become responsible for everyone else's experience are not problems to solve.

They are beautiful developmental adaptations that once preserved connection.

Rather than asking,

"How do I stop doing this?"

Ask,

"What feeling has this strategy been helping me avoid?"

Perhaps grief.Perhaps fear.Perhaps loneliness.Perhaps helplessness.Perhaps the ancient ache of not feeling fully seen.

The adaptation itself is not the wound.It is the intelligence that grew around the wound.

Expand Your Capacity to Include

Healing is not becoming a different person.

It is increasing your capacity to include every part of yourself within a wider field of awareness.

As you welcome fear, doubt, longing, tenderness, and vulnerability without becoming identified with them, something remarkable begins to happen.

The younger parts no longer have to organize your relationships.

Instead, they become held by a wiser, more spacious presence.

And from that place, intimacy ceases to be something you perform or earn.

It becomes something that naturally emerges when you no longer have to leave yourself in order to belong.

If you are interested in developing a healthier approach to relationships, I can help by explaining:

Specific steps for setting emotional boundaries

Strategies for navigating conflict safely

And healing what is at the core ---togther

<3