Codependent Defenses - Part 1 The Gatekeeper
Codependent Defenses - Part 1 The Gatekeeper
“Gatekeeper is a term I first remember encountering over 15 years ago in relationship to archetypes. It is one that I have come to associate in my mind with the ferocious battle our codependency can put up when we are at a place when we are attempting to open our hearts to Loving and being Loved - when we are attempting to open up to allowing good things to happen in our lives instead of sabotaging ourselves. Mythologically there are both positive and negative usage’s of the term Gatekeeper - but in my use, in reference to codependency and fear of intimacy, I think of it as a negative term. In fact, I used to think of the Gatekeeper as some kind of elemental, primal, reptilian presence that emerged from the primordial swamp of the collective unconscious to strike terror into my heart. It was my Gatekeeper that caused me to have the relationship phobia that I described in my May column here. My issues around opening up my heart went way beyond fear - terror of intimacy was the much more accurate term I often used.” “. . . I realized that my wounding caused me to feel like a perpetrator if I set a boundary in an intimate relationship - the very thing I promised myself I would never do, be like my father. In that relationship I learned how to fight. How to stand up for myself and know that a fight didn’t mean the end of the relationship. I had to work at it - telling my inner children that it was okay to say no and set boundaries, that it was okay to be angry and express it. It did take a lot of work to overcome that programming. I sometimes liken the experience to someone who has spoken in a real quiet voice all their life - when they start speaking in a normal voice it feels to them like they are yelling. Someone who has been a people pleaser to avoid confrontation in intimate relationships like I was, will feel like they are being abusive when they start standing up for themselves and owning their anger.” “It was very important in my recovery to realize that emotional intimacy includes anger. That the message that I learned from my mother - that it was not okay to be angry at someone I love - was a false message. Avoiding conflict denies intimacy - we cannot be emotionally intimate with someone we can’t be angry at. Conflict is an inherent part of relationships - and working through issues is how intimacy grows. Conflict is part of the fertilizer that is necessary for the growth of emotional intimacy. A relationship with no conflict is an emotionally dishonest relationship - and the other extreme of the codependent spectrum from relationships that have constant conflict. Both are unhealthy.”
On this page is an article by inner child healing pioneer / Spiritual Teacher / codependency therapist on his fear of emotional intimacy defenses.
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995. Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 thru 2010 by Robert Burney PO Box 235401 Encinitas CA 92023.
Codependent Defenses - Part 1 The Gatekeeper was originally published online August 31, 2004 on the Inner Child / Codependency Recovery topic page Robert used to write for the Suite101.com Directory.
Originally published at https://joy2meu.com/The_Gatekeeper.htm