Defending Yourself Against Intimacy—A Master at Jujitsu

Defending Yourself Against Intimacy—A Master at Jujitsu

A leading psychiatrist once said that the critical key to finding one’s sanity is being a master of defense of your own emotions.

Jujitsu is not only a martial art, it is an art of defending oneself by using the tactics of the opponent to your advantage—staving them off, deflecting them, entangling them in their own force. I wonder if defense in our daily relationships should be more of a battle in Jujitsu than one of retaliation.

But the take I want to make on the style of Jujitsu and relationship is actually in the opposite direction. I was talking to a client recently about a marriage problem he was having. He said that his wife didn’t neglect him. She simply didn’t bring anything to the table in their relationship. She left the entire relationship, including intimacy, in his hands. She just did what he wanted and nothing more.

Though this sounds as if the woman in this relationship is not fighting at all, she surely is. She has become complacent with the relationships and has decided that the only way to appease her self and the course of her steadfast, status-quo life is to simply be in it, but not be a part of the intimate decisions that lead a relationship to be full and complete. She mastered the art of Jujitsu in her relationship and has parried every attempt that the husband has had in attacking the real problem—intimacy.

You might ask why someone would not want intimacy in her marriage. There are plenty of psychological reasons why a person would want to just give the relationship enough breath simply to survive, but not to thrive. One good one would be because she simply doesn’t believe she deserves intimacy (bad self-esteem) or she has never been schooled in the art of intimacy.

Also, intimacy and closeness takes a great deal of vulnerability, when most people in this scenario have led lives that have completely cut themselves off from understanding the message of intimacy. Perhaps, she could have had parents who argued incessantly. When the night would get quiet, and everyone would be asleep, sounds of weeping came from her mother’s bedroom. She would assume that intimacy would bring depression and sadness.

Someone who had been brought up in a very strict religious environment might believe that any sexual thought was being monitored by God and punishable by bad things. He may have seen someone close, like a parent, commit adultery and then later commit suicide or end up in a mental institution. Many scenarios can lead a person to stop the urge of sexuality and intimacy and cut themselves off from closeness for their entire lives.

It is only with a master therapist or psychologist can one begin to untangle the anger that has built up the strong walls around the heart that can’t move forward toward intimacy. Facing the demons and the tragedies in the past are the first steps toward finding the voice of expression you need to begin to understand your own heart and have compassion toward yourself. When you do that, then you can begin to try to understand another person’s feelings. With that understanding you create intimacy.

So the art of Jujitsu can be used as a self defense tactic in relationship to keep someone you honestly would like to love, but may never, because you are too afraid to face your own demons.

There is hope. Today is the day you can begin to uncover what is truly beneath the surface of all that you have compressed and compacted in your soul, from the time you were a child until now. You can begin to unearth the hidden you and finally get back to the reason you are alive on this earth.

Your reason may be just to learn to love and accept yourself. Then again, it may be to share your deepest understanding of human nature with those around you from what you have learned about your own life. That is, in truth, my story of how I came to help others through the traumas and struggles in their lives.

When you dig deep enough and work hard enough at finding the light that has always been inside of you, you want to lead other onto that same path of freedom.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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