Free to let in friendship

Problem/Goal

Rachel wanted to connect with other young Catholic women, but felt wary. She tended to be overly guarded and anxious in social settings. She wanted to work through her guardedness so that she could be more authentic and open with other women seeking to support each other.

In this case, her strong reactions were triggered by group get togethers with other young women, some of which she may not know well.

Inwardly, she felt anxious and kept trying to figure out, "what's my problem?" She was hard on herself for feeling insecure and having racing thoughts.

Outwardly, she came off as guarded, quick to cut people off, or not talk to them if she caught any hint of judgment.

Underneath her anxiety and guardedness, she felt trapped in a black hole feeling of being unwanted. She couldn't speak and express herself freely. This heart-state reflected the negative core belief: I'm undeserving of friendship.

Origins

Using the floatback technique, we were able to surface the origins of her difficulty being comfortable in groups. It turns out, she was rejected and bullied by some of the popular girls in middle school. No one ever helped her make sense of what happened. She was repeatedly overlooked when the typical friend groups got together for outings or parties.

Integrating Defenses

Before approaching the core wound, we first did some integrative writing to tame her inner critic defense. This was the part of her that would be overly self-conscious about the things she said or did in groups settings. We discovered a dose of her mother's overemphasis on looks, seeming to be well put together, and saying the right things. She was able to retrain this mindset to view herself and others with greater acceptance and gentleness.

With the more guarded part of her heart, we did an imagery exercise to integrate a knee-jerk, automatic shut down of any openness with new acquaintances. She was able to soften this part to merely being wary of sharing too much too quickly. She was able to balance being cautious with being more vulnerable and open to expressing feelings and imperfections.

Resolving the Emotional Wound (the Root Cause)

Finally, we were able to work with the core wounded part of her...a middle school aged girl that felt stuck feeling rejected and undeserving of friendship. Since she had other memories that reinforced this core belief of being undeserving of friendship, we used EMDR to process those unresolved memories.

This part of her felt immense relief and was ready to embrace the real truth of her lovability and capacity for intimacy.

At this point, she was able to bring this place in her heart to Jesus to benefit from a direct encounter with Our Lord. Often, the Divine Physician has just the right insight to convey that clears up self-confusion and strengthens a sense of His Truth and Love. It turns out, her defenses had interfered with her openness to Christ's friendship and Our Lady's guidance.

Her feelings of being anxious and empty were replaced with feeling calm, connected, and free. She felt so much lighter than before.

Deeper Friendship in Christ

Now that she was able to shift old wounding memories from unresolved to resolved, she was ready to deeply own a new positive belief about herself: "I'm free to let in friendship."

We continued the work of EMDR to reprocess old wounding memories. We revisited the memories from the past but wired in the new positive belief. She was able to affirm that, even when recalling those middle school memories, she felt the new belief to be completely true: I am free to let in friendship. We were able to then focus on the present and future to fully reach her counseling goal: a relaxed and open response to new female acquaintances.

To more deeply seal in this heart-set, we used the Now I Know, Feel, and Can exercise. We also used imaginal rehearsal to imagine how she might act and respond in group settings moving forward.

These exercises helped her really learn at a deep emotional level the state of mind and heart she would have while relating to other young women, so that she could finally form the deeper friendships she was looking for.

Spiritual Significance

At the deeper, spiritual level of the heart, Rachel could be more vulnerable with the Lord, more likely to turn to Him in prayer, and more able to invite Him in to those places of her heart where she felt dismissed or ignored by others. She was able to focus less on herself and more on the other when in groups, and thus to grow in charity and self-gift.