Can love pass through a closed door?

Can we give love to those who’s hearts have closed to us?  Do we have the energy?   It’s hard to keep radiating love towards the wounded or defended places in others all of the time.  Some of us get fed up if rebound defences and projections send that pain back to us and we feel misunderstood.  This is where we have to do a lot of work to hold onto our own emotional reality when what we experienced or felt has been denied by others.

That said, others too have a right to their reality.  Not all of us are capable of deep empathy ourselves.  When you are an intuitive empath energy IS so often sensed.   You just have a feeling when you are around others or pick up emotions you know you most definately were not feeling before you came into that situation.  And as empaths we have to accept and understand that psychological defences agaisnt feeling and wounds can be strong.   If we are particularly in tune with our emotions and are expressing them around others who are not, we may often be judged.   The intensity of what we are feeling may make no sense to others and if we have wounds from the past that are emotional in nature then in later life we are going to be more sensitive as we grow more aware over time in our emotional recovery and work to clear out and integrate the old, buried or backlogged emotions, bringing them into relationship.

I came across an excellent reading in my daily reader The Soul’s Companion this morning which speaks about how true intimacy with another is only possible if strong emotions can be accepted and lovingly contained.   It helped me to understand why I have struggled in a family that has a hard time accepting and expressing anger and grief.  I hope it may help some readers :

Hatred

Pretending that negative or painful feelings do not exist doesn’t keep relationships more intimate.  It can even create inner distane when I act as if the intimate relationship is not strong enough to hold pain, anger or hate.  Powerful feelings can be frightening, but denying their presence keeps me from deeper layers of self.  When my intimate relationships are able to hold the powerful, paradoxical feelings of love and hate, anger and forgiveness, something deep within me can relax and let go.  If they are not able to do this, I need to withdraw from the relationship in order to be myself.

I can hold angst

In this era of self understanding and conscious efforts at parenting, we learn we should not come down to our children’s level.  That is, we should not be as hateful toward them as they are to us.  Yet, if we seal ourselves off they are cheated and burdened by the illusion that anger and hatred are personally inappropriate.  Therapists are like parents.  When therapists come down to their level, both grow from it when the generation gap is re-established.

David V. Keith

The capacity to contain and accept strong feelings in order to touch base with inner depths is important to our growth as humans, but we may not be able to expect everyone to meet us fully in this place.