Finding the Raw Spots
Hold Me Tight: Finding the Raw Spots
“To love well requires courage and trust”
As Dr. Sue Johnson so elegantly puts it in her book Hold Me Tight, all good and healthy romantic relationships require both partners to be able to confidently bare themselves to one another, trusting that the other person will love and accept them with open arms.
In order for this courage and trust to be fostered in a relationship, we need to be able to allow our partner to know us and on the flip side of the same coin, they need to be willing to learn about us as well, but we all know that this is easier said than done. We all have what Dr. Johnson calls “raw spots” which, when rubbed up against by a lover can be extremely uncomfortable and maybe even painful, as they often remind us of attachment needs that have been neglected in the past.
A ”raw spot” is something we can be overly sensitive to because of moments in a past or current relationship where a need or attachment has been neglected over and over. They can come up in any relationship where we feel emotionally deserted, and we often don’t even know that we have them. No matter how much we think we’ve grown, they can always peek out through the bushes of our unconscious mind – unless we learn how to recognize them.
A lot of the time, we’re only aware of our secondary, emotional reaction to our raw spot, but at that point, it’s often too late to have a conversation about it with a rational mind. Our secondary reactions can be so strong emotionally that they take over the conversation, but they can be helpful in identifying what our raw spots are.
There are two major signs when your or your partner’s raw spot had been hit:
There is suddenly an extreme shift in the tone of the conversation
The reaction appears to be radically disproportionate to what concretely happened
When this happens, our deepest and possibly most rooted emotions are being taken over as a way to defend ourselves from the sort of emotional neglect that created those raw spots in the first place, but in order to understand them, we need to put our more fundamental emotions under the microscope and question why they’re so sensitive, to begin with.
We need to question what was occurring underneath the emotional reaction by asking ourselves questions like - What was happening in the relationship? What happens to your body? Does the awareness of your body help you name the experience? By questioning ourselves with the intention of understanding our raw spots on a deeper level, we can slowly move into an arena where we can bare ourselves to our partner and create a relationship and life that is fulfilling and full of joy!
It’s all about being vulnerable – with your partner but more importantly, with yourself. Once you’re ready to start sharing that part of yourself with whoever is willing to listen, start slow! In the meantime, if you need more support on improving your relationship, feel free to reach out to Relationship Counselling Toronto for more information on how relationship counselling can help you and your partner.
