The document discusses the neuroscience and psychology of love, emphasizing the importance of early relationships and the development of fear of intimacy. It outlines how childhood experiences shape one’s ability to give and receive love and includes exercises for partners to explore emotional needs and vulnerability. It emphasizes the risks involved in loving, particularly for those with traumatic backgrounds, and illustrates the complexities of needing and expressing love.

1. Healthy Relationships II – To Love and Be Loved
Homayoun Shahri, Ph.D., M.A., LMFT
Homayoun.shahri@ravonkavi.com
http://www.ravonkavi.com

2. Neuroscience/Neurochemistry of love
(Review)
● Neurotransmitters involved
– Adrenalin
– Dopamine
– Serotonin
– Oxytocin
– Vasopresin

3. An Object Relational View
● Object Permanency
– Child (Infant) must experience predictable presence of
primary care taker to feel safe and protected
● Object Constancy (Ability to integrate good and bad aspects of
object)
– Child (Infant) must experience unconditional love,
acceptance, empathy, and nonjudgmental presence of
primary care taker to feel that he is worthy of love, he is
worth it, he is good, and he is OK
– He then believes there is benevolence (goodness) in the
world, and people are generally good

4. An Object Relational View (Cont)
Infant splits the object toward whom both love and hate were directed, in two.
The good object (idealized) representation is important and is necessary to go on
in life. The bad (frustrating, repressing) object is further split into two, namely
the repressive object, and the exciting object. Ego identifies with the repressive
object (anti-libidinal self), and keeps the original object seeking drive in check.
Ego also identifies with the exciting object (libidinal self) and seeks exciting
objects in the world.
It is the idealized object that many seek initially in their relationships
(infatuation stage), which is soon replaced by power struggle (acting out of anti-
libidinal self). Some are lucky enough to transcend the power struggle stage and
enter the “co-creativity” stage.

5. Rumi (Last letter to Shams)
Sometimes I wonder, sweetest love, if you
Were a mere dream in along winter night,
A dream of spring-days, and of golden light
Which sheds its rays upon a frozen heart;
A dream of wine that fills the drunken eye.
And so I wonder, sweetest love, if I
Should drink this ruby wine, or rather weep;
Each tear a bezel with your face engraved,
A rosary to memorize your name...
There are so many ways to call you back-
Yes, even if you only were a dream.

6. Exercise 1
● Find a partner and decide who is 1 and who is 2
● Partner 1 – First reach toward frustrating parent (partner 2) and say: “I need you.” In this
statement you are saying: “I need you to see me, love me, affirm me, know me, I am your
child and cannot help but need you.”
● Feel your reaction as you make this statement and let your partner in on how as a child you
stopped this needing in your body and what you said to yourself around this. You have done
this many times. Let you body give you feedback. Your partner will reflect on this until you
feel s/he had gotten it.
● Switch roles
● (Courtesy of Dr Robert Hilton)
“Unexpressed emotions will never die.
They are buried alive and will come
forth later in uglier ways.” S. Freud

7. Exercise 1 (Cont)
● Now partner 1 says to partner 2, “As you can see, the child in me still needs
something from the rejecting parent even though I try to hide it. I want to stop
this cycle. I need this need to come out with you and face it so that I don't go
away disappointed again that I did not get what I have said I don't need. Let
me try it out on you.
●
First make the statement: “I need you.” And then make the demand: “I want
you to like me. I want to feel that I am the best partner you have ever had. I
want to touch your heart and create a response in you that you never had.”
● Feel in your body what happens when say this.
● Before you cut off your feelings, first stiffen up and say: “No I won't let you
see my need”. And then relax your posture and say: “No I won't hold back my
need.” Let this need to be seen and to come through your eyes, breath, and
arms. In other words embody this feeling.

8. Drive, Expression, and Repression
1. Unitary drive seeking expression
2. Environmental negativity
3. Drive seeking alternative expression
4. Part of drive energy seeking excitement
5. Part of drive energy repressing original expression

9. Drive, Expression, Repression, and Acting Out

10. Partners Relating via Adaptive (False) Selves

11. Partners Relating via Introjects

12. Partners Relating via Adaptive Self and Introjects

13. Exercise 2
● Find a partner.
● Tell your partner: I have been with them thus far in this presentation, and I want
this to be a good experience for you. I don't want you to feel alone. I want to
support you in any way I can. And hold out your hands toward your partner
● What do you experience when you see these outstretched hands? Do you want
to push it away, ignore it, or take it but not look at your partner? What is at risk if
you take it, and what if you don't?
● Follow your body's response. What are you feeling about the outstretched
hands? Can you let your partner see your response in your eyes and touch?
How would it be to link up with another person?
● (Courtesy of Dr Robert Hilton)

14. Rumi (Through Love)
THROUGH LOVE all that is bitter will sweet
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!

15. Fear of Intimacy
● Love is not only hard to find, but strange as it may seem, it can be even more
difficult to accept and tolerate. Most of us say that we want to find a loving partner,
but many of us have deep-seated fears of intimacy that make it difficult to be in a
close relationship.
● Fear of intimacy begins to develop early in life. As children, when we experience
rejection and/or emotional pain, we often shut down. We learn not to rely on others
as a coping mechanism. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being
hurt again. We are reluctant to take another chance on being loved.
● If we felt unseen or misunderstood as children, we may have a hard time believing
that someone could really love and value us. Or if we do believe they love us, we
find all kinds of reasons why they are not the “right” person for us.

16. Fear of Intimacy (Continued)
● To love
– It is painful to love someone when they don't love us. This is more familiar
to us, but painful nonetheless. This is about re-experiencing the pain of
deprivation from early contact and holding.
● To be loved
– It is much more painful to be loved – to open ourselves to love, be
vulnerable, and let go of our defenses. This is about re-experiencing the
pain of heartbreak (if we risk going there). Our defense mechanism may
respond with rejection (rejecting the loving object). This is also much
harder to perceive and imagine. There may be a tendency of wanting to
pull back and go away, to feel weired in your body, to feel shame, to
contact in our chest, etc.

17. R.D. Laing (Knots)
My mother loves me.
I feel good.
I feel good because she
loves me.
I am good because I feel
good.
I feel good because I am
good.
My mother loves me
because I am good.
My mother does not love
me.
I feel bad.
I feel bad because she
does not love me.
I am bad because I feel
bad.
I feel bad because I am
bad.
I am bad because she
does not love me.
She does not love me
because I am bad.

18. Exercise 3
● Find a partner and decide who is 1 and who is 2
● Partner 1 places one hand on his/her heart and with the other hand slightly pushes
against the outstretched hand of his/her partner who his other hand on his/her heart.
● Partner 1 says: “This is my heart, my life and you can't have it.”
● Partner 2 says: “I want you to have your life. I only want to be available to you if you
want it.”
● Partner 2 then says: “I don't want you to be alone anymore.”
● Partner 1 pays attention to his feelings and what s/he is experiencing (fear, anxiety,
sadness, love, longing)
● Reverse roles.
Courtesy of Dr Robert Hilton (modified version)

19. Healthy Love – Taking Risks
● Donald Kalsched (Trauma and the Soul):
– The act of loving is a terrible risk for everyone, and especially for
people who have grown up in emotionally impoverished
environments. To really love someone (without symbiotically
attaching to them through identification), is to risk losing them,
precisely because we live in an insecure, unpredictable world in
which death, separation, or abandonment is an ever present reality.
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens”
Rumi

20. Rumi
I swear, since seeing Your face,
the whole world is fraud and fantasy
The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf
or blossom. The distracted birds
can't distinguish the birdseed from the snare.
A house of love with no limits,
a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon,
a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.