How to form deep connections with other people

For most of my life I have felt really lonely and isolated. Even while I was in social situations (or business meetings, or lots of other places where I was with other people), I felt really alone.

It didn’t take me long in therapy to develop “explanations” for why I isolated myself; at least part of the issue was that, as a child, I learned to wall myself off from others as an unconscious defense mechanism to protect myself from anticipated pain.

Figuring out why I isolated myself didn’t really help me that much; I could explain why I felt isolated, but I still felt lonely. But it was a good start.

Lately, though, I’ve been focusing my attention what I need to do to stop feeling lonely … and instead, experience a sense of real connectedness with other people. The answer for me has been learning to open up my heart or my emotional “truth” to other people when I'm scared to do so.

The process for me works something like this:

• When I’m with someone with whom I want to feel connected (and I don’t), I ask myself if I’m feeling or thinking something that I want to share with them ... that I’m afraid of sharing (e.g., because I’m scared they’ll dislike me, or that they’ll get angry, or that they’ll think poorly of me, or something like that)
• Then, I tell the person the thing I’m afraid to tell them - directly and without sugar-coating my words
• Then, I watch what happens

What I’ve discovered – to my absolute amazement – is that, after doing this process well over 100 times with dozens of people in the last several months:

• People’s reactions to me are almost always the opposite of what I expect; mostly, people are really grateful when I share my “truth”
• This process usually creates an immediate sense of connectedness with the other person
• This process has, to date, never backfired on me; i.e., I’ve never regretted it – at least so far

More to the point, what I’ve also discovered is that most people respond very favorably when I am honest and open about my “truth” – especially when the thing I’m sharing is something that seems embarrassing or bad. And, on the flip side, I’ve also discovered that when people are open with me, it makes me feel connected to them.

Given the positive feedback I’ve gotten from this process so far, I’m getting braver every day in terms of what truths I’m willing to reveal – and to whom. And, given that every new step I’ve taken to open my heart further has created so much good stuff, I have no intention of stopping my progress down this path.

If you haven’t gone down this path as well, perhaps you would find this journey of opening your heart to people when it’s scary to do so equally rewarding.