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Writer's pictureIntimacy Counseling & Consulting

Are You Emotionally Cutting Off in Your Relationships? (or Physically Cutting Off too)...

We all get into arguments about anything that is important to us. Many of times, we all do many things in order to maintain our anxiety from getting the best of us or find ways to not hurt others of which typically takes the form of emotionally cutting off from significant relationship or physically disconnecting from them altogether.


This is totally a normal reaction to have. We are emotional creatures and we will do anything and everything to take care of ourselves and others.


When individuals become anxious in their relationships, we have to find ways to take care of ourselves and of others. When we do this, we stop talking to people, move away from them or find some way to cutoff from them and consequently from our own emotions.


These cutoffs can have their own way of maintaining the anxiety but does not resolve the anxiety nor the issue that caused it. We all have principles, values, traditions, and beliefs that are dear to us. Without them, who are we, right? We sometimes expect others to follow them and think/behave the same way we do. When people do not, we get emotionally reactive and say to ourselves, "Well, I don't have to talk to them anyway" or we think that if we move far away from them, we won't have to deal with "it" or with them.


Emotional/Physical Cutoff can look like:

  • Avoiding someone when they walk by.

  • Avoiding being in the same place/spot as the other.

  • You move away from your physically abusive father.

  • Refusing to visit our parents because of what they said or did to us.

  • Silent treatment

  • Asking someone to deliver a message for you to the cutoff person.

Emotional/Physical cutoff only perpetuates anxiety patterns to continue. When they continue, they can have detrimental implications on the family system. The actual source of the cutoff is not resolved and this pattern continues.


"How do I repair my emotional/physical cutoffs,"you might ask?


  1. Manage your emotional reactivity about the situation.

  2. Go and be present with the person you have an emotional or physical cutoff from.

  3. What if the person has passed? Go and visit the gravesite or write them a letter while also answering yourself what you would have wished to received from the person.

  4. You might only be able to handle a simple phone call or a brief visit with the person. You will develop yourself enough to challenge yourself and remain calm while in their presence.

You are in control of you. Do not give the other person the control to get you emotionally reactive. Ask yourself, "How can I be the better (bigger) human in this?"Do not let emotional cutoff affect the next generation in your family, the price of the effects is too high.


Stay tuned for the next topic....Other-Focused/Self-Focused...


(903) 466-2643




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