Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 8, issue - 4, 1 October 2023 | Page 28

Testing the Links Between Fear of Disapproval and Emotional Intimacy
Strengthening Your Own Internal Resolve

Testing the Links Between Fear of Disapproval and Emotional Intimacy

Following along this line of reasoning , Price and her fellow researchers proposed that people scoring high on a measure of externalised selfperception would be lower in their capacity for intimacy . The underlying mechanism , they further proposed , is a weak sense of self . It ’ s not just the need for approval that limits intimacy , then . A high need for approval characterises those with low self-esteem who , in turn , find it difficult to feel they can share their deepest feelings with their partner . The 420 online participants in the BYU study averaged 37 years old ( ranging from 20-72 years old ), and all were in a committed sexual relationship . The need for external approval was broadened in this study from just seeking approval from the partner to seeking external approval from the partner to seeking external approval from people in general .
Sample items on the “ silencing the self scale ” were : “ I tend to judge myself by how I think others see me " “ I spend a lot of time thinking about how other people are feeling ” People scoring low on the “ sense of self ” scale agreed with items such as , “ It ’ s hard for me to figure out my own personality , interests , and opinions .” Finally , to assess emotional intimacy , participants rated themselves on items such as , “ I can openly share my deepest selves on items such as , “ I can openly share my deepest thoughts and feelings with this person .”
As predicted , high scores on the externalised self-perception scale were strongly related to a lower sense of self which , in turn , predicted lower emotional intimacy . Because this was a correlational study , the usual “ correlation does not equal causation ” qualification is important to keep in mind .
However , by setting the statistical model up as they did , the authors were nevertheless able to provide support for their overall theoretical argument .

Strengthening Your Own Internal Resolve

Now that you can see the cost to the intimacy of being overly reliant on the opinions of others , including your partner , the question becomes how to move on to be able to avoid the drumbeat in your head created by a constant need for ap‐ proval . Although it may seem to be easy enough to tell your‐ self that their opinions don ’ t matter to you , in reality , this can be hard to accomplish .