“Intimacy requires the ability to be vulnerable. To be intimate is to risk exposing our inner selves to each other; to bare our deepest feelings, desires and thoughts. To be intimate is to be the very ones we are, and to love and accept each other unconditionally. This requires self-confidence and courage. Such courage creates a new space in our relationship. That space is not yours or mine; it is ours. As a shame-based person all this was impossible for me. I had no relationship with myself. I was in hiding, not only from you but also from myself. I was a human “doing”, because I could not go inside myself. There was no one there. I had no self. My relationship with myself was rejecting and contemptuous. What I feared most of all was exposure. I had no self to give to anyone.”— John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
