One important reason people feel they cannot be emotionally vulnerable around others is that they are afraid to feel the pain of rejection, abandonment, shame, or criticism that came as children when they were vulnerable to their parents and failed to receive the proper love and acceptance from them. There is no real and solid love in them which would give them the sense of safety needed to be emotionally open to someone else. So we create a false self, one that fits into society's standard of how one should be, and as adults we use this fabrication to win the acceptance and validation from others that we failed to receive from our parents. As a matter of fact, the seeds of this false self began as children, as we conformed to our parents' and early caregivers' hopes and expectations of us, and molded our fragile personality into a shape which would give us the sense of being liked and loved. But we were not really loved, because this love was conditioned upon upholding this false self-image at all times, in order to feel safe around those whose praise and approval we thrived on.
Most of us don’t realize we are doing this. Our society has been so conditioned by patterns of denial, deception, and emotional protection, many of us cannot even entertain the idea of being emotionally vulnerable for too long, lest we risk losing our ability to function and succeed in our practical worldly responsibilities. Indeed, it will take a herculean effort of several brave souls at first in order to create the kind of sustained safe space needed to change the course of generations of socialization and overcome the resistance to conformity. For this, we need to find real love!
Real love means we are loved for our soul, just because we are a creature of God, and for no other reason. And real love is God's love. Love from us is only real when we are surrendered to His love, and our selfish motives are purified. And this purification is an ongoing process—a never-ending one. What we have in the world presently are noble attempts to fool each other and to gain approval for our fabrications by following what is basically an arbitrarily-created set of standards, one that does not reflect the spirit and ways of a loving God, although in some cases it may appear to do so. These standards, created by members of a “lamentably defective” society, create divisions among people. They create deep alienation in the hearts of those who follow these standards, and who give up God's standards. The fleeting pleasures that come from conforming to the ways of the world will ultimately create veils over your heart, and deprive you of the joys of the soul, and the true spiritual pleasures for which God has created us.
