Anxiety about appearance, fear of intimate relationships, is it more necessary to seek a counselor of the opposite sex?

Hello, I'm happy to answer your question. Fear of intimacy is a common problem, but you're not alone. I understand you're struggling, and it's tough to face this fear.

There are lots of reasons why people have intimacy fears. Past traumatic experiences, low self-esteem, social skills – these are just a few. The best way to cure intimacy fears is to find the root cause of the fear (it is recommended to seek professional psychological counseling).

My suggestions are just that: for reference only. 1. Learn to accept yourself. Anxiety often comes from our inner criticism. Learn to accept your own flaws and limitations, and don't demand too much of yourself.

2. Work on your social skills. Start by building friendships with the opposite sex and learning to accept your own thoughts and feelings.

It's also a good idea to attend more parties or interest groups. 3. Self-disclosure.

You can start with low-intensity contact, such as simple exchanges like asking for directions, and gradually increase the length and depth of contact with the opposite sex (remember to give yourself encouragement or a small reward for each small improvement). 4. Seek professional help.

A psychologist can help you create a plan to make healthy changes and adjust your inner self.

Finally, remember to stay confident and patient. Every change takes time to take root. Trust in your own actions, and you'll get closer to your goal with each step. Best of luck!

Hello, questioner. I can see the confusion you are facing now, and I'm here to help.

You need to find a consultant from the psychoanalytic-dynamic school to deal with your current problems.

From my own experience, I can tell you this.

I also have a fear of intimacy.

Over four years ago, I found a counselor in Shanghai who was cognitive behavioral.

Then I realized that she would pay more attention to my emotional feelings and thoughts, but often I couldn't tell the difference between the two. This left me stuck in the same place, and the more I consulted, the more confused I became.

Four years ago, I found a counselor here at the Platform, and she is a psychoanalytic dynamist.

She helped me analyze it more systematically. My fear of intimacy is due to a period of time when I was a child and my mother was not around, which made me very insecure.

I am older and stronger than when I was a child. I can give myself a sense of security.

You need to seek the advice of a psychoanalyst.

Gender is not important. It would be better if we were the same gender.

I am confident that the problem you are facing will be resolved soon.

That's all I have to say.

I am confident that my above answer is helpful and inspiring to you, the questioner. As the answerer, I can assure you that I study hard every day.

Here at Yixinli, the world and I love you. Best wishes!

!

Hello! I can feel your confusion from the lines of your question, but I'm here to help! First of all, I would like to give you a hug and hope that my answer is helpful to you.

I can totally relate to you wanting to feel more acceptance and freedom in your relationships, especially in those intimate moments. In public or at work, you're totally killing it, setting clear boundaries and displaying a certain social confidence. But in more personal interactions, you might feel a little nervous and closed off.

This contrast may be due to your deep-seated desire to show your true self, or your fear of other people's opinions and reactions. We all crave understanding and acceptance to varying degrees, and this desire often becomes even stronger in close relationships.

When it comes to choosing a counselor, gender is not the be-all and end-all. What matters most is finding someone who can truly listen to you, understand you, and make you feel safe and supported. It doesn't matter if the counselor is the same sex or the opposite sex. What matters is that they can provide you with the space you need to explore and express your feelings, while also helping you build a stronger sense of self-worth and self-esteem!

At the same time, the counseling process will delve deeper into your emotions and thoughts to understand what is preventing you from being open and relaxed in intimate relationships. This may involve your early experiences, issues with self-image, or even sociocultural influences.

This process is going to be amazing for you! You'll learn so much about yourself, including how to stay true to yourself in any situation and set healthy boundaries. And you'll have a counselor there to support you every step of the way, helping you discover your own strength and value!

You can feel great about taking care of your mind in a way that suits you. It's a courageous act! And every step you take is a big step forward. Even the smallest progress is worth celebrating!

I'm here for you whenever you want! I'm always ready to listen to your story and explore it with you. I hope my answers are helpful!

The world and I love you! ???

I hope my answer helps.

We feel ashamed about our needs in relationships because we feel worthless. When you feel more worthy, you feel more powerful and relaxed. We can look at what beliefs are causing our appearance anxiety. We can adjust our beliefs to adjust our emotions. You can find a same-sex or opposite-sex counselor to fit your needs.

My advice is this:

Seeing one's own needs in relationships Shame comes from feeling worthless, so we need to feel better about ourselves.

Mr. Hu Shenzhi said, "Loneliness makes us feel worthless. This started in childhood when our needs weren't met. We learned to hide our needs because we felt ashamed. This makes us afraid of intimacy. Understand yourself. This is not your fault. It's a natural reaction influenced by our experiences."

To solve this problem, you need to enhance your self-worth, let go of previous evaluations and definitions of yourself, and learn to define yourself. You can do the "Enhancing Self-Worth" exercise on our platform or read the books "Rebuilding Your Life" and "The Power of Self-Care." The important thing is to practice, not just read books and listen to lectures.

2. If you're worried about your appearance, accept yourself and think about why you're anxious.

Our emotions are not caused by events, but by how we perceive them. Our beliefs affect our emotions. We need to find and replace our "limiting beliefs" with reasonable ones.

You can become aware of it. When you are anxious, what are your thoughts? They might be: "If I stop being young and beautiful, people won't like me. If I stop being beautiful, I'll have no value. If I stop being beautiful, it means I've failed." These thoughts influence us, but we don't see them because they're automatic.

When we see these thoughts, we can examine them. They are not objective and do not represent the truth. Appearance does not determine everything about us. A person's value is not determined by appearance. A person's success is not tied to appearance. We cannot change our appearance, and we become anxious about this. This anxiety makes us even more anxious because we cannot change it. We are really afraid of being rejected by others.

We can believe that we are beautiful, imperfect beings. Our existence is valuable. We can choose to be kind, gentle, and caring towards ourselves, regardless of our appearance or age.

When you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, your anxiety will ease. Accepting yourself will make you less afraid of others' dislike. Your inner being will become more harmonious, and you will become more beautiful. Beauty comes from within, and it will show in your body, eyes, skin, and overall confidence.

3. Choosing a counselor.

You say you are afraid of intimacy. Think about when you are with your father and mother.

If you are fearful around your father, you will probably be fearful around a male counselor. If you feel you can open up to a male counselor and gain security, then you can choose a male counselor.

If you can't open up to a counselor of the opposite sex, it will be hard to get good results.

If you feel less fear with a female counselor, if you feel you can be honest and talk about your inner struggles and emotions, and if you trust a same-sex counselor, the counselor will understand you better and you can establish a better therapeutic alliance. If you fear a female counselor and cannot express your feelings, the counseling will be more difficult.

The relationship between counselor and client is important for a good outcome. It doesn't matter if the counselor is the same sex or opposite sex. It depends on how you feel about the counselor, whether you trust them, and whether you can confide in them.

For your reference. Best wishes!

Good day. I believe your concern about your appearance is noteworthy. It seems to be a selective appearance anxiety. Feelings of shame and fear in intimate relationships can result in repression and an inability to let go. However, in relationships with ordinary friends and colleagues, you exhibit the characteristics of a social cow.

From your description, I have two hypotheses: 1. The questioner is at least of normal appearance. If they really were scary-looking, they wouldn't have selective anxiety. 2. The person in the questioner's relationship must be good-looking. If the other person were a "dinosaur" in the context of our time, I believe the questioner would not be anxious.

I would like to take this opportunity to share my views on the matter.

1. Appearance and image are subjective perceptions with no fixed evaluation criteria. The appearance of the same person can be rated very differently by different people. As long as they do not elicit a negative response when walking down the street, there is not much difference in appearance.

It is possible that your psychological appearance anxiety has its roots in a past life experience that has left an imprint on the subconscious. To illustrate, when you were a child, your parents or relatives may have made a jest about your appearance, suggesting that you would be unable to find a partner when you grew up. Alternatively, the teasing of a particular opposite-sex friend may have contributed to this issue, even if the opposite sex was still someone you had a crush on in childhood.

This is the root cause.

2. It reflects your personal beliefs. In a romantic or intimate relationship, appearance is a significant factor. The partner who is not physically attractive is often perceived as inferior. This is evident in your subconscious mind. Think critically and objectively. Is this truly the case?

A normal state of affairs should be one of inner peace and self-assurance. The spiritual temperament should be superior to appearance.

Furthermore, the ability to maintain ordinary friendships and work relationships demonstrates that you possess unique, talented, and confident qualities. Therefore, consider this: What do people truly value in a romantic or intimate relationship? Most individuals' fundamental needs are simply their preferred characteristics, talents, and self-confidence. Deeper needs are a separate matter. In short, it's the courage and responsibility to "love" and "be loved."

It is important to understand that love is not a commodity to be bartered for physical appearance. It is possible that you may have a tendency to view relationships in this way, but it is essential to recognize that ordinary relationships are not mere transactions. In any interpersonal relationship, it is expected that you will treat your colleagues, friends, and even strangers with respect.

If you believe it would be beneficial to speak with a counselor, I encourage you to do so. With regard to gender, I do not believe it is a significant factor from the counselor's perspective. What is important is to choose the counselor who can best facilitate your authentic self expression, whether it be a counselor of the same gender or the other.

Hello, I'm Yu, a heart exploration coach, and I'm going to discuss this topic with you.

Let's start with shame. It's a negative social emotion associated with negative self-evaluation. It attributes negative outcomes to an individual's own internal characteristics and blames the entire self, creating an unbearable experience of embarrassment, pain, and humiliation.

The original poster is right: we feel shame about our needs in relationships, which is very depressing. We can't let go because we feel shame about our negative self-evaluation.

Think back to your childhood. When you first started to walk or hold a chopstick, were you interrupted and stopped countless times by your mother's anxiety and fear of bad consequences? Over time, we will judge ourselves based on our own perceptions of the unknown, thinking things like "I'll get into trouble" or "I'll do a bad job." At this point, our self-efficacy will gradually become problematic, and we will become vulnerable as adults. We will always think that we are inadequate in some way, and we will always be afraid of others knowing the real us. So we often need to wear a mask to play the role of a funny or humorous nice person. We always deny our feelings and needs, and even though we clearly want something or to do something, we always say that we don't care.

These are feelings of unworthiness, and the underlying cause is a sense of shame deep within our hearts.

The questioner is perceptive. A moderate sense of shame has a positive adaptive function. It provides motivation to correct the things that make us feel ashamed.

Replace feelings of shame with positive beliefs. When you become aware of similar self-blame, tell yourself, "I have always tried my best, I am worthy of love, and I can have intimate relationships."

Furthermore, we can reconcile with the past. We cannot choose our origins or our parents. We must face our lives honestly, stop dwelling on the past, stop worrying about the future, and live courageously in the present.

Let's talk about emotions again. Emotions are composed of unique subjective experiences, external manifestations, and physiological arousal. Each emotion may be the result of an unmet internal desire. When we miss the opportunity for a promotion or pay rise, we feel sad. When we lose a treasured possession we have had for many years, we feel angry.

The questioner is correct: appearance anxiety makes the whole person shrink.

We must ask ourselves what we think about intimate relationships, what emotions and feelings they bring us, and what we think about socializing with ordinary friends, and what emotions and feelings they bring us.

We must also ask ourselves what it is about ourselves that makes us care about our appearance and what it is about ourselves that makes us fear intimacy.

We can and should ask ourselves: What is the ideal kind of intimate relationship? What is the ideal version of myself?

I want to know what I can do to achieve this.

We must look for our own bright spots, often brag about our strengths, and in our daily lives, we can also complement each other's strengths by matching our outfits. In fact, vitality is a person's overall temperament, and this precisely requires inner acceptance and harmony, which is reflected from the inside out.

Seek help. This thing is troubling you, so it is not easy to overcome it immediately. Find a family member or friend you trust and who has always given you positive support to talk to. If you feel the need, find a counselor. Release your emotions to relieve the heaviness and blockage in our hearts.

You should consider whether to find a same-sex or opposite-sex partner based on the questioner's communication habits with their parents and their daily social experiences. It is important to remember that the establishment of a counseling relationship is based on mutual trust and harmonious coexistence.

We must also keep an open mind because all growth comes from taking one step at a time.

Read the book The World is Worth It.

Hello! Have you ever thought about where your appearance anxiety comes from?

For instance, did you have a significant other reject you constantly when you were younger? Or did you develop concerns about your appearance after experiencing a traumatic event?

To start healing, you need to figure out why you're so anxious about your appearance, why you can't let go in a relationship, and how your sense of shame about your needs was formed.

I think it may be that you were often criticized, rejected, and belittled during your upbringing, which has led to the current situation where you don't have enough confidence to face the relationship, let alone express your needs. So, it's your internal sense of unworthiness that makes you feel like you shouldn't have needs, and it will cause shame. (It requires self-awareness.)

If you were often told you were ugly as a child, you'll probably still think that today. You'll have internalized the outside world's evaluation and constantly deny yourself. In fact, you're just living according to other people's standards and definitions. What you see is not the real you, but what others see in you.

There's a saying that goes, "There's no one else out there," which means it's all in your mind. When you lack self-confidence and over-amplify your anxieties, focusing all your energy on questioning your appearance and what others think of you, you can't let go of yourself.

So, when you feel unworthy, you don't think you're worthy of love. You worry that your partner will leave you because of something you did wrong. This worry becomes anxiety.

On the other hand, if you have enough self-assurance to believe that you are worthy of love, even with your flaws, you can still be confident that your partner won't leave you. You can trust that they can accept you for who you are, including your imperfections.

Isn't that what intimate relationships are all about? We like not only the good things about each other, but also the bad things. Nobody's perfect, and we can't make each other perfect. Can you completely eliminate the flaws in the other person and only keep the good things?

Or can you get rid of all your own shortcomings?

True love is accepting of the other person's characteristics. If you only love the other person for their good points, I don't think that's love. It seems like you're just expecting the other person to fulfill your needs.

So, stop self-negation and self-doubt. What you need to learn is to accept yourself. When you're able to accept yourself, you'll have the strength to trust the relationship!

It doesn't matter if it's a same-sex or opposite-sex counselor—they can both help you. The key to a successful counseling relationship is trust. Follow your own feelings!

Good day.

There are two main aspects to consider when answering this question.

1. What is the objective of pursuing psychological counseling?

It is our belief that a person who seeks psychological counseling must first address some confusion in their mind. In your case, it seems that you are seeking guidance on how to express your needs in an intimate relationship, particularly in light of the sense of shame you feel.

In summary, the objective is to establish a comfortable, high-quality, and even superior intimate relationship.

2. Would you say there is a difference between a same-sex or opposite-sex counselor in achieving the above goals?

I believe that this would be best addressed through actual counseling. This is akin to the story of "the little horse crossing the river."

It is unclear whether the gender of the counselor will have a significant impact on achieving the aforementioned goals. My hypothesis is that the ability to express inner feelings and thoughts effectively when interacting with the counselor is a more crucial factor.

In addition to your perception of the other person's gender, the success of the counseling process often depends on whether you and the counselor are a good match, whether the counselor can understand you well, and whether they can help you feel and express your emotions.

Ultimately, I believe the reason for this question is twofold. Firstly, you are interested in seeking professional psychological services. Secondly, you have reservations about whether these services can truly assist you.

However, it is the initial step that a courageous equine must take to successfully traverse the river.

However, the effort is worthwhile.

However, the effort is worthwhile.