Stop Running from Love: Three Steps to Overcoming Emotional Distancing and Fear of Intimacy

Are you afraid of or unable to create intimacy or closeness with your intimate partner? Do you find that sometimes you create emotional, communicative, or even physical distance from that special someone in your life, even when, deep down, you really don't want to? If so, you share the relationship style psychologists refer to as the distancer. Distancers are often afraid of being engulfed or controlled by their partners. They fear rejection, vulnerability, and dependence. Sadly, they also tend to have short and unhappy relationships.

If you want to stop running from love in your life, this book offers a simple, step-by-step approach you can use to move beyond your fear of intimacy and start building strong and lasting relationships. The exercises and self-evaluations in the book will help you become aware of how you operate in romantic relationships. You'll review and reassess your relationship patterns, deciding what changes you want to make in future relationships. Then you'll commit to actions that can make it happen.

Dusty Miller, Ed.D., is a clinical psychologist, writer, trainer, and internationally-recognized expert in the areas of trauma, addiction, and self-sabotage-including relationship self-sabotage such as distancing. She is the director of the ATRIUM Institute in Northampton, MA. Miller offers training, consultation, and workshops for professionals and paraprofessionals who work with traumatic stress, substance abuse, relational challenges, and more. She is author of Women Who Hurt Themselves, Addictions and Trauma Recovery, and Your Surviving Spirit.