We assume the scary emotions are the constricting ones — anger, fear. But Joe points out that expansion can be just as frightening, and love is the most expansive of all. Love takes away identity faster than perhaps any other emotion. When you love, the sense of “I” begins to dissipate, the way it does when people get lost in sex, in great art, in extreme sports, or in deeply absorbing work.
“Love will take away your identity quicker than almost any emotion. If I love you, my sense of self evaporates.”
That dissolution of self is thrilling and terrifying. For a system that isn’t deeply safe, the feeling of “what’s happening to me?” can be alarming enough that the person shuts the love down. This is part of why most people can only sustain love — or any positive emotion like joy or exuberance — for a minute or two before it collapses. Without enough safety and the capacity to welcome whatever arises, the expansion of love becomes a threat to the identity it’s dissolving.
“The feeling of expansion when it gets to a certain level… it can be also incredibly scary.”
Related Concepts
- Welcoming all emotions is what makes sustained love possible
- The dissolution of self happens through many paths
- Accepting love requires a nervous system that can tolerate safety
- Deep pleasure dissolves the boundary of self
- The expansiveness underneath resistance to love is overwhelming and amazing
- Self-compassion is the meta-variable that speeds all transformation