Sannah, thank you for your response, too.

You said I could, ".....discover why you learned how to detach and stuff your feelings."

I have told my T I do this, but we've never dug at the root of it. He says he thinks I feel a lot and that might explain why my walls go up more easily than some. I am not sure if I believe this. It was hard enough for me to believe I was capable of feeling like a normal person let alone more than the average person. He also said he thinks I have been hurt. But I don't think anything has been bad enough to explain this. We've never looked at it in depth and asked, "Could that be the cause?"

I think I am biologically slanted towards having an over-active defense mechanism, anyway. As for what set it off, I don't know what triggered it because I have been this way for so long, just to different degrees. I think some of it might have to do with losing people early on.

You said, "Intimacy can be scary and many choose to avoid intimacy in this way." Very true. I try to avoid it sometimes, too, but there is a part of me that wants intimacy. However, not all of my walls are consciously erected. If I don't choose to put one up, how can I choose to take it down? I can't seem to will all of these walls down. Somedays I want to build more, but other days, I wish I could send in a demolition crew and just knock them all down so I can feel without any obstruction. But I think, in my heart and in my mind, I feel this isn't entirely safe. I think my mind won't let me feel without any walls, until it believes, feeling is safer. I know I'm not in an abusive situation, but even I don't feel really safe, feeling.

You said you chose to overcome your fear of intimacy. Was it a totally conscious decision to avoid intimacy to begin with, or were some of your blocks automatic? If some were automatic, how did you remove those blocks your subconscious erected? I want to do this, and I don't know how. I would like to focus on this more in therapy.