You are worthy of love

[Lifewriter16]

   

A week ago, I sent myself an email with links to various websites which make suggestions on how to build self-love. I titled it 'YOU are worthy of love'. I thought it would be a reminder to me that even if my BPDxbf isn't here any more and I'm not getting love from him, I am still loveable and I can take over the job of loving me (as I always should have been doing). Yesterday, I just sat and stared at the subject bar in my inbox and cried and cried because I don't believe it.

Lifewriter x

[HurtinNW]

   

A week ago, I sent myself an email with links to various websites which make suggestions on how to build self-love. I titled it 'YOU are worthy of love'. I thought it would be a reminder to me that even if my BPDxbf isn't here any more and I'm not getting love from him, I am still loveable and I can take over the job of loving me (as I always should have been doing). Yesterday, I just sat and stared at the subject bar in my inbox and cried and cried because I don't believe it.

Lifewriter x

I struggle with this too. People talking about loving themselves and I'm like, huh? I cannot imagine having the same powerful love of myself that I feel for my kids, for instance. That huge love.

I'm starting to realize that for me, at least, self love is more about self-regard, self-preservation, and the feeling I am worth not being abused. I don't believe life is all about happiness, but I can believe I am worth not living in trauma. I especially believe my kids deserve to have a family and home filled with contentment, a healthy love among family members, where conflict is resolved with respect and kindness.

Am I loveable? Yes, I can start to think that. I have a ton of good traits. I am practicing thinking it. Maybe you can practice too? I bet your kids find you loveable. Look into their eyes and see that reflection.

I have to ask this, did you really get love from your ex, as I put in bold above? Was all the bile and anger and spewing emails love? Was his breaking up at the drop of a hat? Calling you a spoilt b___? That's not love. You cannot dissect that out from the times he seemed loving. Love is not something we chop in little piece and pick and choose which ones we like. Love is the whole. It is the entirety of the relationship. Not pieces of it.

I am confronting the very hard truth that what my ex gave me was not love. I can set aside what he thinks it was and look at it for me. It wasn't love. In the end it didn't feel like love, it didn't act like love. Love is a verb, an action that we continually chose, not a static thing or an idea.

I'm sending you love, Lifewriter. I happen to know you are plenty loveable.

[Lifewriter16]

I have to ask this, did you really get love from your ex, as I put in bold above? Was all the bile and anger and spewing emails love? Was his breaking up at the drop of a hat? Calling you a spoilt b___? That's not love. You cannot dissect that out from the times he seemed loving. Love is not something we chop in little piece and pick and choose which ones we like. Love is the whole. It is the entirety of the relationship. Not pieces of it.

No Hurtin, I don't think it was love that I was getting from my BPDxbf but it was more than I had ever had before. How sad that that was as good as it got. What really saddens me is the realisation that I don't feel worthy of love, even after all those years of personal development and therapy and affirmations, I still feel that there is something about me that makes me unworthy of love. I'm grieving over it and it's a big step forwards.

Love Lifewriter x

[Rubies]

I am confronting the very hard truth that what my ex gave me was not love.

The cold, hard truth.  We fell in love with an illusion of love and became emotionally attached to nonperson status with someone who cared nothing for us.  Why?  How do we fix that in us?

I think the exercise that helped me the most was one I found to help daughter.  I can't remember which family therapist wrote it, but it works for us pertaining to loving ourselves, and putting our own hearts first.  This leads to good boundaries and all kinds of healthy things in life.

Reach in your chest, pull your heart out and set her in a chair across the room.  She is a 6 year old child looking at you asking, "When is it my turn?"

You take the time to examine the needs of that Sweetheart and put her first, she's been neglected a long, long time.  You protect her, you love her, you meet her needs first.

[joeramabeme]

No Hurtin, I don't think it was love that I was getting from my BPDxbf but it was more than I had ever had before. How sad that that was as good as it got. What really saddens me is the realisation that I don't feel worthy of love, even after all those years of personal development and therapy and affirmations, I still feel that there is something about me that makes me unworthy of love. I'm grieving over it and it's a big step forwards.

Lifewriter16, I too can relate to your comment; "this is the best it has ever gotten even after the years of self improvements".  Seems fundamentally unfair at a particular level.  

I belong to a meditation group called Self Realization.  The premise of the belief system is that the divine already exists within you, all you have to do is improve your knowing.  I was thinking today, that if I believe this to be true, and I do, then can't I love the divine that is already within me?  Isn't this a form of self love?  Even if I see the lovable parts of me as coming from my creator.  I think so. Therefore, as I understand it, if my creator is worthy than I too must be and can benchmark the rest of me through this idea.

I enjoy your writings... .

JRB

[Lifewriter16]

I think it boils down to core shame. When I think of the little girl I was, picture a photograph of me, then what's not to love? Is it just that if I let love in then the pain of never having had it will be so overwhelming that I feel I can not face it? Better to shut it out than face the true depth of my pain?

[Rubies]

I think it boils down to core shame. When I think of the little girl I was, picture a photograph of me, then what's not to love? Is it just that if I let love in then the pain of never having had it will be so overwhelming that I feel I can not face it? Better to shut it out than face the true depth of my pain?

Yes.  Instead of always pushing that pain away so you can't feel it, which numbs ALL feelings, embrace the pain.  Feel it completely, let it wash over you, and LOVE YOURSELF through it.  Give yourself the healing love you so unselfishly gave to others.   Make the hot chicken soup and herbal tea for you, set the time aside for you, turn the phone off for you, grieve the losses, then fill the holes with love from you.  Promise to always be there to love her and put her needs first.

I think when we can finally feel and address that horrible pain, the numbness goes away and we can feel joy again too.  When we learn to think about our own self with love, even by envisioning ourselves as an outside entity, we begin protecting ourselves from those who treat us as food.

[HurtinNW]

I think it boils down to core shame. When I think of the little girl I was, picture a photograph of me, then what's not to love? Is it just that if I let love in then the pain of never having had it will be so overwhelming that I feel I can not face it? Better to shut it out than face the true depth of my pain?

This. My pain and loss feels SO big, SO raw and real that I am afraid to let it out. It stays inside, creating the sort of doubt that got me into this mess.

I've talked about being severely neglected and abused as a child, to the point we often went hungry. My brother and I would beg food from the neighbors, and I remember vividly waiting in the free lunch line at school, hoping there would be seconds, because often that was the only food I got that day. When my mother stopped drinking when I was nine or so, we finally got decent food. She was still crazy, but that's another story. Anyhow, for whatever reason, my reaction was to become anxious around food. I often hid food under my mattress, or in other places. I was afraid of when the next meal would come. My brother's reaction was to gorge. He was so afraid of not getting fed that he ate out of control. He became morbidly obese by age 12.

We all respond to shortage differently. Emotional shortage and neglect too. From what you have described, lifewriter, you were emotionally neglected as a child. The "food" came rarely and with odd strings attached. It made you feel guilty and confused. My emotional food was also withheld, and I was also emotionally neglected. I was emotionally starved, and the emotional "food" I was given in that way was often poisoned.

My ex seemed to open the door to that HUGE emotional hunger in me. The hunger to be fed, cherished, seen. That hunger is a very vulnerable thing. I was deeply afraid of that need overwhelming me. I wanted to store that food under my mattress. I was anxious and worried and when he started taking the emotional food away I would panic. It was just like before! I might starve! When he would tell me it was my fault he was taking the emotional food away, I believed him. It was like he awoke this huge pain and need in me and now I have to confront it was always there.

If I was a healthier person emotionally I think I would have reacted differently. It would be like, "Of course I deserve food." And "Looks like you aren't ready to share, guess I'll find a different dining partner." Instead emotionally it was like I fell apart or else I was running towards, beseeching.

It's a big pain we carry. And all pain is about need. It's a wound in us that needs care to heal. It's hard to heal by yourself. Especially when the pain feels that big. Confronting that big pain is hard, especially when we've told ourselves it isn't there or it isn't a big deal.

[eeks]

A few thoughts on this topic of being "worthy of love".

Everyone is worthy of love because they exist.  However, dysfunctional families set up explicit and/or implicit conditions and expectations that can cause children to conclude they aren't worthy of love.  How else could you make sense of your obvious feeling of need, and the fact that no one is answering that need?

"Self-love" is a big, vague term.  If people resonate with the "love your inner child" exercises, that's fine with me.  However, I don't, and I wonder if we can break "self-love" and "self-worth" down into something more manageable? 

For example, I recently accepted an invitation that led to one and possibly more new friendships.  I could have stayed home, due to anxiety, telling myself I was tired, etc. 

As true as it may be that you have many traumas and neglects to heal, don't forget that self-love doesn't have to be grand gestures of "believing you are worthy" or declaring that you love and will take care of your inner child... .even small actions on your own behalf, you get to give yourself credit for those actions being loving.  Let's not continue the pattern of discrediting or minimizing our own achievements.

[Lifewriter16]

Hurtin... .

My pain and loss feels SO big, SO raw and real that I am afraid to let it out. It stays inside, creating the sort of doubt that got me into this mess.

I've talked about being severely neglected and abused as a child, to the point we often went hungry. My brother and I would beg food from the neighbors, and I remember vividly waiting in the free lunch line at school, hoping there would be seconds, because often that was the only food I got that day. When my mother stopped drinking when I was nine or so, we finally got decent food. She was still crazy, but that's another story. Anyhow, for whatever reason, my reaction was to become anxious around food. I often hid food under my mattress, or in other places. I was afraid of when the next meal would come. My brother's reaction was to gorge. He was so afraid of not getting fed that he ate out of control. He became morbidly obese by age 12.

The things you describe are too awful for words. So, these are for you:



                  


My mother was quite odd around food. To begin with, she was a dreadful cook whose idea of a casserole was to float some offal in water, add half a stock cube and then cook it to death. I mean, it was disgusting. Her food was inedible half the time or dished out in inadequate quantities the rest. She fed us regularly (like clockwork, on the dot at 8am, 12 noon and 5pm). She never missed a meal and yet she wasn't truly feeding us. My youngest brother once told the Bishop of our local region that mum didn't feed us, but it was laughed off as a joke. As a student, that same brother would eat the tea my mother provided and then, bold as brass, go out and buy a takeaway and eat it at the kitchen table. My mother still didn't twig that she wasn't feeding us enough.

Mum used to like to serve her food up with a large portion of guilt for the starving Africans who would be grateful for the food we wouldn't eat. My middle brother used to say they were welcome to it, because we didn't want it. One time, an ex-boyfriend of mine invited himself to go and talk to them about a charitable project he was involved in, he wanted to ask them for money. He stayed for tea. Afterwards, he told me how he'd forgotten about the 'three fish fingers and half a tomato' which was literally all she fed him and was a standard portion even for teenagers. I think my dad got 4 fish fingers since he went to work. What was interesting, was that even though mum was shopping as if there wasn't enough money for food, she was squirreling the housekeeping away for a rainy day. When my dad discovered this, he went ballistic. One time, she asked us if we would rather have more first course or continue having puddings. We said more first course. It was a mistake because all she did was give us more potato and the puddings were history. We ended up with less. My mother's mash potato has to be experienced to be believed and it floated around in half a stock cube, which was what passed for gravy. I hated food, with the exception of pancakes and boiled eggs. And I hated my mother.

Lifewriter x

[Lifewriter16]

A few thoughts on this topic of being "worthy of love".

Everyone is worthy of love because they exist.  However, dysfunctional families set up explicit and/or implicit conditions and expectations that can cause children to conclude they aren't worthy of love.  How else could you make sense of your obvious feeling of need, and the fact that no one is answering that need?

"Self-love" is a big, vague term.  If people resonate with the "love your inner child" exercises, that's fine with me.  However, I don't, and I wonder if we can break "self-love" and "self-worth" down into something more manageable? 

For example, I recently accepted an invitation that led to one and possibly more new friendships.  I could have stayed home, due to anxiety, telling myself I was tired, etc. 

As true as it may be that you have many traumas and neglects to heal, don't forget that self-love doesn't have to be grand gestures of "believing you are worthy" or declaring that you love and will take care of your inner child... .even small actions on your own behalf, you get to give yourself credit for those actions being loving.  Let's not continue the pattern of discrediting or minimizing our own achievements.

I agree about the little things. I've been doing that for myself, taking care of myself for years. That's partly why I was so shocked to discover that I still don't feel worthy of love.

What you say about everyone being worthy of love, just because they exist, is a bit of a trigger for me. It feels like the fall-back position to catch all those people that no one loves: the social outcasts, the inadequates, the unloveable ones. I know you don't mean it that way and I'm not offended by what you say, but I have always felt like I am in that category and it hurts to be there, to be a person who is unloved by people. I posted once on how my mother told me that God loved me and how what I heard was 'God loves you, I don't, but God does.' She never told me she loved me as I was growing up. She's told me she does a couple of times as an adult, but, the core damage is already done.

I feel like a social outcast. And, that hurts.

Love Lifewriter

[Lifewriter16]

I think it boils down to core shame. When I think of the little girl I was, picture a photograph of me, then what's not to love? Is it just that if I let love in then the pain of never having had it will be so overwhelming that I feel I can not face it? Better to shut it out than face the true depth of my pain?

Yes.  Instead of always pushing that pain away so you can't feel it, which numbs ALL feelings, embrace the pain.  Feel it completely, let it wash over you, and LOVE YOURSELF through it.  Give yourself the healing love you so unselfishly gave to others.   Make the hot chicken soup and herbal tea for you, set the time aside for you, turn the phone off for you, grieve the losses, then fill the holes with love from you.  Promise to always be there to love her and put her needs first.

Hi Rubies,

I relate to inner child work and find it quite powerful. I have warmed myself a baby's bottle of milk and fed myself, taken my inner child to the cinema, talked to her and reassured her. It's powerful stuff. Yet, it's the grieving that's so hard, so scary, so intimidating. Facing the pain, the depth of it. I'm beginning to do it. I once felt God tell me I would never be overwhelmed by the pain, but it still feels overwhelming. The reality is that it comes out in dribs and drabs, as I can cope with it. That's why it's taking so long. I avoid it so much.

I'm looking forward to the joy. I feel like my life has been miserable for far too long, yet I have felt helpless to influence how I experience it. Whatever  I am doing, I still feel an underlying unhappiness. Perhaps, when the core pain is out there and grieved for, I can be the kind of happy, positive person I always wished I could be.

Lifewriter x

[Lifewriter16]

Hi joeramabeme,

Lifewriter16, I too can relate to your comment; "this is the best it has ever gotten even after the years of self improvements".  Seems fundamentally unfair at a particular level. 

I belong to a meditation group called Self Realization.  The premise of the belief system is that the divine already exists within you, all you have to do is improve your knowing.  I was thinking today, that if I believe this to be true, and I do, then can't I love the divine that is already within me?  Isn't this a form of self love?  Even if I see the lovable parts of me as coming from my creator.  I think so. Therefore, as I understand it, if my creator is worthy than I too must be and can benchmark the rest of me through this idea.

I think this is a good angle on the problem of lack of worthiness. I find God worthy and believe he/she/it/whatever is within as well as without. I could see loving me as a loving service to Him and I think that would work very well for me.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Lifewriter x

[HurtinNW]

I really push back on the idea of "damaged."

I don't like the term, because it sounds permanent, sullied, broken. When we say a table is damaged it means worth less, not as good, maybe even something to be tossed out. Damage is a shaming word that implies permanent ugliness. 

I prefer the term hurt. I was hurt, badly hurt, as a child. That hurt was reactivated by my ex. Life comes with pain and we either grow from it or we don't. But people are not objects that can be damaged. They are living, breathing, complex growth organisms that can and do experience hardship. It's how we respond that matters. I've had friends who have experienced every kind of loss. A dear friend just lost his second wife to cancer. Yet he grows and continues. He's not damaged. He's a whole person who is hurting and will recover.

I see it like all growing things. Even the flower has to bend in the wind. Every animal in the wild goes hungry at some point, every entity has loss and hurt. Those are intrinsic parts of life. We either let them help make us stronger or we mire ourselves in helplessness.

[Lifewriter16]

I see where you're coming from, Hurtin. Saying someone is 'hurt' is less judgemental than 'damaged' and makes it easier to retain the self-esteem.

Thanks for that.

Lifewriter x

[Grey Kitty]

Yesterday, I just sat and stared at the subject bar in my inbox and cried and cried because I don't believe it.

Wow, this brought back a memory. Sometime after I'd separated from my wife. [She effectively left me] Probably a year ago--few months after the split when the feelings weren't quite as raw as I was doing a bit better. I was living alone for the first time for more than a few months, actually the first time since we got married for more than a few weeks, and getting used to taking care of everything for myself; in our division of labor I was a secondary cook, not the primary one.

Anyhow, I cooked something elaborate and nice for myself. Set the table (for one), maybe even poured a glass of wine, and sat down to eat it.

And I started to cry--just overcome by the feeling of doing something like that for myself, loving myself through my actions. I think I teared up a few times during that meal.

[Lifewriter16]

That conjured up a vivid picture for me, Grey Kitty. How sad that so many of us need to learn to love ourselves because we just haven't been shown the way.

Lifewriter

   

[eeks]

I agree about the little things. I've been doing that for myself, taking care of myself for years. That's partly why I was so shocked to discover that I still don't feel worthy of love.

What you say about everyone being worthy of love, just because they exist, is a bit of a trigger for me. It feels like the fall-back position to catch all those people that no one loves: the social outcasts, the inadequates, the unloveable ones. I know you don't mean it that way and I'm not offended by what you say, but I have always felt like I am in that category and it hurts to be there, to be a person who is unloved by people. I posted once on how my mother told me that God loved me and how what I heard was 'God loves you, I don't, but God does.' She never told me she loved me as I was growing up. She's told me she does a couple of times as an adult, but, the core damage is already done.

I feel like a social outcast. And, that hurts.

Love Lifewriter

You're right, I didn't mean it that way.  If anything, I agree with you, what I intended to express was that aphorisms like that can't override experience.  Your experience was that you were repeatedly neglected and abused (and on top of that, given the message that the abuse was really love and care, given heavy helpings of religious or other guilt for wanting or needing different) and because kids depend on their parents, the conclusion they often draw from these repeated experiences in relationship is that they aren't worthy.  

What do you think you need in order to believe that you are worthy?  Not what the online articles say, or what members here say worked for them, but your own inner knowing?  

I recommend that you sit with the question and allow whatever comes up to come up, even a word or an image.  Even if you are tempted to censor your answer because it sounds strange, or seems impractical or impossible, please share it anyway, this is a safe place for wanting.

[Grey Kitty]

That conjured up a vivid picture for me, Grey Kitty. How sad that so many of us need to learn to love ourselves because we just haven't been shown the way.

Curiously, when I posted that story I hadn't yet read the rest of the thread and seen your experiences of having food and love withheld by your mother as a child. My mother has personal issues around food, but did a good job of not passing them on. She does show love by cooking for people, and cooks well.

Given that, cooking may be a very good or very bad entry point for you, but there is one thing I did which I'm pretty sure will help you--I actively chose to be loving and caring to myself, show myself the love... .without asking whether I deserve it or listening to a voice that said I wasn't worthy of it.

If you were to do that for yourself, what sort of actions could you pick to show yourself you are loved? Two starting points would be the things you do for people you love(d), or things you wish they had done for you.