Loving is traditionally thought of as an outward expression of feelings. It is rarely (from my perspective) thought of an inward action. The amount we can love someone else is truly dependant on the amount we are able to love ourselves. Sometimes our love for another can feel so intense, it is as though we might implode from the feelings it induces. It can feel like we are losing control because we feel so much towards someone else.
I think love can feel overwhelming when we feel more love flowing out than we hold for ourselves. I can now see that at some points in my life my love was a projection of what I wanted instead of what I had cultivated within. Loving someone else was a method of consumption. Consuming that intense rush of ‘love’ and experiencing the pheromones that pushed me outside of myself and wrapped me tediously around another provided me with the illusion that I was special. In fact, it just made me feel terrified that those feelings would not be reciprocated.
When we are unable to love ourselves with as much ferocity as we love another, it can feel destabilizing. This is because we aren’t actually able to love ourselves with this same intensity, and when we devote all our love to someone else we begin to lose our connections to ourselves. At least I know this to be true for myself.
When I have fallen into that deep ‘head over heals’ kind of love with someone, it comes with a powerful sense of not being worthy of receiving that same kind of love. I feel it is because I haven’t been able to love myself and I am afraid of losing myself when I lose that love. It is a truly ungrounded feeling and keeps me destabilized in myself.
Finding my own love has been a great adventure, one that is far from over. I have learned that I will be OK when things fall apart in my heart. I also have learned that the amount I am willing to love myself directly affects my sense of worthiness.
How much are you able to love yourself? How do we measure the amount of love we give to ourselves? Is that even possible?
True love is kind, generous, patient and vulnerable. It has clear boundaries. True love allows us to be us, have our own lives and learn to cocreate with someone else. It isn’t something that eats up our whole being and makes two into one. It unites our differences and teaches us to explore our boundaries and our ego’s desire to control.
When we are scared to be open to our own truths and fears about love, we are unable to be honest with someone else. We will always seek control, because we are controlling ourselves. I did this for years; I was controlling so I would feel like I was in the driver’s seat and could manage ‘them’ and in turn feel like I could manage myself.
Not being able to give yourself fully to someone is simply liking them from a distance. Wanting to be with someone but holding back is self-protective; we are not sharing ourselves. It keeps people at arms length so we don’t have to open the Pandora’s Box of our hearts. The fear of emotion can be so overwhelming I think most of us spend our whole lives avoiding that kind of depth with another person in order to control our sensory world.
Are you able to listen to someone wrestle with their own pain, or do you need to interject with your own insights? Do you find yourself changing the subject because it makes you uncomfortable to listen? These are strong indicators that you are not able to love yourself.
Are you a runner? Someone who avoids intimacy or opening your heart to someone? Do you feel you need to remain closed so that you don’t ever have to succumb to being hurt? Does your pain from the past keep you from opening your heart at all? This can play out in a long term relationships when you choose not to share your emotions because you are worried about how your partner will respond or when you convince yourself you ‘know’ how they will respond so you begin to self edit in order to remain in control of outcome.
Perhaps you are more intellectual about your love: Do you rationalize and strategize your approach about how you will manage yourself when you are hurt? Do you talk about it with your friends, even explain in detail why something didn’t work out, but feel almost numb to the feelings?
If we feel like victims we tend to run; when we feel like we are smart enough to use our intellect to manage our hearts we disconnect from love.
Watch the ways in which you respond outwardly to love as these will be indicative of how much you are allowing yourself to love yourself.
My humble offering, if you are struggling with loving yourself, is to suggest you focus on building that relationship before delving too deeply into committing to something you are unable to show up for 100{3975b397d65b169f60fde16aa32381cbe23165fba47bc12e3c15bc0cabdca183}.
With love
Noelle
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