Many of us have been taught that we have to earn love and that to do so, we have to give ourselves up and be what a partner, parent, or friend wants us to be.

We might also project that belief onto our concept of God, thinking the Divine wants us to act in certain ways and that Divine love depends upon how we act.

We might have been told that we have to put aside what we want, give up our freedom of choice, and allow our higher power to choose for us.

However, none of this is true.

These false beliefs are sometimes perpetuated by parents or religions that want to control us. Our wounded ego or false self, which was created by false beliefs as part of our survival strategy, wants to control everything, believing this will make us feel safe.

Our false self is the wounded part of us that learned self-abandoning, controlling behaviors to protect us from the deep pain that we might have experienced growing up: rejection, neglect, shaming, and perhaps physical or sexual abuse.

This wounded self might believe we have to give ourselves up to be loved. It believes we need others’ approval to be OK.

Ironically, the “protection” of our wounded self causes us to feel even more pain. No matter how hard it tries to get love, we remain feeling overwhelmingly alone and lonely.

This is why the wounded self is the part of us that needs healing. What we need is to understand what it means to love ourselves—to take responsibility for our feelings of pain and joy.

Since there are so few role models in our society, we need to access this vital information from a higher source of love and truth to be the loving adult that our inner child needs us to be