S2 EP232 – Craving Love?

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m hoping to shed some light on a topic that often seems to confuse people, which is the issue of loving yourself vs getting love, and the fact that many people just can’t conceive of the idea that loving yourself, and then being able to share love, feels better than getting love, and heals the craving for love. 

One of our Facilitators-in-Training brought this up to me and asked me to clarify this. He said,  

(Quote) “As we have been practicing in the facilitator training, the idea that it would be better to have someone else give us love rather than love ourselves, has come up with several people.

“I struggle with this too, although I recently had a breakthrough realizing that as a child, I didn’t have a loving adult available in me, so at the time the wounded self was developed and the only way to get love was from someone else. Now I have a loving adult inside so I can tell the wounded self that I am here, with higher guidance, and that no one else can be the source of love now or could be back then because they didn’t know how.

“Anyway, I know you have mentioned it in several other podcasts, but I feel it is a worthy topic for an entire podcast!” (Unquote)

What I said to him is that what many people don’t realize is that unless you are loving yourself, you don’t have love to share, and sharing love is without a doubt the greatest experience in life – way way better than getting love. If people are not loving themselves, then they think that getting love feels better than loving themself, but they don’t understand that it’s loving themselves that leads to being able to share love.

He said, (Quote) “I think the big challenge is to realize what you are saying and have the faith to let go and really work on it, which is so hard with never having the experience of really loving oneself, coupled with the deep pain of not feeling loved by care takers that will have to be faced when accepting that others cannot provide what was so painfully missing in child hood.

“It makes intellectual sense, but i think we need help to get to the place of trusting and really letting go of that hope of the other and finding it within. 

Of course Inner Bonding is the way, but how to let go of that hope and be with the painful feelings I think is the tricky part. At least for me that is what has worked, feeling the deep pain when letting go of hope of getting love, but not easy to get there.” (Unquote)

Right, it’s not easy to get there, but so worth the work.

Take a moment right now to think about your real intention when it comes to love:

• Is it most important to you to get someone to love you – to get love?
• Is it more important to you to be a loving person – to give love to yourself and others?

At any moment, you can have only one of these two intentions, and the one you choose determines your current experience of love.

Most people move into relationships to be loved, rather than to be loving. Since most people did not feel loved in the way they needed to be as children, and their parents did not role model loving themselves, they believe that getting love will make them feel their best feelings and the best about themselves.

They go about looking for someone who they think sees and values them, rather than learning how to see and value themselves. Not valuing themselves, they believe that the only way they will feel worthy and lovable is when someone they value loves them.

The problem is that since we come together at our common level of woundedness – which is our common level of self-abandonment – the partner you pick is also looking to get love. At the beginning, you each give the other what you believe the other wants in order to get the love you are seeking. Since both of you are in the relationship to get love, you both want control over getting that love. Eventually, you both might feel very disappointed that your control tactics – giving gifts, giving yourself up, giving compliments, acting superior, getting judgmental, being demanding or angry, and so on – aren’t working. You might decide that you chose the wrong partner and move on, or you try harder to control – convincing, explaining, debating, arguing, talking things out and so on.

But as long as you each are not first giving love to yourselves, you will continue to be disappointed and feel unloved.

When you learn how to take responsibility for loving yourself – such as taking responsibility for your feelings, defining your own worth, speaking up for yourself, letting go of trying to control others, taking physical care of yourself, and learning how to fill yourself with your spiritual source of love – then you seek a relationship in order to share your love with another. You see relationships as learning opportunities to further develop your ability to love yourself and others. Relationships become opportunities to grow, play, share and love, rather than to get love, security, and validation.

When your intent is to be loving, you don’t see relationships as having to meet your needs. Love, real love, doesn’t need anything from the other person. Real love is giving care, compassion, and understanding for the joy of loving, rather than with an agenda to get love or approval back.

Until you choose to learn how to take full responsibility for your own feelings of pain, joy, worth, safety, and security, you will likely look for someone to take away your pain and make you feel safe, worthy and secure. The belief that someone other than yourself can do this for you, and that if they “love” you they will do this for you, is a major false belief that causes many relationship problems.

As long as you are making another person responsible for your feelings, you are abandoning yourself, and it is the self-abandonment that is the cause of your pain and lack of self-worth, not the lack of another’s love. 

Everything changes when you decide that your primary intention is to be loving rather than to get love.

Once you make this decision, then you will naturally go about learning how to be loving to yourself and share your love with others. Until then, you will be trapped in trying to get someone else to give you the love you need, and this will never happen, because it can only come from you. Their love is wonderful when they offer it, but you are the only one with yourself 24/7, so you are the only one who can consistently bring yourself the love you need.

Have you ever wondered if, due to childhood emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse, you are too wounded to ever heal enough to love and be loved? Many of my clients have expressed this fear.

It has been my experience that anyone who is willing to learn to love themselves and give themselves what they didn’t receive as children – as well as participate in some form of trauma therapy – can heal enough to love and be loved.

This is Melissa’s concern:  

With an NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] father and grandmother and a neglectful and unaffectionate mother, did I suffer too much damage to trust anyone? I didn’t have role models for good communication, and I was ostracized or spanked when I expressed negative emotions. People tell me I choose the wrong partners. I guess I just let them pick me and am happy for any attention. But at 45 I haven’t had any companionship in 6 years, and I feel like it’s most likely me that is a bad partner. Is love only available to people who were loved as children?

Melissa’s problem is likely that she hasn’t learned to become a trustworthy loving adult with herself. She will not be able to discern who is trustworthy and who isn’t until she becomes trustworthy enough to be able to give her inner child what she didn’t receive from her parents. She is letting her wounded self pick her partners – the part of her that is addicted to others’ attention. Until she learns to lovingly attend to her own feelings and needs, she will likely keep picking partners who give her a bit of attention but are operating at the same level of self-abandonment she is.

Even people who felt loved by their parents or caregivers can have challenges loving and being loved. If your parents didn’t love themselves, then there was no role modeling for you loving yourself.

Love is infinitely abundant for all of us. Love is what God is, and when our intent is to learn to love ourselves, the love and wisdom that is God is available to us. Divine love is not just available for some people – it’s available for all of us, and when we open our heart through our intent to learn to love ourselves, Divine love comes into our heart. But it is up to us to bring that love down to our feeling self – our inner child. It is up to us to take the loving actions that make our inner child feel loved – such as staying present in our body with our feelings, staying open to learning about what our feelings are telling us, and showing ourselves in many ways how much we value our soul essence. In other words, it’s up to us to give ourselves what we didn’t get as children. This may not be easy, but as I said, it is very worth it.

Learning to love ourselves is the key to creating loving relationships. 

Melissa’s partners are treating her the way she treats herself, so if she wants to love and be loved by a partner, she needs to start with learning to love herself.

This is what Inner Bonding is all about – learning to be the loving parent to yourself that you may have never had. This is what heals the damage that may have been inflicted on you from childhood.

I have worked with the most deeply traumatized and damaged people – people who were physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually abused in their family of origin, or who experienced horrific abuse in groups. The good news is that there is always an intact place in our soul – a place that was never damaged, that remains whole and loving and wonderful. This undamaged aspect of our soul hides away until we learn to heal the fears and false beliefs of our wounded self and be a loving adult with ourselves.

Melissa will gradually discover the healthy, undamaged aspect of her soul – which is who she really is – as she learns to love herself. As she diligently practices Inner Bonding, she will learn to love and be able to share love.

Are you able to receive love? Or does receiving love make you feel trapped and obligated? Or do you believe you are unworthy of receiving love?

Lindsay wrote this during one of my Masterclasses:

“I can’t receive love. Physically, not even a kiss or stroke of kindness. I was never told ‘you’re awesome, great job, you’re beautiful, you can do anything.’ Therefore it’s hard for me to receive love and feel worthy.”

It is very traumatizing to grow up with no love, and Lindsay is certainly not alone in this experience. Growing up without any physical affection or emotional support is very sad and lonely and is a deeply painful experience.

But Lindsay’s conclusion – that she can’t receive love because she wasn’t loved – is false. I work with many people who were not only not loved, but who were very badly abused, and yet they are still capable of giving and receiving love.

Many of my clients believe that their past determines their present.

Do you see yourself as a victim of your childhood? Do you believe that your current inability to receive love and feel worthy is caused by what your childhood caregivers did, rather than by how you are currently treating yourself? This is a major false belief.

While low self-worth generally starts as a child, the fact that it may continue now is because of your own self-abandonment.

You have the opportunity right now to learn to love and value the little child within you who is desperate for love – for your love. You will not feel worthy of love, nor be able to give and receive love from others, until you decide to learn to be the loving parent to yourself that you never had.

You will not be able to open to and trust others’ love until you become a trustworthy loving adult to the child within you. Only when you learn to love and value yourself will you be able to open your heart to others. 

However, even if you do your deep healing work and are able to see, value, cherish and love yourself, opening your heart to love can lead to hurt. 

Our heart can be hurt by others’ unloving behavior toward us, or by someone we love dying. The only way we can fully risk loving with an open heart is to know that we can manage the pain of heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others’ unloving behavior and over painful events of loss.

I said to Lindsay, “It is not that you can’t receive love but that you won’t. You are choosing to protect yourself against pain rather than choosing to love yourself and share your love with others.”

You do not have to remain a victim. Even though you experienced a lot of heartbreak and helplessness as a child, you can heal. If you want to be able to give and receive love now, you need to be willing to learn, as an adult, how to compassionately feel those painful feelings and learn to manage them, rather than continue to avoid them.

It takes courage to be willing to risk our deeper existential pain. 

It takes courage to open yourself to feeling – with the utmost compassion, kindness, tenderness, caring, gentleness and understanding – your existential painful feelings of loneliness, heartbreak, grief and helplessness from your childhood, so that the little child in you feels seen and valued by you. In childhood, you shut yourself off from these old deeply painful feelings, because you were too little then to manage them. And it also takes courage to open to your current existential painful feelings and lovingly manage them rather than go into your learned protections – getting angry, shutting down, numbing out, or giving yourself up. Once you learn that now, as an adult, you can manage your painful feelings, you will be able to allow yourself to open to love, even though that involves the risk of being hurt.

To fully give and receive love, we need to know that we can manage the heartbreak of loss – that we have a strong connection with our spiritual guidance who will be here to comfort us through loss, and that we have a strong loving adult self who wants to take responsibility for all of our feelings.

When you learn and practice Inner Bonding, you learn to experience the love that is God, bring that inside to your inner child, and share that love with others. But some of my clients struggle to feel Divine love.

My client Tracey asked me in a session, “When I open to my spiritual guidance, aren’t I supposed to feel loved by God?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but you might have a misconception about how you experience this love. When do you feel love in your heart?”

“I feel the most love when I’m playing with my nephews,” she said.

“So when you play with your nephews, your heart is open – right?” I asked her.

“Yes. I love them so much and I love playing with them,” she answered.

“Tracey, this is what it feels like to feel God’s love. When your intent is to love, your heart opens and fills with Divine love. And the same thing will occur when your intent is to love yourself. Can you imagine wanting to love yourself and take loving action on behalf of the beautiful little child within you the way you love your nephews?”

“I think that’s a problem for me,” she said. “It’s easy for me to want to be present with them and give them love and attention, but it’s hard for me to want to do this for myself.”

“Why do you think this is?” I asked her.

“I don’t think I’m worth it,” she said.

“So,” I asked her, “if you had a daughter who was just like you were as a child, would you say that she wasn’t worth loving?”

“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “I would never say that. I would love loving her!”

“Tracey, this is why you are not feeling God’s love for you. In order to feel the love, your heart needs to be open, and when you are in your wounded self, judging yourself as unworthy of love, your heart is closed and you can’t feel Divine love. You have to take loving action on your own behalf in order to feel Divine love. So, right now, take a deep breath and focus inside. What are you feeling right now?”

“I feel a bit anxious,” she said.

“Please ask your little girl what you are telling her right now that is causing her to feel anxious,” I said to her.

Tracey did this and reported that she was telling herself that she had to do this right. 

“So,” I said, “when you put pressure on yourself to do it right, you feel anxious, and the anxiety is your inner guidance letting you know that you are telling yourself a lie. Remember, your feelings such as anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, and shame let you know that you are off track in your thinking. They let you know that your inner little girl is feeling abandoned by you. Right now she is feeling abandoned by you because you are telling her that she is not okay unless she performs and does this right. Now, open to learning with your guidance and ask, ‘Is this true that my worth is in doing something right?’

Tracey did this, and then stated, “My guidance is showing me how sweet and kind my little girl is, even if she doesn’t do something right.”

“Can you embrace her for her sweetness and kindness right now? Can you hold her in love, bringing her into your heart?” I asked her.

“Yes, I can!” she said.

“How does that feel?” I asked.

“It feels great! I feel warmth and peace in my heart,” she said.

“Now you are feeling the love that is God, because you are loving yourself!” I said.

“I think I’m getting this!” she said. “I can’t feel God’s love for me when I’m not loving myself. When I judge myself and put pressure on myself to do everything right, I can’t feel God’s love because my heart is closed to it. But when I’m loving myself, I feel God’s love for me! This is great!”

“Yes! This is what happens when you practice Inner Bonding!” I said.

Tracey had experienced the joy of sharing love with her nephews, which felt safe to her, and now that she was experiencing the joy of loving herself and receiving Divine love, she was able to open to sharing love with a partner, which she had never experienced. Before doing Inner Bonding and learning to love herself, she had always been trying to get love, so her relationships had never worked out. She was thrilled to be attracting people who were capable of sharing love.

I assure you that when you practice Inner Bonding and learn to learn from your wounded feelings and lovingly manage your painful existential feelings of life, and learn to take loving actions for yourself, you will be able to give and receive love, and this sharing of love is truly the greatest experience life has to offer us.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my new book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.