Love is known as the greatest power in the Universe. When you have love in your life, you’re safe, secure, and confident. Without it you’re worthless, lonely and fearful. In order to bring love into your life, you need to look deep within to discover the part of you that resists loving, doesn’t want to love or is simply incapable of loving. Without seeking your own truth, your experience with love will be fleeting and your idea of love will be based on fantasy, not reality.
When my clients come to me, they have this sense of emptiness, or numbness, that they can’t quite put their finger on. They crave so much more, but they have subscribed to their current state of despair as their “normal” (however, I’d argue there really is no normal!). In almost all cases, we ultimately uncover their fear of loving and being loved.
It’s easy to rationalize and intellectualize this concept, but the key is to internalize it in such a way that you come to understand why you’re so afraid of it – why you’re so afraid of love. It’s such a horrible predicament that we crave love so badly yet we’re petrified of it! Click To Tweet
It is ironic isn’t it?
Your greatest struggle as a human being is your longing for, yet fear of, experiencing love. As a result, there’s a “push-pull” dynamic going on because if you don’t have love in your life, you feel isolated and lonely. This causes a lot of pain so you lower your defenses in order to let love in. However, when it shows up, it scares the hell out of you so you pull back and push it away.
This “push-pull” dynamic creates a lot of havoc in you life and it’s the cause of most of your conflict, disharmony and issues in your life. It’s what keeps you separated from others.
You can typically understand, and own, your desire for closeness. However, it’s more difficult to comprehend why you’d repel something that you know you want so badly!
Why You Fear Love
As a child, the natural instinct, and expectation, is that you will be loved unconditionally by everyone. There is a “me and others” mentality. However, when the love doesn’t come so easily, you experience rejection, abandonment and defeat. Not receiving the love you expected caused a lot of pain. Yet you still long for it and will organize yourself around trying to get it from others just the same.
Over time, you create an unconscious concept of what love really is and how to you can bring it into your life. The premise of getting love was once instinctual but it’s now shifted into an intellectual act of the will. In order to receive love, the heart gets demoted and the ego is promoted to C.L.O. (Chief Love Officer)! The ego is now in charge which creates a “me versus others” mentality.
With the ego in charge you begin to hold yourself as superior to those who are supposed to love you. Of course, this is a defense mechanism. Nonetheless, you’ll organize around getting others to submit to you so that you can feel loved. The idea is that, if you’re superior, they’ll admire and dote on you. In most cases, this will backfire. So, if being superior didn’t work so well, perhaps becoming submissive will work!
The concept of love equating to the need to be submissive is finally born – albeit it is completely unconscious! The unconscious belief now is that, when you submit, you’re being selfless. By being selfless and focusing on the other person, they will eventually love you, in fact, worship you. This is a misconception but it’s frequently taught in various religions and philosophies.
Since you have an unconscious belief, that in order to experience love you need to be submissive, you ultimately choose not to love all together. I mean, who the heck really wants to be submissive in order to get what they want?!
As with all children, you have an all or nothing way of thinking. Since you’re unable to experience unlimited, unconditional love from everyone, you give up on your goal completely. It’s obviously the child within running the show and it perpetuates an immature, unconscious view of love. However, because it’s unconscious it is extremely powerful.
So, how can you begin to open up to love again?
5 Steps to Experiencing Real Love
1) Acknowledge and Give Up Childish Notions
It’s important to realize that love isn’t dangerous and it’s not about losing your dignity, yourself or your freedom. When you come to grips with this you won’t be afraid anymore of giving and receiving love. You’ll reconnect with your core and be able to do this from a real place.
2) Stop Trying to Control How Others Feel About You
Others people’s feeling are outside of your jurisdiction! You need to allow others to feel whatever they feel towards you. Be willing to like and respect them even if they don’t like you, don’t love you and especially when they refuse to submit to you.
As an adult now, you may think that you’re not trying to control other people’s feeling about you. However, pay attention when something triggers you and you get emotional. Is there a part of you that expected someone else to yield to your wants, needs and desires? When you can answer “yes” you’ll be able to set this childish, immature current aside and unburden yourself in a big way!
3) Learn to Trust Yourself and Others
When you’re truly honest with yourself, you’ll see how you push love away with your unspoken demands and expectations. It’s the misconception that love equates to being submissive and weak that actually petrifies you. Not real love itself.
You need to own your personal misconceptions about love because if you don’t, you can’t really trust your own intuition and judgement. If you can’t trust your own judgement, you won’t be able to trust others either.
How can you experience love as deeply as you want to when you don’t trust the other person?
As you learn to trust yourself and others, love will no longer be so confusing or dangerous and you’ll be able to open up to love from your real self.
Love won't be confusing if you connect from your real self Click To Tweet4) Be Willing to Say “I Might Be Wrong”
By admitting you might be wrong, your intuition will get stronger because your mistakes will be harmless and you’re better capable of learning from them. It opens you up to the possibility of seeing things differently. You will engage your intuition and you will be able to promote an attitude of openness and observation, which can be extremely beneficial.
5) Have Realistic Expectations
Learning to experience true love takes time and should be done gradually. When you think of the love you so deeply desire, you are aiming for the highest and most perfect form of love. This is a huge mistake because you neglect to realize that love comes in all kinds of depth, degrees and variations. Being blind to this, you deprive yourself of the kind of love that you’re willing and capable of receiving right now.
By setting realistic expectations, you experience life in the moment. Life will begin to unfold differently and you’ll experience others in a way you’ve never experienced them before. You’ll develop a sense of strength, confidence and security you’ve never felt before.
Summary
The topic of love is quite complicated. In order to meet your goal, it’s important to acknowledge where your thoughts, feelings and emotions deviate from the truth. Discover where you’re still confused and where distortions exist.
Bottom line, you need to let go of all of your resistance, face yourself fully and honestly, without judgement or contempt.
As you desire a full understanding of yourself, it should be done with a quiet, calm, peaceful heart and mind. Don’t create a sense of urgency. Trust your process and let it gently unfold and be open to what you learn about yourself, others and about love.
With love and light,
Dana
