“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love..”
Sophocles.
It is surprising how common feeling unlovable is. Every human being deserves to experience love. Yet, there are times when they don’t get to see love. Why is that? Answering this question will tell us more about feeling nobody loves us.
Feeling that way is fine. That only means that you have an opportunity to explore yourself and learn why you are feeling unlovable. There are many reasons to explain explaining those feelings.
However, we will explore why we tend to attach our self-value to our daily activities instead of grounding it on who we are. There’s a trap behind that. When those actions stop, you may feel like you lost the ground that held you once.
Think about a football player who has dedicated their life to that sport. What will happen to their self-love if they can’t play anymore because of a knee injury? All the attention they once had is gone! Thus, they start to feel unlovable.
That’s the main reason why we tend to feel undeserving. We seek love outside and build a sense of worthiness based on someone else’s standards. Then, we end up looking for love outside of us.
Yet, loving yourself is fundamental for anything you want to do. Building personal relationships or experiencing your life purpose through your business requires loving yourself. Then, how can you give and receive love in a healthy way?
We will dig into what you can do to stop feeling unlovable and share some tools to shift your perspective about yourself. Let’s see some ideas about love to understand it a bit more.
What is love?
Since the beginning, love has meant care or desire. Love is an elusive word, though. The Greeks even identify several types of love. Talking about them, Eros, the god of love, relates to the connection.
Following these ideas, love is a deep connection between people who care for or desire each other. In the end, love is a complex emotion, and each of us gets to experience it in different ways.
For example, brewing and enjoying a cup of coffee while you listen to birds chirping and contemplating nature is a form of loving yourself. Can you think of similar activities you do for yourself?
Are you still finding it challenging to know what love is? Note that you are not alone. Do you recall this song from Foreigner called I Want to Know What Love Is? From the lyrics, you can see the composer also has doubts about love.
Have a look at the pre-chorus and the chorus:
In my life, there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
You may have experienced pain too. See how he doubts he can face the pain again and expect someone else to show him what love is? See how common it is?
The thing is that everyone (you, me, and the songwriter) can face anything when we seek love within us instead of expecting someone else to show us that. When we don’t, we are bound to experience the consequences.
Consequences of feeling unlovable
Everyone reacts in a particular manner when feeling they don’t deserve love. Yet, there are some habits related to feeling unlovable, such as:
- Engage in people-pleasing behavior. Because we want to feel loved, we tend to sacrifice our wants to please others.
- Struggle to recognize when someone is taking advantage of us. When we don’t feel loveable, we aren’t aware of how people manipulate us. We can’t see it.
- Thinking we need to earn love. In this state of mind, we believe we must do something to be loved.
- Have difficulties setting healthy boundaries. A lack of connection with our inner self will prevent us from delimiting where our space starts and ends.
Even though it is not a comprehensive list of what we do when we can’t feel loved, it is a general picture to help you see whether your behavior is similar to the actions listed. In any case, is there anything you can do to welcome love into your life? The good news is that’s affirmative. Let’s explore them!
Transform the feeling of being unlovable!
As you know from experience, seeing love within you is challenging. There is no way someone else can convince you otherwise because you are sure you don’t. You have to experience it by yourself.
Yet, the following assertions might help you see the love you are longing for:
- Remember to notice your feelings
Sometimes, we mistreat ourselves because we feel we can’t experience love. The truth is that nobody wants to feel that way. Then, what can you do to stop it?
Ask yourself the question who am I? Can you see there are two Is in the question? There is the obvious I at the end of the question. Who is the one asking, then? That’s you! The observer of your emotions, feelings, sensations, and thoughts.
So this you is observing that a feeling of being unlovable is happening. From this perspective, you can ask why you are feeling unlovable. By doing so, you are having a healthy conversation with yourself. Be honest. It hurts, but you will get stronger. By the way, all of this is happening within your mind! - Recognize that thoughts are a state of mind.
Just like emotions come and go, thoughts are states of your mind. Remember, you are not your thoughts. You are the thinker thinking your thoughts. You are the observer, the Self. That’s your essence, and that’s who you are.
Thus, whenever you get unpleasant thoughts, observe them, be curious, and ask questions. It feels great to learn things about us because everything starts to make sense. Also, you will find a better criterion for choosing those activities matching your inner self and what you like.
Again, having unpleasant thoughts is fine. That’s part of us. It’s part of our human experience tagging our experiences. Yet, we are not those tags but the observer watching them. From that point of view, we can ask why we tag those experiences as pleasant or unpleasant.
As you keep doing this over time, you will build a strong relationship with yourself. - Shift from the comparison trap.
Self-acceptance is the key to stopping comparing yourself with others. Why? Each human being, including you, come to this existence with gifts, talents, skills, and strengths. In other words, you have gifts, talents, skills, and strengths.
Yes, you also have traits you don’t like. That’s ok. It is an opportunity to discover why we don’t like them. Who knows? You may be surprised by what you end up uncovering about yourself.
For example, Bill (not his real name) thought he was noisy because someone tagged him that, and he accepted it. He then suppressed any feelings and emotions associated with being noisy. Exploring his inner self, he discovered he needs sharing the cheer within himself.
From this understanding, he reframed being noisy into being cheerful. Because he got aware of this part of himself, he now chooses to whom he shares his cheerfulness. And that’s how he integrated “being noisy” within himself. - Get an identity as an individual on your own.
As you explore your emotions, feelings, thoughts, and sensations, you will be able to learn about your values, what you like the most, and with what activities you feel like engaging. In other words, you will learn about your gifts, talents, skills, and strengths.
After you see yourself as a gift, it is easier to see how amazing you are! Because… you are! You just have to see yourself from another point of view. That starts with uncovering yourself and knowing who you are. - Know that every human being deserves love, including you.
Remember that we said love is a connection? Connection to care and desire each other in the many ways we human beings express love.
Nobody expresses love in the same way. You have your unique style. Do you want to know how you do that? First, let’s see an example of an act of love. Your cat brings a mouse to you.
You don’t need a mouse, but in the world of your cat, that’s a way to show you that they care about you. In addition, it is a sign they desire to keep being with you.
When you talk nicely to someone else, you are giving them your love. Do you water your plants? You are giving them love. Doing anything for yourself is a form of love. We are all connected, and that’s why we all deserve love. - Start an inner journey to learn to love yourself.
Love flows. It can come and go but requires action. It is a dynamic cycle that starts with loving yourself. Once you see your gifts, talents, skills, and strengths, you value yourself more. You raise your self-esteem because you now feel love within you.
The joy and bliss we feel when we see the love within us are so powerful that we feel the urge to share for the sake of it. In that mindset, you don’t want to get something back. You only give for the pleasure of giving. Sharing our gifts with the world is what makes life spark.
Final words
Feeling unlovable is a feeling most people experience. Feeling that way is fine. We all, the whole existence, are connected. We strengthen those connections by caring and desiring.
In other words, we can get in love when we love ourselves. That’s the only way to understand when someone else gives us love, so we get to love back and create meaningful connections.
Because you feel good being with yourself, you can connect with anyone and anything. When you love yourself, everything around you shines. You love yourself and share the love when you care for yourself, the people around you, any living thing within your space, and any objects you use.
Now you can see the significance of the device you use to read these lines. Imagine the myriad of connections, of love, that made it possible that you could have the resources to get this device in your hands. Think about the thousand and thousand connections that made possible the creation of the device you are using right now.
Well, that’s love, human beings loving each other. If you want to chat about this, reserve a spot for a complimentary call. You can also email me your questions or comments. Thanks for reading!