(This video is recorded from a Facebook LIVE session)
VIDEO TAKEAWAYS
When we don’t love ourselves we contract in our relationship to other people in 3 ways.
- We create codependency and unnecessary attachments
- We limit our ability to love others
- We limit the true intimacy we can have with other people
When we start LOOKING for love, it is because we have forgotten that WE ARE LOVE. We look to find love everywhere outside of ourselves.
When we don’t love ourselves, it creates codependency and unnecessary attachments. It gives the power of being loveable to everyone else outside of ourselves.
The deepest fear that we all have is that we are not loveable, and most of us will do ANYTHING to feel loveable. This is because we don’t realize all the love we need is within us. We change, we adapt, we play small, we attract, we seduce all in attempt to have someone else PROVE to us that we are loveable. We don’t believe that we are. So, we become codependent, doing anything for our “loveable” fix.
But the problem is that when we keep changing ourselves to fill this hole, we can never fully receive love because that the “LOVE” that comes it a loving of a person that we aren’t. Someone is loving our persona. It’s not real love, because it’s not the real you. So we still feel empty. We still feel unloveable.
“THE WAY OUT OF HELL IS NOT TO SEEK TO LOVE BUT TO SEE HOW YOU ARE BLOCKING LOVE. YOU BEGIN BY EXAMINING WHAT IS CAUSING YOU TO SEEK FOR LOVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.” ROBERT HOLDEN
When we cannot love ourselves it also limits our ability to love others.
MAYA ANGELO SAID: “I DON’T TRUST PEOPLE WHO DON’T LOVE THEMSELVES AND TELL ME, ‘I LOVE YOU.’
What you bring to a relationship is what you are going to experience. We are all mirrors. So if you believe that you are unloveable, you capacity to love others doesn’t exist. You can’t extend what you don’t have.
The reality is, the love you feel for others is a manifestation of the love you feel for yourself. Period. When you block loving yourself, you can’t help but judge yourself. When you have loving compassion, empathy and grace towards yourself then and only then can you genuinely offer and extend that to others.
And the 3rd way that not recognizing our loveability contracts us in relationships is that is limits our intimacy we can have with other people. True love of ourselves, true acceptance of everything that we are, were and will be – that type of unconditional love of ourselves opens us up to deep intimacy.
Intimacy is that type of acceptance and closeness that can only exist when we show up as our real selves and know that THAT person deserves and is worthy of love because they are already wholly loveable.
When we fully love ourselves in our present, we don’t need reasons to justify WHY we are loveable. True intimacy cannot be present with a shadow version of yourself. The unloveable version that we keep trying to “make up” for.
“DO NOT SEEK THE BECAUSE. IN LOVE THERE IS NO BECAUSE, NO REASON, NO EXPLANATION, NO SOLUTIONS.” ANAIS NIN
You cannot love yourself or love others if you aren’t allowing yourself to be YOU. When you show up to the table as you, the experience of intimacy can be embraced. With this love, that intimacy allows for a closeness that warms even the darkest days and invites each other to reveal more of who they are to each other. There is always more to see and experience with intimacy. There is always more love and acceptance. This intimacy is possible in friendship, family relationships and with a romantic partner.
We are wired for intimacy in our relationships. It’s the gift of our soul’s to each other. To be truly understood and loved. A place where we feel deep belonging.
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We aren’t going to love ourselves totally in one day, but we can love ourselves a little bit more every day.
Knowing we are loveable means accepting the good whether we think we deserve it or not, release the inner critic, and love yourself NOW. CAN YOU BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO SHOW YOURSELF LOVE NOW. That nothing has to be fixed. What is the risk in that?
