PREVIOUS: Not Enough Love #2

SITEs: “How to Accept Love“

▪︎ 7 Signs Your Inability to Fall in Love May Be a Larger Emotional Problem

QUOTEs : “I can’t love you unless I give you up” ~ Edith Wharton
“I can’t fall in love with anyone. I make men believe what they want to believe. ” ~ Nicole Kidman

Where do our fearful, LOVE-LIMITING beliefs come from? (cont)
a. From THEM (Part 1 & 2)

b. From US
REMINDER: Believing you have a severe shortage of love-capacity, or that you can’t love at all is a form of FoI – fear of intimacy – expressed in 2 broad ways:
▪︎ Not letting ourselves BE loved, so even when someone does, we don’t believe it or let it in
▪︎ Not letting ourselves give the love we actually are capable of, or limiting how much or how often we do, because of weak boundaries

CAUSES
• Children can & want to love their parents – but cruel, drunk, crazy, depressed ones won’t let themselves be loved. So the children blame themselves for not being able to get thru to the parents – for not having an effect!

• We absorbed all our family dysfunction, which became the PP, ie. Negative Introject. If they didn’t set the example of being warm & kind, then we think it’s somehow dangerous for us to be that way too

• If they were ‘social’, looking good with other adults, BUT were selfish, neglectful & cruel at home, WE either:
— become isolators, to avoid more abuse – from of being ignored, left out & intimidated as kids (more likely Introverts)
— OR are social too, but pick damaged people & abusive situations to be involved with who are like our family. Such friends & lovers are familiar, since it’s what we think love/intimacy is, & it’s all we can hope for.
We know deep down we can’t trust these mates & jobs, but give them everything we are & have, anyway! (more likely Extroverts)

• Our personal growth was undermined in many ways by our Ps, who could not nurture & love us appropriately, yet we were expected to be capable & clever enough to provide emotional & physical support for them, instead of doing it for themselves

• This put us in a double bind : “Be incompetent for yourself AND be competent for us”! Since no one can obey a double message, we were left feeling crazy, inadequate, hopeless & paralyzed!  We believed that we were supposed to be able to fix their pain & worries – as any child would- but can’t!
Not being able to fill their bottomless pit of neediness & suffering, we concluded that WE are fundamentally deficient, a total failure – without enough cleverness, perseverance, guts & LOVE to go around, then or now!  

RECOVERY (The 3 As)
1. Awareness means That :
•  the human mind & heart has the capacity for love built into it
•  we can love others abundantly, as we learn to love our wounded IC

2. Acceptance means That :
• even though our family was not able to love us – at all or not sufficiently – we have the right to be loving & loved, simply because we’re here, & not for what we can do for others.  God doesn’t make junk!
• we do not have to be perfect to have love, give love or receive love!  (Trying to be perfect is a form of self-hate!)

3. Action means That :
• we can actively seek out people who are already capable of loving us & groups, literature…that can teach us to love ourselves.  ✶ These will become our new Positive Introjects!
• we can actively pursue our dreams & talents (with less procrastination!), which will bring more joy & love into our life.

NEXT: Loneliness lack of comfort