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Learning to FEEL loved

8 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11215

Hi edosenpai,

It sounds like you are really putting a lot of thought and effort into figuring this out. It also sounds like you have already come to some insightful realizations. Great work! Are you doing this all on your own or also with the help of a therapist? Either way, I am very impressed with the progress you have already made. How has this realization helped you in the last few days?

Ashley, Health Educator

Here to help :)

8 years ago 0 +0 / -0 3

hi all

I realize this is an old post. But what I have always struggled with thinkhard has described in this original post in 2011. It is as though I am numb to everything. I have recently finished reading the 3 books by Brene Brown. It helped me accurately identify what is happening.

Basically, I am dealing with the pain of feeling "not good enough" by numbing. As I numb the painful emotions, the positive ones went away as well. I realize some of the pain was caused by actual aggressors, and others are caused by my own negative self-talk. But in the end, I just distanced myself from it enough in order to function through the day-to-day. I don't exactly have a solution to this. What I am doing now is focusing on the core trauma that I have identified and traced it back to how unconsciously sort out and focus on the negative on a daily basis.

my hope is that by knowing how it works, I can stop doing it.

8 years ago 0 +0 / -0 3

All of these posts are great, thanks for sharing. It really hits home with me as well, I can related to having issues in feeling loved and I think what was mentioned about people giving and receiving love differently is so true. For example, my father never said "I love you" to us as kids however he would always cook for us and still does today for family gatherings or just on a random day drop by with a care package. I learned to realize that is how my father expresses his love. I find trouble with this with my spouse as he will say the words "I love you" all the time, but I don't feel like he shows it through action. The words start to lose meaning to me. However to him, saying the words is how he expresses it. I may need to check out that book goofy mentioned.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1044

Hi y'all! I couldn't help but get in the middle of your discussion. I think it's awesome to learn that we are not alone in our feelings. I think Courage mentioned below the sessions that can help and then went on to discuss the different ways people express love and perceive themselves as being loved. There's a nice little book out there call The Five Love Languages. It discusses different ways people express love.

I understand what you are talking about also so don't think it's oddball. It's surprises me and is a relief to me to read about issues others are having that I am going through or went through and realize I am not alone with the issue. Thanks for brining this to the forefront. Definitely an issue I need to work on. I keep thinking everyone thinks they need to "fix" me, not that they love me. Does that make sense? I need to follow my own advice here. I do have one saving grace in my son and his family - that unconditional love. My parents are deceased but I had it there too. I wish there were more of that to go around.,

Okay think I got off topic. Very interesting!

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 21

Hi thinkhard,

Firstly, your want to grow in this way is a great and deserving gift (to yourself and to the one's that love you)...it is not self serving at all. I have heard or read somewhere that often communication gaps occur in relationships because we tend to give love in the way we wish to recieve love, and that the way we each give and recieve love is different. Perhaps if you explore the ways you give love, you may learn about how you could best recieve love. Since hearing this I find myself more aware of what I am doing to express love - and whether it is having the impact I want it to have. I try to listen to other people, when they provide information about how or what they would like.

Take care.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 31

Thanks for the suggestion! I've been incorporating the exercise into my routine. Can't say that I've had any major revelations or breakthrough moments yet, but it really does help to combat the negative, lonely thoughts and feelings.

Also, liked the song -- haven't listened to Bjork since her Sugarcubes days.

Take care,

Flint

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 55

Hi,

I used to feel the same way you describe below - I could have written that myself!!

What I am going to suggest my sound a little odd and perhaps is not for everyone. If that is the case I apologise in advance and kindly ask the health educators to comment as I don't want to offer any advice that might be counter productive for others.

Having said that, one thing that helped me immensely to 'feel the love' has been practising loving kindness meditation. You can google it, but basically all you have to do is close your eyes, and start sending loving feelings to people in your life. This is a wonderful exercise, and is done in a structured way: first we send love towards one self, then to a mentor/teacher/parent, then towards a loved one (sibling, close friend, etc.), then to a 'neutral' person (someone we know but who does not causes us any particular feeling, either pleasant or unpleasant - i.e. cashier at the shop you frequent, etc.), and finally to a 'difficult person' (someone you don't get along with perhaps). It can be either by visualising the person in your mind with your eyes closed, and/or by saying loving words to this person as if we were talking to them. Mine goes something like this: 'May you be well, may you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be joyful, may no harm come to you... may you be blessed... etc.' (this perhaps explains my forum user name 'wellandhappy' :) ) Please note that even that this type of meditation comes from the Buddhist tradition, anyone can benefit from it. Sometimes after I finish I then say a prayer for my dear ones.

The above may sound silly but I promise you, it does work. Don't know why or how, but it does. I was shocked one day when I was meditating on loving kindness, on the subject of my parents, I remember I was concentrating on the loving feelings I feel towards them, it of course felt so beautiful... it was such a powerful but gentle and warm feeling, so wholesome and protective, so I was enjoying this feeling, when suddenly it hit me! And I remember thinking to myself 'wow, if this is how I feel for my parents, just imagine the amount of infinite love THEY MUST FEEL FOR ME, their daughter!!'... it was as if a little crack opened my heart and love started to flow! And it still does, slowly but steady :) This has helped me a lot to cope with the depressing and lonely feelings that I still get every now and then.

On that note, I'd like to leave the link to this song by Bjork that I really like. Is called 'All is full of love' :) Hope you like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjAoBKagWQA

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 31

Hi Thinkhard,

I'm fairly new here but will take a crack at this one...I don't consider this an oddball problem since I can certainly identify with what you've described. I know that I'm loved by friends and family but for some reason, I'm constantly surprised by expressions of affection towards me. Also, the positive feelings that those expressions evoke are fleeting at best or quickly dismissed by my own negative thinking patterns, which leave me with feelings of loneliness and emotional isolation.

For me, I think it has to do with my own feeling of self-worth and truly believing that I'm worthy of love. I've had enough talk therapy in my life to be able to recognize this as an issue as well as identify its source, but have yet to find an effective means of making significant headway.

Within the context of this program, I suppose you'd call it a negative core belief. In terms of taking a CBT approach to address this issue, I quickly read through sections 8 and 9 and they seem spot on. Whether or not you believe that core beliefs can be changed, I think the point is to try to replace Negative Core Beliefs » Assumptions » Negative Automatic Thoughts with Positive Core Beliefs » Assumptions » Positive Automatic Thoughts.

Since this is most likely a very ingrained belief for me, I expect that it will take more time to make progress. Personally, I expect to spend a good deal of time on section 9 before positive automatic thoughts are able to take hold. But with perseverance and repetition, I do expect to be able to transform the negatives into positives.

Take care,

Flint

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4

Hi... I was here a few years ago when I went through a bad patch and it helped immensely. I am fortunate enough to say that serious depression is not a fact of daily life for me now. And I mention that because one line of discussion I remember from these forums was whether once you had depression, you had to expect to relapse constantly. For me that smacked of "negative thinking" and I heartily challenged it at the time, and I plan on living up to it.

However, saying that isn't intended to diminish the struggle it takes to get depression-free, or to make anyone else's experience of persistent depression seem worse because it's been so resistant. But I do want to insist that we can make it out and stay out. That said, it takes vigilance and I practice that every day. But so far so good.

That's the good news, here's the other good news. I keep working on things that I identified through this process. I haven't fixed them all, not by a long shot, but I know I can create change so I keep plugging away. And this is where I would like to ask for some help, from the people I found helped so much before.

Right now my concern is with learning how to FEEL loved. I stress the "feel" part because I have come to realise that plenty of people around me do actually love me. They act that way, they say it, the seem to enjoy my company and like me, etc. All good. But I realised the other day that I still go around in a bit of a bubble where I can see the loving stuff but it bounces off my psyche like I have some kind of forcefield around it. I am perpetually puzzled and surprised by expressions of affection towards me. And I realise that I also remain deeply lonely (not the same as depression, but still, a red flag). So isn't this odd? I can now (thanks to help) see there is loving around me. But it's not getting through to me somehow, so I still feel isolated, that loving stuff isn't causing the kind of self-esteem healing etc. that you would expect it should.

I know it's an oddball problem but it feels like I have got stuck halfway out the door. Does anyone have any suggestions or exercises or things I could try to shift this process forward? I hope this explains my situation enough (let me know if I can explain more/better) and I hope it doesn't sound too self-serving, but I know that growing out of depression means developing new skills and I realise this is one I had better work on.

Many thanks...

LBN

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