Am I worthy of LOVE??
Many years ago, I found myself in a long-term relationship where I felt completely unappreciated. I bent over backwards and even sacrificed my own integrity in order to receive morsels of appreciation, but no matter what I did, I still felt unappreciated. I requested, I demanded, I whined – still, less than nothing. As I grew resentful that my beloved withheld appreciation, I began to withhold understanding. The key nuggets of our frequent arguments were, “You don’t appreciate me” versus “You don’t understand me.” As I felt unappreciated, I also felt unworthy of love, and as the pain grew with the passing of time, I arrived at the point where I was done seeking appreciation because it was just too painful.
If you look deep, you will find that the core wound of all emotional wounds is the belief of unworthiness or conditional worthiness. This belief is so painful because it is completely untrue, but since our parents, teachers and peers all suffer from the same debilitating belief, it seems perfectly normal….and it was perfectly normal for me too to neglect the worth I carried in me.
The true purpose of emotional pain is to wake us up, and make us pay attention to the false belief that is causing the pain in the first place….had known this but was not ready to experience this…hence kept dwelling into self pity and eventually found my worth in BLOOD CANCER.
Of course, I ignored this pain through distraction, rationalization, etc… but pain is designed to grow stronger the longer you ignore it, requiring greater and greater methods of avoidance. Depending on your ability to tolerate emotional pain, eventually, there will come a point, where the only way to be free of this pain is to uncover its true source and pull it up from the roots.
Being on my inner journey for many years now, I share this insight with you now so that you can gain the wisdom and power to find love in all the right places. I don’t want to sound gender biased but with my own experiences and watching the women around me, I truly believe that we as a species need to evolve.
Most of the womanhood (not that men are not party to it, I just want to consider the more justified and sensible part of Humanity) is silently suffering from the invisible wound of unworthiness. Because we have amnesia of our true selves, and we have forgotten that we are unconditionally loved by an All Loving Source, we come into this world asking, “Am I worthy of love?” From our first breath, we seek this answer, not knowing that the life-long quality of our relationships, prosperity and health all depend on our immature interpretation of the signs. We destroy All as we keep seeking this “worthiness”.
In most cases, this pivotal answer is, “I am worthy if….” Until we awaken, Conditional Worthiness is the foundation belief for almost every human being on this planet, and the core belief that every other belief is based upon. If you believe that you are fundamentally unworthy of love unless you meet certain conditions, you will construct a reality built on this false premise, and you will embark on this life, seeking love outside yourself and building unsustainable relationships upon that search.
As a way to cope with the emotional wound of unworthiness, the well-meaning “ego” selects a “primary emotional need,” that when met, temporarily fills this wound. The “primary emotional need” is specific to you and your life experiences, with the most common emotional needs including: appreciation, approval, acceptance, understanding and being heard, but there are many more, as well. This means that if your primary emotional need is acceptance, you must somehow get others to accept you, again and again, in order to feel worthy of love. Our personalities become moulded according to this need and our unconscious strategies to get this need met, influencing our choice of careers, friends, clothes, interests and just about everything else. The feeling of lack of love and unworthiness within me kept me in this loop as I just received what I WAS.
Although I was usually unaware of this primary emotional need, there was a part of me that was constantly tracking for the fulfillment of this need, and, consequently, altering my behavior in order to get it met…..And in turn not appreciating what I was getting in abundance from everyone around me.
I did sacrifice my desires for approval, compromised my values for appreciation and hid behind a false self in exchange for being understood. It was an invisible prison of my own making, and, even if I could get others to meet this emotional need, it was never enough to fill this bottomless pit of unworthiness.
In an unconscious attempt to heal this wound, many of us search for that one special person who can love us enough to make us whole, but we fail to take into account that the wise Universe always has another plan.
The main component of what we call romantic chemistry is the unconscious pull towards someone who dos not meet our primary emotional need, and trigger our emotional issues. Of course, when we first get to know this person, and we feel attracted, we usually believe that he will provide us with what we need emotionally, even if we are not sure what then. So, we open our hearts and we let this person in, totally expecting the relationship to grow and flourish, but within days, weeks, months or years, we recognize that we feel hurt and unloved because this person is not giving us what we need emotionally, and then we blame him for withholding love. Our love language is really a language of emotional needs. No matter how much your beloved says, or does, the “right” things, if he doesn’t meet your primary emotional need, you will feel unloved and unsatisfied.
And the song starts playing at the background…
तुम मुझे भूल भी जाओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको
मेरी बात और है मैंने तो मुहब्बत की है
मेरे दिल की मेरे जज़बात की कीमत क्या है
उलझे\-उलझे से ख्यालात की कीमत क्या है
मैंने क्यूं प्यार किया तुमने न क्यूं प्यार किया
इन परेशान सवालात कि कीमत क्या है
तुम जो ये भी न बताओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको
मेरी बात और है मैंने तो मुहब्बत की है
When our partner is not meeting our primary emotional need, we either sacrifice ourselves to do whatever it takes for our partner to love us in the way that we desire, be that through appreciation, approval or understanding, etc…, and if our partner still does not meet this emotional need, we defend ourselves with anger, resentment, resistance or we just shut down. We withhold love from our partner by denying him his primary emotional need in return. Of course, we orchestrate all this, without our awareness. We just feel hurt and unloved, and, so, we try to protect ourselves…blaming the other person.
If you unconsciously believe that you are only worthy of love if your primary emotional need is met, your love receptors will only turn on when you perceive that this condition is satisfied, but, as soon as the condition is no longer satisfied, the receptors turn off. Your condition must also be met by a certain type of person, or a specific person. You might also have self- imposed conditions, for example, if you don’t look a certain way, even if your partner is meeting your emotional need, you won’t feel loved because your love receptors are turned off. This means that even a “bad hair day” can negatively impact a relationship.
Until we are fully awake in our lives, the purpose of relationships, and especially intimate ones, is to alert us to our disempowering beliefs, so that we can heal and wake up. Other people, we call family, lovers and friends unknowingly act out our false beliefs and trigger our issues so that we have the opportunity to recognize and release these false beliefs and heal our wounds. Therefore, if I believe that my worth is conditional and I must prove that I am worthy, my partner can only reflect this belief by unconsciously offering behaviour that activates my feelings of unworthiness.
If you don’t love yourself, you will need others to behave certain ways so that you feel worthy of love, but others can only demonstrate your belief that you don’t feel worthy of love. Because worth is intrinsic and unconditional, it cannot be proven or disproven. The mere act of trying to prove that you are worthy or getting others to treat you a certain way so that you feel worthy, comes from a belief that you are not worthy. If you know that you are unconditionally worthy of love, you don’t need proof.
Few years back, I did stop looking outside myself and I looked within. I began to see a hidden history revolving around my need for appreciation that began with my mother in childhood. I could see that my need for appreciation was a symptom of trying to prove that I was worthy of love. I could also see that there was an empty space inside me where my own self-love was missing. It became perfectly clear that in this unconscious game of trying to prove my worth, the cards were stacked against me.
People cannot prove your worth. People can only demonstrate whether or not you believe that you are worthy.
If you listen to your own words and thoughts, when you are feeling unloved by your partner, you will begin to understand your primary emotional need. If you have found yourself, saying or thinking, “You don’t hear me,” the primary emotional need is likely being heard. In the case of, “You don’t approve of me or you always judge me,” the primary emotional need is likely approval. Your primary emotional need is more than likely the same need that did not get met in childhood.
No matter what your primary emotional need might be, the cure is always the same. You don’t need anyone to meet your emotional need in order to be worthy of love. You just need to release this false belief and embrace the truth.
I say “I Am Unconditionally Worthy of Love.”
