Feeling vs. Being Loved

Being loved is not a luxury.

Science and history can show us clearly that human beings depend upon connection and approval from family and/or their community. Those of us who live in the US in major cities live in a uniquely alienating culture in which we are taught to cultivate independence over interdependence, and most of our social activities revolve around using mind-altering substances or staring at screens.

But before we lived in our own apartments or houses, we lived in shared spaces and depended on one another for resources. If we were exiled from our tribe, we were almost certain to die.

Furthermore, scientific studies have shown us that physical touch is vital to brain development and cognitive function in human beings.

Being loved is not a desire that should take a backseat to being financially stable or being a productive member of society. It is vital and fundamental human need.

When we don’t feel loved

I have lost many friends and many years of my own life to addiction. Experts on addiction have identified lack of connection as a significant cause of addiction, as any member of a 12-step group can tell you. That is (in my opinion) why 12-step recovery programs are often successful—because they provide a supportive and loving community.

When we don’t feel loved, we need something to fill that void. If we can’t fill the void, we want to escape our lives entirely.

It’s alarming to see the outpouring of love that some people receive after they pass from addiction, then. If this person was so loved, why would they feel so alone?

A note about ‘self-love’

I want to deflate this term for a moment, because I found it thoroughly vague despite trying to understand what it meant and how to feel it for most of my life.

I don’t think self-love is something that needs to be cultivated and nurtured unless you are violently harming yourself on a daily basis. If you are functioning enough to generally get enough sleep and feed/bathe yourself, you love yourself enough to pull focus on that and actually work on your capacity to feel loved by others. We can’t exist in a vacuum, no matter how much we want to. It won’t ever be enough to just love yourself. You have to know how to feel the love from others.

You might have some nasty self-criticism and negative programming going on in your subconscious mind that makes you feel like shit, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself. I really believe that unless you are critically incapable of caring for yourself, focusing on self-love to heal a lack of connection is a wild goose chase.

Subconscious vs. conscious agreements

It may be true that someone who is well-liked by many and even loved can still feel totally isolated and unloved. I’ve experienced this first-hand, and I’m sure you know people who have as well or have seen this play out on reality shows. If this isn’t about a lack of self-love, what is it about?

In my opinion, it’s an incapacity to receive love from others. This happens when our conscious mind receives evidence of love and validation from others, but the critical factor which guards our subconscious minds holds a library of archives that provide us evidence that we are, in fact, not loved by others.

This archive gets created every time we have an experience of rejection, criticism, or abandonment. These archives are primarily formed before we are 7 years old, and the person rejecting, criticizing, or abandoning us is an authority figure, this exponentially enlarges the importance of this archived material. Another way the archived material is exaggerated is when the incident occurs and coincides with a strong emotional state.

If we don’t work to create a new and improved archive, we won’t be able to accept love no matter how much people are trying to connect with us.

It often feels unbearable to watch someone who is an un-fillable emotional void clamor for the attention and validation of others. I have definitely been that person. It can also be more subtle—I have friends that are in relationships and have active social lives that seem, from the outside, to be surrounded by incredible amounts of love. But when they are triggered or feel a sense of shame, their entire capacity to feel and experience this love can collapse.

This used to happen to me every time I was hungover, which was all the time. It didn’t pair as well with getting stoned as I thought it did.

I think the cause of this is that our subconscious programming is incredibly powerful and is a well-established part of our cognition that often doesn’t reflect objective reality in the here and now. This means that we can hear “I love you” from someone and convince ourselves that they don’t really mean it, even if we can’t put our finger on why.

For most people, feeling unlovable is caused by childhood trauma and/or neglect. Even the greatest parents in the world can’t always be there for us, and most of us actually have regular ass human beings as parents.

That means we all have to make a conscious and dedicated effort to cultivate our own capacity to receive love if we expect to feel appreciated and loved.

Identifying the root causes of the subconscious programming around feeling unloved is definitely helpful, but I think it is really dangerous to just undergo that discovery process and call it a day.

We have to establish new subconscious beliefs if we are going to be able to feel and behave differently.

There are a lot of ways to do this, and hypnotherapy is one of those methods. Another is vigilant introspection, cataloging ‘negative’ thoughts and behaviors, looking at them objectively, and repeating new affirmations repeatedly.

Changing subconscious beliefs about being unlovable requires patience and self-reflection.

I highly recommend reading Healing the Shame that Binds You.

I wouldn’t take this on alone. After all, the problem is feeling alone.

There are 12-step groups for just about everyone, whether you struggle with addiction or not. Telling a friend, family member, or mental health professional that you are struggling is a crucial step to cultivating your capacity to receive love. You will probably be amazed at how loved you, in fact, are—and if you are not, it is never to make those connections with others. It requires vulnerability and stepping outside your comfort zone, but I promise you it is worth the effort.