The Love Wound
Codependency is not who you are and it is not something you have to cope with.
In reality, codependency is how we survived LOVE NEGLECT. It was the survival strategy our truly brilliant brains came up with to survive what was utterly ABNORMAL for a human being to experience: the lack of conscious, deliberate, safe love from others.
This kind of neglect taught us to believe something terrible about ourselves: that we’re not lovable, that no one would love us, and that our love isn’t wanted by others.
This is what the Love Wound is!
It shows up in several ways in your daily life:
- Feelings of worthlessness
- Questions about one’s belonging and value
- “Does anyone really like me?”
- “They wouldn’t love me if they knew the real me”
- Doubts about ever being loved and wanted by another human being
- Always believing you’re the cause of another person not loving you
- Thinking you have to earn love by “Getting better” and “healing more”
- Obsessing about what other people think and/or feeling about you
- Quietly doubting the love, affection, attention and praise safe, loving people give you
- Dismissing your own feelings
- Pleasing, fixing, and care-taking others
- Waiting for others to choose you before you take action to get to know them
If you find yourself seeing and doing these things, you’re ultimately wrestling with the pain your love starvation.
Healing the Love Wound
Healing love starvation requires a specific approach that self-help books, general therapy, and lone-wolfing it doesn’t address or provide. I know. I spent years seeking the solution for myself and for my clients. Only in the last two years have I realized what was really missing for all my efforts and their efforts.
You see, we keep trying to heal the symptom of the Love Wound. We call that symptom “codependency”, “people-pleasing”, or “self-love deficit disorder”.
And it keeps returning like those weeds in the yard that never seem to die no matter what you do.
That’s because we’ve not removed the cause of the symptom.
So how do we heal the Love Wound and reverse Love Starvation?
It takes three steps:
EJECT SHAME + INTEGRATE LOVE + EXPERIENCE THE REAL YOU = THRIVING
The Love Wound is powered solely by shame. This is the shame we feel for having feelings, for having needs and wants, and for existing. We must eject that shame from your identity so you begin to see yourself as the innocent person you really are. You begin to see all the trauma and hurt you’ve suffered through was a result of the dysfunction of the other person and that your feelings about that abuse and neglect MATTER.
When this shame is ejected, space is created in our sense of self. IF we don’t fill it with a new point of view, our brains will fill it with what we already know: being shameful. The most powerful way to thrive beyond codependency is to connect with LOVE. So I help you integrate LOVE into your identity and open your heart, mind, and body to being loved and received safely by others and yourself.
This is where you begin to see that you ARE worth loving, worth knowing, and worth keeping.
As we release shame and integrate love, we begin to share ourselves with the world and navigate the acceptance and rejection that inevitably comes. This gives us the skills and insights into our growth and transformation and helps us get to know ourselves deeper.
When these three steps happen at a specific rate, we heal deeply and thrive openly.
I invite you to join me in healing your Love Wound and setting yourself free. Take my free workshop on how I help you achieve that here: http://workshop.freetheself.com.
Upfront disclaimer: I will offer you a chance to enroll in my solution, HEAL at the end of the workshop – but this all comes after I give you some deep insights that will aid your journey. I feel that is a fair trade for our time together.
Heal the Love Wound, heal your Life.